it was who broke the ice. But they are better coming from Mr Horsman than from Mr Disraeli, who as usual would have been accused of the most paltry motives, if he had ventured to use such language. Who could believe that the immaculate statesman, the political purist, the incomparable hero of the House of Commons, should in the session in which he is supposed to have achieved his greatest triumph, be told for the first time by one who calls him a right honourable friend, that no man owes so much to the forbearance of Parliament, and that there lives not a politician so vulnerable as he? With Mr Disraeli, who has been so roundly abused by the Peelites, and treated by them almost as if he were a political Pariah, full in his eye, Mr Horsman told his friend, the self-complacent Chancellor of the Exchequer, that there lives not a politician so vulnerable as he; and he told the truth. Mr Gladstone felt the attack keenly; and the Saturday Review, a journal which has always professed the most devoted admiration for him, described his appearance in the following terms: "As each keen and polished sarcasm told upon the House, there gathered over his countenance that expression of condensed, unutterable passion, which those who have watched him know so well. His lip curled savagely, his eyes flashed, his attitude became more rigid, his fingers twitched, the paleness of his face grew ghastlier and ghastlier, leaving not a vestige of colour on his cheek except the dark spot on the centre-the shadow thrown by the high cheekbone as the light fell on it from above." We can answer for the truth of this description, although we were not on this occasion in a position to observe the changes of Mr Gladstone's countenance. It is a good description of what he looked like when, after Mr Disraeli's rebuke, he was compelled to listen in silence to the taunts of the Opposition leader. Henceforth Mr Gladstone will know his place better, and we believe the Tory party will gain more by having him as an open enemy than as a lukewarm friend. We should have been glad of Mr Gladstone's vote; we should

have been still more pleased if his eloquence could be enlisted in favour of Tory principles; but it is well that the spoilt child of the House of Commons should now understand the limit of his power, should feel for the first time the pleasure of being whipt, and should learn that if the Tories love him, and have been willing to welcome him, yet also they do not fear him, and are not dependent on him.

The Horsman duel with Mr Gladstone was, after Mr Disraeli's encounter with the same champion, the most exciting affair of the present session. After it ranks in importance the triangular duel in which Sir Robert Peel, Mr Bright, and Lord John Manners were engaged; but the chief interest of this and all the other combats which the annexation of Savoy has raised in the House of Commons, has reference to the claims of Lord John Russell to be "the complete letter-writer." Almost as fast as his despatches are written they are given to the world. If the events upon which these despatches bear are of the gravest character, it must be admitted that Lord John is the comic gentleman of a serious drama. If any one doubts this, let him read the letters which were obviously intended rather to tickle the House of Commons than to guide our diplomatic agents. The style is a perfect caricature of the English language-a curious jumble of false metaphors with impossible grammar. It is not wonderful that, in return for these despatches, the noble Secretary should be snubbed continually by the French Minister; and we really must be excused if we feel inclined rather to laugh than to sympathise. We are not going to trouble our readers with quotations, and will only refer to the two magnificent despatches in which Lord John first expounded to our Ambassador at Paris for the benefit of the French Government his views on the Annexation. They were the thundering despatches in which he spoke of raising the elements, of bloody wars, of the Alps and the Rhine, and natural frontiers, and in which, almost directly addressing the Emperor, he said, "Let the Emperor recall the noble words in

which he gave forth at Milan,"&c., &c. The despatches are so remarkable for the absurdity of the English, for the magniloquence of the sentiment, and for the directness of the appeal to the French Emperor, that we give the dates of them-January 28th and February 13th, 1860. Now observe. Having taken so much trouble in the preparation of these tremendous documents, Lord John told Lord Cowley to read them to M. Thouvenal, and to give him copies, if copies were demanded. Lord Cowley wrote in answer that he had read the despatches to the French Minister, but that the latter expressed no desire to have copies left with him, and indicated no intention of replying. Can anything be finer? Lord John Russell writes a despatch for the especial private reading of the Emperor, and the Emperor's Minister remembers to forget the usual courtesy of asking for the copy of so important a communication. We are not aware that this little incident has been handled in the House of Commons, but the sort of skirmishing that is going on there day by day with reference to Savoy is continually bringing out similar facts, which make it evident that our Foreign Minister is but a poor diplomatist, and for which he is roasted unmercifully. The conduct of France is no laughing matter, but can one do anything but laugh at the blunders and mortification of our unhappy Secretary of State?

Poetical justice requires that, having spoken at length of the most exciting combats in the parliamentary fray of the present session, we should spare a few words at the end of our article for the dullest and most languid fight that ever was fought. And here, again, Lord John

is the hero of failure. He, indeed, made as great a flourish as he could -for was he not to introduce a new Reform Bill? Because of its historical associations, he selected the first of March as the day on which to introduce his little Bill into Parliament. At the appointed hour he laid his bantling on the table of the House, and made a speech over it that was nearly as meagre and poverty-stricken as the poor little Bill itself, which is so framed as to draw upon it the sneers of every man in the House of Commons, except the complacent father. The Bill having been thus laid before the House, the time came for a debate upon it, and what has been the result? After Mr Disraeli's calm but merciless criticism of it, there was little more to be said, and all interest in the precious Bill is so dead, that the debate has more than once run the risk of a count-out, and has been dragging along, nobody knowing how long it will last, or what is the next turn which it will take. Even the friends of Reform take no pleasure in the Bill, many of them liking it less than ever, now that by the Budget of the present year the finances of the country have been so unsettled that we know not whither we are tending. There is really no debate. The speakers, who follow each other, do not reply, but merely talk on. It is like a charge of cavalry in a review : they charge at nothing. The whole spectacle has the appearance rather of a sham fight than of a serious duel, and we believe that the country will be perfectly content if, by the expedient of a count-out, by a vote in the House of Lords, or by what Mr Disraeli suggested, the withdrawal of it by the Government, the question of Reform be shelved for at least another year.

