without political fostering than an extension of the suffrage at the last election. Even the Conservative candidates regarded it only as a question of education and of time; while a majority of the Liberal members, so great as to form, we believe, a majority of the Commons, are pledged to some extension.

Many of them will stop short at Mr. Locke King's bill for counties, where that gentleman we believe has no desire himself to stop. This measure is a bare act of justice to the rural population, and to the townsmen and villagers who vote in counties. The Premier objected to it upon the ground that a distinction had always existed between the borough and the county franchise; but even if the assertion be correct, which would in our opinion be found on close examination to be inaccurate, the country is not bound to continue a bad custom because it is an old custom. Sin is not like wine, that it should improve by age. The dwellers in burghs have no good claim to privileges which are denied to the inhabitants of counties. The feudal times are gone and past, and this wreck of the feudal system should go with them. It has no foundation in reason, and we must abandon in this country all that is unreasonable. The following is supposed to be a correct state of parties :England Boroughs Counties

...

Liberals 224 56 2 39 51

372

...

Conservatives 111 104

The Imperial Parliament will assemble on the 30th. Mr. Denison, of Nottinghamshire, will be proposed as speaker, aed will be elected without opposition. He is the brother in law of the present Duke of Portland, who does not hold the politics of his father or of his late and celebrated brother, Lord George Bentinck.

Her Majesty is expected to open Parliament in the second week of May, unless some event occur to prevent that arrangement. The health of the Queen is said to be restored, and that of the young Princess born on the 14th ultt. to be excellent; but the Duchess of Gloucester, the last of the family of George III., the aunt of her Majesty, is in a very dangerous state of health.

Among the new members connected with India, we observe that Colonel Sykes has obtained a seat for Aberdeen, and Acton Ayrton, Esq., for the Tower Hamlets. The losses of Indian gentlemen in the House are headed by Sir J. W. Hogg, who disappears from Parliamentary life. Mr. Layard,

the excavator of Nineveh, and the originator and chairman of the Ottoman Bank, is also out, and his experience will be lost in Oriental affairs. Mr. Kinglake, the author of "Eothen," is elected, and will probably compensate for the withdrawal of Mr. Layard, who might have retained his seat for Aylesbury but for his Chinese vote.

The expulsion of Messrs. Bright and Gibson from Manchester, the defeat of Sir Elkanah Armitage, at Salford, of Mr. Cobden at Huddersfield, the withdrawal of Mr. Laing from Wick, and similar events, expunge nearly the old peace-atany priec party from the Commons.

Mr. Oliphant, the author of some able works on Oriental affairs, was a candidate for the Stirling burghs, too late for the present Parliament, but in time, perhaps, for one to come, on his return, if he return from China, where he has gone as private secretary to the Earl of Elgin.

The ceremony of laying the foundation stone of a building for a Free Library in Liverpool, was celebrated last mouth, with more than the usual pomp on similar occasions. They are not numerous certainly, as the building is to be erected at the sole cost of Mr. Brown, one of the members for South Lancashire, whose mercantile eminence is recognised on both sides of the Atlantic. The library will, we understand, cost twenty thousand pounds, and will be worthy of the donor, the town, and the Derby collection in natural history, given by the present Earl of Liverpool, and which will find in the new building appropriate and permanent apartments.

FOREIGN.

We have no political intelligence since the subsidence of the elections, except what comes from the East. Considerable anxiety is expressed both respecting the Chinese and the Persian wars. The Earl of Elgin has started on his mission to China by the last mail.

The intelligence relating to Sir James Brooke's dealings with the Chinese at Sarawak will not bring upon him the troubles which he experienced from his massacre of the pirates-a measure in which he was found to be justified by the Commission who examined his conduct. The blow struck by him in answer to the ungenerons treachery of the Chinese at Sarawak will probably insure other Eastern settlements from the ruthless proceedings of these barbarians.

The foreign intelligence is comparatively unimportant. The diplomatic dispute of Austria with Sardinia is unsettled; but while it remains, "diplomatic" the public-that is the world—will not concern themselves deeply either in its merits or its demerits.

