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(may none of their deeds be worse!) scrape down the gilding of the image till the poorest gentleman will be ashamed to stand for 'Sovereign.' And when the new Ministers bring in their recommendation for a president to do the puppeting cheaper,' or to get rid of the puppets and pay only for the stamp,—what will prolong the last legs of Royalty then? Will my Lords get up a rebellion? They could not raise a troop of horse among them. Will the clergy denounce the sacrilege from their pulpits? They will be busy anointing the trade-president. Has not the English Church always stuck to the dominant power? Will the special-constable class turn out again for their Sovereign? Not they, if saved sovereigns jingle in their consciencious pockets. It was for the shop, and not from any spurring of loyalty, that they rallied behind the police on the tenth of April, their one day of orderly renown. There will be some lamentations from a few old Tory Jeremiahs, some groans from under the red and blue and black cloth of the 'professions,' some lifting up of hands and wagging of sapient heads in the Universities: and so an end. The ROYAL GALVANIC APPARATUS

stopping, through a wise economy of oil.

This natural course of things is foreseen plainly enough by the class which has its gain as priests of the image. Lord John Russell knew well enough what he was about when he undertook the dirty work of all the despots in Europe. He was only trying to copy Metternich, to keep up the galvanic batteries for his own term of office. And are you innocent enough to be gulled by his recent gentle pelting of the Pope? He picked the stones out of the mud before he threw it. Here too is a purpose to be answered, at which his good friend and ally on St. Peter's Ottoman will not be too seriously offended. Why not use the occasion to split up the new union in Ireland, to ruin the Tenant-League, already threatening an invasion of our land? Why not try the excellent Prussian policy of getting up a sham-fight to amuse our combative subjects? The more peaceable will have their heads turned at the Exhibition of all Nations;' and so we provide for all. And old Leviathan holds out his stupid nose for the hook. In truth the English people have been sadly at fault in this Pope-and-Russell business. They should have taken his little lordship at his word, struck again the ball he had flung them, and sent it on beyond his overtaking. The bishops, of course, did not want this; neither did the small popes of the dissenting 'persuasions.' The radicals, who dine with Palmerston, who vote against a free press, and who are only careful never to damage the Worst Ministry,-they also were discreet enough not to push the 'unfortunate business' too far. And honester men could only find the time auspicious for reässerting the principle of religious freedom; and saw no further. The matter is to be settled, they say, by a concordat, or some other compromise with Rome. And liberal 'politicians' call that 'judicious.' Judicious enough for Lord John and the Pope, who would no more really quarrel than would Peachum and Lockit. Is there no fear for religious and political freedom in the embrace of these two worthies, now their mock squabble has served its turn? O, by all means keep the breach open. Do not lose so good an opportunity for striking down the papacy-the key-stone of the despotic arch.

It is perhaps too late. But the true policy of the people was this:-to have joined the anti-papal movement; to have refused to allow the broad political

question to be entangled and lost in the quasi-religious and sectarian one; to have said to their catholic brethren-Your religion shall not be interfered with,— but we repeat what even our old catholic monarchs (before there was any question of the religion) have ruled,—we will have no foreign authority, no SECRET POLITICAL SOCIETY in England; to have said to the very reverend and savage denouncers of the impudent invasion,-Your sincerity shall be tested-we will have a guarantee for this religious freedom you, and we too, so much desire,— we will strike the scarlet abomination (why are your clerical cheeks red too?) in its own den. This blind Authority, which kings openly and whigs underhandedly support, because they know their own divinity is of the same nature, we will put it down. Our arm is long enough to reach the Vatican itself. Our arm, -indeed that is not needed: but our English word, voiced in old heroic style, shall go forth, bidding the French Usurpation recall its Cossacks from the Eternal City, and cheering the Italian Exiles with one hearty, world-rejoicing shout'England will stand by you, go in and establish your Republic.' Then would be no fear of papal aggression upon England, nor opportunity for setting Catholics and Protestants by the ears, to subserve the far-reaching machinations of Jesuitism or the paltrier occasions of its more dastardly accomplices.

Here too, as elsewhere, the golden mean of Whiggism is to be abhorred. There is no decent middle course, no possible half-way resting-place, between Tyranny and Freedom, between Anarchy and Organization, between Wrong and Right. We must make up our minds one way or the other. The present policy, however prettily it may be disguised, will only keep us in a disreputable state of vacillation till it can push us by the fouler way into the arms of Evil. For a limited monarchy is at best a temporary, and withal a very bungling expedient: somewhat over-costly too, in economic days. The rule of the shopkeeper, come when it may, will after all be only a transition state, a trade whiggism, a cheap but intolerable establishment of Chaos, which the ever-during laws of Nature will condemn. We no more than other countries will be able to stop either at the bizarrerie of 'constitutional monarchy', or at the anarchical perfection of 'laisser-faire.' We must either again revert to the rule of the Few or the Onedespotism, even though our Pope should be the best of communist patriarchs; or go forward to the organization of free men, to the progressive rule of the Majority, to the Republic. The time is fast coming in which we shall have no alternative but to be Russian or Free. We cannot stand still amid the revolutions of the world. European Progress must, sooner or later, involve us. It may be well to choose betimes between THE POPE AND THE REPUBLIC.

