vulgar and stupid last year. You lop. may have met them?" "I have not had that advantage." 66 They are people of tong and distinction. We are inseparables." "Indeed!" "I look forward to paying a long visit next summer at their lovely castle Morrissy, and they will be with us at Tolmie-Donnochie in the shooting season," "Ah!" "We shall be quite a Paw party there. The Fortnum-Redmaynes, Count Horneyhoff, and also Baron Hunkers, have agreed to come, instead of shooting in their own forests; isn't it good of them?" "The Count's forest is not very far from Homburg, I fancy." "Ah! you know about him?" "I suspect I have met a good many of his family about the world." "Indeed! He is most attractive; and dear Hunkers quite the original -so simple and absent: fancy his carrying away good Mr Moloney's snuff-box from the card-table, without the least knowing it, t'other evening. The laugh was entirely against Moloney, however, for the box turned out to be brass-it is a freak of his to carry a brass box. And the Baron brought it back, and said so naively, 'The next time I will take a smell of it before I steal.'" "It was scarcely a remunerative evening for the Baron," said Sir Roland. "If I can be of any use in getting you into the best circle, I shall be glad. The Morrissy-Moloneys give their ball to-night. I think I may say that my introduction will be quite sufficient, if you like to take charge of me and Eila." "The temptation to take charge of you, my dear child," said Sir Roland, turning to Eila, "is all but irresistible, yet I must decline; I am engaged." "Oh! put it off,” cried Mrs M'Kil VOL. CX.-NO. DCLXXI. "Everything in Paw gives way to the Morrissy-Moloneys." "I'm afraid my party would scarcely understand such an excuse. I fear they are not quite in the Morrissy-Moloney circle." "All the easier to say 'No.'" "It would spoil my friends' rubber, and I should lose my own." "Oh! as far as whist goes, you'll get that at the Morrissy-Moloneys; Baron Hunkers is crazy about whist; and your friends won't mind when they know what set you are going to." "All my little appointments at present are made of gold, and the Baron might have a fit of absence. No, no; I think I can scarcely throw over the Duchess and Lady Grampington for your distinguished friends. Thanks, all the same." The Duchess and Lady Grampington! Theirs was a sphere to which Mrs M'Killop never dreamt of raising her eyes. The Pau lofty social elevation from which she meant to patronise Sir Roland-as the only platform open to her for such a feat-suddenly shrunk down to the dimensions of a mole-hill, and she was staring up at him, open-mouthed, from that slight and rather dirty eminence. He had only been there forty-eight hours, and he was whisting with the "Dii majorum gentium" already! "Oh!" was all she could say, her face becoming of a deep peony colour. She had put Sir Roland through his facings, and in his right place. His manner had been cool and half-amused, but perfectly civil throughout. He had expected that the woman, from her first onslaught, would require some rough handling, and her sudden and total collapse rather surprised him him-a collapse rendered the more palpable from her making an excuse to leave the room at this juncture. Sir Roland seized the opportunity of her absence to 2 A explain to Eila certain points as to their future relative positions. "I am sorry," he said, "I can't ask the ladies I have mentioned to be attentive to you as yet. When the engagement, which your father wished to be kept quiet till Bertrand arrived" (Sir Roland's memory seemed singularly treacherous to-day) "is given out, I shall do so; but of course any attention they may pay you will be meant for you alone as my future relative, and is not to be supposed to include any of-of— your former connections. And, my dear child, entre nous, the foreign noblemen and the Irish magnates are no doubt very charming, and their eccentricities delightful, though at times expensive; but it is de rigueur that your acquaintance with them should be dropped as early as possible, if my friends are to have the happiness of your society. The whims and caprices of people are unaccountable in social matters, and I fear the Duchess and Lady Grampington, and indeed all my friends, are full of caprices of the sort. I almost think, for instance, that the frolics of Baron Hunkers would not amuse them—you understand me?" "Bertrand would have been jilted for me, that is evident. I protest I shall hate him for ever." One of the truths spoken in jest, it is to be suspected. "You know that I quite refused to have anything to do with him, after your letter, until we should hear if you would relent?" "The little fabricator!" thought Sir Roland; adding aloud, "You will make a model wife." "And niece, I hope," with such a winning smile that his Excellency again took the privileges of an uncle, in advance. And so the dialogue went on most swimmingly between the future relatives; Sir Roland succeeding in establishing exactly the footing he aimed at. As for poor