moment the most extensive fundholder to beggary. But the lord of any given number of acres, from ten up to ten thousand, must in any emergency, unless his property be confiscated, be able to command for himself and for his immediate dependants the means of a comfortable subsistence. Trade is a hot-house plant, which you cannot expose to the frosts without the certainty of destroying it. Monied wealth is real wealth only so long as public credit lasts; but land can never be removed; and, therefore, it is fitting that here, as well as elsewhere, the owners of the soil should be treated as the mainstay of their country's greatness. To throw the whole burden of political taxation on this class, even if you help them to bear it, by taxing at an equal rate freeholders and annuitants, would be not merely impolitic but unjust. Taxation is endurable only so long as it is the means of ensuring to the people taxed the blessings of order and good government; and if there be a distinction in such a case, order and good government are more necessary to manufacturers and merchants than to any other classes in the empire. We admit the difficulty which men in business have to fix the true amount of their incomes. We acknowledge the force of the inducement which leads them, sometimes, to make a return above rather than below the reality of their profits. And we do not deny that the combination of these causes not unfrequently renders their payments heavier than strict justice would require. But in spite of all this, we do hold, that the income or property-tax which should attempt to reach them with a touch avowedly lighter than it applies to property not engaged in commerce, would be an unjust tax, and ought to be resisted. For what is this over taxation of realised property, except the confiscation of such property? of which the effects must necessarily be, to discourage thrift, in exact proportion to the encouragement which is given to habits of wild adventure, and reckless speculation. Whatever the government may do, therefore, in order to meet the pecuniary difficulties of their position, we warn them first, against any general increase to the amount of the income-tax already levied; and next, against such a modification of Peel's measure, as shall throw fresh burdens upon the untrading portion of the community, in order to save the posterity of the classes which embark their capital in trade and manufactures. They may depend upon it, that any such proposition will be resisted, as it ought to be, not in the Lords alone, but in the Commons also. And sure we are, that if an appeal be made to the country on the subject, the country will support those statesmen, whoever they may be, by whom so extravagant a project shall be defeated. For, in truth, this system of direct taxation has already begun to gall exceedingly. It is felt to be the application of an extreme remedy to a patient who is not in extremis-it is the use of a warmeasure in the time of peace, and, as far as it goes, the exhaustion, prematurely, of the national resources. If some of us are obliged to pay five per cent, others ten, others twenty, and so on, what is to become of us in the event of a breach of the peace in Europe. In wartime your customs necessarily produce but little; neither would you think at such a season of imposing high duties on articles imported for consumption; and it is clear that, with the seas unsafe, and ports shut against you in many quarters, your means of export will be terribly diminished. What is to become of your manufacturers then, if the measures you have adopted during the continuance of peace shall be found to have destroyed their home-market, and war has closed against them even a moiety of the markets to which they were accustomed to resort in foreign countries? We believe that the Free-Trade system is a failure. We do not deny the abstract truth of the principles on which it rests, far from it. But it is sheer Quixotism in this country to throw open her markets to all the world, so long as the whole world shall combine to close its markets against her. Nor need the advocates of the new policy flatter themselves that governments are to be moved, in what they conceive to be a right direction, by the mere force of example. If we desire to trade on free and equal terms with other nations, let our government enter into treaties of reciprocity with their governments. This may be an old-fashioned doctrine, but we believe it to be a sound one; and we are further convinced that the manufacturers themselves, as well as the operatives, will call upon the legislature to see that it is acted upon. And now we come to the state of Ireland; concerning which there can hardly be two opinions. That must be improved at any conceivable expense, both of money and of feeling. How shall we improve it? Again, we are ignorant, while we write, of the ministerial plans for the furtherance of the good work; but of this we warn them, that England will not be contented with half measures. No miserable Arms-bill, such as Sir Robert Peel failed to carry in 1846, will serve the purpose now. Neither will it suffice to proclaim three or four baronies, or even counties, leaving the rest to be governed by due course of law. The whole of Ireland is diseased-the whole of Ireland must be subjected to the treatment which the disease seems to require. For it is a remarkable fact, in the history of Irish assassination, that the murders which occur in the South, are invariably perpetrated by ruffians from the North or West. No man kills in his own county. All men or to speak more guardedly-many men are ready to kill anywhere out of their own county. Irish murders come