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purpose of preventing a block in promotion, and then they proceed to set aside by Royal Warrant their Lordships' decision. "On this point," said Lord Cairns and to his declaration the Lord Chancellor, who attempted a reply, took no objection-"on this point I am prepared to maintain as an important constitutional proposition, that when the Crown has placed any of its prerogatives at the disposal of Parliament, as was done in the present instance, it is contrary, I will not say merely to constitutional principle, but to good faith and to common fair-dealing on the part of the Government, afterwards to withdraw from the consideration of Parliament the measure affecting such prerogative." And if the step itself was unconstitutional and contrary to good faith, what can be said of the argument on which the attempt to justify the proceedings is rested? The Government say, that, having obtained the consent of the House of Commons, they should have gone wrong in their duty to the country had they allowed the House of Lords to thwart them in their purpose. In other words, failing to support their exercise of the prerogative on its own merits, they shelter themselves behind a vote of the House of Commons; and thus, so far from asserting a right inherent in the Crown, convert an accidental majority in the House of Commons into a dictatorship. "We should not have ventured under other circumstances to bring the prerogative to bear hostilely upon the House of Lords. But forasmuch as we have a majority of the Commons at our back, we shall obey the behests of that majority, making use of the Queen's name. Can any political crisis, short of a coming civil war, justify this proceeding? Are the liberties of the people and the peace of the realm safe, if such a precedent

be established without a challenge? "Prerogatives," as was well observed in the course of the debate, “may be used by one Government for one purpose, and by another Government for another purpose." In what plight will public freedom be placed, if they who happen for the time being to form the minority of the Commons, are to be overruled by the Government backing up the decisions of the majority with some arbitrary exercise of the royal prerogative?

We have not shrunk from delivering our opinion plainly and frankly upon this extraordinary proceeding, both as it touches the dignity of Parliament now, and as it may injuriously affect the liberties of the nation hereafter. The former outrage Parliament has, indeed, already resented-the latter evil Parliament will, we are convinced, guard against sooner or later; but the authors of the outrage can never recover from the damage which an act so unwise, so unconstitutional, so illegal, has done to their reputation as statesmen and

as men.

"Read your Bill a second time," said Lord Cairns, at the close of a peroration than which none more eloquent or telling was ever uttered in the House of Lords—“ read your Bill a second time, but take with it the mark of censure and condemnation of this House-censure and condemnation which I am persuaded will be approved by the deliberate opinion of the country, and confirmed by the verdict of history-censure and condemnation, that at a crisis which demanded the wisdom and the forbearance of statesmen, you, with the petulance and fickleness of children, in order to obtain an apparent and casual triumph at the moment, pre-eminently violated and wantonly strained the Constitution of your country."

CORNELIUS O'DOWD.

WHOSE TURN NEXT?

WE have all heard the story of the Irishman, who, on being bound over to keep the peace towards all her Majesty's subjects, exclaimed, "God help the first furriner I meet!" and that my injured countryman was not so illogical as he appeared, will be evident to any one who will now look at the actual condition of France.

Here is a country bound over in the very heaviest recognisances the world has ever seen. Without discussing the provocation or entering into the causes, all must admit that such a series of reverses, unrelieved by a single gleam of good fortune, never befell a people. From Spicheren to Sedan it was uninterrupted defeat. It is no pleasure to dwell on such a story, which was simply the downfall of all that makes the greatness of a people. Their unity, their patriotism, their military courage, and their endurance, all were put to the test, and all failed. Their capital occupied by the enemy-their legions prisoners of war-whatever they had of a government a sort of compromise permitted by their conqueror, these were terrible lessons, and lessons which every nation of Europe read with awe and misgiving all the greater that the country in which they occurred had been, till then, the admitted leader and head of all European civilisation.

There are optimists everywhere and for every cause; and some said here that all these misfortunes, terrible and crushing as they were, would redound to the advantage of France; that France needed this reverse to cure her of her old besetting sin of enormous self-conceit, and, what was VOL. CX.-NO. DCLXXI.

still worse, of that habit of underrating and even despising all other nations. France, in fact, had been doing in an exaggerated degree the very same piece of folly that we English have so long persisted in-living on the capital of former successes. The splendid victories of the Consulate and Empire had accumulated a stock of glory to the nation which they believed to be inexhaustible; and the petty triumphs of a late Italian war-very different from real war-had satisfied them that they were the same people who had conquered at Marengo and at Lodi, and whose victorious legions had bivouacked in almost every capital of Europe.

