PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

THE distress in Lancashire increases, and as the severity of winter is felt, will no doubt continue to increase. It is not merely that supplies of cotton are wanted; there have been large importations from Bombay, and the stocks on hand in Liverpool are greater than they have been for a year past. It is evident that there is little desire on the part of the great mill-owners to resume working. Their indifference arises from two causes; the inferiority of Indian cotton, and the apprehension of a sudden fall of prices consequent on the changes which may at any time take place in the relations of the United and Confederate States, or which may arise from larger importations of cotton of a better kind from other parts of the world. But during this time of suspense the operative starves. During the last week or two public opinion seems to have been roused from its long and blamable indifference, and contributions upon a liberal scale are pouring in. But we still doubt whether private generosity will meet the terrible and daily-increasing distress-the distress of absolute want, which already involves probably half a million of souls in its deadly grasp, and is daily adding to the number of its victims. We suggested, many months ago, a loan from the national resources, to be charged upon the districts within which the famine exists, and repaid within a given period. The suggestion now begins to find favour, and we are persuaded that, unless affairs should take some brighter turn than we have reason to expect, it must be adopted when Parliament assembles. The distress has risen to a height which reflects great discredit upon our national character: all that we have done, and we have not even done that in every case, is to step in between extreme want and absolute starvation. We all compliment our suffering fellowcountrymen on their wonderful patience and submission, and yet we allow them to suffer the agonies of want. We say it with an indignation we have no wish to conceal, a set of brawling seditious papists would have been far more kindly treated.

A ray of hope seems at length to gleam upon America. The obstinacy, insolence, and contempt of justice and humanity of the Federal government have met with a sudden check where it was least expected. There has always been a party in the North to whom their proceedings were as hateful as to ourselves; but they were cowed and silenced; for moral courage is unhappily a feeble virtue there. But it has gathered strength at last; and the disgraceful misconduct of the war, together with the political misconduct and incapacity of President Lincoln and his cabinet, have added thousands to the list of the discontented. The elections for the next Congress, as well as the different State elections, which have just taken place, show a strangely altered state of feeling throughout the North. The war-party is in fact in a minority, and the inhuman proceedings and tyrannical violence of the government are denounced in public meetings held even in New York itself. At present the Republican or war party, with the President at its head, are in the throes of what is not unlikely to terminate in another revolution; and it seems far more probable that the

Federal States will break up into two or three republics, or military despotisms, than it has been at any time since the commencement of the war, that the North and South should ever be re-united. General McClellan has been once more suddenly dismissed; and the command of the great army of the Potomac is committed to General Burnside. We do not pretend to judge of military affairs, but it appears to us that the General is sacrificed to public clamour. The North wants a victory; the government cannot exist much longer without one. McClellan has been ordered to fight, and has refused so to do, on the plea that he wanted supplies; but no doubt under a conviction, which it was not prudent to avow, that with an army such as he commands it would have been madness to risk all in a battle with troops such as the Confederate generals could bring into the field. Whether general Burnside will repeat those useless, murderous slaughters, which, under the name of battles, have shocked the world during the last American campaign, remains to be seen; nor can we tell whether the war itself will be renewed. It seems to have come nearly to an end, from the mere want of materials to feed on. The fire has burnt out for want of fuel. Even the most ferocious of the war party will not enlist. Volunteers are not to be had at an enormous bounty; and the government dare not enforce the conscription. The tax-gatherer waits till the 1st of January, and every thing seems to threaten an impending crash. Even the dissolution of the whole fabric of the Republic in the North would not surprise us. Yet, such are the changes to which all democratic governments are liable in times of danger,-so violent, sudden, and often contrary to every reasonable conjecture,-that all this may mean nothing more than a conflict of parties. The French ambassador in London, after witnessing the uproar of a Westminster election, such as Westminster elections used to be, wrote home, it is said, that England was already in the midst of a revolution. Americans tell us we cannot understand them; and it is possible, just possible, that what seems to us in England a great political convulsion, may be little more than an ordinary electioneering contest, with its "words full of sound, and fury signifying nothing." But we put a far more serious construction upon, what seem to us, these ominous events.

