disown morality in politics, and become unjust to foreigners who are struggling under oppression. The real struggle in Europe now is not for Republicanism as an end, though in special cases as a means; but with the many, it is for Nationality; with the leaders, for Morality as the basis of policy. The many desire administrators and organs that speak in their mother tongue and regard their local ancestral customs. The leaders find a religion in State Morality. The perfidy of Courts makes many despair of royalty: this is what gives impetus to republicanism. In Germany it is asserted that all the princes but three broke their oaths to the Parliament of Frankfort in 1848. The King of Hanover (our old Duke of Cumberland) had been hated for overthrowing there the Constitution granted by his brother, our George the Fourth: we understand, he became popular in 1848 simply by not breaking his oath! Hungary desired only that her ancestral laws should be observed, laws to which every Austrian king punctiliously swore-indeed signed his name to a personal engagement; yet every king of the dynasty had flagrantly and unceremonionsly broken the solemn oaths. The existing king was not blamed, for he was judged to be imbecile and the tool of others. Hungary fought in his name against her Austrian invaders, and had no desire to eject either the monarch or the monarchy. When this Ferdinand was deposed by the Austrians, against Hungarian law, the Hungarian leaders would have accepted the Archduke Stephen as king, but he refused. They asked Queen Victoria to give them an English prince for a king, but our ministers refused. Hungary became republican from despair of justice; and Kossuth says, he did but follow the movement after it became national. Lord Palmerston avowed that it was national, and that the war was strictly defensive of ancestral law; yet, even when Hungary was victorious in a good cause, England refused to acknowledge her belligerence (though it was matter of public fact), and thereby hindered her from buying arms to resist Russian invasion. For this injustice we are punished by our present war. We were bound to mediate when Austria broke the peace which our mediation established in 1712. But morality is not the law with our statesmen. That Hungary should recover her national rights, would (according to Lord Palmerston) have been a European mischief; therefore we refused to mediate and stop bloodshed.

Poland and Italy also desire, first of all, nationality; but neither a fractional Poland nor a fractional Italy would stand. Deeper

still lies the question: Is Right to be recognised in the affairs of nations as paramount and sacred, equally as in the affairs of individuals? The heart of the people everywhere says, Yes! The Republicans of Europe (alas! not of North America) decidedly say, Yes! Only the dynastical faction, both in England and on the Continent-the secret diplomatists and the organs of the Stock Exchange, unanimously reject the supremacy of Right, and even deride the idea as a childish enthusiasm. EXPEDIENCY is their guide. If the Expedient happens also to be Right, they will, no doubt, be eloquent on the latter topic; but, to judge by their uniform conduct, Right which does not meet their notions of Expediency has no chance of support from their pens, their voices, nor yet from their private sympathies. In this contrast we see upon the Republicans the mark of martyrs and heroes. "The Kossuths and Mazzinis," of whom the Czar Nicolas spoke to Sir G. Hamilton Seymour with mixed contempt and fear, may meet the lot common to the apostles of a new creed; but they are preaching a nobler practice and a higher faith than our routine statesmen dream of. To such apostles the Future belongs; they may die before their cause triumphs, but triumph it will. The human heart responds to the faith, which kindles them, and enables them to inspire the hearts of others. On the same exalted platform stand the Abolitionists of the United States-men sometimes fanatical, but always upright, resolved to act on moral principle, and to sacrifice the convenient, the pleasant, the easy, the apparently or temporarily Expedient to the sacred certainty of Right. These are in America what the votaries of Nationalism (accidentally republicans) are in Europe; apostles or martyrs, not for a new creed, nor for any theological opinion or dogma, but for applying ancient and sacred Duty honestly to the highest affairs of nations, equally as to daily and hourly life. Herein lies the real struggle for a New Moral World.

We pride ourselves on Christianity and look down on Greek and Roman Paganism, yet the same controversy as arose among them is still unquelled among us. Pericles could not answer the argument of young Alcibiades, who, from the violent conduct of Athens to her allies, deduced the right of the strong to enforce their will on the weak. The conduct of "THE CITY" had a most corrupting tendency on the citizens; her conduct was put forward as a law of life, and as a sanction for their conduct. Rhetorical debaters pleaded that the powerful had always indulged the propensity to domineer and always would; that to fight against this

law of nature was vain; that this generation had not originated, but had received, from time beyond memory, the law that the stronger should enforce his will, and the weaker give way. The idea of Justice, for which Aristides had lived,-justice between nation and nation, as well as between the Orders of a nation,was exploded as a dream; and "simplicity of heart, which enters so largely into noble natures, was laughed down and disappeared." Thenceforward, public action became predominantly a scramble of selfishness. When the guidance of Justice is scientifically rejected, Expediency, its most unscientific substitute, is a Will-o'the-Wisp, changing shape every minute, and surely leads its followers into bogs of disaster. .

