resignation: thus terminates the inglorious existence of the Ministry of Trick, Trade, and Compromise, amidst the rejoicings of the country.

RECRUITING THE GARRISON.

The first monthly soirée for 1851, of the National' Reform Association for extending the privilege of the franchise, took place on the 3rd, at the London Tavern. After tea Mr. HUME addressed the company.

He held it to be

He began by thanking the Association for their patriotic exertions. the business of every man to see that his fellow men (that was to say, all above a certain station) should not be deprived of their rights, that they be placed in that position as members of society and as freemen to which they are entitled, and not left to suffer a species of slavery. He thought in a free country EVERY MAN ought to have a voice in the choosing of representatives, not only of those who are to tax the people, but of those who make laws to affect life and property (and therefore he was the staunch advocate of an association for limiting the franchise to 3,000,000 persons, or less). He valued the 'constitution,' consisting of King, Lords, and Commons, whose rights were most accurately defined by law, a matter which had been obtained at no slight cost. He found the people's rights were very ancient: parliament-Blackstone said-was 'coeval with the kingdom itself.' Parishes too, were a very old institution. From time immemorial

With these observations He found that in 1834 now one in six (which Surely

ratepayers had been entitled to attend and vote at vestries. In his opinion the man who paid only sixpence was as much interested, perhaps more so than the man who had £10,000. The office of coroner, also, was ancient, and every ratepayer had a right to vote in his election. Referring again to Parliament, he found that Blackstone went further than he did,-viz.: that upon the true theory and genuine principles (not whigradical principles) of liberty, EVERY MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY, HOWEVER POOR, SHOULD HAVE A VOTE. He had also a number of other authorities (all equally condemnatory of his own partial measure). Were they such dolts as to say that every man is now represented in Parliament? (Sublime effrontery of whiggism! would they be such dolts as to say that every man would be represented in Mr. Hume's reformed Parliament? What then did they seek more than Blackstone and other authorities had told them was the right of the People? (Not more, but less.) he came to consider whether the right is now enjoyed or not. only one in seven had the vote. He believed the proportion was he wished altered to one of two, or perhaps three, to strengthen the garrison). no man could lie down on his pillow with a clear conscience that it was right he, one in seven, should possess a power of taxation over life and property, while others were denied. (But his conscience was easy when denying only two). Was it reasonable that the five or six should be satisfied? (As reasonable as that one should.) It was impossible. He went further and said that the refusal of this right was actually holding out a temptation to men to do evil (but he thought they would be strong enough to keep down the tempted, when the garrison was recruited). He owned the Reform Bill had failed, for want of the Ballot and short reckonings. Quoting the Daily News, accusing the House of Commons of being a 'hell' of political rouge-et-noir players, he pointed out the present necessity of a repeated agitation for every special grievance. The amount of agitation to remove a single grievance was sufficient to get rid of every abuse. He said put the public into power at once. Therefore he urged them to join the National Reform Association (whose object is to prevent the People from ever obtaining power). The Hon. Gentleman resumed his seat amid enthusiastic cheering.

Meetings have been rife. The papal aggression ferment scems however to be subsiding the sound and fury signifying nothing. More practical breechespocket valour is concentrating itself against the Window-Tax: which is at last announced to come off, a House-tax being substituted as a relief. Other agitations claim their share of the public time and energy :-meetings against the duty on soap, the duty on carriages, county-rate meetings, meetings for parliamentary and for chancery reform, for national' education, for repeal of taxes on knowledge. On the 13th a society was formed for getting rid of the whole of the last obnoxious impost, including the penny newspaper-stamp, which certain 'moderate' reformers would retain.-Mr. and Mrs. Sloane, convicted of worse than brutal treatment of their servant, have been punished for an assault,-the cruellest part of their conduct being unpunishable because the girl was not of tender years. Excellent English law! In a poor-house near Ipswich there has been a revolt of the paupers, most worth noticing from the attendant fact that neither the Home-Secretary nor the Chief of the Poor-Law Board had any tidings of the occurrence till after all the world had learned it from the newspapers. So perfect is the machinery of our Government! And for consistent practice, the Authorities who refuse to interfere for the protection of injured workmen, interfere so vexatiously between seamen and their employers that the merchant service is on strike from Newcastle to Hull.-The Established' Church is coming out strong. The Worcester Chronicle gives a touching proof of episcopal zeal, the bishop of that diocese condescending to christen a black infant. Whether the African mother had been christened does not appear; but if not, she must have been edified by the imposing ceremony: two thousand spectators thronged the sacred edifice, clambering over the monuments for a sight of the Little Nigger and the Bishop, hustling each other as in a theatre, chorussing the responses with catcalls and other reverential manifestations. In the same Chronicle appears the account of a woman of the cathedral neighbourhood cutting out the heart of a living cat, for a superstitious charm: perhaps as she was not black, the Bishop had neglected to christen her. Most apostolic Church, so zealous in its home missions that even the Book of Mormon finds ready believers: -400 of these 'deluded wretches' from all parts of England leaving in one vessel for the Mormon settlement. So even Joe Smith rebukes the Christian Bishops. In INDIA the retiring General, Sir Charles Napier, finds it necessary to reprehend the prevalent dishonesty of the officers of the Indian army, to teach them that it is not gentlemanly to run into debt. The Trader's Oracle, the Daily News, rates him for appealing to a low standard of morality, in referring them to gentlemanly honour; but the trader's moral notions do not seem of much higher quality, if we may judge by the samples occasionally exposed,-such, for instance, as the fining (frequent in the last few days) of respectable coal-merchants for selling short weight.