Mrs M'Killop, she, on her return to the room, sat, feeling very sore and sulky, and quite in her place. The visit was brought to a close by the announcement of Count CorriganShaughnessy (Shannochbawn) blinky and not very clean-looking young man, with a foamy head of hair, and a roll of music in his hand, who entered the room in the heraldic attitude of pussant regardant, his body making for Mrs M'Killop, while his eyes and head devoted themselves to Eila. a "He is in the Pope's Noble Guard," whispered Eila. "He combines every Continental advantage, then," replied his Excellency-" an Irishman (I presume), a count, and a captain. Thanks, no -no presentation." He buttoned up his pockets with a comical look, and made his adieux with affectionate empressement to Eila, but including the Count and Mrs M'Killop in a formal reverence. "Till to-morrow, Eila; I will call for you after lunch, if you like, and take you for a drive -would you care?" "I should delight in it." THE COUP D'ETAT. THE days of impeachment are over; and if they were not, it would be next to impossible, under almost any conceivable circumstances, to get a vote passed, through the present House of Commons, subjecting Mr Gladstone and his colleagues to that ordeal. Yet, assuming the case between the Executive and the country to be as both Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville persist in representing it, her Majesty's Ministers have brought themselves within the meshes of the law as completely as if they had persuaded the Sovereign to levy ship-money, or by any other process to raise a revenue without the sanction of Parliament. Observe that we are not now questioning the right of the Sovereign to enact, by virtue of the prerogative, and without reference to the Legislature at all, whatever regulations may seem to be expedient for the discipline and management of the Army. From the earliest date of England's existence as a nation, that right has been inherent in the Crown. It existed in the Saxon times; it was in full force under the Normans and the Tudors. It was recognised and accepted in those special acts of the Legislature which, on the Restoration, gave the power of the purse, as well in military as in civil administration, into the hands of Parliament. But neither then, nor prior to the great Civil War, nor subsequently to the Revolution of 1688, can we find, before the present, the record of a single instance in which the prerogative has been interposed in order take out of the hands of Parliament, and settle by Royal Warrant, a measure on which the Crown had asked for the advice and assistance of the Legislature, whether the subject dealt with re ferred to things civil or things military. It is true that the outrage just offered to the Legislature falls, or seems to do so, exclusively upon the House of Lords. And there may be politicians shortsighted enough to imagine that an outrage perpetrated on that particular branch of the Legislature affects only the privileges of the Peerage. But this is a great mistake. The Lords are nothing by themselves, any more than the Commons are anything by themselves. Laws are made and unmade, subject to the Crown's approval, by the concurrent assent of the two; and any wrong done to one is done to both, if it come from without in the shape of an arbitrary interference with the deliberations and conclusions of either House. It is a gross error of judgment, therefore, to assume that, because the Commons had approved the Ministerial Bill, the Crown was free, in the event of a refusal to concur elsewhere, to set the decision of the Lords aside by an exercise of the prerogative. The Crown had surrendered-pro illa vice-its inherent rights to Parliament. It had placed a great subject, of which Purchase in the Army formed only a part, in the hands of the Legislature, and recommended the two Houses, among other powers, to confer upon the Sovereign the right to put a stop--equitably, and with due consideration for the interests of individuals-to a practice which had heretofore prevailed, but was now held to be inconvenient. The case under review is, in truth, analogous in some respects to proceedings that might have been but were not adopted in order to put a stop to the slavetrade. That traffic did not originate with the Legislature; it had its moners The outrage offered to the House of Lords is certainly very flagrant. There has been nothing approaching to it in modern history. Neither Earl Grey's threat of creating a hundred peers, nor Lord Palmerston's unwise attempt to create lifepeerages, can be regarded as coming within a thousand miles of it. Lord Grey's conduct, though arbitrary in the extreme, fell quite within the four corners of the Constitution. It is the undoubted right of the Crown to raise to the peerage whom it may, and as many com as it will. Hence the creation of twelve peers in one batch by Queen Anne, though censured at the time, and still considered to have been a most unwise act, has by no writer been condemned as unconstitutional. In