. . . After such events, can we wonder that the epithet "perfidious Albion" clings to us? It is not the mass of the people that is perfidious. The real nation is often ignorant of facts, but never wrong at heart. On a retrospect since 1815, we are surprized to observe how right on the whole has been the popular judgment, how it has been confirmed and justified by events. In 1815 peace was welcome, and for more than thirty years no foreign event stirred England deeply, except the Turkish massacre in Scio. In 1849 the events in Rome and Hungary excited us anew, and opened our eyes to the conspiracy of despots against these two nations. The popular instinct felt the crisis, and urged the ministry to acknowledge Hungary as belligerent, open trade with her, incite the Turks to do the same, and protest against the Russian invasion. The half of this would have saved Hungary, and have spared us this Russian war. But whigs and tories and the Stock Exchange in complicity with Austria, conspired against Right; and were surprised to find that when Austria was become dependent on Russia, she was no longer a check to Russia! Such is the unwisdom of those who "drift" with the gusts of EXPEDIENCY.

ON ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM.

1856. AFTER AGITATION CONCERNING BALACLAVA BLUNDERS.

[A strong effort was made to form a Society for this object. I was asked to join it, and wrote the following. I believe it was not approved: certainly it was not printed. No agreement adequate for a political Society came out.]

I

CANNOT profess much hope; for without publicity as to Foreign Dispatches and other fundamental change-beside the improvement needed in Public Morals-it is hard to be sanguine; yet neither ought we to despair.

Notoriously men have less conscience in public affairs than in private, and less in dealing with public money than with private, hence far stronger checks on malversation are needed, and from the nature of the case they are in themselves weaker. The head of a private firm loses heavily, if negligence and extravagance prevail in his office: the head of a public department, unless convicted of embezzlement, loses nothing by decorous mismanagement, rather he is apt to lose by any wise severity; for this is sure to raise up for him private enmity.

Edmund Burke despaired of Reform, because the public is not grateful to a minister for the severities which are essential to Reform, yet he exasperates individuals by them. Does this state the worst? Perhaps not. Just as a minister, whether by his own impetus or his prince's, finds it easier to make war because his predecessor was peaceful, so he is more easily induced to run up a new debt, if by sage economy and self-denial a huge debt was recently cleared off. There is no greater discouragement to Reform than the expectation that you labour in vain. Thus no one seems to care about paying what used to be called "the King's Debt," because we have no security against the instant contracting of another. We need new principles that shall be accounted sacred, and shall seem to work automatically, else no reforms stand.

We want a high independent authority that can call Ministers to account. This can only be a Parliament, Ministers should have no power to disband it and paralyze it. It will of

course be said, that this is to invest the Legislature with the Executive Government: but such an assertion is groundless. If a Senate is to enact Laws, it must exact observance of the Law; and be able to expel one who is entrusted to enforce it, if he fail to enforce it, whether in his post as Administrator, or as judge of crime. Without this power in a Legislature, its law is vain. Therefore it has to call for returns to acquaint it with official facts. It must stand above all ministers; but its superiority does not supersede them. The English vote of "Confidence in ministers or no confidence," avows the just principle.

Plain as is this principle, those who desire lavish ministers pretend that no able men would submit to the indignity of accepting office if Parliament is to re-judge their doings. But a Parliament is greater than individuals, and men ambitious of office are not so absurd. Despotic Princes and Cabinets, in like manner, pretend that Kings will not submit to the indignity of being controlled by a Parliament.

Assuming that Parliament ought to exercise a constant general control over the Executive, the question arises, Why it does not now? First, because of Secret Diplomacy. Ministers carry on correspondence with foreign Powers as servants of "the Crown," and can always find plausible ground for concealing what they are promising or threatening, though their secret action may entangle us unduly in grave responsibilities. The United States of America destroy secrecy by investing every member in their Senate with the right of inspecting all documents in the Foreign Office. We might adopt some similar method of forbidding the Executive from keeping any secrets from the out-party, but until we do so we shall be duped in foreign affairs.

Next, because Parliament has allowed Cabinets to have a corporate existence and special corporate interest. That which is truly a faction or a club we dignify as if in parity with a legitimate Order. The medieval clergy struggled against their members being amenable to Civil Courts. So our Cabinets struggle to exempt Executive officers from the judgment of Parliament; and (to use the popular trade-word) threaten to strike in a body against the Parliament, and insist that they will not serve unless they can rule. If a Ministry resign,-Ministers being legislators! there is enormous disappointment in half-carried Bills, immense private loss, and risk of Parliamentary dissolution; all as if made to facilitate irresponsibility. Moreover, the out-party is largely in collusion with the holders of office. It hopes, ere long, to