borough-mongers and dealers returned by nomination men of distinguished talent. This was true, though it was done sparingly enough. But what shall be said of the selection of those sent to represent the people since the Reform Act? We do not believe that a single individual has been selected by the people on account of his abilities or high character in any intellectual walk of life. "Has he the tin ?" is the common query. Take away a hundred names, or thereabout, out of six hundred and sixty members sent up to the House, and it is hardly to be doubted that the number thus omitted, the five hundred and odd left, are not better qualified for their position, intellectually, than any five hundred met in Pall-Mall or the Strand by the accidental passenger. The city of London and the metropolitan boroughs are proverbs for the indifferent characters of their representatives; they ought to set the example. The argument used by the enemies of reform cannot be answered in this respect. The extension of the franchise will not mend the matter. It might be supposed that the principal inhabitants of a city or town would meet previous to a vacancy, and agree to tender their votes, if not to an individual at home, as originally designed, to some one distinguished in public life as a politician, or noted in science, or literature, or commerce. Not at all. The intriguers and money-expenders carry the day. In the metropolis, the man whose agent keeps open the greater number of public-house or gin-shop committee-rooms is the hero of the borough. A few thousands spent this way, in place of hard cash in the palm of the hand, does the business. The Roupells of the metropolitan boroughs have made the metropolitan taste in this kind of selection a by-word: we must be faithful. Where the chief examples of election purity, of gifted choice, and of public spirit, are expected, nothing of the kind is found. The more respectable bankers and merchants, men of talent and character, known far and near, have little honour in metropolitan representation. Hence it is we see so little good effected by those worthy obscures, of some of whom the world hears for the first time on their election. It cannot be supposed that the ministers of the Crown can be acquainted with innumerable subjects to which legislation pro or con. should be applied. Information is looked for from the members of the House generally, who are ready enough with railroad jobs and objects of private speculation. The public looks for it in vain as well as the minister. The fault is solely in the venality or recklessness of electors. Venality may influence without breaches of the law, or money payments. If electors are corrupt, or careless, or insensible of their duties, the country suffers equally. We seldom remember a body of popular representatives that more resembled the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow than those of the existing parliament. It sometimes seemed wonderful to us how ministers contrived to get through the labours of the session. They must have studied the Book of Job very attentively to succeed as they have done. "I do not mind a sleepy congregation," said a distinguished divine, "it may be nature's frailty; but a wakeful, stupid, inattentive one makes me angry, for it insults me to my face." May not the country be insulted in a way somewhat similar? The admirable statement of Mr. Gladstone will sufficiently explain that the business of the country has not been neglected by ministers at least in what relates to the finances. The statement of the present year is highly satisfactory, and the truth told, there was not one upon the antiministerial side that could object to it, yet it was wormwood to some who

sat there. The malt-tax, too, was a grievance of the session. What right has the landed interest to cry out upon that impost? The free trade it denounced has raised the price of land enormously, and increased the owners' rental everywhere. With that advantage in place of self-prognosticated ruin, they are not content. They would prevent the other part of the community, less happily circumstanced, from profiting one tithe of their own gain in any manner while a single burden remained upon them. This is what a former statesman characterised when he alluded to a certain grasping character on his own side as one "too bad." If the malt-tax be taken off, it must be placed on the people, who have not derived proportionate advantages with the landholder from the rise in property by the step that he prognosticated was to ruin him. Surely the landholder can bear it a little longer before he is obliged to succumb under the burden of his present superfluity. He it was who backed up the accumulation of the great debt of the nation in times gone past; we must not forget that in the reckoning with him while taxes are taking off.

We shall shortly see what a new parliament will bring forth. We know the venality of the country-in fact, of all countries in the business of elections-wherever Mammon happens to be the superior deity. We might, but for an alienation of all which is great and good in the human heart whenever lucre is the sole question, reasonably hope to see a strong and very powerful majority returned in behalf of the Queen's present ministers, from the principle that they have done well for the public-far better, indeed, under the circumstances of the cotton defalcation, and the formidable war in America, than was expected. By interfering or being interfered with regarding the American contest, it was no easy matter to be clear of trouble. It is evident that the wisest course was taken, and although some unprincipled individuals disregarded the law and the general interest of the country in the sordid desire after lucre, England escaped involvement in war, and those parties who defied the good sense and law of the land will, it is hoped, be the only sufferers. The feeling of every just man in the country, uninfluenced by selfish motives, must be with the rule laid down by the government, leaving the sense of duty out of the question.