In FRANCE the factious Authorities widen their quarrel. The Assembly has refused to increase what that great financial reformer, the Daily News, calls 'the miserable stipend' of the Prince-President. It is only £120,000 a year. The French 'Mountain' continues to parade its feebleness, in virtue of its false position as part of an unconstitutional Assembly.

In GERMANY the Dresden Conference restores the Diet of 1815, only absorbing the lesser sovereigns so far as may be convenient. Austria and Prussia are to be joint despots: the monstrous double-headed Vulture is a reality at last. Only, as the king of Prussia is not trusted even by his accomplices, Austria will be paramount. Austria is licutenant of the Czar. The Russian territory now

extends to the French frontier, and to the Danish sea-board that flanks the 'British' Seas. Already Austrian troops occupy the 'free' city of Hamburg.

From ITALY also a part of the Russo-Austrian Empire-come rumours of the intended abdication of Pius IX. He can not sit comfortably even on French bayonets. Now that, thanks to the Russell Cabinet, peace is restored to the Roman States, the anarchy is so great that a brigand force dares to take possession of a whole town (Forlini-Popoli, a suburb of Forli), holding the chief inhabitants as hostages in the theatre, while they ransack their houses. The brigands are improving; but will hardly out-brigand the priests. The brigand king of Naples continues to sentence the Sicilian Patriots to the dungeons and the galleys. Of 140 deputics of the Sicilian Parliament 80 are either in prison or

in exile.

In SWITZERLAND there has been an insurrection': that is to say, a popular manifestation in favour of a proscribed republican, which it was hoped might become an insurrection, and so give a pretext for the interference of the Powers. Police plotters acting as forerunners of military intervention. In these liberal days it is better that Wrong should have a colour.

Round POLAND bristles a hedge of bayonets: a military station at every eighth of a mile, sentinels, mounted and on foot, continually patrolling the spaces between. Soon they hope that a continental coast-guard will be all that may be needed; and if a Whig Government will then drive forth the exiles to seek an asylum beyond the Atlantic, European Peace will be established, and the temple of the two-faced Janus may be closed, to commence the universal service-the "Te Deum' to the Czar.

While we write these lines a vessel nears our shores bearing 270 of those heroic Poles who fought for Hungary: the last remains of 1034 who took refuge in Turkey in 1849. Staunch Republicans, they have kept together spite of every endeavour to scatter them to a distance from the coming European War: spite of flatteries, threats, bribes, lies and calumnies, of diplomatic and police agents,spite of struggles and sufferings in a foreign and semi-barbarous land. They have at last succeeded in obtaining a passage to England. Shall we not make much of them when they arrive? Alas! before these words are read, they may have landed at Liverpool-they are pennyless and friendless. Yet not friendless, for already Committees of relief are forming. Let our Republican readers hasten to assist their endeavours! It is a sacred debt we owe to the Martyrs who have endured not only for Hungary and Poland, but for the world; it is a duty to Humanity, and to our own republican conscience. Let us show that we really understand the republican unity of Human Life, the brotherhood of nations, by helping to our utmost these heroes cast naked upon our coast.

Let our readers immediately form committees; where they can not do that, let them individually subscribe: sending their subscriptions to

STANISLAUS WORCELL,

44, Thanet Street, Burton Crescent,
LONDON.

February 22nd.

OUR MARTYRS.

II. ATTILIO AND EMILIO BANDIERA.

BY JOSEPH MAZZINI.

HE NAME of the brothers Bandiera has been often pronounced; but very few know anything of them beyond the simple fact of their adventurous enterprise and tragical end. What they were, what a life of virtues and of noble thoughts they could have devoted to their country, and through their country to Humanity, if a Country had not been denied them, is not known. And yet, this is most important to the cause for which they are dead; this it is which elevates their enterprise to the importance of a symptom of the state of things and of minds in Italy.

