by the highest Foreign Office honours in the
gift of the Crown, while those who presumed
to breathe a whisper against the system were
persecuted without scruple or justice, and were
ultimately hustled out of the diplomatic service
by means as unfair towards individuals as
injurious to our national interests. Finally,
we closed this strange account of the doings
of these Foreign Office midges which were
actually going on in London within five minutes'
walk of the House of Commons, by alluding
to the enormous gains reaped by a few clerks
who insisted upon their right to levy a large
arbitrary tax upon the handsome sum voted
annually to support the dignity of our
embassies abroad.

We were met by a hailstorm of denials. A
gentleman in the service, supposed to have
written the article in question, was interrogated
in defiance of constitutional law and precedent,
which grants freedom to all proper expression
of thought in this country; and after having
been fined, upon various pretexts, about five
thousand pounds sterling (5000/.) was, as
stated in the evidence of the Right Hon.
Henry Elliot, in a report now before us,
coolly shelved. During the fifteen years which
have since elapsed, the Agents, five in number,
have reigned supreme over the foreign
relations of Great Britain, taking toll, without
let or hindrance, from six hundred and ten
thousand pounds (610,000/.) yearly, of public
money, beside the large profits which they
must derive from bankers' interest on
deposits. Moreover, it appears by a list now
published for the use of Parliament, that one of
these Agents, who is controller of public
accounts and financial business at home and abroad
connected with the Foreign Office, enjoys the
further additional salary of twelve hundred and
fifty pounds (1250/.) a year, exclusive of fees
on the issue of all commissions; while the other
four gentlemen, who are each senior clerks of
departments, divide six thousand nine hundred
and ninety-three pounds (6993/.) a year among
them.

A few weeks ago, we referred again to this
singular abuse, and in consequence of the
great dissatisfaction expressed on all sides
with reference to the indisputable facts
contained in our disclosures, Mr. Potter, one
of the members for Rochdale, moved for
some returns. At first there was the usual
determined effort of the parties interested, to
evade inquiry. They did not hesitate to insult
the House of Commons by presenting the
shortest paper ever printed for the information
of a national assembly. It contained five names,
set forth in the middle of a very large sheet of
paper of the usual official form, and not one
word beside. Of course, when Parliament
reassembled, this immediately provoked another
motion; after a short discussion, tending to
make the desired returns as incomplete as
possible, they were granted, and a " Statement
respecting Foreign Office Agencies" was
presented to both Houses of Parliament. To
this, has been added a lengthy paper extending
over twenty-seven printed folio pages, put
forth by the Agents themselves in defence of
their profits, and published with curious effrontery
at the public expense.

The plea of the Agents is, however, not without
a certain importance in the interests of
truth, and is valuable as an official confirmation
of every fact we have stated on the subject. It
contains, moreover, singular proof of the great
age that may be attained by a British abuse,
however shocking, if it be but defended with
sufficient determination and stolidity. We are
anxious to give the Agents perfectly fair play
—- which is all they can expect—- and we
therefore present their doings once more to our
readers in strict accordance with their own
account of themselves.

They open their defence by admitting that
no fewer than eighty-three years ago the existence
of the Agency system in the Foreign Office
was recognised as a grave scandal. In 1785,
when all sorts of malpractices existed in our
public offices, uncensured, the Agencies were
thought too bad, even for the lax official
morality of that time. Commissioners were
appointed to inquire into the suspicious perquisites
of the Foreign Office clerks, and it is now
recorded that those commissioners expressed an
opinion adverse to the whole system. It appears,
however, that the practice of rattening
is by no means of recent date, and it was put
so actively in force on that occasion that, after
a fight of ten years, the subject was suffered to
rest without a decision. In 1816 it came forward
again, and Lord Castlereagh, who was
certainly no strict disciplinarian, found the
abuse had become so rampant, that it was necessary
to check it by special regulations. It is
a bold act on the part of the Agents to plead
these restraints as a sanction of their trade,
but they do. In 1836 there was again a riot
as to the immense emoluments derived from
these Agencies, and then it was at last
admitted by the parties interested, that the
objections urged fifty years before by the
commissioners of 1786 were valid and sound, but that
they had been removed by the regulations of
Lord Castlereagh. This meaningless excuse,
being supported by no evidence whatever, failed
to satisfy the commissioners appointed to
investigate the subject by the reform Parliament;
and they reported, as their predecessors had
reported half a century before, that " they
entertained objections to the Agencies," and they said
that, " after the best consideration they were
enabled to give, they found that those objections
were not removed by the reasons adduced
in support of a practice which should, in their
opinion, be altogether prohibited."

Of course the customary logic of the Midges
was again employed with that invariable success
which has long since passed into an official
tradition.

A Mr. John Backhouse, then Foreign
Under-Secretary, and his colleague, who bore the
appropriate name of Strangways, composed a hymn