your opinion was not asked. We don't need your criticism or your help to make our plan better; we ask you only for your vote, and that the allegiance due to party constrains you to give us." If this be the manner of proceeding in Cabinet, as it certainly is in the House of Commons, then the subject of surprise must be, not that the business of the country is carried on so indifferently, but that it is carried on at all. The fact we believe to be, that it would not be carried on at all under Mr Gladstone's management, but for the circumstances already referred to more than once. A House elected as the present House was cannot venture to quarrel with its leader. Not a few of the men who sit in it occupy now a social position into which they probably never expected to be introduced. They know perfectly well that a dissolution would relegate them to constituencies which would certainly not return them again; and so, rather than fall back into their original and natural insignificance, they take with patience whatever slights the Minister may put upon them, and vote, whenever a question of confidence arises, to keep him in power.

Meanwhile, through the peculiar relations that subsist between Mr Gladstone and the House of Commons, England is becoming every day more and more an object of contempt to foreign nations, and to those among her sons who most love and desire to honour her, a source of growing anxiety. We may affect to hold light the criticisms upon our foreign diplomacy in which our neighbours indulge. Such squibs as the Letter of Herr Frutz Baumwolle to the Emperor of Germany, it may suit the purposes of the Ministerial press to hold up to ridicule. But this we venture to say, that there is not a thoughtful man

in the land, be his professed politics what they may, who, even if while reading that letter he anathematised the writer, did not feel a blush upon his cheek, and a painful though secret consciousness that it spoke too much that was true. Even Lord Chancellor Hatherton, and his humble imitator Sir David Salomons—who equally abhor the term prestige, must, we imagine, be struck with the justice of the sentiments which we here transcribe ::

"Every one here feels that, in the language of Shakespeare, 'the time is out of joint.' That national patriotism which once influenced all classes of the English people no longer exists; that respectful which survived on this island long after and chivalric loyalty to the Sovereign, it had been dead in the other western countries of Europe, has now disappeared. Nothing remains of the subordination of remarkable a feature in English society. There is no longer that mutual confidence and dependence of one class upon another which formerly softened the differences of everywhere see contempt and slight for birth and wealth. Instead of this we now all authority in every rank, jealousy at the power and prerogative of the Crown, envy at the privileges of the aristocracy, of any individual and every rank, insolirritation at the real or fancied superiority

the different classes which was once so

ence towards the great, which is repaid by extreme haughtiness and harshness, sulkiness, bad-tempered discontent amongst the masses, and everywhere conflicting other, an insatiable passion for gain, and desires to supplant and overreach each an ardent longing for luxury and good living."

Then, after describing what the House of Commons used to be in days when Pitt and Canning presided over its deliberations, this provokingly-observant satirist goes on to say :

"Neither the Government nor the Parliament are the same. The House of Commons is totally changed. Amongst some of the country members one may still find something of the old style, but two successive Reform Bills have produced new electors and new deputies. The working-class electors consist of workers in wool, cotton, and iron. They are men

of hard hands and hard heads, of very little education, and that little of the very narrowest kind. Whatever they may have learned, it is certain that a knowledge of the history of the Fatherland and an admiration for patriot organisation they have not acquired. It is impossible for a German to imagine how a people can be so totally ignorant of its own history as the English working man generally is.

Even the more advanced or the rather better instructed amongst them do not know more than they have learnt from some miserable pamphlet, perhaps specially prepared to show that all the historical personages of England only existed to drag down the working man, morally and materially. Let your Majesty compare this state of culture with that of your Prussian subjects.

"Into the hands of such men-ignorant, prejudiced, malignant, bemuddled and stimulated with beer-the wisdom of English Ministers has thrust the power of electing the representatives of the English towns. In all large boroughs they form the majority of the electors, and, if united, can return whom they please. In any case, nobody can be elected in direct opposition to their wishes. As the electors, so the elected: a little above them by birth, a little by education, and greatly by wealth, the chosen ones add to all the prejudices and defects of their electors the dread of losing their newly-acquired honours. They generally know as little as the working man of the history of Eng. land, are not less liable to be influenced by one-sided religious views and narrowminded traditions, and are far more nervously susceptible in their purse than the working man. Not a few of them enter public life with all the soured antipathies of the cantankerous piety of a provincial Dissenter. People of this kind constitute fully one-half the House of Commons; people of this stamp form nearly the entire Government of England. As the elected stand towards their electors, so the Ministers stand towards the deputies. I do not mean to say that Messrs Gladstone, Hardy, Lowe, Cardwell, Disraeli, Lord John Manners, Sir Stafford Northcote, or Mr A. Herbert, stand, in regard to intelligence, geist, education, and knowledge, on the same relative level, with reference to Messrs Bright, Mundella, and others, as these latter stand with respect to the working men who chose them. I only mean to say that they are forced to adopt the tone of mind, position, and view of these gentlemen in their governmental and parliamentary duties. It is interesting to observe how

this influx of the industrial power in the Legislature has remodelled the conduct and behaviour of the English Ministers. Most of them have come from a mercantile position, and-if their enemies are to be believed-bear the unmistakable brand of the Philistine upon their foreheads. Mr Gladstone, Mr Cardwell, and others, have all the look of highly respectable commercial clerks accustomed to take their recreation in the evening, after their hard day's work, in the society of Christian young men." When old members listen to the self-denying sermons of Mr Gladstone, which unite in so masterly a manner the humility of the earthworm with the consequence of the counterjumper, their thoughts involuntarily revert to the tone in which Pitt defied some vexed minorities in the House, or some threatening noisy masses in front of its gates. How can they avoid thinking of the pride and contempt of a Castlereagh, or the aristocratic irony of a Canning, while they listen to the studied humility of their successor? And, thinking thus of the past, have they not a right to sigh?

