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State, instead of stretching beyond the life of man | and acts may be, the colonists of the Cape of Good and counting by generations the progress of their Hope are, above all others, entitled to the indullarge designs, are contracted within the span of gence and fair consideration of the home governthe daily wants of the community. In France ment. government in its many shapes continues to act, and with nearly equal vigor, or society would perish; but men have ceased to look upon it as a thing which endures. Even its own success wears out the ephemeral machine. For, though Right lives on without Possession, Possession totters in all its pride of place before the calm expectancy of Right. We see, therefore, in the present condition of Louis Napoleon a certain amount of personal success, not undeserved by him; but no principle of stability which is likely to resist the pressure of adverse passions, the mutability of France, and the stress of years.-London Times.

From the Examiner.

THE CAPE AND THE CONVICTS.

THERE are some remarkable peculiarities in the British population of the Cape of Good Hope. The colony is not a spontaneously and naturally formed one for England. It is a Dutch colony, captured and settled by us for imperial and commercial interests; or rather in the interest of dominating over, and communicating with, our Asiatic possessions. The colonists who have settled there have done so as the followers of a military occupation. One of the most formidable races of savage life held the land before Dutch or English came; this race was possessed of abundance, and had already advanced from the mere hunter's life to that of the pastoral. To have warred with such heathens would in ancient times have begotten one of those admixtures of religious and chivalric fraternity, such as the Teutonic knights or the Knights Templars. Our morals forbade this; but still the two principles have gone separately to work, and at the Cape the warrior and the missionary have each carried on his campaign against the heathenism of the Caffres. The result has been the union of a military and a religious spirit, which forms one of the most obstinate of compounds in the human heart.

Among the many instances of colonial discontent, produced partly by the march of events, partly by our own innovations and adoptions of theory, and partly by administrative blunders, there is at least one hopeful circumstance. No two colonies are stirred by the same grievance. Canada complains of free trade, Australia of prohibition, the West Indies of want of labor, the Cape of something quite different. Most of them are agitated by material wants and interested purposes the Cape alone seems only influenced by moral motives. The disaffection is not republican like that of Canada, nor protectionist like that of Jamaica. All they ask is to keep their homes and hearths pure. It is in fact more like a cause of rebellion in the eighteenth than in the nineteenth century. And therefore, however forward, rude, and even irrational many of their demands

We can conceive some indignation in the breast of an English statesman against the Canadians who cry annexation, or even against the West Indies who refuse to pay their civil list; but in Cape resistance there is scarcely a political idea. There is nothing more than religious and moral repugnance. Angry threats of retaliation, òr threats to withdraw troops or protection, are quite misplaced when addressed to the men of the Cape. In such a country we should avoid war and extended frontiers, and above all things eschew a commissariat which spends millions and keeps no accounts. We should put a bar to this out of justice to ourselves, not out of vengeance against the colonists of the Cape.

Another consideration that should disarm animosity against the people of the Cape is the insigAll of them taken nificance of their number. together, blacks and whites, Dutch and British, would scarcely make a London parish. There are above 100,000 whites and 50,000 blacks. The whites are divided into Dutch and English. Thrusting convicts upon so limited a population is literally forcing a very bad character, in the shape of a servant, upon a family. And the word family is especially true, for the people of the Cape, being pastoral, do live so divided into large farms and families; and in a predatory country one must know whom it is proposed to admit into a household. Add to which, that nowhere are the vagrancy laws more inefficient and more complained of, and, from the nature of the country, more difficult to be enforced, than at the Cape.

With all these natural and strong objections on the part of the Cape colonists to the introduction of even reformed convicts, we could nevertheless recapitulate, as we have done on a former occasion, several strong reasons which rendered the Cape desirable as a place for such exiles. Among these are its temperate clime, its abundance of land, the lack of attraction and emigration to it, its out-lying farms being posts and services of danger, and the strong military force that could be brought against recalcitrants. But, as we before said, none of these advantages could be reckoned, except on the supposition that the exiles were reformed, and that the probationary system in England had resulted in success. It was the want of completion in this first part of the experiment, that has jeopardized and defeated that part of the third stage contemplated by Lord Gray and the home minister.

There is now nothing left for it but to yield to the remonstrances of the Cape. And we fear there is little hope of any number of colonial populations, large enough, consenting to receive the mass of reformed convicts yearly turned out of the gaols of Great Britain. Van Diemen's land is gorged; and Port Philip and Western Australia together have not the available resources for such an inupdation of forced labor, unless the exiles or the

convicts be either worked in gangs or allowed to tions of recovery, with their dangers of the same settle and cultivate for themselves, either of which calamity, and the endless renewal of the perilous would be a complete overthrow of the system and search. the principles so recently and properly adopted.

