man.

But Mr. Gladstone possesses in a marvellous degree the art of stating a case. He can put point after point so as to make everything seem clear to the dullest hearer, and he can weave his web so adroitly that the most vigilant and suspicious adversary can seldom lay his finger at once on a flaw. Besides, Mr. Gladstone was in the delightful position of having to announce a surplus where a deficiency had been apprehended. He might well trust that the House I would let him do what he liked with a surplus that was so little expected; and if the proposal to abolish the paper duty was a political rather than a financial measure, it might be pardoned when accompanied by the remission of a penny on the hated income-tax.

There was never a Budget that presented more broad and intelligible points for discussion. There are really only two points about it worth discussing. In the first place, is it true that there is a surplus and secondly, if this surplus exists, is it wise to expend a large portion of it in abolishing the paper duty? As to the existence of a surplus, we are obliged in a great measure to trust to the calculations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The debate on the Budget showed that, although there were differences in the mode and result of the calculations of ascertainable items on the part of Mr.

Gladstone and his critics, yet that after full allowance had been made for this, the substantial difference of opinion lay in the divergent estimates of the future which he and his opponents had formed. Mr. Gladstone prophesies prosperity; Mr. Baring and his supporters prophesy distress. If neither of them were in office, we should think both these men likely to be good prophets; and should not perhaps know on whose prophecy we ought to rely. But Mr. Gladstone is a Minister, and Mr. Baring is not. We have, it may fairly be said, selected Mr. Gladstone as the person who is to prophesy for us this year. This is true in constitutional law, and it is true in fact. The great majority of Englishmen are content to see Mr. Gladstone at the Exchequer; and if he tells us there will be a surplus, we cannot tell him we disbelieve him without implying that he is unfit for his post.

We must, therefore, take the surplus for granted, so far as its existence depends on a calculation of the general features of the country during the current financial year. Is it wise to apply a large portion of this surplus to a remission of the paper duty? Financially it is obviously unwise. A remission of a portion of the war duties on tea and sugar would be a far greater boon to the poor. The abolition of the paper duty may possibly do some one good besides a few newspaper proprietors and vendors of cheap romance; but it also may very possibly benefit them alone; whereas the cheapness of tea and sugar would be felt as a gain in every cottage in the kingdom. The tea and sugar duties have also this great advantage. If we lower them, and find that the debated surplus does not exist, we could easily raise them to cover the deficiency; but the paper duty once gone is gone for ever. Financially, therefore, Mr. Gladstone was wrong; but politically he has made a choice which has endeared him and recommended the Government

to a considerable section of wavering and dangerous supporters, who keenly resented what they considered the recent interference of the Lords with the progress of modern Democracy. The rights of the people were held to be invaded. Mr. Gladstone has succeeded in attaching these turbulent spirits, at the same time that he has achieved a personal triumph, and wiped out the memory of the only serious defeat he ever sustained.

One of the most important questions that could be raised as to the Government of India has been decided by Sir Charles Wood. It is not too much to say that on his decision depended the nature of the tenure by which England is to hold India. In spite of the distinct promise given by the Indian Government last year that the Bill for the compulsory cultivation of indigo should not be renewed, and the announcement made by the present Governor of Bengal, sanctioned by the supreme authorities, that henceforward the ryot should be at liberty to cultivate indigo or not as he pleased, the Indian Government have this year brought in another Bill to make the cultivation of indigo compulsory. Strange to say, this measure was supported by a large majority of the members of the Legislative Council. Mr. Sconce and Sir Charles Jackson alone voted against it, and Mr. Harington, the member of the North-West, recorded his vote in its favour, although he had exposed in the speech he delivered to the Council all the injustice and folly of a course of legislation that must alienate the people of India for ever. Mr. Harington belongs, we believe, to that section of Indian officials who think that when once the Executive Government indicates a strong opinion it must be supported at all hazards, and that individuals ought to bow to its decisions. This would make the Legislative Council a consultative and not a deliberative body; and the theory that it ought to be only a board for tendering advice to Government is certainly defensible, a though there can be no doubt

that legally it has the functions of a deliberative body to discharge. The Government, through Mr. Laing, pronounced its opinion in the most decided way, and it was supposed that he had brought with him the last notion of English authorities, and spoke the sentiments of the Secretary of State. Mr. Laing decided the whole subject in the most peremptory manner. Unless the planters got power to treat ryots refusing to cultivate as criminals, they could not be induced to stay in the country. A planter might as well pack up his portmanteau at once, Mr. Laing remarked, unless the Bill was passed. The interests of the English settler demanded that the Hindoos should be thrown into gaol if they would not plant indigo, and therefore the demand must be granted.