"As the men, so their policy; one word expresses it sufficiently-' compromise.' Advisers of the Crown bargain like old-clothes-men (handelsjuden), and the cant of the conventicles is heard in the councils of Parliament. A little piece of this policy to gain one faction; a little patch of that policy to satisfy another; a little concession here, and a still smaller one there, to flatter this or that interestthese are the noble arts, these the noble duties, of an English Premier of to-day! 'Tu regere Imperio populos sic, Angele, Hæ tibi erunt artes !' memento,

"Nor is this all. The feverish restlessness which has given the highest authority of the realm into the hands of sweeps, bricklayers, carpenters, shoemakers, and waiters, has contaminated our whole polity; it has revolutionised the law of property in Ireland on the basis of official and systematic robbery, and will, in the next session, do the same for England. It has closed one eye to (perhaps even encouraged in secret) tumultuous meetings, setting at defiance the laws of public order; and as in law-making the chief result is cowardly yielding, so in the matter of government the result is anarchy. This is bad enough, but there is worse behind. The diplomatic disclosures of the last few months have shown England's incapacity in all international relations. Once she played a

first-class part in successful wars, and in still more successful treaties of peace. She could not have spoken one word that would have been lightly listened to when the results of the great war were settled in 1815-a settlement which stopped the outbreak of another war in 1830. She spoke, and kings and commanders listened with respectful attention. The conditions she proposed were accepted, those she objected to rejected. It is so no longer. When Figland speaks now, foreign nations listen with polite but half -contemptuous mien. When she proposes anything-if she really succeeds in screwing up her courage to that point-it is totally disregarded. When she goes security for anything, her signature is more likely to do harm than good. When she threatens, the threatened one may laugh mockingly -unless he be a half-savage Abyssinian. In a word, England's position and prestige have been replaced by comparative insig

nificance."

Our readers will, we trust, excuse us for having quoted so largely from what is probably no better than a squib. In a different way from our own "Battle of Dorking," it speaks truths which carry a great moral with them. The channel through which such truths come to us may or may not be lightly thought of. Woe to the land if the truths themselves be disregarded! Will anybody say that in the days of Wellington or Nelson, Russia would have dared to force upon us such a capitulation as that to which we submitted in the spring? Will anybody say that, had the spirit of Palmerston been amongst us, we should have despatched commissioners to Washington authorised to usher in a treaty of submission with an apology such as never before found its way into any public or official document interchanged between nations-both being as yet unconquered? Lord Russell did not, in our opinion, act with judgment when he moved the House of Lords to petition against the ratification of the treaty. The treaty has been concluded, and with the Crown it rests to confirm or

VOL. CX.-NO. DCLXIX.

decline to ratify as the constitutional advisers of the sovereign shall recommend. Therefore any interference by either House, before the Crown has made its option, would be as unconstitutional as ineffective. But Lord Russell did not, in his speech, advance a single statement which we are not prepared to endorse; and we are much mistaken if, everywhere else out of England, Lord Russell's view of the case be not taken.

Meanwhile the whole bent of our domestic policy and management seems to be drifting us towards a state of things from which the mind recoils with dismay. Not a single institution of all that our fathers handed down to us is safe from the hand of the spoiler. The university has ceased to be in close connection with the Church. The professor of any creed, or of no creed, may become the teacher of our youth. In one, and that not the least influential, of the colleges of Oxford, the master, himself in holy orders, cannot take his doctor's degree because he declines to subscribe the articles of faith which the Church has made her own. By a majority which, looking to the subject, we cannot but regard as narrow, the attempt to deprive the Church of her jurisdiction over her own burying-grounds has just been defeated. By-and-by, if Mr Gladstone remain in office, and if, as is probable, he change his mind on that subject, the minority will grow into a majority. In the mean time, an Endowed Schools Bill threatens to get rid of trustees and guardians, and to apply estates, settled for special purposes, to other purposes which the testators had never contemplated.

