working class as were displaced. Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and other cities have obtained authority to pull down the nests of crime and disease, and to initiate comprehensive schemes of improvement. In many recent railway bills have been inserted clauses requiring companies, before taking fifteen or more houses wholly or partially occupied by the working class, to provide sufficient accommodation elsewhere; and similar provisions are inserted in the metropolitan improvement measures, and all Acts which cause the displacement of the poor. Last session, another very wise step was taken by granting in effect to railway companies a partial exemption from passenger duty, on condition that proper and sufficient workmen's trains were provided. This is a capital idea, and nothing could be better, socially, mentally, and morally, than improved dwellings for the poorer classes in country districts near London, with an organized system of cheap trains by which the workmen could go to and return daily from their work. The supply of decent accommodation is not sufficient; the cost of land and building of houses in London and the large towns is too high to get sufficient interest on the outlay from the rents the poorer class can pay. The Peabody Trust purchased nine acres of the Board of Works for 5s. a-foot, because Parliament compelled the Board to sell for this purpose, and this purpose only. But it must not be forgotten that, by this restriction upon the disposal of the land, Parliament caused the Metropolitan Board of Works the loss of half a million of money, which is really a contribution by the ratepayers to the erection of