of the salary. No pension is granted to any
person under the age of sixty-five, except
upon the furnishing of proof that he has
become unfit for work.

Business at the Home Office is commenced
every day by one of the senior clerks and the
librarian, who acts as registrar. These
gentlemen open and register the letters brought
in by the postman. After registry these are
sorted and delivered to the senior clerks of
the classes to which they may respectively
belong; a senior clerk extracts the pith of
each, minutes it in a few words, appends his
suggestions, and, in ordinary cases, also the
form of answer to a question, or the practical
way of dealing with the subject brought under
discussion. Where references are required
he makes them; where a letter is one link in
a long and intricate correspondence, he adds
whatever retrospect or analysis he may think
necessary to refresh the memory of his chiefs.
The senior clerk having thus dealt with them,
sends the letters and papers on to the Permanent
Under Secretary, who passes them up with
his own notes and comments to the Political
Under Secretary, through whose hands they
reach the head of the department. The Home
Secretary having attached statements of his
wishes or opinions to the papers laid before
him, they are returned, by the same road
to the senior clerks. It then becomes
the duty of each senior clerk to see that
no point in the Home Secretary's instructions
is at variance with law, fact, or precedent,
and to call attention to any errors
that he may detect before executing the
orders he receives. Drafts are often
prepared by the Permanent Under Secretary;
but everything done has to receive the sanction
of the Political Under Secretary and of the
Secretary of State. The Permanent Under
Secretary is the ordinary legal adviser; for the
bill-preparing counsel has enough of his own
work upon his hands—so much of it, indeed,
that as a condition of his appointment he is
restrained from private practice. If he
should have spare time, he may be required
to prepare bills for the government departments.

The four sections of the Home Office business
are the following: The chief clerk is at
the head of the most important, namely,
that which prepares all commissions, instruments,
and appointments that have to receive
the Queen's sign manual. They include
civil, military, ecclesiastical, peerage,
honorary, and other appointments of whatever
kind; charters, commissions of inquiry, and
licences of sundry sorts. This is of course
delicate work, and it is the chief clerk's
business to see that the documents issued
from his department are made fit to receive
and do receive the royal signature, and the
counter signature of the chief Secretary.
The chief clerk has to superintend also the
payment of all salaries, allowances, and bills,
and to prepare all returns asked from the
Home Office by parliament. Four or five
junior clerks are commonly at work under
this official.

Another distinct section of Home Office
business is formed by the correspondence
with lord-lieutenants of counties, and other
magistrates in England, and with the chief
authorities in Scotland, Ireland, and the
Channel Islands. A third section has
charge of the yeomanry and militia
business; and to a fourth is entrusted the
correspondence arising out of addresses
to the Queen. There is a special section
also devoted to criminal business; with
a keeper of criminal registers, who
analyses and reports annually upon the whole
body of criminal returns. Again, there is a
clerk who keeps a register of aliens who come
into the country, and prepares, when requisite,
letters of naturalisation.

One of the peculiar functions of the Home
Secretary is to consider appeals on behalf of
persons under sentence of death. To him
only can appeal in such cases be made. He
institutes inquiry, and recommends the Crown
to respite, to pardon, or to pass milder
sentences. If he can see no cause for
interference he is silent, and the law takes its
course.

The Home Secretary has charge of the
internal defences of the country, and
communicates on that subject with the Commander
in-Chief, and the Master-General of the Ordnance.
Upon the application of the Secretary-
at-War, it is the Home Secretary who orders
the issue of arms to the Queen's troops, and
who makes out commissions. No Commander-
in-Chief is allowed powers that he could
pervert on any large scale to the damage of
the constitution. The soldiers, however, upon
whom the country depends in case of invasion
for defence of hearth and home, are the
militia -- the ancient, national, and permanent
body of soldiery as distinguished from the
regular army; which is maintained only by
parliamentary vote from year to year. The
militia is in each county a local force, raised
by enlistment and bounty; or, if necessary,
by ballot or conscription. The lord-lieutenant
is the chief and appoints his own deputy-
lieutenants—unpaid officers—who carry out,
in their separate districts, all the details
of raising the force, except appointing the
adjutants. He also nominates all other officers,
and these, if above the rank of captain must
be county landowners. The ordinary strength
of the English militia is fixed at eighty thousand
men: in the case of rebellion or invasion
as many as a hundred and twenty thousand
may be called to serve; but not unless such
increase has received the sanction of an
assembled parliament within fourteen days
after it was ordered. The Irish militia force
is twenty thousand strong; the Scotch, ten
thousand. The raising of the force is nominally
regulated by order of Privy Council,
really by the Home Secretary, who also issues