H.

So completely has the balance between the two great parties in the State been restored within the last few weeks, that it is difficult to realise the fact of its having been lost, and to all appearance irrecoverably, at an earlier period of the session. When the Houses of Parliament assembled in January last, the Tory party imagined that they were a power in the State, that they held a strong position in the Lower House, and that they could compel the existing Government to respect their wishes. In a moment they found themselves bereft of power, in a hopeless minority, a derision to their enemies, and a wonder to themselves. The Whigs flapped their wings and crowed mightily, for, lo! the Radical policy was in the ascendant, the Tories had no chance against it, and there beamed upon the Treasury benches the prospect of a long lease of office. The Tories were dumbfounded, and felt so strongly the justice of their cause, that some of them began to ascribe their discomfiture to the bad management of their leaders. A few,

echoing the popular cry that at last we have Demosthenes among us, attributed the success of the most reckless Budget that has ever been proposed by a British minister to the marvellous eloquence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and felt that the party had committed a grand blunder in allowing Mr Gladstone to be severed from their ranks, no matter what the price of his adhesion. Others doubted the competence of Mr Disraeli, and felt that a chief of different mettle would either have led them on to certain victory, or would have masked defeat by avoiding a disastrous division. In the confusion of party, the wildest explanations were hazarded. But it will now, we think, be admitted, that the temporary success of the Budget was due neither to the merits of Mr Gladstone nor to the faults of Mr Disraeli. Mr Gladstone, with all his merits, is regarded as a thorn in the side of his friends, who cannot mention him without shaking their heads; and Mr Disraeli, whatever be his faults, is certainly not answer

able for the mistakes committed in what he has happily described as the delirium of the Treaty.

Four circumstances conspired to render the Opposition timid, and to give the Government a triumph. In the first place, nobody wished to displace the Cabinet. There have lately been so many changes of Government, that, in the interest of the Constitution, all Tory members have been anxious to give the Ministers a fair trial. They have no desire for office, as the result of a party move. They are willing to bide their time, well assured that the Cabinet has in itself all the elements of a speedy dissolution. Some members of the Cabinet are known to have Conservative tastes; others have friendly relations with the chiefs of Opposition. Even at the cost of accepting such a monster as the Budget, the Tory party shrank from striking a blow which might be fatal to such a Ministry as the present. A second consideration increased their unwillingness. Under most critical circumstances, the Cabinet announced to Europe through the Treaty that their relations with France were of the most friendly nature. The news seemed too good to be true; but there were the assertions of the Ministry made at their peril, and there was the fact of the Treaty, which gave to these assertions the semblance of validity. Many of those who were not convinced were at least perplexed, felt that they could not take upon themselves to give the lie to the Government, and declined to run the risk of a misunderstanding with France which an adverse vote might involve. We were arming against the Emperorwe were engaged in most delicate negotiations that in a moment might have precipitated war. Who can wonder if, when the Cabinet declared that they had discovered a means of averting strife and insuring eternal peace, there were those among the Tories who, however distrustful of such glittering promises, declined the responsibility of peremptorily meeting Ministers with a haughty negative? Add to this a third fact, that the reduction of the Paper Duties acted on a very large por

VOL. LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXVI.

tion of the press as a direct bribe; that consequently a considerable clamour was raised in favour of the Budget by a very noisy set of personages; and that many members of the Tory party could not affect to be insensible to the appeals, urgent and defiant, which came to them through these organs of public opinion. Lastly, the Treaty offered a bribe to our manufacturing and commercial centres-to Belfast and to Liverpool, which are represented by Tories in the House of Commons, not less than to Manchester, Birmingham, and Newcastle. The Tory representatives of such towns were obliged to consider the interests of their constituents. Their hands were tied. They could not well vote in favour of a Budget which, to the country at large, boded no good; and they could not well vote against measures which would confer benefits on the particular localities with which they were connected.

The fear of ousting the Ministry, quashing the Treaty, offending France, and precipitating a European crisis, was so great, that the Tories were in a hopeless minority. The Government was safe. Influenced by the considerations we have enumerated, the Opposition refused to run the risk of expressing want of confidence in the Ministry.

Suddenly the bubble has burst, the horizon has cleared, the delirium of the Treaty has been followed by the return of reason. In the annexation of Savoy, Louis Napoleon has furnished us with a key to the muchlauded Treaty. It is universally admitted, that had the design of the French Emperor been known from the first, there would have been no chance of the British Parliament giving its sanction to the instrument negotiated by Mr Cobden. It is palpable that the provisions of the Treaty were intended as a confection to help us to swallow what Louis Napoleon knew would be most distasteful to us. It appears, however, that the design of this astute ruler has not yet been plumbed to the bottom. We find that we have made a mistake, and the mistake which we have discovered appears to be blinding people to a source of infinite

3 D

mischief involved in the Treaty. People expected that commerce was immediately to flourish between France and England-that we should buy each other up-and that we were to be so necessary to each other as to be incapable of using sword or rifled gun again. We have now discovered that we are not to gain so much as we expected from the Treaty, and that when the ad valorem are translated, under Mr Cobden's care, into specific duties, they will, even at the lowest point, amount to a heavy protective tariff, and will in many cases act as an absolute prohibition. People, therefore, jump to the conclusion that the Treaty is naught that it was never intended to be anything that it is operative only on our side, leading us to give up a great deal, while we gain but a song in return. This we believe to be an exaggeration. The Treaty is worth something. Mr Cobden has really succeeded in getting our iron and coal into France on better terms than before. Louis Napoleon was obliged to give us a sop, and he has furnished himself in this way with those two articles which a great military nation most requires. But is this all? Is the purchase of our coal and our iron useful simply in storing French arsenals and working French railways? It will lead to another result, which those who dwell on the worthlessness of the Treaty have quite forgotten. It will tend to depreciate the Belgian coal and iron, which hitherto have been very greatly favoured in the French tariff. Depreciating the coal and iron of Belgium, it will cause depression and suffering in the mining districts of that country; it will create such discontent as may express itself in a desire for annexation to France, which would effectually remove the duty on Belgian articles sent to the French market. According to Mr Bright's view of the value of patriotism, if we can cut out the Belgians from the French market, we shall very soon make annexation not only welcome to them, but a necessity. And it therefore appears, that at the very moment when Louis Napoleon was meditating the annexation of Savoy, he was soothing our fears and tickling

