remember that its existence depended on that pledge, which was literally given in extremis to save them from dissolution. If they should now turn round, or suffer dissensions in the camp to threaten their tenure of office, as their own internal weakness threatened it before, they may be assured that their power is dated, and that the opportunity of making fresh conditions for a new lease is lost for ever. This is their last chance; and everything will depend upon the largeness and the wisdom, and, above all, the sincerity of the measure they are about to propose. Lord John has abandoned his finality. Let him take a lesson from the past, and embarrass himself with no more fixed saws, but hold himself ready, if not to anticipate the necessities of the age, at least to yield to them with a statesmanlike grace.

But, unfortunately, this playing fast and loose is the old sin of the Whigs. In times of danger, demanding decision and boldness, they have never been found equal to the occasion; and one reason why, with all their experience and repentance, they are not likely to be equal to it now is, that the people do not believe in them. It is the tradition and glory of the party that they make a famous opposition, but an incompetent government. The Grenvilles failed, Fox failed, Canning was not suffered to succeed, Melbourne failed, and Lord John Russell totters. The administration that stood the longest, and that seemed to be best adapted to the genius of our institutions, was that of Lord Liverpool. It closely resembled, in the character of its chief, and in the nature of its action, the working attributes of a limited monarchy. Slow, practical, and honest, without showy qualities to provoke jealousy, or any great powers to keep down the develop ment of utility in others, Lord Liverpool's pre-eminent merit consisted in his habits of business, and in the exercise of that sort of common sense which enabled him to collect elever men about him, and to keep them together for effective co-operation, in spite of individual differences of opinion. The only choice for a stable administration in England lies between a Cabinet thus constituted and controlled, and one with

a man of surpassing capacity at its head, whose intellect should inspire and command the confidence of the country. But, unhappily, when we have had such men, the strength of party, and the meannesses and petty persecutions of faction, have killed them. The two greatest examples of this class of statesmen we have had in England were Pitt and Canning. Their fate was a homily. Pitt died of old age at forty-six, and Canning was hunted into his grave.

Whether the discussion of a measure of reform is opportune at this crisis, or whether, indeed, it is likely to take place at all before the dissolution of Parliament, may be doubted. To say the least, it is an unfortunate period for the Manchester school to select, for insisting on sweeping changes in our representative system. Perhaps they are proceeding on O'Connell's principle, and discover in England's misfortunes Manchester's opportunity. But we are not to be diverted from more urgent topics because Lancashire is discontented with twenty-six representatives. Nobody denies the necessity of Parliamentary Reform. The disclosures at St. Alban's must convince the most prejudiced enemy of progress that something must be done to purify the House of Commons from contagion of that sort. But it is not the most felicitous moment when the Cabinet is divided against itself, and the kingdom is agitated by an alarm of invasion, to discuss the abstract merits of universal suffrage and equal representation. Nor are we much tempted to do so by the examples of similar experiments elsewhere. In France, Louis Napoleon has restored universal suffrage, and, with unimpeachable equity, apportioned the representation to the population. In four years there have been four distinct trials of universal suffrage in France. And what is now the condition of France? and of what practical value have these nominal concessions proved? We are far from thinking our system perfect; but we are not, therefore, prepared for violent changes, which threaten to abolish the peerage, or something very like it, and to conduct us, by gradual advances, to the confiscation of private property.

It is possible that the general con

viction of Lord John Russell's reluctance to take any steps in the direction of reform, until he is forced into them by pressure from without, may have the effect of urging him to hasten his bill, for the sake of propitiating a little extra parliamentary support in other and more important matters. But these adroit tactics to secure majorities will be of no avail, unless he adopt decisive measures to ensure support out of doors. It is upon this alone his Cabinet must stand or fall. And the first measure the country demands at his hands is the renovation of the Cabinet.