WE pointed out in our last Number* the limited portion of the vast Empire of China to which our trade is at present restricted, and endeavoured to show how it came to pass that the native dealer, as well as the foreign merchant, dwelling on the seaboard of the four accessible provinces of China, were averse or indifferent to a farther prosecution of military operations for the enforcement of a Treaty which laid open to the European every part of the Flowery Land.

Now, we hold that an energetic and prudent series of military and naval operations is necessary for Imperial interests, and may be most profitably carried out in Northern China-that is, north of, and beyond, all our present mercantile establishments with this twofold object:

First, To open up rich regions, populated by Asiatics in a high state of Eastern civilisation, all of whom will become our customers; and that the impression made on their minds by Englishmen appearing among them in a military character, will tend to the future security and profit of our missionary and merchant.

Secondly, That we have to impress upon an Eastern Court the grand

fact, that the defeat of the forces of Great Britain, and the slaying and wounding of four hundred and fifty British subjects, is not an act to be passed over with a tame apology, without indemnity, or without guarantee against its reoccurrence, when perhaps some unfortunate collection of traders shall fall under the wrath of Emperor or mandarins.

These two objects are so interwoven one with the other, that it is impossible to consider them separately. You cannot open China but as an armed man-victorious. You cannot teach the rulers of China to respect their political engagements with a foreigner, except through fear. It is because we wish to open China, to see our import trade to China as flourishing as the export trade from China, that we urge an armed exploration of her seaboard and interior; and we cannot help thinking that those who are now declaiming against such measures on the plea of humanity, consult rather their ledgers than their consciences in desiring to prevent the introduction, now that an opportunity occurs, of a better civilisation and a purer creed amongst the many millions who long

VOL. LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXV.

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could be carried out in 1860 at five places of trade? In 1840 our forces, far too small for the task in hand, seized the Chusan group of islands, and escorted our envoy to the mouth of the Peiho. There was one vessel in all that force that could cross the bar, and so far as being really in a position to act against the capital of China, our admiral and fleet might as well have hoped to operate against Ispahan or Moscow. "Oh, you only want kind treatment and an apology for past insults," said the mandarins of Taku. Augh! augh! go back to Canton again, give up Chusan when the apology arrives, and all will be well." The unlucky envoy, unable to act, hampered by instructions from home, fears of the wrath of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and beset by the doubts of a mercantile entourage, came back to Canton to find the apology an empty one, and that he had been simply cajoled out of his hold on Chusan. The year 1841 found us as far off any solution of the question as 1839 had left us. Trade at Canton, Hong-Kong, and Macao was, however, steadily increasing, and there were not a few who deprecated farther prosecution of hostilities, not only on the score of humanity, but on the advisability of letting things be. Had they those humanitarians who denounced the opium war-been listened to, we should still have been trading with Canton Hong merchants, and known as much of China to-day as we did in the times of the Stuarts. A more enlightened policy prevailed; and in the summer of 1841 the naval and military authorities organised a force, and proceeded to act against the Chinese military forces on the coasts of Fokien and Chekiang provinces. We knew as much of these coasts then as we now do of those of Shantung and Pechelee-little or nothing. The forces explored and surveyed as they advanced. Wherever the authorities resisted us, they were firmly, but not inhumanly, expelled. The inhabitants of the great cities which fell into our hands saw that, though irresistible in combat, we were just and merciful; and it is not too much to say that, quite apart from all the deeds of arms, the able operations

VOL. LXXXVII.—NO. DXXXV.

carried out in that autumn, winter, and following spring were fraught with the utmost importance and benefit to China and Western civilisation generally. Without those operations, the Treaty of Nankin, even if it ever had been signed, would not have been worth the paper upon which it was written. Those military operations, those explorations of Fokien, Chekiang, and the Yangtse-kiang up to the walls of Nankin, extended over a twelvemonth. The whole military resources of the Empire were brought against us. The Abbé Huc tells of the wild tribes of Mongolia that were marched against us, and how the Tartar horsemen, over their cups in those wild plains, magnify their campaign against the fair-haired men of the sea; and we know that even the untamed Meaoutsze of the Himalayan ranges were brought down to exterminate those who would intrude upon the privacy of the Flowery Land. The Emperor and Court did all that was in their power to bring upon us the whole weight of the masses, and they utterly failed. The Chinaman would trade: he did so, in the captured cities, before the mandarin who died in resisting us at its gates was buried. The Chinese merchant of Ningpo hired us vehicles, sold us stores, wherewith to master the mandarin; and in the self-same day obtained a ball-and-peacock-feather decoration for a voluntary contribution to his own government towards exterminating us. He was only a Chinaman -a creature who looked to profit, and left conscience for priests and women to babble of. And what did they do at Canton during all that twelvemonth ?-simply traded. The mandarins might look sulky; patriotic retired officials, and Hong merchants who had made their fortunes by the past condition of foreign commerce, might have been alarmed lest the vested interests of Canton in foreign trade should be impaired by the new order of things which then only loomed in the distance; and the provincial government, urged by the Court to do something against the barbarian, might have threatened, but all wisely satisfied themselves with pouring stones into the channels

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