It is a great pity that party should have laid hold upon a question which might have remained a stranger to it, and which has contributed so largely to its embarrassments.

From the Examiner.

THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.

The Polar expeditions, barren as they were of results, were in point of safety fortunate up to Franklin's last venture; but we may in future apprehend for them less favorable chances, especially as their business now exposes them to far greater dangers, for they cannot look for the shipwrecked or beset without putting themselves in the places most liable to those dangers.

We have thus stated in the strongest form, and with no desire to conceal any part of the case, the A SERIES of Polar expeditions, costing an enor-difficulties which surround it in its present aspect. mous sum of money for no practical and no ade- But entertaining these views, we have thought it quate object, has ended either in some disabling right very closely to investigate the course taken in disaster, or in the utter loss of the ships under Sir the last expedition under Sir James Ross, and the John Franklin. Upon this commences a new series announced course of the expedition which is now of Polar expeditions to search for the missing ves- proposed. The results we shall describe as briefly sels and crews, or any traces of their fate. These as possible. expeditions, from their very object, must be more Sir James Ross' instructions were to enter dangerous than the exploratory ones that preceded Lancaster Sound, and, proceeding up Barrow's them, and which have terminated so unfortunately; Straits, to attempt to penetrate due west in search for the recovery of the missing ships and crews of Sir John Franklin. His attention was also ought of necessity to lead to visits to the most directed to Wellington Straits, through which it dangerous places, as it is in them that the ships was thought possible that Sir John might have are likely to have been locked or cast away. attempted to penetrate. These latter expeditions have hitherto happily escaped, after incurring most imminent dangers; but every fresh venture multiplies the chances against them, and it is a serious matter to consider what would be the result of any fatal disaster to the next. Upon it would commence a new and third series of expeditions in search of the lost searchers, and thus a prospect would be opened of Polar expeditions without end. A parallel on a small scale is of frequent occurrence. A man is sent down a well in which there is bad air. He drops down insensible. Another goes after him, and shares the same fate; a third follows; but the parallel stops about here, for when the mischief has reached a certain point, the further exposure of life ceases, and the purification of the air is set about before any fresh attempt at recovery. But the dangers of the Polar navigation are not, like foul air, to be removed by any human art. Every renewed attempt to recover the missing is attended with the same dangers, and with the chances against escape increased.

Here we ought to remark that there are the strongest reasons for believing that Sir John Franklin pursued the route through Wellington Strait; When Parry penetrated to Melville Island, holding a course due east from Lancaster Sound, Wellington Strait was observed by him to be free from ice both on his passage outward and as he returned. This had made a deep impression on Sir John Franklin. Before he started he is known to have expressly stated his conviction, that, by sailing up Wellington Strait, a course more to the north might be found than any yet tried, and affording a better chance of effecting the north-west passage, To Mr. John Arrowsmith, among others, this opinion was strongly expressed. We entertain no doubt whatever that Sir John Franklin intended to try the passage through Wellington Strait.

Had

There are corroborative circumstances. Sir John followed Parry's course (the only other open to him) he must have done one of three things. He must have come out to the west in his ships or boats towards the mouth of the Mackenzie river; or Is this consideration a reason for giving up the he must have come back by those means, or over the search while a rational chance of success remains? ice, to Lancaster Sound; or, finally, he must have No, it is not. While such a chance remains, the made his way over land in a southern direction idea of leaving Franklin and his gallant companions towards the shores of the Hudson's Bay territory. to perish is not to be borne. But the grave ques-The sea off the mouth of the Mackenzie river was tion is, whether the chance now remaining war-directly in the line of his onward track, supposing rants the risk of another expedition. And if it do Parry's to have been the course taken. When halfnot, heavy will be the responsibility of sending way from Lancaster Sound to that point, he was out another, which, less favored by accident than equi-distant from each of the three destinations above the last, may never return. We have to bear in mentioned. He knew that relief could be got at mind the wisdom of the old proverb as to the pitch-any of them. It is clear to us, therefore, that had er's going to the well. There is the once too he been arrested in this track of Parry's, he or often; and in this peculiar case disaster must be some of his hundred and twenty-six followers followed by the risk of more disaster, for every would ere this have contrived to make their way missing expedition must have its train of expedi- to one or other of the destinations in question.

The greatest distance from any of them is less As to a new expedition, we have already stated

than has repeatedly been accomplished in a summer, with ease, by the government arctic land excursions, and by the servants of the Hudson's Bay Company.

