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, the Slave Trade, and Treaties and Conventions with Foreign States. Last of all, as volume sixty of the set, we have the Numerical List and General Index, itself a goodly tome of nearly 200 pages, compiled with immense care, and arranged so perspicuously as to afford the utmost facilities for reference.
These papers, as we have said, differ greatly in size. Some consist of but a single page, others swell up to volumes two or three inches thick, and of perhaps 2000 pages. As to the contents, the majority display a mixture of letterpress with tabular matter; and while some are wholly letterpress, others present an alarming and endless array of figures—filing along, page after page, in irresistible battalions. In many, valuable maps and plans are incorporated, with occasional designs for public works, &c.
Besides these returns and papers of permanent value, there are daily issued during the session programmes of the business of the day, entitled Votes and Proceedings, and containing a list of the subjects, the motions, petitions, bills, &c., that are to be brought before the House, according to 'the orders of the day.' These, and all the other papers issued by parliament, may be obtained regularly through 'all the booksellers,' by any person desiring to have them. Their prices are fixed; and in the case of the larger papers, the price is printed on the back of each. Copies of bills and returns may be had separately, on payment of these affixed prices; and indeed few parties require complete sets. Some public libraries take them, as do most of the London, and one or two provincial newspapers, by which the gentlemen of the press are enabled to compile the numerous articles and paragraphs with which all newspaper readers are familiar, and which usually begin: 'By a return just issued, we learn,' &c.; or: 'From a parliamentary paper recently printed, it appears,' &c. The public is often considerably indebted to the labours of newspaper men in regard to these papers, for the exigence of space, and the necessity of beating everything into a readable shape, require them to condense the voluminous details of the returns; and their sum and substance is thus given without any encumbering extraneous matter.
The cost of complete series of the papers varies from session to session, according to the number issued, ranging usually about L.12 or L.14.
LIGHTS FOR THE NIGHT.
Unquestionably, darkness is disagreeable. Whether to manhood hoary-headed in wisdom, or to childhood yet in soft-brained ignorance, darkness is an unpleasant fact, to be got over in the best way possible—to be got over at all events, and at any cost, and to be turned into luminosity by every expedient that can be used. Wax-tapers, to throw their soft, luxurious light on my lady's delicate face, as she lies like a beautiful piece of marble-work on her dreamy couch; shaded lamps for the grave merchant, the virtual king of the present, as he sits in his still office, ruling nations by bale and bond, and guiding the tide of events by invoices and ship's papers; Palmer's candles, under green pent-houses, for students and authors, whose eyes must withstand a double strain; the mild house-light, with a dash of economy in the selection, whether of oil, sperm, long-fours, or short-sixes, for the family group; the white camphene flame for the artist: strange mechanisms for the curious; the flaunting brilliancy of the coloured chandeliers and cut-glass shades for our English Bedouins in the gin-palace; the flaring jet of the open butchers' shops; the paper-lantern of the street-stalls; the consumptive dip of the slop-worker; the glimmering rush-light for the sick-room; the resin torch for the midnight funeral: these, and countless other inventions—not to mention the universal gas—assert man's disinclination to transact his life in the dark, or to bound his powers by the simple arrangements of nature. There are better lights, though, than any of these, and a worse than mere physical night, be it the blackest with which romancer ever stained his innocent paper, when describing those dark deeds on desolate moors which all romancers delight in, and which send young ladies pale to bed. The night of the mind is worse than the night of time; and lamps which can dispel this are more valuable than any which make up for the loss of the sun only, though these are grand undertakings too.
Most people know what a Child's night-light is, and most people have heard of Belmont Wax, and Price's Patent Candles, though few would be able to explain exactly what the warrant guards. But who ever pretends to understand patents? The 'Belmont' every one knows; it is a mere ordinary wax-candle, which perhaps does not 'gutter' so much as others, and with wick more innocent of 'thieves' than most, but with nothing more wonderful in appearance than an ordinary candle. A Child's night-light, too, has nothing mysterious in its look. It greatly resembles the thick stumpy end of a magnificent mould, done up in a coloured card-jacket, and with a small thin wick, that gives just a point of flame, and no more, by which to light another candle, if necessary—of admirable service for this and all other purposes of a common-place bedroom. Eccentric sleepers, who write Greek hexameters, and fasten on poetic thoughts while the rest of the world are in rational slumber, might object to the feebleness of this point of light; but eccentricities need provisions of their own, and comets have orbits to which the laws of the stars do not apply. For all ordinary people, this thick candle-end is a delicious substitute for the ghastly rush-light in its chequered cage, which threw strange figures on wall and curtain, and gave nervous women the megrims. But nothing more is known of Belmonts or night-lights; their birthplace, and the manner of their making, are alike hidden from the outer world; the uninitiated accept the arcana of tallow only in the positive form. It is generally presumed that candles, in the abstract, come from some unknown place in 'the City;' but how they are made, or who is employed in their making, or how the workmen live in the grease-laden steam of the factory, not one in a thousand would know if he could certainly none would give himself any trouble to find out. Neither should we ourselves have known, had not a little pamphlet, bearing the heading, Special Report by the Directors to the Proprietors of Price's Patent Candle Company, fallen into our hands. Holding the Report open on the desk before us, we will now give to our readers the net result of the moral doings of the factory.
In the winter of 1848, half-a-dozen of the boys employed in the candle manufactory used to hide themselves behind a bench two or three times a week, when work and tea were over, to practise writing on useless scraps of paper picked up anyhow, and with worn-out pens begged from the counting-house. Encouraged by the foreman of their department, who begged some rough, movable desks for them, and aided by timely but not oppressive prizes from the Messrs Wilson, and by the presence of Mr J. P. Wilson, the little self-constituted school progressed considerably, until it reached the number of thirty; then a large old building was cleared out, a rickety wooden staircase taken down, an iron one put up in its stead, and a lofty school-room, capable of holding about 100 or more, made in the place of two useless lumber-rooms. The making and furnishing that room amounted to L.172. The school for some time held to its first principles of self-government. All the instruction, discipline, and management were supplied by the boys themselves; and when a number of elder boys joined, a committee, appointed by themselves, regulated the affairs of the community. However, this did not last long. The hot young blood and immature young brain needed a stronger curb than self-appointed committees could supply; and by a general request, the school has since been worked by authority—this authority itself guided by a general vote in many matters of choice immediately concerning the scholars. In the following summer—we are still in '48—a day-school was held in the room, to which the younger boys who were wanted in the factory at uncertain times and for indefinite periods, were sent when not employed—drafted from school to work, and from work to school, as the necessities of the factory required. The annual cost of this day-school is L.130; the total cost from the commencement, L.327.