The laws of Health, the properties of Food, the laws of Heat, the laws of the Market, the doctrine of Vulgar Fractions and of Compound Interest, may be called homely science, but are as important to women, married or unmarried, as to men. To understand daily facts, modern languages, the state of modern nations, the origin and history of landed property, and the whole of our complex modern life; to be sound in all elementary knowledge and in the homely branches of science just mentioned;-are really the rudiments both of politics and of practical good sense. With SOCIAL UTILITY held up as the end of ordinary and general education, the studies of women, even in classes which now live for elegance, will gravitate towards solidity; while the genius of the sex itself assures us, that refinement and grace will never be too little valued by them.

SIR,

CHARLES SUMNER'S ALABAMA SPEECH.

To Editor of "Morning Star," May 11,

1868.

IR,-Americans in this country urge me to express publicly my judgment of Mr Sumner's recent speech, which I lament to hear has aroused a hostile feeling among those who were the best friends of the United States during the war. May I hope that your columns will not be too full to admit my letter.

I find in his speech nothing new; nothing beyond what was in his great speech of Sept. 10, 1863, on "Our Foreign Relations." Of the two speeches that was the more excited and exciting. He evidently was apprehending that we might enter war against the North voluntarily, besides the danger of the pirate ships rendering war between us inevitable. I then justified Mr Sumner's tone, as well as his arguments, in the interest of peace. Cicero, in reproving the violent language of Roman tribunes, says that after all it tended to make the national struggles less dangerous: for when the people found that their official protector would speak up for them, they felt it needless to take matters into their own hands. So, the evils which the United States were suffering from England being felt in wounds and blood, death and impoverishment, no dissimulation on the part of American statesmen could do anything but exasperate. It tended to soothe them, when men like Charles Sumner showed to England her injurious conduct and her sin. I hold this to be nearly true now, but less intensely. I regret that it has been forced on Mr Sumner to repeat somewhat less vividly the same bitter complaints. But I cannot see in his speech any menace of war, direct or indirect, or anything to denote that he does not look on the thought as horrible, and as an utterly absurd remedy for the past. In the close he says: "I know it is sometimes said that war between us must come sooner or later. I do not believe it. But if you say, it must come, let it be later, and then I am sure it will never come. Meanwhile let good men unite to make it impossible." 1 am told that an English newspaper which was strongly with President Lincoln during the war, comments on this to the effect,

Well, then, if we find that war must be, let it be at once, and let us have done with it."

Mr Sumner discerns that the treaty patched up so hastily by Mr Reverdy Johnson would make exasperation chronic and intractable for it would stop the mouths of American diplomatists against further demand or complaint, and it would give redress for no wrong but the smallest part of what was endured. Therefore it would leave a permanent sore in the public, a permanent topic for agitators who have not the responsibilities of statesmen. That the treaty has been rejected in the Senate by fifty-four to one, ought to show Englishmen how entirely Mr Reverdy Johnson failed to represent the national feeling. Every fact connected with his conduct here shows that he represented the South, not the North. He was very candid. It was our fault, if we did not understand his tendencies. Mr Sumner quotes testimony that the Confederate Loan went up from zero to ten, as soon as it was ascertained that the treaty was signed; it being believed that its words will cover the demand of those British subjects who have suffered loss by lending to Mr Jefferson Davis, President of the rebel South. It does not seem to show in us much coolness of judgment to treat as "" a menace of war the decisive rejection of a treaty negotiated for a President and by a Secretary and Ambassador, whose interest and sentiments are not those of the North. The North it was which suffered from our fostering of its malignant enemy, the enemy of justice, freedom, and civilization.

دو

But there is a matter of fact which Sumner neglects,―a fact which I suppose few of us know. I learnt it only last year accidentally from the Report of the Paris Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867. In it is printed an elaborate memoir by the Hon. John Jay, on Emancipation in the United States, which is really a historical Review. It states (p. 102) that in April 1861 the Secretary of State (Mr Seward), writing in the name of President Lincoln, advised all the American ministers in Europe, and the European Cabinets hastened to accept the Assurances, that the President, so far from rejecting, willingly accepted the doctrine, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to "obedience by conquest;"-an avowal which was promptly responded to by proclamations endowing the Slave Power with belligerent rights by sea. That our Government acted very wrongly, is my belief, as deeply as Mr Sumner's, and I admit that we have to suffer for errors or misdeeds of our rulers. But

so must Americans suffer from any blunders and stupid policy of their Presidential Cabinet. When Mr Seward went out of his way so needlessly to tell our Government that Mr Lincoln had no right to constrain the South, any friends of freedom and right within our Cabinet were thereby paralysed. In the face of Mr Lincoln's confession, they had no power to resist others who inferred that when Mr Lincoln tried to do what he himself said he had no right to do, the South had a right to resist him; therefore, it was proper for us to recognize their right. Well may Mr Seward now wish to close the discussion, if to continue it will fix upon him the chief blame of that recognition of belligerency which Mr Sumner justly treats as the primal cause of mischief.

Mr Sumner, alas! has plenty to say against us; but unless the Hon. John Jay misquoted the despatch, I no longer see how a reasonable man could expect a Royalist Government not to declare the combatants equal, when the President volunteered to tell us that he had no right of coercion. The Hon. John Jay says, that at last the American people, step by step, brought their Cabinet round to a sense of its duty and dignity. Well! so did our people happily at last bring our Government round, Adversity taught Mr Lincoln; a sense of danger perhaps taught Lord Palmerston something. Mr Sumner unavailingly asks for expressions of regret and contrition. Without a total change of men in power, such expressions could not be sincere. We should show ourselves a very excitable people, if we make much of the fact that an Ambassador who has a Southern heart has failed to carry with him the approval of the North in the treaty which he negotiated. I hope better things.

Ν

THE FUNCTIONS OF AN UPPER HOUSE OF

PARLIAMENT.

From "Fraser's Magazine," June 1867.

IN every crisis of national contest the victory of one side or other is earned by the energies of some one national organ and at such a crisis the partizans of the failing cause will look with zealous hope to the other organs, and are liable to ascribe to them even inordinate value. In this spirit the beaten Tories of 1833 cried frequently, "Thank God! we still have a House of Lords; "—judging with a very sagacious instinct that the Upper House, by its patient tenacity, would gradually regain much or all that had been lost to them in 1832. Conversely, if the Lords had succeeded in some great development of oligarchical power, their opponents would "thank God that we still have a House of Commons," however weakened for a season. We do not intend now to treat of these temporary reasons for rejoicing in an Upper House, which once more, in the prospect of encroaching democracy, may present themselves to those who would fain stem the movement. But we desire to treat the question, as fundamentally as we are able, on its own merits; assuming a nation profoundly united, equably patriotic, and desirous of such institutions only as shall conduce to universal justice and thereby to universal welfare.

Voting without deliberation, and voting in the heat of passion, are of course ruinous. If there were danger that a popular assembly would fall into these errors, the veto of a second chamber might be serviceable, to delay the decision,-to gain time in which passion might be cooled and wisdom gain a hearing. Perhaps, to those who have never very closely analysed the working of institutions, it is from this point of view that an Upper House will seem of peculiar value; namely, as a check to the passions which are supposed to agitate a highly popular chamber. Of course, we do not deny that upon occasion a mischievous bill has passed the Commons, and would have become law, had not its error been detected and corrected in the Lords.