We take it to be a strong presumption, then, that the expedition passed through Wellington Strait. Sir John's known intentions, and the nonappearance of himself or crews, point to the conclusion that he passed up Wellington Sound. He has not effected the passage. He has not returned. Sir James Ross laid up his ships near Leopold's Island, on the south side of Barrow's Straits; 24 degrees of longitude (which are very short here) to the east of Wellington Strait, but on the south -the opposite side-of Barrow's Straits. Now a whaler is known to have penetrated as far westward (while Sir James was there,) proceeding up the north side of Barrow's Straits. We are convinced that Sir John Franklin's ships, and their crews, if surviving, are somewhere between the mouth of Wellington Strait and the northern opening of Behring's Straits.

But Sir James Ross did not approach nearer, in his ships, than 24 degrees of longitude, and about a degree of latitude, from the mouth of Wellington Strait. In his land expedition, he proceeded, first to the west, along the southern shore of Barrow's Straits, and then turned round to the southward. Though his instructions mentioned Wellington Strait as one of the regions to be searched, Sir James Ross never looked near it.

We make this remark with much pain, implying a reflection, as it seems to do, on a most deservedly distinguished officer. But the facts exact it from us. Sir James Ross might not have known the circumstances which strengthen our belief that Sir John Franklin had passed through Wellington Strait; but he could not have been ignorant of the grounds that exist for believing he intended to pass that way. Sir James was ordered by the Admiralty to examine it. Yet he confined his exertions to the southern side of Barrow's Straits. The accounts of his proceedings which have been allowed to appear, bear marks of his having been less anxious in the direction of the specific search, than to extend his land journeys in a S. W. and then in a S. E. direction, till he should reach, by another track, the extreme limit he had attained in a former expedition-his "furthest." Nor, when he again set sail, does it appear that he made any effort to reach Wellington Sound. The first published account asserted that he was carried out from his mooring in the midst of a field of ice. A subsequent account in the Times, undoubtedly from the pen of an officer in the expedition, stated on the contrary that they had been able to weigh anchor and had tried to beat for a short time to the northward. We do not profess to understand these contradictions; but, coupled with the facts stated, they have left an impression upon our minds the reverse of favorable to the satisfactory conduct of the last expedition.

the grave question that exists-whether the chance now remaining warrants the risk it would involve. And further we say that, inasmuch as every fresh attempt multiplies adverse casualties, we are bound to provide that the risk shall not be desperate. There must be a chance to venture for, and a reasonable safety in the venture. We are not indisposed to think that both exist, if the prudent steps are now taken; and we say this with the strongest feeling of objection, as already expressed, to any ill-considered or gratuitous renewal of the perilous search.

We cannot but think it possible that some of the crews may survive. More than two years have elapsed beyond the time to which they were victualled, but they must have been aware of their position sufficiently carly to provide in some sort against it. The seas, and shores, and ice, had stores to furnish. We see how the ignorant and helpless Esquimaux exist in regions not much to the south of them. We have seen in Russia what civilized men may struggle through. With their ships for homes, with their intelligence and zeal, with their implements and agencies of help, it seems scarcely possible that the whole hundred and twenty-six men, the flower of our navy, can have sunk entirely hopeless under their difficulties, and perished already. And we hold it to be quite indisputable, that, while a gleam of rational hope survives, however distant, the country which sent forth these gallant men, is bound to make still renewed search for them, if the search be compatible with all due safety to others.

There are two conceivable routes by which they may be sought-by Behring's Straits or by Wellington Strait. We may go to meet them, or we may follow them.

Now the first, which is at present proposed, we believe to be chimerical. From the entry into Wellington Strait to Cape Lisburne, the northern terminus of Behring's Straits, is 1,700 miles. Of the nature of the intervening surface of the globe we know nothing. It may be ocean. It may be continuous land from Melville's Island. It may be an archipelago, with straits between, so narrow that the ice is never dissolved. The nonappearance of the Franklin expedition favors the impression that Sir John has encountered insurmountable barriers in the way to Cape Lisburne. Then what would be the use of sending ships to reach him by a route which we have every reason to believe impracticable?

On the other hand, we know that where he has gone others may in similar seasons follow. It is possible to reach him from the mouth of Wellington Strait, and the real question is, whether the attempt consists with safety.

Pond's Bay, near the mouth of Lancaster Sound, is much frequented by whalers. The crew of any expedition that could reach it would be safe. All that would appear to be required to ensure the safety of an expedition dispatched in search of Sir John Franklin, would be, to take

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care that they do not penetrate so far as to render without every possible precaution to ensure that it impossible, in the event of their being obliged they shall not be lost also. to desert their ships, to reach back to Pond's Bay.

