was a moment when the Continent was filled with more hatred and jealousy of France. If bitter cliques and misguided nations look with less confidence than before to the day when the Cossack, the Vandal, and the Croat shall encamp again upon the Boulevards of Paris, it is because England continues to be governed by men who will not hire out their country as catspaw to a few German courts. All this is undeniable. Whether it is the fruit of the imperial system; whether, with a freer regimen and a less halting policy, tepid support would have warmed to loyalty, and liberal Europe would have been less suspicious of its best friends, these are speculative questions on which it would be absurd to dogmatise.

In the opinion, however, of an eminent personage,-the Drusus of the French Cæsarean house,-the sails of the vessel of State have been trimmed too often. Prince Napoleon has always maintained that the empire could never find its account in coquetting with its worst enemies at home and abroad; and he has not ceased to counsel the adoption of such a scheme of "thorough" as would command the sympathy and confidence of honest politicians. To this, always delicate and often thankless, task he has brought an eagerness and an ability only to be equalled by the mettle with which he has vindicated his enlightened views. To uphold the English alliance, to defend the domestic liberties of France against sinister influences in the court and cabinet,-here was a work affording scope for all his energy and eloquence. But to rise year after year in the Senate, amidst the yelps and barks of savage party, and in their very den to beard priestcraft, reaction, and divine right, demanded a strength of endurance not often found on the steps of a throne. There is no reason for believing that the Emperor is, in abstract opinion, less advanced than his imperial cousin; but the situation above indicated is not without gravity, and one charged with its responsibilities may well. hesitate before he abandons that compromising method from which he has hitherto reaped certain negative advantages. is very natural for Protestants to recommend an immediate solution; but it is no less natural that he who occupies the most exalted position amongst 250 millions of Catholics should pause ere he takes a step fraught with unknown consequences to the spiritual economy of their common church. Besides, that the evacuation of Rome is loudly called for in France, is more than can be said by a candid observer. In favour of the maintenance of the status quo, and even for an extension of the occupation over the whole extent of the Pope's former territories, there is the ecclesiastical body and the legitimist aristocracy, besides many important members of the Orleanist or (so

It

called) constitutionalist faction, amongst whom we have, with great regret, to rank the still respectable name of Guizot. Then come those who, without feeling for Rome a reactionary or a religious sympathy, nevertheless doubt the feasibility of a united Italy, or believe that unity, if achieved, will make her a troublesome and even dangerous rival for France; and amongst such is the eminent name of Lamartine. On the other hand, the immediate evacuation would be warmly approved by the bulk of the middle classes, by the Protestants, by the press almost without exception, by the advanced liberals like M. de Lasteyrie and the members of the "Comité Italien," and by the majority of the Emperor's entourage. Yet we must not exaggerate; the fait accompli will be applauded, but the country at large is not eager for an instant decision. Nor would any isolated act of liberalism, however admirable in itself, suffice to reconcile the empire with its republican and socialist enemies, or even to wean the bourgeoisie from their undisguised Orleanism. These considerations may suffice as a key to the Emperor's policy, without flying to far-fetched and imaginative explanations. We can discern no symptom of his alleged desire to keep Italy in a state of perpetual ferment; nor of his secret encouragements to the brigandage, in the hope that Naples might become the "Serbonian bog" which would swallow up King Victor's gold and armies; nor of his tampering with public men, or striving to pull down one minister and set up another, so as to have ready to his hand a pliant tool against the moment when he shall need Italian bayonets for the conquest of Belgium and the provinces of the Rhine. There is nothing probable in these refinements of a diseased fancy. The Emperor may not contemplate Italy with the enamoured eye which the sculptor of antiquity cast on the statue his hand had carved, but neither does he regard her with the gaze of horror which the rash artist in Frankenstein turned on the monster of his own creation. Had his late intentions pointed to the destruction of what has been already effected in the Peninsula, there would surely be practical tokens somewhere existing of his nefarious scheme. Instead of this, Italy is already a fact, and the warmest wishes of optimism have been more than surpassed by the progress of the last few months.

Although our present purpose excludes any estimate of consequences to be apprehended from an undue prolongation of the status quo, we have no desire to burke contingencies inseparable from our own or any other theory of the vacillations of French policy. To philipise in a like strain would be little less reprehensible than to croak in the key of hired slander and detraction proper to the lackeys of the reactionary camp. Human fore