There is an impression abroad that the ministry is composed of a family compact, and whoever will take the trouble to dissect the interrelations of its members, may satisfy himself of the fact. The pretensions of great families, or even of any peculiar circle of men, to monopolize to themselves the whole patronage and authority of the state, constituting themselves, as it was eloquently described, into a bank for circulating the favours of the house and the suffrages of the people, and distributing them only to their adherents, were long since repudiated by him who, using the language of Mr. Burke, declared that he would look these proud combinations in the face.' The progress of events since that time has not contributed to reconcile the people to such compacts, which are all the less to be tolerated from the feeling which is gaining ground, that the old stock has lasted too long, and that gout and imbecility have kept office when they ought to be keeping their sofas. The bare suspicion of a family arrangement of ministerial portfolios is enough in itself to weaken the influence of a Cabinet; while the conviction which can no longer be suppressed, that its principal members have outlived their work, must be fruitful of complaints and warnings which no ministry can continue to treat with indifference. A country like England will not consent to live on the reputations of superannuated statesmen. Reputations are of no more avail to us, in a crisis like the present, than the gallery of portraits in which their lineaments are preserved at Apsley House. Traditions of the Peninsula, and

Waterloo medals will not suffice w save us now. We must have younger blood and fresher energies: men who have to make the history of the future, in which they are to find their fame; and not men who laurels are already sere in the history of the past. England owed a larg debt to the Duke of Wellington and his companions in arms; but has paid it in full, in the hones she has showered upon them, inte affection in which she holds them, and in the respect with which he still listens to their words of ances wisdom. We shall not, therefore, i be charged with ingratitude to the heroes who flourished so far back a the age of the Regency, if we er press unreservedly the universal opinion, which recent circumstance have quickened into birth, that the time has arrived when the direction of the army and the navy, the ord nance, docks, forts, and arsenal entrusted with the material of national defences, should be confide to more energetic hands than those in which they are placed at present We have seen how an old admiral at Plymouth sat quietly in s drawing-room waiting for a formal announcement of the burning of the Amazon before he would even take into his consideration the humanity of sending out a vessel to the succour of the survivors, although the fact of the calamity had reached him in the shape of a wild rumour, which all the more demanded prompt inquiry, because it was wild and vague. What are we to expect in cases of emergency from the vigi lance and activity of men like these, who, educated in a school of etiquette and quarter-deck discipline, insist upon the fulfilment of empty forms before they will stir a finger in the way of their obvious duty? And when we come to add the inca pacity of old age to the immovability of antiquated prejudices, the neces sity of a sweeping change in these departments will hardly be denied. It has long been felt that the Duke of Wellington was too old for the responsibility imposed upon him; but whilst we were at peace with the world, or likely to continue so, and he had no more arduous funetions to discharge than a holiday visit to Walmer, or a levée at the Horse Guards, nobody thought of!

disturbing him. We are no longer in the lap of ease. The pageant and the festival must be displaced by action. The Waterloo Banquet was pleasant enough in the piping time of idleness; but it would come to be regarded as a sorry spectacle if we were required to look to that gathering of retired heroism for the defence of the country against a foreign enemy.

Amongst the most pressing topics which may be expected to occupy the attention of Parliament, and increase the difficulties of ministers, the late strike of the associated engineers affecting, as it does, the future interests of the entire manufacturing population of the country -will, no doubt, occupy a prominent place. The elementary principles at issue lie in a nut-shell; but it is easier to reduce a controverted question to its fundamental conditions than to persuade men who have committed themselves to a great practical error to retrace their steps. It is the duty of the Legislature, nevertheless, to assert these conditions, although it may be beyond its province to insist upon their

maintenance.

It is not denied, we apprehend, on either side, that labour should be free. If the admission of that maxim be the object of the Amalgamated Society, they have wasted a great deal of energy to obtain what they already possessed. The great principle affirmed in our commercial code of the right of the consumer to go to the cheapest market, is a recognition in full of the right of the producer to make the most profit he can. That producer is a compound of labour and capital. You cannot separate them. They cannot move independently of each other; and the right of the labourer to the highest procurable wages is not more clear than the right of capital to the best possible investments. These rights are, in fact, identical in spirit and reciprocal in action. If labour is free, so, too, must be capital. But that which is sought by the Amalgamated Society is, not to establish the right of labour to choose, but the right of labour to dictate; and this is the fallacy and the wrong that vitiate their whole proceedings.

If you demand for the workman the right of combining against a

given scale of wages, you must grant to the employer the right to refuse any scale of wages which he considers excessive. If you do not, instead of endeavouring to regulate the labour market by just and equitable means, you are, in reality, seeking to control it by a revolution. We may mince the matter as we please, out of a mistaken delicacy, but every attempt to force upon capital the demands of a class-interest is an invasion of its legal privileges, and amounts in effect to a revolution.

