leyford. "I should say he was a very 'Finish-the-bottle,' if not a 'Let'shave-another' sort of man."

Miss Jawleyford was right in her conjecture; and there was a considerable waste of wax in the drawing-room ere the great silver urn, and other implements of tea, were ready for review.

The port and conversation finishing about the same time, Mr. Sponge further ingratiated himself with Mrs. Jawleyford by entering just as the tea tableau was in full bloom. He came swaggering in, as men in tights generally do.

66

May I give you tea or coffee?" asked Emily, in the sweetest tone possible, as she raised her gloveless arm towards where the glittering utensils stood on the large silver tray.

"Neither, thank you," said Soapey, throwing himself into a manycushioned easy-chair beside Mrs. Jawleyford. He then crossed his legs, and cocking up a toe for admiration, began to yawn.

"You'll feel tired after your journey?" observed Mrs. Jawleyford. “No, I'm not,” said Sponge, yawning again—a good 'un this time. Miss Jawleyford looked at her sister-a long pause ensued.

"I knew a family of your name very intimately," at length observed Mrs. Jawleyford, in the simple, innocent sort of way women begin pumping a man. "I knew a family of your name very intimately," repeated she, seeing Soapey was half asleep-"the Sponges of Toadey Hall. May I ask if they are any relation of yours "Oh-ah-yes," blurted Soapey; "I suppose they are. The fact is -haw-that the-haw-Sponges-haw-are a rather large familyhaw. We are the Soapey Sponges, you know-haw."

?"

"You don't live in the same county, perhaps?" observed Mrs. Jawleyford.

No, we don't," replied Soapey, with a yawn.

"Is yours a good hunting country?" asked Jawleyford, thinking to get at him in another

way.

"No; a devilish bad 'un," said Soapey, adding with a grunt, "or I wouldn't be here."

"Who hunts it?" asked Mr. Jawleyford.

"Why, as to that-haw"-replied Soapey, stretching out his arms and legs to their fullest extent, and yawning most vigorously-"why, as to that, I can hardly say which you would call my country, for I have to do with so many; but I should say, of all the countries I am-haw-connected with-haw-Tom Scratch's is the worst."

Mr. Jawleyford looked at Mrs. Jawleyford as a counsel who has made what he thinks a grand hit looks at a jury before he sits down, and said

no more.

Soapey presently beginning his nasal recreations, Mr. Jawleyford moved an adjournment of the house.

COLONIES AND CONSTITUTIONS.*

MANY causes have contributed to awaken an unusual degree of attention on the part of the English public to the present condition and future prospects of our Colonial Empire, and at the same time to bring into unprecedented prominence the whole of that extensive subject which is now comprised under the head of "Colonisation."

The slavery abolition is now producing results not anticipated by the nation when, with a curious mixture of philanthropy and party zeal, it decreed the freedom of our negro brethren, and voted 20,000,000l. to compensate their owners. The freedom has taken place, and the money has been spent, and the ex-slave colonies are ruined. And this ruin is something more than a figure of speech. It is not as it was-the old proprietor bankrupt, and the "attorney" and merchant enriched. The property itself is now gone-is valueless-enriching nobody. Yet the land remains, and the "plant;" and the negroes, we suppose, are merry. But the proprietors are not ruined in silence. It is not the way of men, least of all of Englishmen, to be so. The equalisation of the sugar duties gives the coup-de-grace to the West Indian interest. The colonists, in a fury, and deriving no consolation from the fact that, if they are ruined, Manchester and Birmingham consume cheap sugar, carry on a system of warfare with their rulers-whether dating from Downingstreet or Spanish Town-which is barely kept within the theoretical limits of our constitutional system. In a word, there is a great West Indian quarrel, which has got the full length of "stopping the supplies." Canada, a few years ago, feeling itself growing into lusty manhood, became disposed, whether with reason or without, to think and act more for itself. Groans and remonstrances had their run; and in due course came rebellion, and its repression. Then we had a legislative merging of an English and a French community into one; and after a short while the establishment of local "responsible government." That brought with it a peculiar species of revolution, which requires some practice to reconcile men to. It drove those who had almost a prescription of power, from place and income, and converted them into that patriotic but unpaid body, an Opposition. Thence arose a pretty Canadian quarrel, into the merits of which we shall not enter; but which, we may state, has been disfigured by personal violence offered to the Queen's representative, and made the subject of the crack debates which have taken place in the present session of parliament,--bringing out all Lord John's skilful simplicity of statement, Sir Robert's unctuous impartiality in summing up evidence, and D'Israeli's smart vivacity of personal portraiture.