We-with our memories charged with Peninsular victories, and who at every moment fell back upon Salamanca and Fuentes d'Honoro for the character of our troopsshould be more than merciful to this disposition. We who have been living on Wellington, might with fairness forgive those who relied on the fame of Buonaparte.

That Frenchmen or Prussians could be anything other than they both were at Jena, never occurred to any one in France. There was, indeed, a time in Europe in which the Frenchman's estimate of himself was partaken of by every people of the Continent.

The great Napoleon had so dazzled the world by his genius, that the troops he led marched on to victory as a recognised conclusion. French dash and intrepidity-French daring in emergency and rapidity in movement-were admitted elements of superiority, which at least ex

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plained defeat to those whose less excellent qualities had been arrayed against them.

The spread of the French language over Europe-the most enduring of all the conquests of the First Empire-contributed largely to this exaggerated estimate of France. All were able-from Moscow to Cadiz-to believe what Frenchmen said of themselves; and who could doubt them when they declared that they were not only the most polished and cultivated, but the bravest and the boldest, nation on earth? Aided by the resources of a language whose delicacy of expression cannot be equalled, and where every shade and tint of a meaning can be conveyed, and where the neatness of a phrase is often able to do duty for an argument, how could any people vie in politeness with those whose very forms seem made to cultivate courteous intercourse, and who, even in dissent, appear to regret divergence from an opponent? In good truth, we all of us accepted the inferiority she assigned to us as our fitting station, and admitted that Frenchmen were everything that they said they were.

These Prussian reverses have been a rude awakening from this delusion. Wholesale capitulations of greater armies than all our home experiences can conceive; defeat admitted without contest by masses numerically greater than those by which the first Napoleon subjugated all Europe; the military spirit of the nation so crushed that whole companies gave themselves up as prisoners, and surrendered, in some cases, to a few wandering Uhlans. Worse than all, and strangest of all, French generals declaring that from want of confidence in their men they were reluctant to risk a meeting with the enemy, and actually claiming credit, as a fait d'armes, for a

retreat by which they avoided a battle. These were what the world has called the "lessons" France has had to learn; and we most of us—in such frame of mind as our individual sympathies might suggest--began to picture to ourselves how far France had been taught by the cruel experiences of her last campaign. Some of the ablest of her journals assured us that she would seriously set to work to redress the balance of misfortune. We have seen, said they, our terrible errors of defective education; we have seen that our youth, utterly neglected in culture, have been trained up to self-indulgence, and seen that the immoralities we had believed to be the pardonable excesses of a luxurious civilisation, had usurped the place of all moral principle, and that the corrupt novel and the licentious play were actually giving the tone to a society which no longer took pleasure except in excitement and excess. The 'Debats' told us they would reform the finances, control the expenditure, and economise in all the establishments, and, in English fashion, endeavour to obtain more for their money than heretofore. They courageously reminded their countrymen that there were other victories than those of the battle-field, and that for such conquests Frenchmen had no rivals; that in every walk of science, in every department of letters, in all the arts to which elegance of design and correct taste impart their excellence, they must always hold the first place in Europe. If these pretensions were not distinguished by any especial modesty, the spirit that dictated them was so just, so reasonable, and so praiseworthy, we readily forgave the boastfulness for the sake of the manly determination to make profit of even misfortune.

Now, however, that France has somewhat rallied from her depres

sion, not only has this tone declined, but there are evident signs abroad that the great lesson has been no lesson at all, and that for all that concerns French self-sufficiency, boastfulness, and pretension, Bismark might never have existed, nor the "Red Prince" have ever been born. Already the nation is dreaming of war: they are bound to keep the peace with the Emperor of Germany; but they cry, God help the first furriner they meet with!

It is in this unhappy position that Italy now stands to them, and, as I write, men are speculating on a war with Italy. There are not wanting reasons to make such a war popular. The Italians owe their existenceall that they have as a nation-to France, and the Italians have behaved with gross ingratitude! They might have come to their aid in the late war, and they did not. Garibaldi and a few ragged followers came in at the end of the struggle, and made dissension rife amongst their own people. Except this pitiable contingent, Italy sent nothing. Nor was this all. Italy took the moment when France was crippled by disaster, to reverse all the policy France had imposed; and although that policy was Buonapartean, and the nation had expelled the Buonapartes and more than that, although it was against such policy the most formidable opposition in France was formed-it was enough that Italy should dare to assert a will of her own to offend this haughty people, all the haughtier that they had been lately thrashed, and more bumptious than before they were Bismarked!

