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 Hatherley in 1871. I suppose that even a
Lord Chancellor does not claim infallible wisdom. Therefore I venture
to insist upon the facts that the Reformation destroyed the Religious
House of St. Katherine; that the changes made by Lord Somers only made
the old Hospital useless; and that the Royal Commission of the year
1871 confirmed, in the new foundation, the later uselessness of the
old. The House of Shams and Shadows in Regent's Park is not the old
St. Katherine's at all; that is dead and done with; it is a fungus
which sprang up yesterday, which is not wholesome for human food, and
uses up, for no good purpose, the soil in which it grows.
Yet, because one would not be charged with unfairness, what does the
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