If the English people fail to see that by this measure, and by this speech of Mr. Laing, a great and radical question as to our Administration of India was put to a definite issue, England is unworthy to bear rule over that gigantic dependency. The Supreme Government in India knew how thoroughly the natives in Lower Bengal detest cultivating indigo; they were aware that the Lieutenant-Governor had been besieged by crowds of eager ryots on his recent tour through the districts, all anxious, as if their life was at stake, to hear that the ryot was to be his own master; and yet they carried through a measure which proposed to bind him to a taskmaster by the penalties of the criminal law. Most fortunately for England and for India, there was an authority still superior whose assent was necessary, and Sir Charles Wood has without hesitation and without compromise or concession rejected the measure altogether. He has saved India from an enormous calamity, and England from committing a most flagrant injustice. He has expounded in the clearest terms the only true doctrine that we can uphold in cases of this sort—the Hindoo is to be treated as a free

man and as the equal of the European. The object of the occupation of India is not to enable English settlers to acquire rapid fortunes, but to make the natives of India happy and prosperous. If we do not propose this to ourselves as the one aim of our government of India, we shall only bring curses on our own heads and on the heads of the wretched Hindoos. That a Hindoo who does not fulfil a civil contract should be treated as a criminal, because, if civil remedies alone are provided, the English settler will, as Mr. Laing says, pack up his portmanteau, is so wild a confusion of those first principles of justice and law which should regulate the government of a dependency like India by a free country, that we may tremble at the thought that when it was announced as the foundation of a Government measure only two members of the Legislative Council were found to vote against it. We may also tremble at the thought that the decision of such vital points of Indian Government hangs on the accidental fluctuations of our parliamentary struggles. Sir Charles Wood happened to be in office, and has decided, as became a man who cares more to adhere to great principles of justice and good government than to please the noisy cliques who rage and write at Calcutta. But Mr. Danby Seymour, who was Under-Secretary for India in Lord Derby's Administration, took the side of the planters, and thought that the natives should be compelled to cultivate indigo. That the Derby Cabinet would really have sanctioned this gross injustice if it had been in office is very doubtful, for Lord Stanley has always shown himself a friend to the natives of India; but that a man who has held office at home, and has had an opportunity of knowing the real question at issue, should have been capable of defending a measure that would have placed the ryot at the mercy of a taskmaster, is a sign of what Parliamentary Government may do for India that gives rise to the gravest apprehensions.

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It has often been said that the danger of allowing English settlers to treat the Hindoos as slaves, or, to use the term actually in vogue in India, as 'niggers,' is quite as great for the English as for the natives. The settlers would become rapidly demoralized unless Government kept a firm hand over them. How strong is the propensity of a portion of this class to tyranny and cruelty, and how easily authority entrusted to them is abused, even when they are neither tyrannical nor cruel, may be gathered from the facts collected together in Mr. Layard's recent speech. It must be remembered that Sir Charles Wood declared after this speech was made, that all the assertions contained in it were strictly true. He invited the House to hear what had been the effect of the temporary Act of last year, the Act which the Legislative Council now proposed to renew. The Act, as appears from the evidence and judgment of independent eye-witnesses, was virtually à Slave-law, and amounted to an attempt to get indigo sown at the point of the bayonet. The administration of the Act was entrusted to a large number of young, inexperienced men sent up to the indigo districts. It was found that hundreds of the agreements between planters and ryots were forgeries, that great numbers of the ryots were in prison, and that the indigo districts presented one horrible scene of reckless injustice and oppression. In one gaol there were no fewer than 588 ryots, criminally convicted under the Act; one man had to pay 217 rupees, who had had an advance of only six, and another 161 rupees for an advance of only two. One case deserves to be singled out and engraved in the memory of all those who concern themselves with the manner in which we fulfil the responsibility we have assumed by occupying India. An unhappy ryot was said to have bound himself and his heirs never to repay back an advance in any other way than by cultivating indigo. This agreement was a forgery, and was of a date as recent as November, 1859. The ryot was

thrown into prison, having bound himself and his heirs, according to a forged agreement, to be for ever a slave to the soil of which an indigo planter had obtained possession. If Englishmen get into the habit of using such means, and inflicting such wrongs, if settlers who do or allow such things are not repressed sternly by the Government, the fatal spirit of slave-driving will creep into the English in India, and we shall not only make the Hindoos miserable, but we shall introduce into the bosom of our own society the poisonous taint of that moral hardness which is the inevitable fruit of a European holding an Asiatic or an African in bondage.