ATTILIO AND EMILIO BANDIERA Sprung from one of the old patrician families of Venice, and-sons of the Baron Bandiera, rear-admiral of the Austrian marine, -had followed the paternal career, and held high rank in the fleet, when they began to be known in the ranks of those secretly devoted to the success of the National Italian Cause. 'I am an Italian,' wrote Attilio, the elder of the two brothers, in the first letter I received from him, dated August 15th, 1842.-'I am an Italian, a soldier, and not proscribed. I am rather feeble in body; ardent at heart; very often cold in appearance. I seek to temper my soul in the practice of stoical maxims. I believe in God, in a future life, in human progress; from Humanity, taken as a point of departure, I descend in my thoughts to country, to one's family, to the individual. I hold as certain that justice is the base of all right; I have long concluded that the Italian cause is but a dependence upon that of mankind; and I console myself for all the difficulties of the present by thinking that to serve Italy, is to serve Humanity altogether. I have therefore decided to devote all my being to the practical development of these principles.'

And in a later letter, Emilio, in his turn, said to me, 'We wish for a country free, united, republican. We propose to ourselves, to have no faith but in the national means, not to count upon foreign succour, and to throw down the gauntlet of defiance when we shall be sufficiently strong.'

How did they arrive at this? they, soldiers, bound by all the exigencies of discipline, deprived of all contact with the patriots of the Peninsula, living on ship-board, now at Smyrna, now at Constantinople, another time in Syria, where they distinguished themselves in the action of the combined English and Austrian forces, scarcely greeting with their eyes the vanishing shores of their country. 'I have never been able to read till the other day,' said Attilio in the letter I have quoted, a single writing of Young Italy.' And yet they had already, at this period, organized an important work on the identical bases. The Italian

G

spirit fermented in them in virtue of thier origin. The Austrian uniform weighed upon their breasts; the Austrian flag, floating over vessels manned almost exclusively by Italians, appeared to them an outrage. And the name which they bore, devoted to the universal reprobation of Italy, in consequence of the arrest by the father, at sea, in 1831, and in contempt of the capitulation of Ancona, of the patriots who were leaving for France, gave to their desire of action an additional impulse. In their most private talk they avoided all allusion to their father; but one saw in the fire of their sad and sombre regards that they felt the want of rehabilitating this tarnished name. For the rest they fulfilled all their domestic duties. They passionately loved their mother. Attilio was both husband and father; but the duty of raising a young soul to the worship of the Just and the True, reinforced bis duties towards his country, and his wife, since dead of grief, was worthy of him.

I am not able to state here either what the two brothers wished to do, or the causes which nullified the results of the Italian agitation of 1844. But, as in all prolonged preparations, treason was already, in the commencement of that year, creeping into our ranks. Denounced first to their father, then to the Austrian government, by a man who had feigned to enter their ranks, they were compelled to fly, towards the end of February, 1844, during the night, in a little boat, to two different points; Emilio alone, Attilio with an old soldier, Mariano, who desired to follow him, and who now expiates his fidelity in the dungeons of Santo Stefano, in the kingdom of Naples. How will they support this ruin ?' wrote Attilio, at the end of the letter which announced to me the treason and their flight-my poor mother and my wife, frail creatures, perhaps incapable of resisting such great griefs? Ah! to serve Humanity and one's country has been, and will be always, I hope, my first desire, but I must confess that it costs me much.' His wife had been informed by Emilio, at Venice, of their projected flight; she had kept the secret from the family, without letting them a single instant divine what she suffered. But when she knew him out of reach, grief got the better. She died a short time after. She was fair, good, and brave. And if I had not long firmly believed that the woman and the man, who, loving each other, die of suffering, must one day be re-united as angels in some holy mystery of eternal love; the sole thought of this woman dying of a broken heart, without unjust irritation, and without complaint, for the man, who himself some months after was to die in his turn, in bearing witness for his faith, and doubtless thinking of her—this sole thought would be sufficient to give me such belief.

Emilio had repaired directly to Corfu. The Austrian government, afraid of the moral effect which the flight of the two officers must produce in Italy, in revealing to all how the Italian spirit was at work even in their army, endeavoured to make them appear as mutinous children, and to prevail on them to accept a pardon. The Archduke Rainieri,' wrote Emilio to me on the 22nd of April, "Viceroy of the Lombardo-Venetiau kingdom, sent one of his people to my mother, to tell her that if she could succeed in bringing me back to Venice, he would engage his sacred word of honour, that, not only I should be acquitted, but restored to my rank, to my uobility, to my honours. He added, that my brother,