Except the Empress Eugenie and a small clerical clique, nobody cared very much about the Pope's cause in France. Its political importance had declined with the downfall of Legitimacy. Pio Nono's fortunes were linked with those of Henri V.

A restoration of those antiquated absurdities-a return to noodleism -would have brought back high mass to solemnise divine right; but it was about the last thing Frenchmen were thinking of. Whatever the future before them—a war of vengeance or a progress of peace

clearly the Comte de Chambord was not the man they wanted; and men troubled themselves little about his cause, or what would come of it.

No sooner, however, had Italy decided the question of the Papacy for herself, than French pride was hurt, and French honour insulted. That they had paid heavily for imposing their will upon Spain, and declaring what king Spaniards should not have, taught them little, for they were just as ready to dictate a policy to Italy, and determine what should be law on the other side of the Alps. It is precisely, then, in the position of the indignant Irishman France now stands. Her honour requires that she should beat somebody, and Italy offers the sort of victim that would gratify national rancour, and not offer, perhaps, insurmountable difficulty. France certainly does not rate the military ardour of Italy too highly.

The campaigns they had made together had not raised either in the esteem of the other; and when the peace of Villafranca was signed, Italians would far rather have fought France than be led against Austria. That the time of a war between France and Italy would come, was one of Cavour's speculations; and I can recall very memorable words of his with reference to the various passes of the Alps, to the foot of each of which he "hoped in five years to have a railroad." I am quoting words which a great English diplomatist could corroborate.

Italians see the possibility of this rupture with sorrow, but not dis

may. The late events in France have enabled men to take a more just measure of a French army; and though men do not conceal from themselves the gravity such a struggle might impose, there is none of

that discouragement a French war would at one time have inevitably conveyed.

It remains to be seen what will M. Bismark say to it, for he is still the lord of Europe.

OUR NATIONAL DOTATIONS.

To explain to any man who lives on a shilling a-day how another man with ten thousand a-year should find himself occasionally straitened for money, is one of the hardest problems in existence.

First of all, you must inform him with reference to a variety of ways and habits and requirements of which he has never heard before; and well knowing that none of these enter into his daily life, or have any bearing upon his health, comfort, or pleasure, he will be disposed to undervalue and decry them.

Secondly, you will have to show him that habits constitute necessities of life, and that what a man has been brought up to from childhood, has become a part of his existence so completely, that to strip him of it is to infringe upon his identity.

Lastly, and hardest task of all, you will have to try to make him understand that whatever a man's condition in life, the world of his fellow-men impose upon him a corresponding mode of existence, and are not very measured in the terms they employ to his shortcomings and deficiencies.

The man of £18 per annum will not lend much patience to such reasonings. A continual reference to himself and what he eats and wears, how he is lodged and cared for, will make him very obdurate as to the necessities of those who never knew hunger, nor cold, nor felt how poverty could add pangs to sickness.

The "Cannot he do as I do" argument, the most selfish of all sophisms, will satisfy him that all that is not needed for actual subsistence is downright extravagance and waste; and if, in addition, he can contrast this lavish outlay with some actual destitution elsewhere, he will be prepared to denounce it as wicked. ! To trade on this very natural ignorance and on these very human sympathies, is the success of all the platform eloquence we find arrayed against the civil lists of sovereigns, and the endowments of princes of royal blood.

The Bealeses who convene these meetings have no especial call made upon them for logic or information. Neither reason nor imagination are pressed for service; they can be as ignorant and as unreasoning as the unwashed assembly they address; the few platitudes that have served at Bradford will do duty at Birmingham; and the "Cannot he do as I do" mode of reasoning convincingly shows that the head of a state need not have more costly tastes or more elevated requirements than the head of a firm,-and that the workshop spirit which deifies industry will see little to admire in unproductive expenditure, or the cultivation of what can only refine but never enrich.

Now, if our money-getting had not been, as it is and has been, so associated and bound up with our industry, we should long since have seen how completely the love of gold had sullied every honest and

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