criminals?' which had been asked some years before, was now again asked, with increased earnestness and alarm. It was a question discussed in every journal and in every society. But it was a question more easy to be asked than to be answered. Our criminals must be kept, they must be fed; they could no longer be transported; the prisons would not contain all who were sent to them. Some such expedient as that of the ticket-of-leave system must be resorted to, and there, for the present, the matter rested. However, in consequence of the universal outcry, the police force was strengthened and put more on the alert; the practice of garrotting became less frequent; the alarm subsided, and London gradually resumed its old habits. But public opinion demanded with great insistence and unanimity that henceforward the lot of the honest labourer, and the pauper whom age, sickness, or misfortune had brought to the unionhouse, should be better than that of the man who was under punishment for the crimes that he had committed. There was also a strong feeling that the ticket-of-leave system had been carried too far, and that a more careful surveillance ought to be exercised over those who enjoyed the benefit of it.

Early in the beginning of the year Mr. Lincoln, the president of the United States of America, took a step which elicited some enthusiastic demonstrations of approval in this country. After much hesitation he launched a proclamation ordering the emancipation of all slaves within the ten rebel states, and declaring that such persons, if of suitable condition, should be received into the armed service of the United States, to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels. He based this act entirely on military considerations, which he believed to be warranted by the condition of the States, and solemnly invoked the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favour of Almighty God. declaration, however, was regarded with very unfriendly eyes by Lord Russell, who, on the receipt of a despatch from Lord Lyons enclosing a copy of it, wrote him a letter to be communicated to the American government, in which he characterised the proclamation of the president as a document of a very strange nature. He observed that it professed to emancipate all slaves in places where the

This

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government of the United States could not exercise any jurisdiction or make emancipation a reality, while it did not decree the emancipation of slaves in any states or parts of states occupied by the federal troops, and subject to the jurisdiction of the government of the United States, and where therefore emancipation, if decreed, might be carried into effect. He farther insisted that the proclamation made slavery at once legal and illegal, and made slaves punishable or rewardable for running away from their masters, according to the locality of the plantation to which they belonged and the loyalty of the state in which they might happen to be. Hence he argued that there seemed to be no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery in this proclamation; that it was a measure of war, and a measure of war of a very questionable kind. The English minister concluded his communication by saying, that as President Lincoln had thrice appealed to the judgment of mankind in his proclamation, he ventured to say that he did not think it would or ought to satisfy the friends of abolition, who looked for total and impartial freedom for the slave, and not for vengeance on the slaveholder.

But, whatever Earl Russell might say or think, the friends of abolition in England regarded this act of President Lincoln with favour, and received it with demonstrations of sympathy and approval. They saw that, whatever the motive that dictated the proclamation, its effect would be the entire abolition of slavery if the Northern States triumphed. It was evidently impossible that if slavery were abolished in the ten confederate states, it could hold its ground in the small portion of the union to which the president's proclamation did not apply. Accordingly it soon became evident that the old anti-slavery spirit that had animated Macaulay, Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Brougham, was not dead. Meetings were held in the largest available rooms of the metropolis, Liverpool, Manchester, and most of the chief towns of the kingdom. Before the hour of the meeting at Exeter Hall had arrived, it overflowed into the large rooms below, thence into the adjacent street, out of which a fourth meeting arose in the immediate neighbourhood. All these meetings fermented with anti-slavery enthusiasm, excited to a still higher pitch of effervescence by some small and ineffective

attempts at a counter-demonstration in favour of the Southern States.

At the commencement of this session the Prince of Wales took the oaths and his seat as a peer of the realm. After having been admitted with the usual formalities, he retired to lay aside the ducal robes which he had worn during the ceremony, and then returning with the Duke of Cambridge took his seat on the cross benches, where he continued during the debate on the address in answer to the royal message. In both houses that address was adopted after undergoing some not very important criticisms.

