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say's sense, in order to obtain a virtual tri- | giance, a new war, a new prohibition of umph for the South, to encourage France to debate, a new device of some kind which threaten forcible aid to the South if the Federal Government should not accede to her proposals, and to involve ourselves in a certain, though it might be, reluctant war with the Federal Government, which would have the same effect,this would be a proceeding to which we might, perhaps, find a very inadequate precedent in the intervention of Russia in Hungary, in 1849, but to the spirit of which our present interference with the affairs of Poland, unwise though it may be, is diametrically antagonistic.

would make them realize once more that they were sheltered by a strong hand. Just as their counsels were sternest came the news of the fall of Peubla, news which assured them that, repress as they would, the danger of discontent in the army was for the present over. The power for a heavy blow came sharply after the provocation to strike, and half the born kings of Europe would have yielded to the temptation. The Orleanists expected with annoyance that all their sacrifices in taking the oath might have been made in vain; the Republicans anticipated with amazed hope some blunder which From The Spectator, 27 June. should wound the amour propre of France. NAPOLEON'S LAST COUP D'ETAT. Fortunately for Louis Napoleon he has lived FRANCE is one step nearer to constitutional many lives, and in the midst of the riot the government. The doctrine of ministerial re- emperor, whom any man seems to rule while sponsibility is not admitted by the empire, he is silent, and no man can change when he but a defeat on the hustings has sufficed to has spoken, suddenly opened his mind. The drive a ministry from their seats. Of the reproof of Paris was to be met by concession, many acts by which Louis Napoleon has es- and not by new coups d'état; the ministry tablished his claim to a place in the front must resign, and the Government must be, rank of statesmen, few have been wiser or defended in the Legislature by cabinet minbetter timed than the decree issued 24th June. isters instead of ministers' clerks. In other That decree is not one of the sensation kind, words, the ministry, in whom France has has not effected rentes, or disturbed Europe, lost confidence, was dismissed; the Legislaor given any party or nation cause for imme-ture which she had strengthened received a diate hope or alarm, but the circumstances new mark of respect; and the despotism under which it was issued make it still a against which she had protested was modified coup d'état. The elections were but just by a new constitutional right. over, and the cities of France, without an ex- The protest of Paris is met upon every ception, had pronounced against the existing point by concession, and though in each case régime. Paris especially, which claims to be the emperor yields as little as possible, still France, and which is really its brain, had it is much that he yields at all. If a minoremphatically declared her weariness alike of ity of thirty-five suffices to change the personM. de Persigny and of a system which offered nel of a ministry, may not a majority one day her order instead of excitement, high rents change the party from which it is selected? instead of great thoughts, new streets and If the rebuke of Paris has abolished the minsquares and fountains instead of vivid intel-isters without portfolio, may not the rebuke lectual life. The entourage of the Tuileries of France abolish ministers without responwas wild with chagrin and disappointment. sibility? If a small opposition is entitled to The minister of the interior-a man who for explanations from ministers instead of clerks, twenty years had been the emperor's trusted may not a large one be held worthy to confriend-was said to have recommended that trol those ministers' action? The concession, the elections should be annulled, and cer- however small, looks like obedience to the tainly did attack Paris in language her citi- popular vote, and if a vote is to be obeyed, zens will not forget. The swarm of little instead of being met with grapeshot, the desmen who cling to the imperial throne like tiny of France has once more passed from the barnacles to a keel, and by whom the em- hands of the emperor into her own. That is peror usually chooses to seem to be swayed, the main significance of the change, though were all clamoring for further repression,-in itself it is not so contemptible as French for a new coup d'état, a new oath of alle- Liberals may believe. The importance of the