Among the corners or nooks of the globe that the British people are looking and polishing up Morocco has been forgotten long; and yet the territory of the Moors is within sight of our great "strength," Gibraltar. At length a commercial treaty has been concluded betwen the British and

the Mauritanian empire. The treaty provides liberty to traders which they have not enjoyed in that region for many years, centuries, or some millenniums, never perhaps since the days of the Punic pomp and pride. The Moors have closed themselves up as effectually as the Chinese or the Japanese; not unlike the Arabs, and both are near neighbours of Europeans, although the Moors are geographically the nearer. Ever since their expulsion from Spain the Moors have "sulked," kept people from their shores, and themselves out of the world's ways; yet Mauritania, occupying the north-western shoulder of Africa, with abundant agricultural and mineral resources, should be a thriving land.

The Central American war-Walker and the Free Lances of the States against the natives-proceeds slowly and unfavourably for General Walker, whose hopes of an empire there at present must be as much below zero as anything can be in the tropics. This onslaught of the United States Filibusterers against the Republics of Central America is already debtor to mankind for more than ten thousand lives.

A curious case of poisoning, that interests everybody, and was very like Alum the baker's episode at Hongkong, has occurred at Washington. The new President, Mr. Buchanan, his suite, and a number of legislators and senators of the United States, were for a time residing at the National Hotel there. They all became sick, and very, very sick-sick, and going to die. The troubles of an evil conscience came upon them in that extremity, and they dreamed of a horrid conspiracy by the negro slaves of the hotel to poison the President and all his friends. N.B.-Gentlemen should never take their butlers or their cooks from their slave gangs. A short shrift and a tight rope might have been the only earthly inheritance of those chattels and goods by which the boots were cleaned, and the breakfasts laid, of the President of the great western Republic, when somebody discovered that something was wrong with the drains of the hotel. Upon a close examination they were found to be full of mephitic air-that is, poison in a gaseous state; which, it is believed, poisoned the provisions in the larder, while they in their turn poisoned the President and his followers in the dining room. The house might have been blown up, and the world might have had another gunpowder plot; but the doings underground were discovered in time, and therefore the house has only been closed up preparatory to the drains being reformed of all which the application is, when

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men think that they are poisoned, they should inspect their drainage.

Several great railway accidents have occurred in America, but the most terrible has originated in the breaking of an axle of a railway engine, at an unhappy point where the concussion broke a bridge over a canal, sixty feet beneath the level of the rails to the surface of the water, and eighteen feet deeper to the bottom-within two miles of Hamiltou, in Upper Canada. The ice upon the canal was two feet thick at the time, but the engine with the engineer went through like a shot, while the carriages fell in a heap. Seventy persons were on the train-twenty were saved, fifty were lost -and among others, Mr. Zimmerman, the most extensive contractor of railway works in Canada. Two other and serious accidents have occurred in the States; and fears exist that their works are constructed cheaply but weakly; that severe frosts injure the iron, both in the engines and carriages on the ground.

Considerable reinforcements left Portsmouth for China early in the month. The Transit steamer, with a large number of soldiers, was obliged to return to Portsmouth in a sinking state, and happily arrived there without loss of life; but only in time, and too near the water's edge. vessel was unable to convey the House of Peers in time to the celebrated naval review of last year, and the authorities who hazarded the lives of our

This

gallant soldiers on a leaking streamer, for the long voyage round the Cape to China, are extremely culpable.

They persisted, however, and the 90th Regiment was shipped a second time on the Transit, and a second time that vessel has been obliged to into Corunna. take shelter, in a shattered condition, having put

The ratification of the treaty with Persia is expected from Teheran by the 13th of May, but not earlier. Instructions have reached the commanders, both of the British and Persian armies, to suspend operations. The battle fought on the 8th of February may have irritated the Persians, and thus not facilitate but retard the ratification of the treaty.

The new line of steamers by the Eastern route to Australia has established communication within the promised time of fifty-five days; and the Glasgow company, who have the enterprise in hand, if they be supported by the country, will bring down the time to a few over forty days. One of their steamers, the Oneida, is missing.

really cheap and reasonable at £42,000 per annum, or less than one shilling per week each-although when they get into prison they require nearly £30 a-year, and juvenile thieves cost £300, whether per annum or per vitam is not said. The following sentences immediately precede the quotation:-" :-"In London one man in every nine belongs to the criminal class." "According to the reports, there were in London 143,000 vagrants admitted in one year into the casual wards of the workhouse." Presuming that the "casual wards" resembled those city casualities visited by the present Lord Mayor, we cannot say that the 143,000 vagrants were by good quarters tempted to repeat their visits. Nevertheless, we have no doubt that the 143,000 vagrants are made up by each vagrant repeating himself or herself very many times; and that 143,000 visitations of probably 1,430 persons are turned into 143,000 separate vagrants.