LET ENGLAND REMEMBER!

Air-Let Erin remember!

LET England remember the days of yore,
Of her old heroïe story,-

The days of Naseby and Marston-Moor,
And Worcester's crowning glory:
When the People's will and the People's right
Made a traitor monarch heed 'em;
When the Commons dared or speak or fight
For the sake of the common freedom.

Let England think of the men of old,
The chief of her hero story,-

Of Eliot brave and Hampden bold,

And Cromwell, England's glory:

When England's strength was a righteous sword,
Abroad or at home to defend her;

When glorious Milton's banner'd word
Lent farthest lands her splendour.

Is England's heart grown senseless now?
Or her fame dim-eyed and hoary?

Or does she repent of the hero vow

Of the men of the days of glory?

That the Commonweal is a fearful word
To the slaves that are trampling on her;
That a coward's trick is her only sword,
And a trading lie her honour.

May England retrieve her hero name,
Resuming the olden story;

And, true to the pledge of her youthful fame,
Lead the world again to glory!

Let her sons advance in the teeth of Time,

Where their rights or the world's may lead 'em,

In the track once mark'd by a faith sublime

In God and in human freedom.

W. J. L.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

THE leader of the wretched Galician peasants, to whom the Austrian Minister, METTERNICH, intrusted, in February and March, 1846, the atrocious mission of murdering all of the Polish land-owners who were suspected of patriotism, was SZELA, a monster who had been condemned to imprisonment for setting fire to his father's house and for a horrible crime against a child. He was set at liberty to head some other liberated convicts and disguised soldiers, to excite the peasants against their masters, by false tales, and by promises (guaranteed by the 'Government') of so much a head for every Polish proprietor. A higher price was paid if he was brought in dead.

Theodore had his

Theodore and John Bromiski were butchered in their own houses. ribs, arms and legs broken, and was afterwards killed with flails. John had his ears and nose cut off, and his head skinned. His wife was forced to light the ruffians while they tore out his eyes.

Charles Kotarski, often mentioned in the journals as the benefactor of the country. people, had his jaw-bones removed before they killed him.

Sokulski was thrown into a treagh, and minced there as food for pigs.

Mrs. Kempinska-born Countess Dembicka-pregnant with twins, was killed with a dungfork. The twins were torn out of the corpse, to get the 'Government' price for each head.

The foregoing are taken from an incomplete list (bearing 1484 names) of the Polish gentry massacred in Galicia, in 1846, to uphold the Austrian Monarchy. Not one Court in Europe protested against the massacres, not one royal or diplomatic person withdrew from companionship with the Murderers. And this is but one page out of the detestable Book of Kings.

Beneath yon unhewn stone, o'er-writ with slime

Of loathliest vermin, who crawl there to die,-
Where silent Scorn points till the end of time,
Szela and Metternich and Görgey lie.

OUR MARTYRS.

I-SIMON KONARSKI.

IMON KONARSKI, a Protestant gentleman, born in Poland, was twenty-two years of age at the breaking out of the last Polish revolution. In that

holy war he served first as an ensign; but his bravery and military talents soon obtained for him the rank of captain and the cross of honour. After sharing in all the most important battles of that ever glorious campaign, he when compelled, in common with the thousands of his countrymen, to emigrate, took refuge in France. But his soul was too ardent, his need of action too imperious to allow him to remain at rest. In 1833, under a fictitious name, and disguised as a clock-maker, he with thirty-nine of his fellow exiles penetrated through Germany, to Poland, with the intention of stirring up a guerilla warfare as the prelude to another national insurrection. This enterprize failed. Most of those who took part in it fell into the hands of the enemy, and were shot, or hanged, or buried in the mines of Siberia or the Austrian dungeons of Kufstein. Konarski had the remarkably good fortune to escape the indefatigable pursuits of the Russian government, in spite of clouds of spics, innumerable hordes of Cossacks, large detachments of the regular army, and even the population of whole villages turned out to get hold of the emigrants. For months the forests were his only shelter, often not knowing how to clothe himself or appease his hunger. Once he owed his safety to a Russian Officer, who called out the

Under the leadership of Zalivski. Twenty-nine of them perished in the expedition. Few of them, when they started on this journey of a thousand miles, possessed more than forty shillings each. Most were without passports.

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