The Cape is the theatre of a war with savages, at a cost, for one year, of a round million; and New Zealand furnishes us with a like field of practice for our troops, at probably, when the account is made up, not a sixpence less.

Suddenly the Australian Colonies make a figure on the map of the world. Within the last five-and-twenty years, quietly, and unknown to

The Colonies of England: a Plan for the Government of some portion of our Colonial Possessions. By John Arthur Roebuck, M.P. London: Parker, West Strand.

the mass of European men, three or four communities have been growing up at that end of the earth; when at length it is one day revealed to us that there are between 300,000 and 400,000 of our countrymen located there in towns and villages, with thousands of acres of land in cultivation, and countless flocks and herds; consuming millions' worth of British goods, and exporting the equivalent in colonial products; inviting their starving and struggling fellow-countrymen at home to go and share the plenty which is a waste for want of mouths to consume it; and crying out aloud, and with a perseverance bespeaking the blood that is in them, that they may be indulged with the luxury of governing themselves.

Then at home we have manufacturers ever hard at work, always producing, always going ahead of demand, looking out for new markets for their surplus production; men of trades and professions craving new fields for the employment of their decreasing capitals and of their unrequited skill; men of labour pining for regular work, and, regularly, enough to eat; to all these the colonies are hourly growing into objects of greater interest.

Thus it is that our colonies, old, and new, and those about to be-in one way or another-whether as a source of expense and annoyance, of newspaper-paragraph interest, or of immediate or anticipated profit-have contrived to work themselves into a position of considerable importance in the active politics of the day; and in spite of Paris revolutious, and the flight of Popes and potentates, they more than hold their own. We may be sure, too, that, in these our busy and pragmatical times, the facts have not been lost to many minds for begetting doctrines innumerable in all that pertains to colonies. We have a school that would let colonies grow up, if they have a mind, like mushrooms-but not otherwise; others would foster and encourage, and go to some expense in founding colonies, as a good national investment; others, again, who would plant colonies "systematically," and in such wise that they should never cost anybody anything; contriving, with a provident prescience, that the waste lands of such colonies shall always be so valued, that they shall always be so saleable, that they shall always produce enough money, to introduce exactly as many labourers as will always be willing to work for those who buy the land, in sufficient numbers to keep their wages just so high, and not so low, as that both employers and employed shall always be exactly as well off as they respectively ought to be! For that latter scheme a patent was taken out;-it was tried and found wanting. But that by the way.

Then we have those who, prying into the local politics of our colonies, have spied the causes of all the heats and discontents which have marked their brief histories; and who, Bacon-wise, have risen to inductions which enable them to hold out to the queen's ministers and the parliament assembled infallible rules for their guidance hereafter. Let no man say he knows not how to govern a colony. Lights to lighten the Stanleys, the Greys, and the Gladstones, are to be had at the bookseller's. The thing is reduced to a certainty. All the conditions of the problem are ascertained, and a never-failing formula arrived at. There may be variations to be taken into account- divergencies to be allowed for: heed has been taken of all these, and their value ascertained: but the great general truths are not the less unfolded to the admiration and profit of mankind.

We had known that there was a class of politicians-colonial “doc

trinaires" as we may call them-who, learned as they think in the experiences of the past, fancy themselves entitled to dogmatise à priori for the future, on every topic of colonial concernment. We did not expect that John Arthur Roebuck was one of these; for Mr. Roebuck is a man of vigorous intellect, wholly without cant, and personally acquainted with colonies. His was not the mind from which we should have expected unprofitable and really unphilosophical generalisations. From the sharp, penetrating, perhaps captious, but right honest political lawyer, we had expected an eye for detecting a grievance and its best immediate remedy, and even for suggesting good practical methods of prevention in future. And, after all, his book now before us is full of practical hints, and bears abundant evidence of the shrewd, intelligent, practical man. Had Mr. Roebuck been less ambitious in his aim-had he thought less of generalising, and fallen short of prescribing a panacea—he would have produced a right good book.

The general scheme, then, of Mr. Roebuck's book we do not approve of; though confessing that it is made the vehicle for a number of useful remarks; and any person studying colonial policy, or colony-making, or, to get to ambitious words, the science and art of colonisation, would be enabled to jot down not a few profitable memoranda from Mr. Roebuck's book. But the scheme itself we think a mistake. Mr. Roebuck appears to us to have sat down with his mind engrossed with one idea-What a grand colony the United States of America is! This is his leading 66 notion," upon which all the book appears to turn. It is this which makes all other colonies appear insignificant, and badly contrived through all the stages of their social and political existence.