thus to be regarded by the Irish people, as acts of severity perpetrated on grounds of public justice; for very few of the executioners are acquainted even with the persons of their victims, till they have been pointed out to them. It is quite clear, under these circumstances, that there is no part of Ireland, not even the Province of Ulster, which is fit at this moment to be governed by the English law; and were the case otherwise, even Ulster, which cannot close its doors against the influx of barbarians from Leinster and Munster, must be content to suffer a temporary inconvenience, in order to serve a permanent good. If, then, the ministers hope to carry England along with them, they will put the whole of the sister country under martial law; and keep it in this state till its inhabitants shall have learned that order is a better condition of society for all parties, than the reverse. Moreover, there is nothing in such a prospect, to alarm or seriously annoy, the loyal and peaceable portion of the community. Courtsmartial are conducted now, uuder the sanction of oaths as binding as those which consecrate the proceedings of our ordinary criminal courts: and their judgments are invariably marked by a leaning towards mercy. They have, however, in troublous times, this advantage over civil courts, that they will not be deterred, through fear of the consequences, from convicting, where guilt has been proved. And their sentences are carried into effect, only after approval by the highest authority in the realm. Again, though the proclamation of martial law may expose the people generally, to the possible inconvenience of having their houses visited at unseasonable hours, by armed men, the well-disposed among them will never practically suffer for it. There is no species of orangism in the British army now— - in the regular army there never was; and as care will be taken to employ on such services only regular troops, Roman Catholics, so long as they are charged with no designs upon the public peace, will be quite as safe from molestation as Protestants. Martial law for the whole of Ireland, is therefore, the only measure of coercion, which bids fair to do its work; for anything short of this, any attempt to draw a line between the north and the south for example, would be at once denounced as an act of sectarian partiality, and we all know to what consequences a cry of this kind is sure to lead. Another measure, we warn the ministers, is expected at their hands. Granting that the Roman Catholic priests, as a body, deserve the praise which Mr. Labouchere has bestowed upon them, neither Mr. Labouchere nor any body else, we presume, can offer one word of excuse for the altar denunciations of which some of them are occasionally guilty. That practice must be stopped at once. Lord John does not bring in a bill rendering the condemnation of individuals to death, by priests, at the altar, an act of felony, we beg to assure him that somebody else will. And we shall be very much surprised indeed, if it fail to be carried in both houses by acclamation. If vels, French and English, 694 Barristers, a Batch of Parliamentary. By the Author of "Literary Legisla- Barron, Sir H. W. Some Members of Basing House: its Besieged and its Be- Bernal Osborne, Mr. Some Members Blewitt, Mr. Group of Parliamentary Book-Love, 199 Borthwick, Mr. P. Group of Parlia- Carlovingien Romances of the Middle Carlyle, Thomas. Thirty-five Unpub- lished Letters of Oliver Cromwell. Chalmers, Dr., Recollections of, 140 222 Chapter on the Art of Eating, 610 Chartley Castle and the Ferrers Family, 415 Choiseul, Praslin, and Sebastiani, Fami- Classical Education, Defence of a, 276 Coincidences: a Tale of Facts, 655 Cromwell, Oliver. Thirty-five Unpub- Currency and Banking, 728 Dalmatia, a Day in, 127 Defence of a Classical Education, 276 Deserted Bazar, the, 88 De Vere's, Sir Aubrey, Mary Tudor. 532 Dialogue on English Hexameters, 665 Eating, a Chapter on the Art of, 610 Families of Praslin, Choiseul, and Sebas- Famine at Schull, Three Days of the. First of October, 494 Flowers, Memories stirred by the Sight Forbes (Duncan), and Lord Lovat, Lives Fortifications of Paris strategetically con- Francis's History of the Bank of Eng- Free Church Sites, 379 Girondists, Jacobins, and M. de Lamar- Gloves, Hands and, 290 Hands and Gloves, 290 Has History gained by the Writings of Health of the Metropolis, and the Sanitary Henckel (Count), von Donnersmarck, Hexameters, a Dialogue on English, 665 Hudson, Mr. The Railway Potentates, 215 "I Owe you Nothing, Sir." Part I. Jane Eyre. Recent Novels, French and Jervis, Sir John. A Batch of Parlia- Jewish Disabilities, Thoughts on. A rice, of King's College, 623. A Reply José Juan, the Pearl Fisher. Scenes in October, the First of, 494 Old Judge, the; or, Life in a Colony. Orator of the Shop, the. At Home, 336; Mr. Outlines in Parliament. By the Author of Paris, the Fortifications of, strategetic- Peel's (Sir R.) Letter, and the Elections, 241 People, Education of the, 169 Stirred by the Sight of Flowers, 227- Portugal, a Visit to the Wine Country Portuguese Question, the, 115 Praslin Family. Families of Choiseul, Railway Potentates, the. By the Author Ramble at the Foot of Mount Olympos, 13 Reviews: Ninfa, Eine Novelle, 20-De Schull, Three Days of the Famine at. Sebastiani, Choiseul, and Praslin, Fami- Sensations of a Summer Night and Morn- Serfage, Russian. Relation between Lord Shaw, Right Hon. F. Some Members Stapleton's, A. G., Reply to Professor Sir Willoughby Ware, a Ballad, 112 Soulié's Olivier Duhamel. Recent No- Stuart, Mr. A Batch of Parliamentary Summer Night and Morning on the Tales and Narratives: "I Owe you No- |