e bewildered public gnashed its teeth at the Minister, the Guardians,
and the law, and wished them all at Land's End or beyond it.

V.-An Ungodly Jungle.

The case of the Guardians of St. Bartimeus against the Guardians of St.
Simon Magus was at length reached. The argument lasted for two days.
There is a grim work, the short title whereof is "Burns's Justice," in
five fat volumes, from which the legal Dryasdust turns aghast. In one of
these portentous books, title "Poor," pp. 1200, the inquisitive may
find a code unrivalled by the most malignant ingenuity of former or
contemporary nations: a code wherein, by gradual accretion, has been
framed a system of relief to poverty and distress so impolitic, so
unprincipled, that none but the driest, mustiest, most petrified
parish official could be expected to lift up his voice to defend it;
so complicated that no man under heaven knows its length or breadth
or height or depth; yet it stands to this hour a monument of English
stolidity--a marvel of lazy or ignorant statesmanship. Imagine, if you
please, a Lord Chief Justice and three Puisnes, all keen, practical men,
alive to public policy and the common weal, eager to extricate the truth
and do the right, plunging into this "ungodly jungle," thwarted at
every turn, in search of justice for Ginx's Baby. With all his patient
industry and lightning quickness of apprehension, the Chief Justice
found it hard to reconcile past and present, or evolve from the vast
confusion anything consistent with his moral instincts.--Clear the
board, gentlemen. True regenerative legislation will begin by drawing
away the rubbish. Reform means more than repair. Mend, patch, take down
a little here, prop up some tottering nuisance there, fill in gaping
chinks with patent legislative cement, coat old facades with bright
paint, hide decay beneath a gloze of novelty, titivate, decorate,
furbish--and after all your house is not a new one, but a whited
sepulchre shaking to decay. Repair? There is a Repair party,
intermediating between Tories and Reformers--Radicals or Rooters let us
call these latter if you like--who cling to "vested interests" and all
other sorts of antique nuisances, yet say they are willing to improve
them. REFORM, which means, Pull down with bold statesman's hand, and
with like hand REBUILD, is no darling of your political Repairer. Call
the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in
legislation or admi