The experience of all ages proves that when the relations of the employers and the employed are left to themselves they find their fair and natural level. A particular capitalist may be deluded by eccentric crotchets; a great manufacturing firm may be misled by false theories about work and wages; but if we give perfect freedom to the action of competition these exceptional variations must right themselves in the end. It is as impossible for an individual capitalist to alter the scale of the labour-market, as for a rusty vane that wont turn with the current to alter the course of the winds. The safety of the workman depends on the competition of masters, which he ought to encourage to the utmost by leaving wages at all times an open question. Let him beware how, by attempting a dictation which he cannot enforce, he urges the masters into combination. In such struggles, however the fortunes of the conflict may fluctuate, the final victory must inevitably be on the side of capital. What can impoverished labour, whose conscript funds are speedily exhausted, do against capital that can afford to retire and wait its time? Resort to violence? Such an alternative would only bring the contest to a speedier issue and a more overwhelming discomfiture.

The rule laid down by Lord Cranworth applies to every possible shape the demands of the workmen may take, and is not the less forcible because they have endeavoured to repudiate the charge of interfering with the employment of unskilled labourers. All the relations,' says his lordship, between employers and employed are, or ought to be, those of perfectly free agents.' This is the whole case. It is a matter of

bargain-an open contract between two individuals on terms and conditions which they are at perfect liberty to discuss and agree upon or reject. The assertion that the Society have not attempted to interfere with the right of unskilled labourers to avail themselves of this privilege is not quite borne out by facts. They interfered at Oldham and Manchester; and although their printed rules do not contain express provisions against the employment of unskilled labourers, they talk of vested interests' and the limitation of apprentices in a way which leaves no doubt of their intention to overawe the labour-market, both skilled and unskilled, if they can.

The effect of this species of tyranny over the rights of capital would bring us at last, if it were permitted to have its fling, to much the same condition as if we had adopted M. Proudhon's celebrated doctrine, which denounces all property as theft, and which is beginning to be preached by some of the lecturers of the working-classes in this country, who do not hesitate to trace it to the New Testament. The example of Him who kept his hands pure from the things of this world is cited as an argument against the accumulation of property. These blasphemous absurdities, which perish even in the atmosphere of France, may, no doubt, be disclaimed by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and other combinations of that kind in their public and aggregate capacity; but there is no doubt that they are accredited by their orators, and maintained, with a certain covert inuendo, in their publications. The doctrine, in fact, is spreading, that property is a wrong to poverty, and that its redistribution is a debt which pillage owes to society. Much as we deplore the diffusion of these mischievous notions, we cannot believe that they are destined to take very deep root in a country essentially industrial, which subsists solely by its trade and manufactures, and in which the accumulation of wealth is the source of the national stability. They may occasion a temporary disturbance amongst the classes who are so credulous as to embrace them, but the common-sonse of the people, the spirit

of our institutions, and the fri effects of the subdivision of pr in France, will ultimately disp delusion.

How much of the erre vis has obtained circulation on tek subjects may be ascribed to t dent and eloquent writings small but influential party Christian Socialists, we will natu ture even to conjecture; bai they have to some extent contre, to give weight to doctrines Ti in their naked form, they can suspected of entertaining fear, too true. We know the of intention by which these abhonest men are actuated; web their objects to be in the highes gree benevolent and elevating: practically, they would be as ling as we should be ourselve sanction revolutionary or commit views. If, however, in the p of a contingent good, they set sanction opinions and dogmas gerous to the repose of society if they leave their actual convic on these agitated questions ope: misconstruction, they cannot be lieved from the responsibility & directly promoting a crusade order and property, of which wer lieve, thus plainly set before no men in the kingdom would conscientiously disapprove. touch upon the labours of the Ch tian Socialists because we think th have been misunderstood, and cause we hold their talents and the virtues in too much respect, not? desire to see them exercised doubtfully, and with more inte gible advantage to the commu

Parliament will open in a days, and never were its deliber tions looked for with deeper anxie At few periods in our history wer problems of greater moment waitin for solution. We confide in the de cretion and energy to which we ha hitherto been indebted for the bir place we have held amongst the tions of the earth, and, notwithstan ing all alarming appearances 25 auguries, we have no fears for the future. Our reliance is in th patriotism and union of the people and if war be inevitable, our word is not to stand still till * comes, but to anticipate and termi nate it in the harbours of the enemy.