Never was the wisdom of a peaceful course of policy more visible than in the state of the public revenue exhibited in this the last session of the present parliament. In modern times, the well-being of every state is to be judged by that of its finances. War is getting more costly, and it is to be hoped that the increase of the cost, and the benefit accruing from peace, will by-and-by become agencies under which the curse of war will be diminished to a mere threat among civilised nations. The divine right of kings, maintained at such an enormous expense by George III., has been a cause of misery unmeasured in the pauperism of this country. Millions upon millions for a chimera! Six or seven hundred millions sterling thus squandered in vain to uphold absolute power among continental kings, would have given rise to domestic enterprises which would have converted England into a garden. Although a diversity of conditions be an inviolable law of mundane existences, we may fairly presume that the dissolute and imbecile, or the poor from age or sickness, would have been the only burden upon the community. Were it possible now to diminish the taxes to the amount of the interest of the debt, what infinite good would follow? Suppose twenty millions in amount of taxes

repealed, how magnificent would our position become! Mr. Pitt began this task nobly after the American war, but George III. suffered him not to proceed in reducing the debt. On the contrary, he held his post only on the condition of burdening the country further by enormous loans to bribe the Continental kings to dictate a sovereign to France on the one hand, while with the other those same kings were themselves spoliating the sovereignty of Poland-hypocrites as they were. We are wiser now; but, as Franklin had it, we paid "too dear for our whistle."

Leaving a topic which is a lesson to England as to contracting debts in future for the sustenance of rotten thrones, we return to the present cheering appearance of things on the dissolution of the present House of Commons, on which, we trust, its successor will improve, taking care that we neglect nothing of the past in the way of lesson. But what right have we to such an expectation if members are returned by the purses of jobbing companies? if electors, as usual in too many cases, regard a great public duty only as it contributes to private advantage? How are any ministers to proceed with integrity and utility? How is a ministry to do its duty to the country, when boroughs are turned into instruments of private gain, and that obligation to the public is disregarded upon which the entire welfare of the State reposes? The venality of electors is the crying sin of the time; it is a reproach it should be so visible under the large measure of reform recently obtained, and at present enjoyed by the British people, who give ill encouragement for a further extension of it. There is nothing like being open on every subject. To some localities we know in this great country, the lines of Pope on corruption were never more applicable than they have proved on the eve of recent elections, where gold is so feloniously applied:

Trade it may help, society extend,

But lure the pirate, and corrupt the friend;

It raises armies in a nation's aid,

But bribes "the voter," and the land's betrayed;
In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave,

If secret gold sap on from knave to knave!

We would fain observe the public mind become of a loftier cast. The sneer of Napoleon I. at the nation of shopkeepers we would see rendered groundless, de facto. We cannot expect Roman patriotism in venal times, but corruption against our own welfare, a sort of felo-de-se of political virtue, as this line of corruption may be styled, is in the teeth of the advance of knowledge, and the hope of that political integrity in the people we have a just right to expect should, in these times, appear uppermost in their conduct.

We are thus plain spoken, because we have long witnessed a much less diminution of the prevalent vice of the people in this respect than might have been hoped for after the Reform Act. No one can deny but that the country has been well governed by the present cabinet. The time has been one of no mean trial, both of intellect and forbearance, on the part of the ministers of the Crown, and they have succeeded in their efforts. The conspiracy for assassination among some of the dregs of the Southern slaveholders in America-the vilest of all races, because they are the lowest of those most in arrear intellectually, for no one credits that it had its origin with the leaders, or less still those who had gone into the field of combat on that side-has enlisted the sympathies of Europe where

