ion, but a charity.

The Report mentions several propositions which had been laid before
the Commissioners during their inquiry for the application of the
revenues. The Committee of the Adult Orphan Institution thought that
they should like to administer the funds; the Rector of St.
George's-in-the-East thought that he should very much like to use them
for the purpose of converting that parish into 'a collegiate church,
under a dean and canons, who, with a sisterhood, might devote
themselves to the spiritual benefit, etc.'; others suggested that a
missionary collegiate church should be established 'as a centre of
missionary work for the East of London, with model schools, refuges,
reformatories, etc., conducted by the clergy.' Others, again, pleaded
for the use of the money in aid of the crowded parishes near the
Precinct.

The Commissioners were of a different opinion. The Hospital, they
said, never had a local character. This is the most startling
statement that ever issued from the mouth of a Lord Chancellor. Not a
local character? Then for whom were the services of the church held?
Where were the Bedeswomen found? Where the poor scholars? Where did
the church stand? Who got the doles? Not a local character? We might
as well contend, for example, that Rochester Cathedral and Close and
School have no local character; that Portsmouth Dockyard has no local
character; that Westminster School has no local character. St.
Katherine's Hospital belonged to its Precinct, where it had stood for
some hundred years. As well pretend that the Tower itself has no local
character. The 'local character' of St. Katherine's grew year by year:
the founder thought only to make a bridge for her children from
purgatory to heaven by the harmonious voices of the Master, the
Brothers, and the Sisters; but purpose widens. Presently purgatory
disappears, and the whole ecclesiastical part of the foundation,
except service in the church, vanishes with it. There remain, however,
the revenues, and these belong, if any revenues could, to the
locality.

In the year 1863 the proportion of waste to profit was as 12-1/2:1.
Has this proportion in the quarter of a century which has elapsed
increased or has it decreased?

From time to time, as we have seen, the question forces itself upon
men's minds--whether this revenue could not be administered to better
advantage. Lord Somers encounters the difficulty in the year 1698;
Lord Lyndhurst in 1829; Lord