10, Downing -street, ) Whitehall, Oct. 4, 1884. j Dear Mr Smalley : I was unwilling to answer your letter nastily, and I therefore postponed writing for two or three days, but I find this does not in any way relieve me from my dilemma. The first point raised by you is, indeed, one that can be briefly disposed of. When I first read in detail the " Life of Washing ton " I was profoundly impressed with the moral elevation and greatness of his oharacter, and I found myself at a loss to name among the statesmen of any age or country, many, or possibly any, who could be his rival. In saying this I mean no disparagement to the class of politicians, the men of my own oraft and cloth, whom, in my own land and my own experience, I have found no less worthy than other men

of love and admiration. I could name among them those who seem to me to come near even to him. But I will shut out the last-half century from the comparison. I will then say that if, among all the pedestals supplied by history for public characters of extraordinary nobility and purity, I saw one higher than jail the reet, and if I were required at a moment's notice to name the fittest occupant for it, I think my choice, at any time during the last forty-five years, would have lighted, and it would now light, upon Washington. The other subject is one on which I hardly like to touch in a few lings, for. the prospect it opens to me is as vast as it is diversified, and it is so interesting as to be almost overwhelming. Mr Barham Zinck, no incompetent calcu lator, reckons that the English-speaking people of the world a hundred years hence I will probably count a thousand millions. [ Some French author, whose name I unfortu nately forget, in a recent estimate, places them somewhat lower, at whatprecise figure I do not recollect, but it is like 600 or 800 millions. A century back I suppose they were not much, if at all, beyond fifteen millions ; I also suppose we may now take them at a hundred. 