Corps Legislatif, which without ministers | no ideas, obtains the Ministry of the Interior, was, like the American Congress, only a by far the most important in France. M. great debating club, is very decidedly in- Behic may possibly be known to those who creased. The emperor has re-connected the hold shares in the Messageries Imperiales, Legislature and the Cabinet, removing those but he has not hitherto been one of the politibuffers between them—the ministers without cal circle. M. Billault, Minister of State, portfolio. Two Cabinet ministers, whose of who, with M. Rouher, Minister President, will fices correspond nearly to those of our own represent the Cabinet, was last session only president of the council and premier, are to the tunnel through which the Foreign Office speak on behalf of Government of plans and filtered its ideas to the Chamber. And M. acts in which they have had their share. Baroche, now Minister of Justice and ReligThe "ministers with a voice" had none, ion, was at the same period only umbra to M. could only speak as they were bid, only prom- de Persigny. The personnel is changed, and ise after a consultation with the real admin- changed, there seems little reason to doubt, istrators behind. It is the difference between in a comparatively Liberal sense. M. de talking to a partner and to a clerk, and will Morny, who, like his master, understands tend directly to increase the influence and his epoch, and thinks the safety-valve of the the dignity of the legislative branch. Then, steamer an inexpedient seat, would hardly though ministers are not responsible, they have consented to remain in the Government can, as we see, be dismissed, and Cabinet without some guarantee for the press. Then ministers whose bills are rejected, or who are it is improbable that any minister would comdirectly censured by a majority, are very press the journals quite so fiercely as M. de likely to find themselves out of office. Even Persigny, impossible that any minister should in England it is only the practice and not the compress them in quite so hateful a way. theory of the Constitution which makes a His dismissal is by itself a warning which no hostile vote fatal to the continuance in office statesman is likely to disregard, and M. Bouof men who theoretically are only her maj- det has not the personal hold which M. de esty's servants. The tendency, too, of every Persigny possessed. Above all, the visible man is to respect the body to which he be- determination of the emperor to accept the longs, and which he finds he can influence, will of France as the guide, if not of his acts and ministers sitting in Parliament usually at least of the direction of those acts, will regard the debates with a very different feel- give every publicist courage, and make every ing from that displayed by ministers who ob- minister dread lest the time should yet arserve them only from the outside. The rive when a free press should denounce himAmerican secretaries would not be so regard- self before a Legislature summoned by the less of the opinion of Congress if they min-authority of a Bonaparte, but still irresistigled in its debates, nor would they be quite bly powerful. All must depend as yet on so willing to accept their president's decision as final. The tendency of the change, however feeble, is still to increase the influence of the representative body over the executive, and thus to open to France the means of executing her will without descending into the streets.

the emperor's personal intentions, and we have not forgotten that M. de Persigny began his career with a profusion of liberal words, but the tendency of the decree is to show once more that the emperor does not forget he holds power by the tenure of expounding the popular will.

These, however, are results which will only There is much speculation abroad as to the be felt in the future; the fact more imme-effect of the ministerial changes on the emdiately interesting is the change of advisers upon which the emperor has resolved. M. Fould remains, it is true, as guarantee for economy, and M. Drouyn de Lhuys, as proof that foreign policy is unchanged; but the bulk of the ministry is made up of new men. M. Boudet, who, though a Councillor of State, and a "most respectable person," is outside his own country a man whose name suggests

peror's foreign policy, and the removal of Count Walewski is held unfavorable to intervention in Poland. Upon questions like this, however, the emperor rules alone, and the change can scarcely affect his course upon foreign affairs. The Minister of War and the Minister of Marine, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, all the officers whose departments would be

AN IRISH PREMIER ON IRELAND.

187

greatly affected by war, remain unchanged. | the departure of her people not in itself a M. Boudet cannot prevent Poland from being blessing. He did not shirk the question of heard, or M. Behic cool down all France from tenure, but asserted point blank that any ara fever of eager sympathy. The motives rangement which left the landlord less than which might impel, and the motives which absolute was "confiscation," and "a subvermight restrain the emperor in beginning an- sion of all the fundamental principles of soother war of European dimensions, are wholly cial order." He denied the possibility of unaffected by anything that has occurred. remedy save from the seasons, and called on He will not play for so vast a stake until his the House to refuse the motion, which the mind is made up, or the pressure from with- House did by a majority of one hundred and out is not to be resisted, and when it is made twenty-eight to forty-nine. up, ministers and councillors, public and secret, will be changed, or used as if they were pawns in chess. In the Italian War he hesitated up to the last hour, and, had Austria been less impatient, would have called on Congress instead of his army. It may be very unpleasant for Europe to know that peace or war hang upon one man's will, but that has been the case any time these twelve years, and that is the penalty Europe must always pay when in its timid fear of freedom, it rejoices that "order reigns in France."

From The Spectator, 27 June.
AN IRISH PREMIER ON IRELAND.

It is impossible not to admire the political courage which tells the inhabitants of a kingdom that there is no hope for them save banishment; impossible not to distrust the sciolism which pronounces so boldly that the If Lord Palconsequences of an unnatural social condition are in reality its causes. merston's theories are true, nothing can be more beneficial to Ireland than the way in which he states them. If it be the fact that Ireland to be prosperous must be a desert, if her fate is "prairie " instead of " clearings," if her people are a nuisance, and their hopes chimæras, the more thoroughly the country understands those hard truths the better for its population. Political reticence is never worth much, and the suave etiquette which because lets a people perish rather than cease to prophesy smooth things is the worst, the most injurious, of the hundred forms of lying. But then it ought, at least, to be clearly proved that the curses are truths, that

