as a cheap and magnificent Poor-law, and politically as a vitally important safety-valve. The rapid progress of the Union, too, which so astonishes the admiring eyes of Mr Bright, is not due to any superiority of energy to the old country, but to a yearly influx of adult and energetic settlers such as is enjoyed by no other country. Indeed, were Mr Bright a well-informed man, he would know, and if an honest man he would say, that Liverpool and Glasgow, without any such extrinsic aid, have increased almost as rapidly as New York, and that the Canadas also have of late been "going ahead" in a style to excite the envy even of the "smart men" of the States. But even if the United States were peculiarly that "paradise for the working classes" which Mr Bright depicts, it would by no means follow that they are equally a paradise for humanity in general. Mob-rule doubtless has its sweets for the mobocracy, but it is neither a noble, wise, or pleasant thing for the other and better classes of the community. The British nation has no desire that the lowest of its many levels shall dictate law and manners to all the others. Mr Bright descants most fervidly upon the corruption which he alleges to exist in the administrative system of Great Britain; but if he wish to see that monster fully developed, he should further recruit his health and calm his Radical enthusiasm by a twelvemonth's sojourn in his darling Transatlantic Utopia. Six weeks' time during a Presidential election would suffice to open his eyes-if they be pervious to evidence at all. Unless his optics be, as we fear they are, like stained glass, which only permits light of one hue to pass through it, a very short residence would suffice to throw into confusion all his present notions of republican purity and freedom. In these days of administrative reform in our own country, what does Mr Bright think of the practice of the Union, where the entire Government patronage is distributed avowedly on no other principle than that of party interest? Moreover, a ministerial change in this country takes

place without affecting the tenure of any public offices save those immediately connected with the Cabinet; whereas, on every presidential change in the Union, the whole public officers, from ambassadors down to tidewaiters, are driven from their posts in order to make room for the myriad friends and friends' friends of the new Administration. No wonder that a Presidential election witnesses an unscrupulous struggle of parties, an amount of intimidation and corruption not even dreamt of in the "old country"-when, on every such quadrennial occasion, seventy or eighty thousand individuals are struggling per fas aut nefas to preserve their daily bread, while twice or thrice as many-the expectants of office-strive with equal unscrupulosity to turn them and their leader out. In the United States, it is no exaggeration to say, all our electionevils reappear in greater magnitude and more repellent form. Corruption is undisguised-intimidation is organised. So common and recog nised are electoral corruption and intimidation, that they have been the means of introducing new words into the American vocabulary. Indeed any one who has been in New York during an election does not need a dictionary to explain "shoulder-hitter," and suchlike terms of formidable import. In addition to bribery, which is too delicate an operation to attract any attention, often in the larger cities bands of bludgeon-men are regularly hired for the fray; party-mobs blockade the polling-booths; and the ballot-boxes-Mr Bright's ultima spesare "stuffed." And as the votingbillets are all dumb as to their ownership, of course there can be no check upon such foul play,-which is a very serious drawback upon the ballot as compared with our own system, under which scrutiny is easy and false voting impossible. Of "stump" oratory and "talking to Bunkui," we need say nothing, for Mr Bright himself is the very paragon of such orators, so far as the genus has a place in this country. Neither do we know whether the mob-manners which reign supreme in the public life of the Union be any

evil in the estimation of our Quaker friend and his clique; but we know this, that as a consequence of such a state of things, the most elevated and enlightened classes in the United States remain studiously apart from political life, and keep as much as possible out of sight. This is a sign of evil which has been observed for the last twenty years, and which has been commented on by De Tocqueville, and every writer on the political condition of the Union. The best and most intelligent citizens of the Union acknowledge this, and deplore the falling off as regards moral character on the part of their countrymen. They will tell you," said a Scottish duke who has come much in contact with them, "that there is less and less possibility of getting the highest characters to take an interest in public affairs; that there is less and less freedom of opinion for all those whose opinions are unpopular with the masses; and last of all, that there is even a sensible and visible decline in that which used to be the great characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race-a respect for the authority of the law."

Mr Bright shuts his eye to such things, and to many others of still more striking and repellent aspect. Has he nothing to say of the American doctrine of " manifest destiny" and annexation? Has he no anathemas to hurl at the filibustering expeditions of Lopez and Walker, projects carried on with publicity, and connived at by the authorities? Has he, mild Quaker, no hands of horror to lift up at the Vigilance Committees, and the atrocities which give rise to them ?-no voice to bewail the anarchy, bloodshed, and civil war in Kansas, or the polygamy and rebellion in Utah? How orderly the country where, not two months ago, under the very eye of its chief city, a furious mob burned out the feverstricken sufferers in quarantine, and