Since this was written, a letter from the Rev. Ample experience has taught us that a ship Mr. Scoresby has appeared in the Morning Herald may advance 300 miles from such a harbor of (of Friday.) This eminent Arctic voyager norefuge in the Arctic Regions, with confidence. tices that the late expedition was never nearer A crew obliged to desert their ship could easily Cape Walker (to which Sir John Franklin's inaccomplish that distance. Say that there were structions told him to proceed in the first instance) sent out, then, four vessels, with crews suffi- | than forty geographical miles; and he also adverts cient to navigate them, and with supplies for to the fact that Wellington Strait (the alternative themselves, and the missing expedition, and we confess that we should not despair of a satisfactory result.

Taking their departure from Pond's Bay, the whole four might proceed to the mouth of Wellington Strait. Let one of them be moored there, in a safe position. The other three might push on 300 miles up the Strait, leaving a second securely berthed at that point. Three hundred miles further on, if it be possible to penetrate so far, a third might be moored. The fourth, if possible, might penetrate 300 miles further; and in this case the most advanced ship would be 900 miles to the W. or N. W. of Wellington Straitmore than half way to Cape Lisburne. Looking to the progress made by Parry in one season due west, and the non-appearance of Sir John Franklin, there is every reason to believe that he has got no further than this, if indeed ice or land has not arrested him much short of it; and, should it be necessary, a fifth ship might carry on the process of sounding 1,200 miles from the mouth of Wellington Strait-two thirds of the distance. We are disposed to believe, however, that, considerably short of this, impenetrable barriers occur. The set of the current is out of Wellington Strait; and some of the best geographers attribute this to the Polar current in a southerly direction being deflected to the east by land between that part and Cape Lisburne.

Such an arrangement as we have thus described would completely scour the track on which Sir John will be found, if he is ever found. Each vessel moored would be a harbor of refuge for those in advance if anything happened to thema station and resting-place keeping open the communication with Pond's Bay. It would, therefore, be certain that the crews in search of Franklin would be able to return with him and his companions, if found; without them, if not found.

The expense of such an expedition may be objected to. But the most expensive of all work is work inefficiently performed; and we believe that what has lately been suggested would be a sheer and idle waste. Let us make a last trial with the best means at our disposal, and trust the rest to Heaven. We have no right to count the cost, if a chance remains. We ought to have counted it before we sent Franklin and his companions out. It would be mockery now to dispatch an inadequate expedition. It would be murder to send more men in search of the lost

destination in Sir James Ross' instructions, and through which, for the reasons assigned above, we believe Sir John Franklin to have passed) was never visited.

Mr. Scoresby also recommends the plan of relays of vessels, to keep open a retreat for the crews of those which penetrate furthest; and specifies the kind of vessels that might be employed-a point on which his practical experience entitles him to be listened to with attention.

From the Examiner, of 15 Dec. LOUIS NAPOLEON'S YEAR OF PRESIDENCY. THE ides of March have passed both for the French Republic and for Louis Napoleon. The anniversary of the election, so generally announced as the day of an émeute on the part of the republicans, and of a coup d'état on the part of the president, was marked by nothing of the kind. There was no review, no jubilee, no public demonstration, nothing but a grand civic ball at the Parisian Mansion House, where public men of all shades and grades waltzed and pirouetted pretty much after the same fashion that they have done in politics, and pretty much to the same end.

Our daily contemporaries have taken the opportunity to pass Louis Napoleon's year of government in review, and very diverse have been their judgments. Some think that he has done well, and has not met with the adhesion that his policy deserves; some that he has done ill; others that he has done nothing. His warmest panegyrists do not go the length of assuming that he has founded a dynasty; and those who flatter him, evidently do but flatter for the nonce.

There has, however, been one judgment passed upon the president's reign of 1849, to which one is inclined to pay more deference than to that of any writer. This is the judgment of Louis Napoleon himself. It has been made notorious that the president, as his first year of power drew to a close, professed extreme dissatisfaction with its color and its results. So deep was the dissatisfaction, that, in a fit of moody and restless discontent and remorse, he abruptly turned out of his cabinet and his counsels the very man in whom he had most trusted for the conduct of affairs since his accession. M. Odillon Barrot was this man. And in dismissing him and his colleagues, the president very pithily passed sentence upon them of incapacity, irresolution, and error.