LORD PALMERSTON's speech on Tuesday on the condition of Ireland was a good example of the best and worst peculiarities of his mind. Mr. Maguire, in a speech temperate as if he had been born in England, as full of facts as if an Irishman could by possibility respect statistics, moved for a royal commis-our blunt friend is telling us things visibly sion to "inquire into the state of the agricultural classes of Ireland," because the measures of 1860 in the direction of tenantright had proved inoperative. Speaker after speaker rose to repeat some one of Mr. Maguire's propositions in italics; Mr. Roebuck made a clever but unpractical suggestion; Sir Robert Peel poured out a strange "discoorse," which reads like a lecture to a Young Man's Society, on the tenures prevalent among mankind; and then the premier stood up to order the division. His usual weapon, tact, was for the evening laid aside; the rapier was exchanged for the club, and he struck out hard. He did not attempt to deny the distress "we all admit and deplore it" and the tenure sanctioned by opinion. The but he attributed it to the seasons, over which no Government has any control. He did not question the proportions which the new exodus has assumed, but openly doubted whether Ireland was not over-populated, and

for our good, and not assuming frankness in order to feed fat a secret grudge. The premier spoke with earnestness, and being an Irishman can hardly be suspected of anti-national prejudice, but his reasonings seem as feeble as his convictions are strong. Mr. Maguire, in common with most contemporary thinkers, and notably Mr. J. Stuart Mill, ascribes the evils of Ireland to what he terms the land tenure. He means, we believe, though he did not bring out the point, not the tenure itself, which is simply the absolute right of the owner, and which works well enough in England and Scotland, but the incessant conflict between the tenure sanctioned by law

law makes the landlord absolute, enables him to turn cornfields into pasture or pasture into cornfields at discretion, to split his land among pauper cottiers, or to remove the population en masse that sheep may have space to

feed. There is no limit to his right except | Premier, backed, we allow, by the Liberal the one which is the safety-valve of our soci- party, speaking, we admit, the sentiments of ety, and which binds him, if he allows the five-sixths of England, blankly declines to population to stay, to see that in the hour of grant. extremity, while he has anything, they shall He says, and those who vote with him say, not die of hunger. Absolutism corrected by this is not the true disease, but the diseases a poor-law is the English landlord theory and they quote may be proved to be only sympthe lawyers' theory in Ireland, and, once toms. It is over-population, says Lord Paladmitted by all classes, is, we honestly be- merston, but population is only an effect. lieve, upon the whole the best. Only, the Why should Ireland be over-populated any Irish don't admit it. Their theory, strength- more than Great Britain? The theory of ened by a custom of three hundred years, is marriage is the same, the age of marriage that the landlord has absolute right of prop- among the agricultural classes the same; the erty, but the tenant an equal right of occu- women are not more prolific, the people sinpancy, so long as he pays the acknowledg- gularly and enigmatically free from all forms ment fixed by the lord, and of course, law and of sexual vice. They were but a million opinion are at incessant war. The tenant, once, and the problem is to discover why they justified, perhaps, by precedents stretching should have increased on the land like rabthrough centuries, improves, or sells his im- bits, while Englishmen bred like human beprovements, or transfers his right of occupancy ings. Are not the true causes the poverty for a consideration. The landlord, justified and the recklessness which spring of the soby the law, takes the improvements, annuls cial disorganization, which is produced by the their sale, or claims to transfer the occupancy class hostility which, in its turn, has its root under no restraint save his own will and in the tenure? It is the cottier system? pleasure. Of course, there is a struggle, and The French, who do not multiply, are cotunhappily for Ireland the contempt for life tiers too. It is the national character? In which is at the very root of the Celtic nature, what respect does that character differ from which is the spring of the French passion for that of the Poles, who, so far from multiplyglory as well as of Irish murders, of the Par-ing, have in all probability decreased? It is isian readiness for barricades as well as the the national creed? Bah! Look at LomIrish sympathy for assassins, makes that strug-bardy, where a Catholic population turn a gle a bloody and therefore a criminal one. drought-stricken plain into the richest of garEnglishmen long ere this would have met a system which they hated as the Irish hate this by a passive resistance, before which the landlords would be as powerless as the Legislature. Suppose a county threw up its hold-bardy is a dry one; or take Bengal, which is ings, accepting poor relief till its leases were signed! Irishmen meet it,- —we are pleading their cause, but shall blink no truth-like assassins, by cowardly shots from behind hedges, and still more cowardly menaces of future vengeance in writing. Of course, atrocities of that kind rouse the manliness of the landlords, as well as their instinctive hate of restraints on property, and so the conflict grows daily worse, the gulf between class and class deepens and widens, the peasant betakes himself more readily to his weapon, the landlord is almost ready—as Sir E. Grogan showed in his speech-to call for despotic measures of public safety. It is into the possibility of remedying this state of affairs that Mr. Maguire asks Parliament to inquire, and it is an inquiry into this condition of affairs that the