our hopes by means of a concession which leads directly to a further extension of the French frontier, and another outrage to peace in the annexation of Belgium. M. Thouvenel, it is true, denies that his master has any designs upon the neutral territory of King Leopold; but French diplomacy has been so tortuous, that when the Foreign Office repudiates any design, people begin to feel that there must be some truth in what previously was nothing more than suspicion.

Although the evil in this direction has not yet been recognised-although it has not yet fully appeared that the annexation of Belgium is involved in our acceptance of the French Treaty, enough of Napoleon's design was unmasked to make us feel that we had been thoroughly duped. The eyes of the public were at the same time gradually opened to other grave defects of the financial scheme. It increases the income-tax, in violation of innumerable pledges; it insures a deficiency of more than £12,000,000 for next year's Budget; it does not even provide a revenue sufficient to cover the expenditure of the current year; and when these and other defects were pointed out, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had the imprudence to assert the propriety of leaving a large deficit and an uncertain future to the financial wisdom of a Parliament elected by the six-pound householders. The designs of Napoleon and the dreams of Mr Gladstone have at last thoroughly alarmed the House of Commons; all its latent conservatism is aroused, and a session that commenced with peans for Gladstone and Manchester, gives every prospect of closing in derision of the "transcendent orator," and in detestation of cotton statesmanship. In not a few of the debates this is pretty clearly indicated, but most of all in the division on the Ballot, on ChurchRates, on the Paper Duties, and in the discussions on the abortive Reform Bill.

The question of the Ballot creates a division, but seldom raises a debate worthy of the name. Mr Henry Berkeley makes his usual speech, full of quotations and bad jokes. In order that he may have a resting

place for his mass of papers, he gets to the seat usually occupied by Mr Disraeli, with the large box before it, and there he holds forth to a House that is pretty well filled, not because it takes any interest in the discussion, but because it scents the coming division. The only thing remarkable in this particular debate was the reception given to that "chip of the old block," the junior member for Carlisle. The House of Commons usually receives with the utmost indulgence all maiden efforts. But if maiden speeches, in addition to being ridiculous, interfere with dinner, woe be to the speaker. Mr Lawson has an unfortunate lisp, and a pompous way of saying nothing. He was coughed down, and no doubt the old block of which he is a chip was thankful that, having left the House a few minutes before, he was not present to witness the humiliation of his nephew. Whenever a man has anything to say, the House of Commons always listens, and a cool spectator is often amazed at the conceit and bull-dog courage of men who, in spite of all interruption, push on and determine to speak because they rose to make a speech. The only member who was really attended to was Lord Palmerston, who put everybody in good-humour with his jesting proposal, that when Henry Berkeley should be gathered to his fathers, and the time should come for his friends to think of a monument for him, it should be in the form of a ballot-box. When the question came to a division, it was found that in a House of 400 members the friends of secret voting could only muster 147 names. Mr Berkeley had been very confident. A Cabinet of which Mr Bright was the judicious bottle-holder being in office, the friends of the Ballot began to wax valiant, and to hope all things. They were aghast at their discomfiture. Beaten by 107 votes, it was a disgrace to those who year by year had been diminishing the distance between the Ayes and the Noes, and who were now in full view of victory. They tried to explain away the defeat. It was all the effect of dinner delayed. It was the effect of attempting too much. It was the effect of interpolating a dull debate

into the adjourned discussion of the Reform Bill. It was evident that there was something exceptional in the magnitude of the defeat, for the House of Commons was immediately afterwards counted out. The advanced Radicals could not see the true explanation, that already the Conservative feeling of the House began to show itself. With a Budget before the country that was the first step to the confiscation of middleclass wealth, and a Reform Bill by the side of it that despoiled the middle class of their power, the sense of danger began to work, and the motion for the Ballot was ignominiously rejected.

In itself this discussion might scarcely be worthy of notice, only when we are told that other successes obtained by the Tories were stolen victories and casual events, it is worth remembering that they have not been so isolated as it is convenient to aver. The division on ChurchRates was palpable proof of the Tory reaction that had set in. The opponents of the Church have been carrying their opposition to Churchrates by triumphant majorities. In the last struggle, however, their success dwindled to a majority of 9 in a House of 461 members. Mr Bright imagines that if a majority of 13 is sufficient to overthrow a Ministry, a majority of 9 is quite enough to repeal a tax. It is a fine illustration of the arithmetical style of argument which finds favour in the eyes of Manchester. It so happens that a majority of 1 against it in the House of Commons would in a moment send a Cabinet to the right about. Either it must resign, or appeal to the country. Therefore, according to Mr. Bright, a majority of 1 is more than sufficient to secure the enactment of any measure introduced into Parliament. A grapestone is enough to choke off a Ministry; but a rate that has been in existence for hundreds of years, or a tax like that on paper, which has long been one of permanent impost, is far less important than any Ministry; therefore something less than a grapestone will suffice to insure its destruction. When Mr Bright propounded this argument in St Martin's Hall the