One of the avowed causes of the difference with his ministers was, that they were more illiberal in their conduct and views of Roman affairs than he was himself, and that whenever he expressed this more liberal view, they burked it. It was a very legitimate cause of discontent. Moreover, in his views of an amnesty, and of dealing generally with the politically condemned, the president was admitted to be more liberal than his late ministers. For this reason it is but fair to suspend one's judgment respecting the domestic policy of Louis Napoleon's presidency. Hitherto his hands have been in a great measure tied. With a legislature by his side, and almost paramount over him, which he can neither prorogue nor dissolve, Louis Napoleon could do no other than take a ministry from its majority; and that majority being conservatives, he could do no better than select the members of his cabinet from the most liberal of that majority. In 1849, therefore, the National Assembly is more reponsible for the march of French policy than the president. The president, apparently, was ready to submit to this; but he begged to be allowed the right to protest. M. Barrot, not admitting this, was turned out. With respect to the foreign policy of Louis Napoleon, we are told much that is hearsay. But this we beg to set aside. The only patent act of French foreign policy throughout the year has been that of the French fleet joining the English in a demonstration to the mouth of the Dardanelles a very ominous and efficient demonstration, for no sooner was it made than Russia bowed to it. And if Russia has resumed her exigencies since, it is chiefly owing to the fleets having quitted the Dardanelles. For this joint demonstration, England and liberal Europe are certainly indebted to France; and it would be unfair not to give Louis Napoleon, and indeed M. Barrot, the honor and the advantage of it.

Would we could say as much upon the Roman question, which appears to have been atrociously and irrecoverably blundered. Had M. Barrot and M. de Tocqueville continued to hold power in Paris, and Messrs. Rayneval, Corcelles, and Rostolan in Italy, the Pope would have returned to his capital, and restored his despotism. But at least

he might then and there have assumed the policy and the independence of a Roman prince. Since the change in France, however, and the appearance of Louis Napoleon's declaration, the Pope has abandoned the idea of returning to his capital for the present; and, for spite, has flung himself completely and irrevocably into the hands of the Austrian party. It is said, we know not whether with complete truth, that his holiness has even signed a treaty, adjoining his dominions commercially to those of Lombardy, and renewing the customs union between them. The same is asserted of Tuscany. This, should it be realized, is not only a check to English trade, but a slap in the face to France. The Spaniards certainly excluded English commerce, even whilst Englishmen were fighting her battles; but that the Ro

man pontiff should proscribe French trade at the very moment when a French army is in occupation of his capital, after having captured it from the republicans, is such an act of wilful provocation and gratuitous vengeance that we can hardly credit it. It will be to the eternal disgrace of both England and France, if they suffer any such annexation. Austria has indeed augmented her forces in the Romagna and in Tuscany, to support such new pretensions; but if the joint representations of England and France defeated Russia at Constantinople, their joint action on the coasts of Italy would surely bring the courts of Vienna and of Portici to their senses. We were sufficiently befooled in the Sicilian business. Let us not allow Italy to be choused out of every liberal principle of religion, politics, and trade.

DEATH in the battle is not death;

Deep, deep may seem the mortal groan,
Yet sweeter than an infant's breath
Is Honor's, on that field alone,
Where Kossuth called his Spirits forth

Aloft from Danaw's heaving breast;
They quelled the South, they shook the North,
They sank by fraud not strength represt.

If Freedom's sacred fire lies quencht,
O England! was it not by thee?
Ere from such hands the sword was wrencht
Thine was the power to shield the free.
Russells erewhile might raise their crest
Proud as the older of our land,
Although I find but in the best

The embroidered glove of Sidney's hand.
Rachel may mourn her children now;

From higher source her glory springs, Where Shakspeare crowns Southampton's brow Above the reach or gaze of kings.

Russells! where? where? To waver high
Faction the slender twig may place,
And cover, when that twig shall die,
With plumes as dark its dark disgrace.
Drive the drear phantom from my sight,
O Kossuth! Round our wintry shore
Spread broad thy strong and healthy light,
And I will tread these weeds no more.
December 2. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

GERMANY.-The protest which the Austrian government has put in against the separate operations of Prussia to set up a Federal government is remarkable for its composite fashion, and it distinctly indicates the distrait condition of public affairs in Germany. The protest conveys the warning threat, that if the attempt of Prussia should lead to a breach of peace, Austria must take means to restore "order." is accompanied by a note, which explains that Austria does not expect any hostility, and does not intend to threaten aggression. Together, the protest and note seem to mean, that Austria wishes to record the warning lest occasion should arise for resorting to arms, but that she has no present intention of doing so it is a reserved right to make

But the protest

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