We must make in future, then-is the sentiment and logic of Mr. Roebuck's book-all our colonies United States. We must rear our system on the American experience. We have the facts of the pastthey are the data for our future projects. Let us see. We will plant a settlement with municipal institutions-we will expand it into a colony, with a tripartite legislature-we will group colonies into a federation: we shall have United States, with all their felicities, in any number! Now, this may be a very excellent plan for certain colonies-it may be, with respect to most coterminous settlements of the same national origin, the natural development of institutions-but we think it would be really idle to attempt, as Mr. Roebuck proposes, by any specific law to prescribe any such general method of treating colonies. It would only be laid down to be warped, twisted, diverged from, in so many ways, as, in sporting phrase, to place the scheme itself nowhere. Would we ignore the past? On no account. And whether the question be of planting a colony, or adapting institutions to it at any given stage of its existence, the lessons of history would be of indispensable usefulness. But such lessons would teach fully as much in pointing out what to avoid, as what to imitate; what was incongruous, no less than what was analogous. Mr. Roebuck's book itself is full of such instructive inferences. Give us a scheme for a particular colony, and we will seek in history for another scheme and another colony as like as may be discoverable; and will do our best to "improve the occasion." But to lay down a scheme of general applicability, when the circumstances, in the nature of things, can never be generally predicated to apply to it, or it to them—to this we must take leave to demur.

There are, however, some parts of Mr. Roebuck's book which we have read with nearly unmixed pleasure; those, in particular, which give us a cursory history of English colonisation in America. Talking of Virginia, we are reminded, at the close of the following extract, of some of the urgent appeals made at the present day from labour-wanting colonies:

Severe misfortunes attended the infant colony; the practical proceedings of its founders being no wiser than their scheme of its political institutions. Visions of glory and of gain-sanguine hopes of great wealth and honour attained without labour, and at once, led the daring, the reckless, and the idle-broken down spendthrifts, and gay gallants of the court, to form part of the company of emigrants by whom the new community was to be established. The celebrated Captain John Smith, the real practical founder and saviour of this the first settlement, knew well what was the class of men needed for the work-and clearly understood the benefit that would follow well-selected emigrants. "When you send again," said Smith, in a letter written to his superior at home, “I intreat you, rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers-up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand of such as we have." He was averse to all schemes for the attainment of sudden wealth by gold-finding and mining. "Nothing," said he, "is to be expected from Virginia but by labour."

Captain John Smith was quite right. Her Majesty's Colonisation Commissioners have, we doubt not, many such correspondents at the present day.

Mr. Roebuck, following the historian Bancroft, is no lover of the method of founding colonies by means of companies. Still speaking of the early Virginian settlements, he takes occasion to remark as follows:

When we see attempts making to revive that old form of company, by which our forefathers vainly endeavoured in ancient days to found colonies-when we hear the final success of those colonies attributed to this mode of directing the enterprise, the skill, and the energy of our people, when laying the foundation of what are now mighty states,-it behoves all who know how really false are these statements, and how mischievous these companies were in fact, how seriously they impeded the progress of adventure, and retarded the growth of the colonial communities, to lay this experience with earnestness before the world; not to be nice as to phrase while insisting upon the value of the knowledge which can be obtained from our former colonial history; and at all proper times fearlessly to expose the grave errors which are daily propagated on this important subject by interested projectors, who pretend to be philosophic discoverers of great moral truths in political science, instead of assuming the more modest character of historians, in which, if they were honest, they might bring to light the valuable experience which the past has garnered up for our use.

At the present day the function of "Companies" in the establishment of Colonies appears clearly pointed out. There is no reason why they should, but abundant reasons could be adduced why they should not, be permitted the slightest power, political or civil. Their utility is entirely of a commercial or financial character; and any privileges with which the state or the legislature should be persuaded to invest them, should have exclusive reference to that consideration. What individual enterprise would be unequal to, the "capital" of a company might afford the means of successfully accomplishing. The only inconvenience to which colonies in the establishment of which companies may have had much concern, real or ostensible, are in some measure liable, is the creation of certain home interests, not always identical with, but it may even be diametrically opposed to, the interests of resident colonists.