to be rewarded in
the end. They contain great masses of 'evidence,' extracted by the
examinations of committees and commissioners from the parties believed
to be best qualified to give correct and full information on the
various subjects on which they are examined, and these opinions are
supported by facts and authentic statements and statistics, invaluable
to the investigator. The first volume of last year's Reports from
Committees opens with that on the Edinburgh Annuity Tax, the fifteenth
contains that on Steam Communications with India. There are four
volumes on Customs, two on Ceylon, one on Church-rates, one on the
Caffre Tribes, one on Newspaper Stamps, &c.; while other volumes
contain Reports on the Property Tax, the Militia, the Ordnance Survey,
Public Libraries, Law of Partnership, &c. From commissioners, we have
Reports on Fisheries, Emigration, National Gallery, Public Records,
Board of Health, Factories, Furnaces, Mines and Collieries, Education,
Maynooth College, Prisons, Public Works, &c.

The fourth section of these parliamentary papers for 1851 amounts to
thirty volumes, and consists of _Accounts and Papers_. It is in these
that the statist finds inexhaustible wealth of material, long columns
of figures with large totals, tables of the most complicated yet the
clearest construction, containing a multiplicity of details bearing on
the riches and resources of the empire in its most general and most
minute particulars. Thus the first volume relates to 'Finance,' and
includes the accounts of the Public Income and Expenditure, Public and
National Debt, Income Tax, Public Works, and a vast variety of other
subjects. The second volume is made up of the 'Estimates' for the
Army, Navy, Ordnance, and 'Civil Services,' which includes Public
Works, Public Salaries, Law and Justice, Education, Colonial and
Consular Services, &c. The third volume is filled with Army and Navy
Accounts and Returns. The next six volumes refer to the colonies, and
consist of Accounts, Dispatches, Correspondence. The tenth is occupied
with the subject of Emigration; and the eleventh with the Government
of our Eastern Empire in all its vast machinery and complicated
relations. The remaining volumes--for space would fail us to enumerate
them in detail--treat of such subjects as the Census, Education,
Convict Discipline, Poor, Post-office, Railways, Shipping, Quarantine,
Trade and Navigation Returns, Revenue, Population and Commerce,
Piracy