[11] The City of London, the wealthiest in the world, but not the best governed, is destitute of a Public Library. The babblement of Sidney the vain, which in 1855 triumphed, now ceases to amuse and the shrill screams of the Peacock are no longer heard. If you wait for a scheme that will please the Peacocks and the Sidneys, you will never do anything at all.[13a] It is not for me to say how the wisdom of the wise slumbered on this particular Night, (May 21st, Paper Duty Repeal Bill—Lords Division). What do I see? Mirabile dictu! The Earl of Shaftesbury, the Premier’s Lord High Admiral of the Sees, not to support his Patrons on a Field night like this is really too bad! To give a vote which seriously impedes education, and prevents the cheapening of School Books and Tracts, is consistent in the extreme. But not only is it refractory, but ungrateful opposition on the part of Lord Shaftesbury. A nobleman so favoured by Lord Palmerston as to issue his CongÉ d’Élire, permission to choose a Bishop, and on whose fiat the Lord Chancellor appoints to Livings, ought not to have been a deserter when his vote was of so much importance.[13b] That most genial Entertainer, and by far the cleverest Lecturer ever seen in London, combining great talent, with rare common sense and worldly knowledge, Albert Smith, now, alas! no more, sent me a good humoured note a few days ago, acknowledging “Who is my Neighbour?”[15] Last Autumn the sad want of knowledge of the elementary rules of economy among Operatives was strikingly and ruinously displayed, and it is obvious what a handle it affords to employers to be apathetic, if not hostile to extending the Franchise. Hence the need of “more light.”[17] The Member for Sheffield is severe enough, is the Censor par excellence of small offenders—and pays full tithe of mint and anise, but with characteristic cowardice is dumb as a dog, has not one syllable of remonstrance against the titled USURPERS in the House of Lords, who would retain an iniquitous tax on the Newspaper Press.[19] There is no vote among the Pairs on the Repeal of the Paper duty that challenges more attention than that of Lord Brougham. What a miserable spectacle! Conspicuous by his absence, not one word,—not one syllable could Ex-Chancellor Brougham vouchsafe to strike off the fetters on knowledge in Central England. Let me tell his Lordship his Mission speech on Central Africa was inopportune, and unpatriotic, when on that Monday evening there was a nobler field before him in the House of Lords to exert his eloquence. England FIRST.[22] The Meeting will be held at 12 o’clock on Monday, 18th June, Waterloo day, at the Literary Institution, 17, Edward Street, Portman Square. The friends of Progress are earnestly requested to COME EARLY.[24] The objections to the extension of education are often ludicrous; some complain of servants reading instead of working. A friend at Liverpool, who had read my pamphlet, “Who is my Neighbour?” writes to me, “I think it is a very good thing that somebody thinks of the poor man. I once heard a Doctor of the Navy say, ‘if he had his way a poor man’s child should never have any learning whatever, as it made the Big Bugs look so small.’” I have often thought of his words.[26a] The Bishop of Chichester is sagacious enough to comprehend the dangerous tendency of educational questions to his Order. Instinct tells him the dark abuses of the Church would quickly disappear before the light of intelligence. Here is the key to his opposition to the Paper Duty Repeal Bill, (May 21st. 1860.) A cheap well written Press is also denounced from the Palaces of Bangor, Cashel, and Exeter, and by several Absentee Bishops, including St. Davids, and the Bishop of Winchester. I am glad to notice the Bishop of this Diocese (London) with eight other Prelates voted for the Repeal.[26b] The Church of England is the wealthiest Church in the world, yet it would scarcely be credited the number of well authenticated cases of appalling destitution that exist amongst some of the worthiest and hardest worked of its Clergy.[30] Out of the 20,000 Clergy of England and Wales there are 10,000 with an income of less than £100 a year; contrast this poverty with the rich Clergy, and an Archbishop of Canterbury with £15,000 a year, and York and London each 10,000, and Durham and Winchester each £8,000. The Laity denounce these shameful inequalities of remuneration.[34] The Public Libraries Committee, Birmingham, have recommended a central reference library, with Reading and News Rooms, a museum and gallery of art, and four district lending libraries with news rooms attached, should be established. The cost of the lending libraries, each to contain 3,000 volumes, and the expense of maintenance for one year would be £3,252, and the annual cost of each, after the first year, would be £370, or £1,480 for the four.[35] Nasty minds are loth to part with dirty calumnies.[38a] The Earl of Rosse’s vote (Pair) against the Repeal of the duty upon paper is inconsistent indeed! His telescope is the wonder of the world, but for free glass what would it be? Here is a Peer, a great astronomer, coming down from his high tower and clipping the wings that carry knowledge.[38b] Mr. Bright in a recent speech alludes to the Times as a paper of “great eminence,” I suppose he means as an enormous liar, for he tells the Birmingham Meeting the crushing and withering truth that the Times is at “this moment selling the dearest interests of this country for its own private purposes.”