they had been lukewarm before, and shown the deep and sincere detestation of the deeds of blood perpetrated upon chief officers of the American republic. The loan-mongers to the South in Europe no doubt are mourners here in sincerity over the black deed, not perhaps so much from abhorrence of the crime, as that it has operated ill for their market, from the loss it must cause to their indefensible speculations. The victories of the North could not produce half the ill effect of this flagitious deed, even upon the minds of those of the Southern people-and there are many honourable men among them-who regard the laws of humanity. They must feel the mischief it has done to the morale of their own cause. The sympathy of England (except as just excepted), the kind, good, sympathetic feeling of our excellent Queen, the natural abhorrence of secret deeds of blood felt here, and echoed back from France and all Europe besides, cannot fail to convince the American people, with the exception of the scapegraces who have made the United States a refuge from crime or contempt from this side the Atlantic, and the actual conspirators for assassination in the South, that the feeling here towards the American people is of a kindlier nature than the disaffected from Europe, and the renegades from its justice, some of whom are concerned with the press, circulated facts there to serve their own miserable ends. Many of the American people do not reflect that the states of Europe, the habits of thinking and judging here on almost all subjects, must differ in a great respect from those of a new people that a century or two ago. was nonexistent. Opinions and ideas will amend among the latter as time develops great truths, and their liberality will enlarge. England has twenty centuries of recollections upon which she may draw for precedents, or by which she may justify herself. America is not yet settled beyond a mere speck of her vast dominions. The feelings and sentiments upon some points even there may very naturally differ, but no more than they may lawfully differ within the boundary of the same family circle.

If the conduct of Lord Palmerston's government has been satisfactory, and if other or rather more numerous public measures have not been carried out, it must be attributed to the composition of the present House of Commons, which we have already characterised. No tears will be shed over its obsequies. If the people complain of more not being done, the remedy is in their own hands-return able and efficient men. Select them carefully both for ability and principle. It is impossible the government, of itself, can perceive, rectify, and revise all which the rust of time has cankered in our existing state in the different branches of the public service. It is natural that able men should be returned to assist in it. But we have not space to be minute. The state of the law administration, and of the laws themselves, require a close attention and no slight modification in many of their differing, confused, useless, complex, and ruinous ramifications.

Finally, we are thankful that at such a momentous period as the present we stand so well in all our home and foreign relations. The government has shown a just claim to the gratitude of the country on this ground, despite those who cavil at what they themselves would never have had capacity to amend had they been in office. The Opposition never showed itself so feeble in argument, and never was less regarded by the country, than at this moment. For this there were evident reasons. It is composed of materials of a dissonant character. Compactness of action, and

uniformity of habit and movement, are needful for efficiency. There must be no want of confidence between man and man, no little jealousy or doubt of sincerity in such a partnership. All must think and move in unity; this has evidently not been the case. We do not see in consequence that any great fear for the ministry is to be discovered in the result of a new election. If it be denied that the ministry of Lord Palmerston has worked well for the country, we are ready to place the evidence in detail on the tablet against such a denial. The increase of commerce and revenue are facts not to be set aside, even by the strongest spirit of party. Let them be arrayed against those who are so pressing to occupy the places of the present government, and it would not be difficult to guess the public decision.

The enormous increase of our commerce, far exceeding all that the most sanguine could expect, through the means too long proscribed by ignorance and narrow-mindedness, brings the development of the activity and skill of those concerned in trade and manufactures as an evidence of the correctness of the course pursued by the government, and strengthens the good opinion of the nation in its favour. The age of the premier has not at all lessened his capacity for public business, because the mind may be young even with a centenarian. No one has had more experience than his lordship, or understands better the internal position of his own country, unless it be that her relation with foreign powers is even more within the circle of his long experiences. We know not his successor in either case among our younger politicians. The art of governing a complex machine is not one to be acquired by intuition, because it is practical, and is by no means born with the man, like the genius of the poet. It is a laborious, and must be a thankless employment. The ambition of a name with posterity being denied it as a reward, it must rank with those things of this life which must be repaid by present gratification. Still, power is a tempting bait, and the just use of it is one of the noblest achievements of man, seeing it is given for the benefit, not of the user but of species, in order to be a contribution to the general happiness.

We urge it upon the people, when the moment comes, to attend honestly at the hustings, that for one popular election in the end we may have men of ability returned to serve the country. That they be returned independently, after careful selection, solely for talent and integrity, not as jobbers for money-grabbing companies and selfish ends. Will the people not have patriotism to look well after this duty? Will not for once the more venal places bear to have it said truly, what perhaps they never could bear before, that they have returned men to parliament as their representatives without favour or affection, in order that they may feel the comfortable influence of an elective honesty, to which up to that hour they have been strangers? The very novelty of the act may not be without the consolatory reflection, that for once in their lives they have sacrificed corrupt and sordid to public gain. It may refresh the souls of the electors in those boroughs more particularly where the true sense of political duty has hitherto been as little traceable as the solution of an algebraic quantity is traceable among the Esquimaux of the North Georgian Islands.

CYRUS REDDING.