It really seems to us that members of Parliament who vote for such measures do not understand what they are doing. The endowments

H

which they are helping to break up had much more in view than merely to teach boys and girls how to read and write and keep accounts. Of course, by throwing them open you will extend this benefit, such as it is, to larger numbers. But what becomes of the poor lad's maintenance, his food, his clothing, his lodging, his moral training, and of the provision that was made for putting him out as an apprentice, or otherwise starting him in the race of life? Will the loss of these inestimable, benefits by the comparatively few be atoned for by extending to comparatively many the opportunities of acquiring, free of expense, as much book-learning as can be picked up at a day-school? No. Book-learning is an excellent thing in its way. Without it neither boy nor girl can hope in these days to rise above the level of a hewer of wood and drawer of water. But book-learning, when it becomes the common property of a whole nation, will so far lose its value-if, indeed, it do not become mischievous that the majority who fail in the battle of life, and the majority must always fail,-will prove the more dangerous to society that they go in against it with sharpened intellects. Forgery has become a much more common offence of late than it used to be. It is not off the cards that by-and-by, when the sort of literature which is making head amongst us is multiplied, other means than highway robbery may be devised of making the holders of property share it with their neighbours who have none.

And this reminds us of what is actually going on under the eyes of the Government, not secretly, but openly and ostentatiously, and there is no one to check it. Mr Bradlaugh, Mr Odger, and their coadjutors, may be very poor creatures. We believe that

they are. But Mr Bradlaugh has influence with one class of persons, just as Professor Huxley and Dr Darwin have influence with another; and if Mr Bradlaugh's assaults on revealed religion be more coarse than those which Professor Huxley and Dr Darwin are making, they are scarcely less effective. Now we do not desire to see the laws against blasphemy and sedition put in force against men who argue points of faith and civil polity on their merits; but coarse ribald denunciations of the only principle which can operate for good upon men's inner lives are an offence against the law as well as against morality. Why is not the law appealed to to put them down? For it is not exclusively with a view to relieve them of all sense of responsibility to the Author of their being that the lecturers in our freethinking club-rooms address their audiences. He who, in these days, strives to dethrone God, strives also to dethrone the Queen and the Constitution. Never, within the memory of man, were Materialism and Communism so openly and largely recommended to working men as they are now, and not a finger is moved by the Government to abate a nuisance which is spreading far more widely, and doing infinitely greater harm, than people are aware of. To be sure, it seems marvellous that, with the example of France before their eyes, any persons should be found in this country mad enough to profess the principles of the Red Republic. But the fact, though marvellous, is a fact still, and may be easily accounted for on the ground that men like Mr Bradlaugh have implicit faith in their own omnipotence, believing that if they could but put the machine in motion they would be able so to guide it that rank, large properties, and all that they hold to be offensive in the constitution of

society, would disappear, and every man enjoy a competency. Perhaps our present rulers, knowing this, laugh at it. The time may come when their laughter shall be turned into mourning; for while they leave the rabble-as in their more confidential intercommunications they designate Mr Bradlaugh's admirers -to go their own way, they have managed to create in every other class of society enormous discontent. discontent. Just observe how all the members of the Civil Service are irritated. Just take note of the dissatisfaction that prevails among the officers of the Army and the Navy. Just see how the order of men that used to supply recruits for the ranks refuse to enlist. Ask the publicans what their opinion is of the Government which they contributed largely to carry into office. Consider how the prospect of having their children plundered, under the guise of a succession-duty, disgusted all who had anything to leave, and especially those among them who were the least opulent. Why, the very match-makers were prepared to take up such arms as they could find -sulphur, brimstone, spale-boxes, and what not-and to co-operate in whatever effort might be made to get rid of a state of things which to them, as to others, is proving, day by day, more intolerable. And, finally, the payers of income-tax is Mr Lowe mad enough to imagine-does Mr Gladstone pretend to believe that from the Land's End to Johno'-Groat's House there is any other feeling on that head dominant than disgust and indignation?

When the present session began, there was on all hands a disposition not only to condone the past and make the most of it, but to give to the Government a hearty support in any measures which they might bring forward that had a tendency to promote the best interests of the

country. We, the Tories, were ready to forget and forgive the Irish Church Bill, much as we detested it, and, as Lord Cairns has shown, to help the Government in making their Irish Land Bill, scarcely less distasteful, at all events practicable. The more moderate of the Liberals, in like manner, looked far more to a policy of reconstruction than its opposite. Both expected a great measure of Army Reform Army Reforma scheme which, without departing too much from the ancient usages of the nation, would give us a military force sufficient in point of numbers, and well supplied with all the means and appliances that render armies effective. Both alike were ready to assist in making the laws and the courts of law more manageable than they are. And, above all, had the Minister shown the slightest desire to put a stop to that system of mob-rule which has prevailed a great deal too long, and a great deal too much amongst us of late, he would have found himself sustained by such a power in both Houses as has not been seen or heard of for many a day. But what has come to pass? In a session when real practical measures were looked for, when everybody felt that there was substantial work to do, and great promises to be fulfilled, nothing has been effected, or even pertinaciously attempted to be done, except the passing of two measures, neither of them heartily approved except by the clique below the gangway. The House of Commons has abolished Purchase in the Army, taxing the country enormously for that end; and has agreed that in future the Ballot should be used in the election of members to Parlia ment.

in

All their own measures the Government threw over order to achieve these two ends, one of which the Premier not long ago pronounced to be most objec