sight cannot fix the precise limit beyond which the Emperor's Fabian conduct cannot be carried without producing a general collapse, yet that limit somewhere exists; and should hope be deferred till good hearts sicken, Europe must inevitably drift into war and revolution. In such an epoch of disaster, what thrones may be swallowed up, what victims may be overtaken soonest by a righteous Nemesis,-this will be learnt when the sowers of the wind are already reaping the whirlwind of retribution. But these dismal anticipations need not extinguish a moderate confidence. We believe that the sagacious ruler of France will be wise in time, and that the Roman question will not continue to imperil an alliance, which is the most useful and the most honourable connexion that can be offered to us and him. We prefer to think that England and France are at bottom agreed on this, as on most other questions of European interest, and that the day may not be very far disant when their moral dictatorship will be reinforced by the addition of a young and welcome ally. There may be deceptions, there may be disappointments, there may be conflagrations; but there will be forthcoming the genius, the courage, the energy to meet them. The illustrious prince who has defended Italy in her hour of need will not desert her, nor will there be wanting the help of the active and distinguished minister of France at the court of Turin. If the administration of Signor Rattazzi should not continue to receive parliamentary support, King Victor has in reserve a statesman in whose veins runs the wolf's milk of ancient Rome, whose soul is filled with such lofty and patriotic passion as he may have inherited from the Lucumos of old Etruria. Then, for her share in the work, England may have confidence in men who are regarded in the Peninsula with unbounded trust and affection. It should make English ears tingle to hear what is said in the corridors of the Palazzo Carignano, and in the smoky atmosphere of Café Fiorio, when news is brought that the rude detractors of Italy have again been the butt of Palmerston and Russell. Last, not least, we may remember with complacency that on the other side of the Alps the Queen is represented by the most solid and most brilliant of contemporary diplomatists, the tried and trusted friend of Cavour, one who will never flinch or truckle, one whose prudence and sagacity are always ready, even in sight of those unspeakable diplomatic Acroceraunia, the despatches of the Earl of Malmesbury.

In that immortal Canzone addressed by Petrarch to the Tribune from whom he looked for the regeneration of their beloved country, there is a prophecy which, after five centuries of anguish, no longer reads as the chimera of a disordered brain. The

poet's vision will be realised, the good estate will be restored, and the shades of Cincinnatus and Fabricius may yet delight in the aspect of the Forum and the Sacred Way. And now let it check the ingratitude of impatience to remember that five short years ago few living men had imagined, and none had hoped to behold, the unparalleled and beneficent revolution which our happy lot has permitted us to witness. History, less hasty and more generous than ourselves, will keep no chronicle of delays and doubts. She will relate how Italy lay in the horrid thraldom of priests and tyrants, with none to pity or save her; and how her chains were broken, how her head was lifted up amongst the nations, and how she became mighty, beautiful, and free. She will blot from her record the hesitations of Villafranca and of Gaeta; but will write in many a stirring and splendid page how nobly the Zouaves kept the bridge at Magenta, and won the windmill of Solferino. Telling of these things, she will adjudge to the third Napoleon an honourable place on the roll of conquerors, and she will add another to the many and imperishable titles whereby France has deserved well of Europe and mankind.

ART. VIII. THE SLAVE POWER AND THE SECESSION WAR.

The Slave Power; its Character, Career, and probable Designs: being an Attempt to explain the real Issues involved in the American Contest. By J. E. Cairnes, M.A., Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in Queen's College, Galway. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn, 1862.

THE most striking and weighty phenomenon in the history of the United States of North America during the nineteenth century is the rise and growth of the Slave Power. The sympathy expressed so loudly in England on behalf of the Southern Confederacy has its origin in loose and inaccurate notions of what the Southern Confederacy has been, of what it is, and of what it would be, were it permitted to develop itself unmolested in obedience to its instincts and unavoidable tendencies. The bare fact that it is a slave power, that is, a power with slavery for its "corner-stone," and the other fact, that this slavery is of a kind entirely new in the history of the world, ought to have made the public writers and public speakers of England turn with dismay from the mere thought of lending their support to such a power, and pouring out their sympathies on its behalf. It is difficult to account for this strange

perversion of wholesome British opinion. It is difficult to understand how, with the history of the past accessible, the facts of the present patent to all eyes, the prospects of the future unclouded and unveiled, any one could be content with the shallow explanation that the present contest is for empire on one side, and for independence on the other. No doubt some have been led away by a blind hatred of democracy; others have been irritated by the reckless violence of Northern newspaper-writers, and the mad speeches of hack-politicians; others, again, have desired success to the South because they think it better for the world that there should be more nations than one within the enormous territory, stretching from ocean to ocean, owned by the United States; and there are not wanting those who have Southern sympathies because they have accepted Southern hospitality. It would be useless to deny the force of these influences; they are around us in full operation, and their fruits are visible every day. But it is strange that such influences should have been adequate to blind thoughtful men to the true character of the contest and the immense issues it involves. It is strange that our public teachers should contemplate with something more than indifference, in many cases with absolute approval, the rise in the heart of America of an overshadowing Slave Power, and should visit on the heads of those who are attempting to break and bind that power their unmitigated censure, and comment on the progress of the attempt with continuous and envenomed hostility. The fact is the more remarkable because we have rid ourselves of slavery; although it was not with us, as it is and has been with the United States, the canker at the core of their political and social institutions. We can only account for the fact by the supposition that our Southern sympathisers have been blinded by the superficial influences we have mentioned to the teaching of history. And were it not that opinion, in a country where publicity prevails, rectifies itself rapidly and effectually, we should look with considerable apprehension for the future of England upon the recent manifestations of English opinion on the side of a Slave Power.

Professor Cairnes has done good service, not to the Federal Government, but to truth, by the publication of the volume the title of which we have placed at the head of this Article. His book will be found to be, not a speculative commentary, but a logical demonstration. The facts on which he bases his arguments and conclusions are probably familiar to the bulk of our readers; for we have repeatedly indicated the character of the Southern Confederacy; but in no other work exists so methodical and forcible a delineation of its origin and growth,