you do to encourage them in celibacy? You
allow them at any age to accept your
hospitalities, and you expect no return, and you
charge them twelve shillings only for the privilege
of wearing a demi-griffin rampant on their
little fingers, while the married man has to pay
twenty-four. Now this, I say, is too bad. The
bachelor is a selfish luxurious wretch, able to
do more with three hundred a year than the
family man can with three thousand. Tax
him then—tax him heavily. He is young and
strong, and able to endure—grind him down with
taxation till he groans under the load, and then
when he becomes a married man, and a worthy
useful citizen, lighten his load instead of increasing
it. And at the same time that we bully these
selfish young dogs of bachelors, would it not be
judicious to take a hint or two from them.
How is it that they manage to get a maximum
of enjoyment out of a minimum of expenditure?
By combination. And why shouldn't married
people combine as well as bachelors? Not
combine socially, I don't mean that, but
pecuniarily; as they already do to get their
supplies of water, their gas, the books that they
want to read. We ought to have club chambers
for families. Great big handsome houses
let off in floors. For want of these we have
ruined our town; we have made metropolitan
distances so vast that we want railways from
one part of the town to another; we are
involved, each one of us, in an enormous
expenditure for which we only get the smallest
amount of comfort. In the present state of society,
the providing for families should be the work
of a professional man. Why are you a householder,
which is another name for a persecuted
miserable swindled wretch?—why are you to
be bothered with mysterious papers about gas-
rates, and water-rates, and poor-rates, and police-
rates, besides ten thousand other cares and
botherations, which are at once vexatious and
unworthy of your attention. Let it be the
business—and a very profitable business it might
be—of a professional man to take a house or
houses, to attend to the rates, taxes, and repairs,
and to superintend and watch its kitchen arrangements
as carefully as such matters are looked after
by the committee of a club.

"If you please, sir, the thor has set in and all
the pipes is burst;"—"If you please, sir, the man
'ave called to see about the biler, and he says
could he speak to you about it;"—"There's a
party in the 'all, sir, as wishes to see you about
the gas-meter, which he says a new one is
wanted." Such announcements as these, together
with incessant intimations that, "A gentleman
has called for the pore-rate, and has been twice
before," are familiar to every British householder.
What bliss to hear no more allusions to
such matters, and to make over a cheque once a
quarter to an individual who would take all such
troublesome matters off your hands for ever!

I have no space to dwell longer on this
particular suggestion. I was thinking just
now of something else that I wanted to say
—what was it? Oh, I remember:

Why don't you improve your street
conveyances? As to omnibuses, they are beyond
hope. A faint attempt was made to do something
with them, but it soon subsided, and you have
lapsed back into your old grooves again. But
don't you think something might be done with
the cabs? Why not follow the plan adopted
on railways, and have first and second-class
cabs. According to the present arrangement,
you go to the play with your wife, in a vehicle
which just before has been occupied by six
drunken blackguards returning from a foot
race, or even by worse customers. If there were
first-class and second-class cabs, such objectionable
people would hail the latter, on account of
the difference in price. And keeping still to
the cab question, why don't you have some
means of communicating with the driver without
thrusting your head and half your body out
of the window? Even by doing that, you can
hardly make yourself heard, in a crowded
thoroughfare, till you have got past the house
you wanted to stop at, or the street up which
you should have turned. By means of a flexible
tube you might give your direction with ease,
without stirring from your place, or bawling
yourself hoarse. And would it be too much to ask
that in close cabs there should always be a light
inside after nightfall? As it is, you plunge into
the interior of that dark receptacle for locomotive
humanity, compelled to take your chance of
plumping down upon a seat on which some
inconsiderate person has just before deposited a
pair of boots thickly encrusted with mud. There
is a lamp outside the Hansom; why don't you
have a lamp inside the four-wheeler? And talking
of Hansoms, how is it that the public puts
up with that guillotine window? We have a very
nice fellow in this establishment who once broke
one of those windows with his nose—the feature
is a large one, and the scar is upon it to this
hour. If it is not possible to make a window
altogether outside the cab, allowing a good space
between it and the apron for ventilation, at least
the window as at present existing might be left
to the management of the individual inside the
cab. The majority of persons who have sense
enough to find their way into one of these
vehicles, would probably be capable of the
mental and bodily effort of dealing with the
window. But it is a curious thing, and difficult
to account for, that all persons who are
professionally mixed up with horses and carriages
always treat you as if in all matters connected
with either you were a perfect baby. I must
leave this subject of Hansoms and four-wheelers.
I come to my most important suggestion. It is
new. It is practical. It gets us—the country
generally—the government—the people—out of
a difficulty. It is economical.

I have to propose a new method of rewarding
merit in this country: a new way of distinguishing
those among our citizens who have earned a
right to our approval, and on whom it is the
general wish to confer some great public
evidence of our respect and gratitude. Hitherto,
when we have sought to do honour to a great