The horrors of civil war seem impending over America. For some time the policy of President Lincoln's Cabinet appeared doubtful, but its hesitation is now attributed to the absorption of attention involved in the appointment of thousands of supporters to posts of every degree of importance. The policy of the Cabinet now seems clear; and it would be very difficult to say that any policy would be better. The Union will not commence hostilities, but it will not surrender anything. It will pour reinforcements into the forts that can be safely and easily reinforced, and it will perhaps make a serious effort to occupy such a position in Texas as will, in the event of an open struggle, enable General Houston to operate against the secession party in that State. The important forts of Tortugas and Keywest being situated on islands in the open sea, may be easily held so long as the Southern confederation is without a navy, and Brazos Santiago is represented as a station in Texas that may readily be occupied, and which will place its occupants in a commanding position. On the other hand, the Southerners have completed their preparations for war, and have probably a much larger force ready to take the field than the United States can boast. has even been said that they are prepared, if war once begins, to

It

march northward at once and dictate their own terms at Washington. The most curious part of the whole is, the calm apathy with which the great mercantile cities seem to regard a danger that is so near and so great. Every account represents New York to be as tranquil as Glasgow or Liverpool, and the military affairs of the rival confederacies elicit scarcely as much interest as the Crimean campaign did in its time. This will be pronounced by different critics to be the noble tranquillity of conscious strength or the torpidity of mercantile selfishness,

Meantime, an event has occurred which a year ago would have awakened the vociferous indignation of all Americans. Under the cover of a local revolution, Spain has decided on annexing her old colony of San Domingo. Mr. Buchanan must now remember with some shame the Ostend manifesto, and all his messages to Congress advising a vote for the purchase of Cuba. It is Spain, not the States, that is now the aggressor, that lifts its head on high and challenges the contumelious Yankee. Probably San Domingo has been appropriated chiefly as a sign of the activity of Spain, rather than as a source of positive profit. It is scarcely likely that either France or England would view with indifference the enslavement of the free blacks of Hayti, and a neighbouring population of free blacks is a serious difficulty for the possessors of Cuba. San Domingo is, however, in some measure an outwork of Cuba, and the likelihood of some portion of the American Union one day attempting to get San Domingo first, in order to get Cuba afterwards, may be a sufficient reason for Spain to have decided to run the risk of appropriating her old colony. Even in the midst of the confusion of an impending civil war in the States, there is some risk in the bold act of Spain, for it must make the blood of every American boil to think that his country is now rated so low that Spain can beard it. England has no interest in the

matter. So long as the area of slavery is not extended, it cannot signify to us whether San Domingo is in the hands of revolted or reconciled colonists. In one way we may rejoice at what has happened. Spain is rising in the world, and if she rises much more she will claim to be consulted in European affairs; but this claim can hardly be allowed so long as she parades her insolvency, and she may therefore gladden the hearts of English bondholders by paying her debts, in order to gain admission into the councils of Europe.

The Schleswig-Holstein dispute still rages without any appearance of approaching a conclusion. The Danes have unfortunately committed the folly of resorting to an unworthy subterfuge. They have long ago acknowledged the right of Germany to interfere to see that justice is done to Holstein, and they have been brought to allow that justice to Holstein involves a permission to the Holsteiners to have a voice in fixing their own taxation. About a year ago the Federal Diet issued a series of demands, which ended in a peremptory claim that the budget of the current year should be submitted to the estates of Holstein. The Danish Government kicked hard at this, but Germany, through Prussia, appealed to the sense of justice in the three powers, England, France, and Russia, who were endeavouring to put an end to the dispute; and these powers decided against Denmark, by saying that the budget must be submitted to the estates. To the surprise of every one, the Danes replied that it had been submitted already. To no one was this more unexpected news than to the members of the estates. They asked the Royal Commissioner present at the sitting, whether it had been submitted or not, and he replied that he did not know. Afterwards it turned out that what the Danish Government meant was, that a general proposal for the submission of the budget, not of this year, but of a different period, had been put as a clause into a bill of a more gene

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ral character. It is not by such poor artifices as this that Denmark will avert a war if she dreads one, or enlist the sympathy of Europe on her side in case war breaks out in accordance with her wishes. The whole business looks very much as if Denmark longed for a war in which her powerful friends would secure her from harm, while the mere fact of war would release her from her engagements to Germany. On the other hand, it must be allowed that the estates of Holstein are equally disinclined to treat Denmark fairly, and to come to a peaceful and honourable settlement. They have announced their intention of rejecting all proposals whatever made by Denmark, until they get their way as to the union of Schleswig. This is abandoning all the sure ground of legal claims for the vague region of national sympathies, and we cannot expect that Denmark should waste her time further in efforts at reconciliation which are beforehand doomed to failure. It is now incumbent on Prussia, as the representative of Germany, to discountenance the Holsteiners in a course of resistance that is open to so many objections.

Prussia has very good reason for avoiding war if she can. She has now ceased to act cordially with Austria, and her demand for the leadership of the Northern Federal troops in time of war has been rejected by the Cabinet of Vienna. Unless, therefore, she is prepared to defy Austria, it cannot be to her advantage to provoke a contest in which Federal rules and feelings would necessarily play so large a part, and where the pettiness of the enemy would prevent the inclination to let Prussia lead, which might arise in the crisis of a great war. Posen, too, must make Prussia anxious. It is true that the disturbances at Warsaw have ended in the easy triumph of the military and in the massacre of a great number of unarmed citizens. Russia has no immediate danger to fear from Poland; neither has Prussia. But it is a source of immense anxiety to every country, and espe

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