still rejoice in the impunity which has attended the inhuman exploit! How peaceful the land where the bowieknife and revolver are a recognised means of redress for real or imaginary wrongs! How perfect the freedom, and fraternal the spirit, when even in Philadelphia a man tinged with African blood was tarred and feathered for being the husband of a white lady, and the civil power took no notice of the horrid crime! Freedom! we can hardly find it in that "model republic;" unless we understand by the term the power to fetter and control the natural liberty of others! Freedom! when one-half of the country is covered with slavery! Universal suffrage what a mockery! when there is a population outnumbering that of all Scotland, who are not only debarred from alĺ political rights, but who cannot even make themselves heard in the courts of justice-held in such fearful thraldom that the husband cannot claim his own wife, so entirely is she at the will of her master, and where the mother has no right even in her own children! No, no, Mr Bright! the Old Country may have its faults, but sure we are that there is too much good sense and right feeling in our people to let them join in your blind and ignoble worship of American institutions! Go, make a small experiment yourself. In this country you can abuse Peers, Church, Army, everything and everybody, in the foulest and falsest manner, yet no one harms you save by quietly showing the absurdity of your statements. Try the same thing in a much smaller degree in the United States. Abuse the slave-owners in just the same terms as you have thought fit to apply to English bishops, and over one-half of the Union you will be tarred and feathered, and in the halls of Congress you will be caned and horsewhipped.*

Turning from this wide miscellany

theirs! Such is the consistency of your true demagogues. "Turn them out!" is John Bright's cry to the constituencies against all who dare to differ from him; and his indignation exhales against the whole institutions of the country, if the men or ministers whom he chooses to denounce do not fall on the instant. But when a popular constituency rejects him, the case becomes very different in his eyes. He is an ill-used man-the country is unworthy of him, &c. &c. Nevertheless, now that he is framing a new Reform Bill, we would just beg to remind him that if triennial Parliaments had been the rule in the past, as he wishes it to be in the future, the only difference would have been that he would have been turned out two years sooner than he was.

Mr Bright, we have said, was naturally anxious to stand well with his new constituents, who had so generously elected him in spite of his principles; and it is wonderful to see the adroitness in this respect which lurks under all his fervid oratory. But, at one point at least, this adroitness was carried to the very borders of most daring farce. For who would ever have thought of John Bright appealing, in justification of himself, to the very class of rulers and Prime-ministers whom he so ferociously denounces as warmakers and fools! John Bright at Birmingham, with a view to silence the gunmakers, and to make himself look as respectable as possible, absolutely invokes the shades of Walpole, Fox, Grey, and Peel, as vouchers for the wisdom of his peculiar views. If you condemn me, he says, remember you will be condemning also all these great statesmen. This was a floorer to the sturdy gunmakers, whose knowledge of Parliamentary history was not sufficiently ready to be able to fire the shot back again down the orator's throat; but we have no doubt they are quite aware by this time of the legerdemain practised upon them. Did not Walpole go to war with Spain? Did not Fox die exhorting his colleagues to an energetic prosecution of the war with France? Did not Earl Grey go the length of taking part in the civil wars

of Spain, Portugal, Belgium ? sending our fleet to blockade Antwerp, and to beat Don Miguel's_navy, and permitting the British Legion to interfere in the purely domestic contest between the Carlists and Christinos? Lastly, as regards Sir Robert Peel, he had but small opportunity of going to war at all; but was it not his Foreign Minister, Lord Aberdeen-the statesman who amicably settled the Tahiti quarrel with France, and the boundary question with the United States -who, along with Peel's own colleagues and officials, found it ne cessary to engage in the war with Russia, which Mr Bright has ever so furiously condemned? Let Mr Bright answer these questions before he again quotes these statesmen as authorities for his peculiar views. Desirous of peace they certainly were, but Brightites in any sense they were not. The great war with France, as might be expected, furnishes Mr Bright with an inexhaustible subject of invective. Had he lived in those times, would he not have stopped that war at the outset, and let France march over Europe as she liked? Perhaps he thinks so; but if he had, most certainly the country would have risen against him with a hundredfold more fury than assailed the Aberdeen Cabinet, and might have hung him up as a scarecrow on the Sussex coast, to meet Napoleon and his legions arriving from Boulogne. Let Mr Bright try to read history better; at present he can only give parodies of it. Whether past or present, whether as relates to Europe or to America, he knows no more of history than a boarding-school miss may pick up from her manuals. It is easy to rhetoricise when the speaker invents his facts as well as his views, and when neither the one nor the other need to square with common-sense. If Mr Bright knew one-half of what he pretends to have studied, he would be aware that so far was Mr Pitt from desiring to interfere with the internal affairs of France, that he hailed the early dawn of the Revolution with undissembled satisfaction; and even when the Revolution steeped itself in blood and horrors, and when