On Saturday the 7th of March the prince took part in a pageant of a very different kind. On that day the streets of London were crowded as they had never been crowded before; for it was an occasion that appealed very powerfully to the sympathy and curiosity of our countrymen and countrywomen-the public entrance of the Princess Alexandrina, the affianced bride of the Prince of Wales, into the metropolis on her way through it from Gravesend to Windsor Castle, where she was to be married to the prince on the following Tuesday. It is needless to say that not only almost every Londoner was in the street or in some place of advantage to view the procession, but that millions from all parts of England, taking advantage of the improved means of conveyance furnished by the railways, flocked to the metropolis. Great preparations had been made for the event; 40,000l. had been voted for the purpose by the corporation of London; triumphal arches, splendidly decorated, had been erected along the line of procession. Such was the anxiety to obtain a good view of the princess that a single seat in a window was let for 301. The gas companies were unable to meet the demands made on them in connection with the illuminations by which the event was to be celebrated. The reception which the youthful princess met with on her way through the city, though respectful, was boisterous and tumultuous, and several people were crushed to death beneath the human deluge that rushed towards the carriage in which she was conveyed. These misfortunes were due partly to the enormous number of those who were anxious to catch a glimpse of the princess, but chiefly to the

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exceedingly bad arrangements that had been made by the corporation of London, who, confiding in their own ability to maintain order, had stubbornly refused the offers that had been made them of the assistance of a body of police and of a military force. Owing to their obstinacy and bad management many lives were sacrificed, and those of the prince and princess had almost been placed in jeopardy. Public opinion therefore loudly demanded the reform of the corporation; and the government, well aware how much it was needed, brought in a bill for the purpose. But it was strenuously resisted by the civic authorities, and the attempt failed through the neglect of those who had the charge of the bill to comply with the standing orders of the House of Commons. On the day fixed for the wedding, the marriage-ceremony was performed with befitting pomp, and was attended by all those royal and distinguished persons, ambassadors, ministers, and others, that such an event as the wedding of the heir to the throne was sure to bring together. But amongst all the persons who were present in that splendid and glittering throng none attracted so much attention and interest as the bereaved Queen, who, sitting in a gallery just over the altar of St. George's chapel, looked down in her widow's weeds on the wedding of her firstborn. The event was celebrated with rejoicings in every part of the kingdom.

The parliamentary proceedings of this year were devoid of public interest and historic importance, with the exception of the budget, introduced by the chancellor of the exchequer on the 15th of April. Mr. Gladstone's previous financial statements had been so interesting, that the circumstance that he was now to make another was sufficient to collect a multitude to hear it. But it was not possible always to produce budgets like that which was associated with the French treaty. Besides, the war that was being carried on in America, and the distress that prevailed in the manufacturing districts, would not allow opportunity for the exercise of much financial ingenuity. Consequently the budget, though open to little or no objection, was not of a character to, excite great interest. Mr. Gladstone's statement was, like his budget, perfectly plain and unambitious. He did not indulge in any of those disquisi

VOL. III.

Q

tions on the philosophy of taxation which had given such a charm to his previous financial addresses. Nevertheless he spoke for three hours, during the whole of which time he managed, as he had done on former occasions of the same kind, to command the unflagging attention of his audience. The chief feature in this budget was the reduction of the duty on tea to one shilling in the pound; and as the largeness of the tea-duty had at the time of the last budget been the grievance on which the opposition more especially harped, the reduction left them almost without any ground of complaint. Some of its less important details were strenuously resisted, especially a provision, which seems to be a very fair and just one, for imposing a license-duty on clubs as well as on public-houses. In favour of this proposal it was urged that the club was to the rich man what the public-house was to the poor man, except that it was less necessary. It therefore seemed only equitable that the former should contribute to the support of the exchequer as well as the latter. But this reasoning did not commend itself to an assembly almost all of whose members were also members of the institutions which it was proposed to tax; and this provision, as well as one for the taxation of charities and some other less important financial proposals, was eventually abandoned.

The remarks made by Mr. Gladstone towards the conclusion of his address on the state of the trade of this country with the United States and with France have an abiding and historical interest:

'I come now, sir,' he said, 'to consider a subject which is always of great, and which is also at this moment of painful interest; I mean our trade with the United States. It is of great interest because of its importance to the country; and it is at present of painful interest because the reduction it has undergone bears melancholy witness to the secondary action of those far greater and more frightful calamities which afflict the continent of North America. And I shall proceed to state the condition of our trade with France, because this is the first occasion of a financial statement on which I have had it in my power to exhibit one full year of the working of the commercial treaty with France, and of the altered system it has introduced.