If, in common with the whole of England, we view the American crisis with satisfaction, it is from no indifference to her real welfare. She has shown us within the last twelve months, that her own happiness, and the peace of the world, are likely to be promoted by the disruption of her huge republic. A state that has no respect for its own liberties, is not likely to respect the liberty of other states. A nation that carries on a civil war with a ferocity unknown except to savages, is not exactly the nation whose threats of foreign conquest will much longer be tolerated even by the most tolerant of her allies. The massacre of ten unoffending, unarmed Confederates in cold blood, on the plea that a Federalist, who was missing, was supposed to have been murdered, has sent a thrill of horror through Great Britain. This is not merely the language of newspapers and politicians; it is well that America should know that the indignation is much more wide and solemn; and that our oldest and best men are amongst the first to denounce it, as standing side by side with the massacres of Vol. 61.-No. 300.

6 H

Dahomey in the appalling magnitude of its guilt, and as affording a proof of the wonderful patience and long suffering of Almighty God. It was in such terms that it was denounced from the pulpit on Sunday last, in a missionary sermon, by Mr. H. V. Elliott, of Brighton, which those who heard will not soon forget. Why are American Christians silent amidst such national crimes as this?

The Emperor Napoleon has formally proposed to England and Russia, that an offer of mediation be made on the part of the three great Powers, the basis of which should be the suspension of the blockade, and of hostilities on both sides, for six months, with a view to further negotiations for peace. Russia first, and then our own cabinet, have declined the proposal; though at the same time Russia declares her readiness to give to it her moral support, if it should be carried out; and England, expressing great respect for the Emperor's motives, and throwing in a courteous acknowledgment of his good offices rendered to us in the affair of the seizure of the Trent, thinks it expedient to wait; under the conviction that interference at present would be productive of no good result. On the whole, it is clear that the three courts are prepared to move whenever they can do so with a fair prospect of success, and this is all that we can reasonably desire. The madness of America must be allowed to exhaust itself, and then reason will be heard.

Amidst these scenes of home-suffering, and these daily reports of the most gigantic civil war that ever raged, events pass unnoticed which in quiet times would absorb the attention of Europe. Greece has passed through a complete but harmless revolution. The whole nation has united to dismiss king Otho, and the crown is vacant. It is said that it is likely to be offered by the unanimous voice of the people to our own Prince Alfred, and that our ambassador will not interfere, which, it may be presumed, amounts to an intimation that if the offer be made, it will not be rejected. Such an offer, of course, would be highly flattering to us; and if it should be made and accepted, we cannot but indulge the hope that the interests of real liberty, of peace and commerce, and above all, of true religion and a purer faith, may be promoted by this sudden and most unlooked for extension of British influence in the classic lands of Greece.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

IT has been suggested to us that the four papers on the Madagascar Missions should be re-printed. The writer of those papers is about to comply with the sugges tion; and he will add much interesting information, which the space at his disposal did not allow him to introduce in our pages.

Our friends who advertise upon the cover very frequently lose time by directing their advertisements to the Editor instead of the Publisher. We beg their attention to this matter; and at the same time we express our obligation to those who give us their advertisements, or induce their friends to do so. We believe that our Magazine affords a very effectual means of placing advertisements before the public; and at the same time they add considerably to the interest with which the Christian Observer is taken up in many a remote nook and corner both in England and abroad. It is not merely on education, or religious subjects, though they are always welcome, that advertisements are appropriate, but upon almost every thing connected with the economy of a parish, or the com. fort of a well-ordered household.

INDEX

OF THE

ESSAYS, SUBJECTS, INTELLIGENCE, OCCURRENCES,

&c. &c. &c.

Monastic system and Evangelical Chris-
tianity contrasted, 52.
Mormonites, the, 183.

National Defences, 399, 562.
Nonconformists, the ejected, and the de-
prived Clergy, 142.

Northumberland Coal Pit, accident in,