text:  Why should eleven thousand pounds a-year be given to any ambassador at Vienna or at any other court of the earth? Cannot his actual diplomatic functions be amply served for a tenth of the money? Or what is the actual result but to furnish in nine instances out of ten a splendid sinecure to some man of powerful interest without any or but slight reference to his faculties? Or is there any necessity for endowing an embassy with an enormous income of this order to provide dinners and balls and a central spot for the crowd of loungers who visit their residences; or to do actual mischief by alluring those idlers to remain absentees from their own country? We see no possible reason why the whole ambassadorial establishment might not be cut down to salaries of fifteen hundred a-year