like manner, if Earl Grey had pitchforked his hundred into the House of Lords, the worst that could have been said of him would have been this, that he had done his best to bring the order to which he belonged into contempt. But the House of Lords would have been, just as much after as before the process, precisely what it ever was-inconveniently enlarged, perhaps, so far as numbers went, and for the nonce a mere instrument in the hands of the Minister, yet uninjured in its right to consider every question which the Minister might bring before it, and to arrive at such conclusions as to the majority should seem best. So also the attempt to create life-peerages without the sanction of Parliament for the first time in four hundred years-justly brought down on the Ministers who lent themselves to the manoeuvre the censure of the House which defeated their policy, and of the country which approved the line the Lords had taken. But Mr Gladstone, without taking time to consider whether the act would be approved even by his own partisans, has struck such a blow at Parliamentary Government as it has not received since the days of Strafford and Laud. Nor is this all. The blow is struck by the hand of the Queen. The Queen's signature is attached to the deed or warrant which deliberately reverses a decision of the House of Lords; and the Queen can do no wrong. But the Minister who advised the Queen is responsible. On what ground does he rest his vindication of an act so entirely without precedent in modern times? Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville have both been challenged on that subject, and they have both denied that they advised their mistress to exercise her prerogative. They were particularly plain and outspoken on that head when the Royal Warrant was first produced. Their tone on subsequent occasions, especially that of Lord Granville in the House of Lords, has been much more guarded. At first the insinuation was repelled with scorn. "The right honourable gentleman," said Mr Gladstone, in reply to Mr Disraeli, "says that the Government have fallen back upon prerogative; and having thus introduced a term which he thinks will be unpopular, he warns us against the danger of putting prerogative in conflict with Parliament. Sir, this is an instance of the inaccuracy of the right honourable gentleman's statement. We have had no recourse to prerogative, and we have had no conflict with Parliament." In the same spirit, though expressing himself with less attempt at antithesis, Lord Granville ostentatiously, and with marked emphasis, denied that prerogative had been appealed to. After making as much as he could of the possible detriment to the officers and to the Army of the desire expressed by the Lords to hear more of the proposed substitute for Purchase before they would consent to its abolition, Lord Granville went on to say,"Your Lordships adopted the resolution with which we are all so well acquainted, and her Majesty's Government had to consider both their bounden duty and also the enormous inconveniences which would accrue to the Army itself, and to all the arrangements connected with it, from any delay and uncertainty in this matter. The result of that consideration has been to advise her Majesty not to make any use of her royal prerogative, because there is no question of that in this matter, but in the exercise of that discretion which is conferred on the Crown by statutory enactment, to take the only means which is possible to put an end to the illegal practice which has thus been denounced; and I may add that her Majesty has graciously consented to sign a Warrant this day which cancels the regulation that sanctions prices being paid for the sale, purchase, and exchange of commissions." We ask our readers to stop for a moment and observe to what this declaration amounts. It implies three things: first, that the practice which had prevailed in the Army for wellnigh two centuries was an illegal practice; next, that prices were paid, illegally, for the exchange as well as the purchase of commissions; and last, and not least important of all, that her Majesty was advised to put a stop to these illegal practices, not "by making use of her royal prerogative," because there could be no question of that in the matter, but by exercising that discretionary right which had been conferred upon the Crown by statutory enactment. Now, he who argues thus must be prepared to show that there is upon the Statute-book a law which gives the Sovereign the discretionary authority here referred to. If there be no such law, then her Majesty's constitutional advisers have deceived the Sovereign, by tendering to her advice on grounds which were false grounds. Is there such a law in the Statute-book? No, there is not. Neither the Acts 5 & 6 of Edward VI., nor the 49th of George III., confer any rights on the Crown of which it had not previously been possessed. The Acts 5 & 6 Edward VI. make, indeed, no reference whatever to buying and selling commissions in the Army, |