The assertion that one man in nine belongs to the criminal class is monstrously unjust. After all the figures that are packed in these early pages, the error should have been visible to any arithmetician. It occurs on page 8. Well, at page 2 we are told that there were 2,362,236 persons in Loudon, of whom 1,106,558 were males. They are divided into

Of the 670,380 unmarried males, 146,449 were under five years, who could not be expected reason. ably to be married; or, we may add, to be criminals. Deducting that number from the aggregate of the male sex, 960,109 remain, of whom every ninth person belongs to the criminal class, or in all 106,678 individuals. Perhaps, including prostitutes, the females are no better; but, being more numerous, London would possess a population of 220,000 criminals over five years of age. How are such blunders committed, and why do they come to be quoted in the London newspapers without correction ?

Mr. Mayhew has produced a mass of what he calls facts, regarding low life in London; but we are not bound to believe in his calculations. Thus, at page 10 Mr. Ritchie writes:-"We have, according to Mr. Mayhew, 2,000 street sellers of green stuff, 4,000 sellers of eatables and drinkables, 1,000 street sellers of stationery, 4,000 street sellers of other articles, whose receipts are three millions sterling, and whose incomes may be put

down at one." Eleven thousand street hawkers of common necessaries clear one million sterling, or £90 per annum each. It is nonsense.

The author reproaches third rate literary men who frequent clubs for discussion in public houses, and they are not likely to advance their views materially in that description of places; yet it is un

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necessary to sneer at third rate men, who may become first rate in course of years-certainly not "The number of families in course of drinking. living in one room is estimated as high as 150,000." The meaning of the sentence may be gathered out of the words, but a third rate literary man would call it unintelligible. "Look at that girl all radiant with beauty and smiles,-beautiful even in spite of her long lost virtue, and life of sin." Virtue, absent or present, would not make the girl ugly. She might have been beautiful in spite of her long acquired vice. We have no desire to quote sentences of this kind, and should not have taken the trouble of copying one of them, except as a sort of revenge for "the third and fourth rate literary men," who, the author fears, are the "most braggart, lying, and needy under heaven," and we are very sorry to hear that character of them.

Mr. Ritchie adopts and advocates the temperance principle, and we cordially agree with his remarks on that subject. He describes a number of places of an infamous character, in colours no deeper than nature, yet red as scarlet. He censures Chambers' Journal for bestowing laudation on the arrangements of Highbury Barn and grounds, and we do not clearly see the reason for our sober and staid contemporary's interest in the matter. For dancing, dashing "ne'er-do-wells," it is all very bad, but, of course, for moral people it is worse. We do not allege that such grounds are always frequented by immoral persons. We have been there, and have still a tin token, given in exchange for sixpence on entrance, and currency within for sixpence worth of refreshments, which we did not require. The hour was late. The grounds were good enongh, but one third-to be charitable -one third of the company were no better than they should be, if not worse, and the atmosphere was ruined by fumes of gin and tobacco. It did not seem, in our half-hour's visit, one of those places likely to make the world better. A great difference exists between gas and sunlight, and "Chambers' Journalist," wiser than ourselves, may have adopted a more becoming hour for his visit than we selected.

Mr. Ritchie is, we fear, one of those persons who imagine that advanced politics and sincere rcligion are somehow natural enemies. According to the views that we hold, this is a grave mistake. Why should this author hold forth in the following strong words against the Finsbury radicals?

Come here in the summer time, and the attendance is then numerous, and on a Sunday evening, on the lawn before the

Barn, or in the bowers and alcoves by its side, what vows

have been uttered only to be broken; and what snares have been set for youth, and beauty, and innocence; and how many have come here with gay hearts who have left with them bruised beyond the power of man to heal! Even in this room itself, what changes have been wrought by the magic hand of time! Where are the Finsbury radicalsall beery and chartist, who have dined; the demagogues who duped them, the hopes they cherished, the promises they made? One after another have the bubbles burst,