dens, without eating one another up by their numbers. Then, suggests Lord Palmerston, if it be not over-population, it is the rainfall. Ireland is a wet country. Well, Lom

wetter yet, and which is over thousands of
square miles cultivated like a garden. The
use of scientific cultivation, as we understand
it, is to meet local difficulties of soil and cli-
mate and season, and the reason scientific
cultivation does not exist in Ireland is simply
the absence of capital, produced by the class-
war which has its root in tenure. To
say the
island cannot under any conditions feed its
people is simply to accuse Providence of be-
ing rather more stupid than Scotch landlords,
who contrive to make a poorer soil keep their
people fat.

"But," argues Sir E. Grogan, "it is not over-population or the tenure, but disorder and idleness." Crush down disorder by force, and make the people work hard. Yet for three hundred years we have tried this

From The Spectator, 27 June.

THE BRITISH DEMANDS ON RUSSIA.

THE six points of Earl Russell's proposal by no means reconcile Liberals to the Polish policy he is pursuing. They seem to us just wide enough to render concession exceedingly difficult, and just narrow enough to make it of no conceivable use. If rejected, they leave us no honorable alternative except to insist on acceptance-which is war; and if accepted, they provide no guarantee against further oppression of Poland-which is not peace. Let us make the three wide assump

crushing system under the most favorable and into the possibility of amending that circumstances, and with the effect we see. A tenure Parliament refuses to inquire. government supported by a race who at almost any time in their history could, had they chosen, have exterminated the Irish, was for three hundred years released from scruples by a difference of creed, and applied its pitiless strength without a shudder or a remorse to this one end, and failed. It has not even secured the one poor result, which in vast and swarming countries like India it has secured, viz., the personal safety of the rich—the end which a government like that of Naples, abandoned of God and detested of man, did still contrive to obtain. Are we to re-commence that system, and live over again three centuries of cruelty, to find ourselves at the end either with a desert to re-people, tions-that Russia accepts them en bloc, that or a new effort to begin the career of justice the national Government of Poland, which upon which we are at last fairly embarked? lately declared that its single object was Statesmen, we submit, will for once agree" independence," consents to recall its own with philanthropists that if all efforts are to fail, and Ireland still to be a wound rather than a limb in the body politic, they may at least accept that fate more easily by retaining the consciousness that, as at present, Ireland suffers under no intentional injustice. As to industry and energy, the very ground of inquiry is that the Irish who abroad succeed, at home despair, the very object to be sought is the cause which produces the admitted difference. The shiftless, improvident, lying heap of rags and geniality who in Ireland potters over a half-drowned potato patch, crouches to the priest and shoots at the landlord, is in Ohio a hard-working farmer, believing in broadcloth, and spiteful only to the priest who objects to a Protestant school. The wretched squireen, who is in Ireland the worst specimen extant of civilized man, is in India a successful administrator, or in Austria founds a family honored for generations. The rebel, who in Ireland writes mad verses in the Nation, or talks lying trash about the " Saxon," or rushes with a mob of half-armed wretches on the same wretches civilized by English discipline, is in Australia a working and very successful Minister of State, in Canada a large proprietora man whose opinion carries English votes, whose letters of warning sound to Englishmen masterpieces of eloquent sense. The cause of the difference is social disorganization; the root of disorganization is the tenure;

words, and that recalling them it retains its influence with the insurgents; and, even in that excessively improbable case, what will Poland have gained? The Czar will have pledged himself to create a representative government, to select only Poles for office, to establish a fair conscription, to employ the Polish language, to grant a general amnesty, and to protect religious freedom. Considering that Prussia at this moment possesses every one of these advantages, they are not necessarily of much value, even when considered apart from existing facts. But, considered with them, they amount, with the exception of the amnesty already refused, absolutely to nothing. Poland has had all these things once before already, granted in honest faith, secured by treaty, guaranteed by all Europe in arms, and they have all been taken away. No constitution could be more liberal than the one of 1815, the Polish language has never been abolished, and as for the employment of Poles, it was a Pole who devised the act of tyranny which has made even Conservatives speak as if ready for war. Poles are not pleased when their first-born are kidnapped by a Pole any more than when they are abducted by a Russian. There is no new guarantee that the Alexander of to-day will be more honest than the Alexander of 1815, that Constantine Nicolaivitch will be less of a tyrant than Constantine Paulovitch proved to be. All the

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