Gladstone has associated with himself, and her Majesty has accepted as a member of her Cabinet. Mr. Bright's visit to Ireland three years ago was not made in vain. The Irish people did not indeed appear quite to understand him at first; but the words uttered by him respecting the state of property in Ireland in the Rotunda in Dublin, and still more explicitly at Limerick, made their mark on the Irish mind, and did so effectually. We believe that in the course of that visit an alliance was entered into between the Quaker politician and the chiefs of the ultramontanists of Ireland, with Cardinal Cullen at their head, of which we are now reaping the fruits. We believe, further, that Mr. Gladstone's rash declaration last year was not made except at the instigation of these allied powers. We also believe that the present Prime Minister is, at the time of our writing, as much beside himself with excitement as ever man was from whom Providence had not withdrawn the light of reason. That a terrible Nemesis awaits him we are fully convinced. He will awake some day to find the grandest constitution ever worked out by a nation falling to pieces over his head; and among the millions who mourn the catastrophe, not one, we venture to predict, will mourn more bitterly than he.

3. We come now to the last of the three points to which we proposed to turn the attention of our readers, the attack upon the rights of the House of Lords; and it is fair that we should confess, at the outset, that if that move, or a move analogous to it, had been made at any other time-and, let us add, from any other quarter-we should have looked at it differently from what we do. There can be no objection to life peerages for laymen any more than to life peerages for churchmen, provided the institution be founded on any just and intelligible principle. Great advantage, on the contrary, would accrue both to the nation and the

legislature, were it customary to call to the Upper House the judges of the land, or some portion of them. In this case the peerage would attach, not to the individual, but to the office; just as the rights of the peerage attach at this moment to the tenure of an English or an Irish see. But what we do object to is, that under the pretext of getting into the Upper House a constant succession of talent, the Minister of the day should have the power of making life-peers out of artists, authors, soldiers, sailors, gentlemen who have lost their seats in the House of Commons, Under-Secretaries of State, according to his own will and pleasure. To all that we entirely object. And through the bill which Lord Russell prepared, and Lord Granville, speaking for the Government, supported, contained clauses limiting the exercise of this power, we all know that clauses of this sort are never much valued. Remember how

the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament, and the repeal of the Test Act, were believed to be rendered innocuous by the enactment that the persons benefiting by the change should swear not to use their influence for the injury of the Established Church in its rights and property. And remember how the restraints thus imposed upon their freedom as legislators were first evaded, then inveighed against, and ultimately taken away. Who can doubt, that if Lord Russell's bill became law, Mr. Gladstone would discover good reasons next year-perhaps this very year--to evade its provisions, or, supported by his majority of 118 or 125 in the House of Commons, to compel the Lords to repeal it. No; to have read that bill a second time would have been fatal; and their attempt to get it so read we look upon as one more very significative token that while the nation sleeps its privileges are assailed by the very men to whom it has intrusted power, not in order to destroy, but to expand. and consolidate its institutions.

one

As we have just said, no thinking man would object to render such offices as that of Justice of Appeal, the Master of the Rolls, the Chiefs of the Queen's Bench, the Common Pleas and the Exchequer, life peers. Their presence in the House of Lords would greatly enhance both the dignity and the value of that assembly as a final court of appeal; and their views on questions of general policy would not carry the less weight with them, that they might not, any more than the views of the bishops, be always in accord with the other. Neither can we see any good reason why the full rights of the peerage should not be extended to every Scotch and Irish peer without exception. Or if it be necessary, in order to guard the Act of Union, that sixteen Scotch and twenty-eight Irish noblemen should still come to the House of Lords as Scotch and Irish peers, why might not the Crown leave the nobles of Scotland and Ireland to choose the sixteen and the twentyeight peerages respectively which shall in all time coming enjoy that particular privilege and honour. But for all the rest there is ample room on benches, which even their admission to them would not fill. To any arrangement of this sort we should not only not object, but it would receive our heartiest concurrence, because there would follow upon it a provision that the Crown should cease in future to have the power of creating peers of Ireland, just as it has long ceased to have the power of creating peers of Scotland. But a parliamentary sanction to such an arrangement as Lord Russell proposed and Lord Granville supported, would be the first step, and a very wide one too, towards the conversion of the House of Lords into an elective senate. Never let us forget that the House of Lords is not an assembly representative of anything else. It is a di estate of the realm; and

cause of its peculiar character as such that it is able to interpose something like effective resistance to the constant encroachments of the Commons on the rights and privileges of the Crown. Change its character, and it will become in name what in fact it has of late too much been-less the reviser than the registrar of the decrees of the Commons. Observe that we are not

his

to

averse to the occasional recruitment of the House of Lords from other classes than successful lawyers, soldiers, sailors, and statesmen. Differing as we do in many opinions from Lord Belper, we saw with great satisfaction advancement to the peerage. For it is a wise thing, and a great defence for the constitution, in Queen, Lords, and Commons to make large manufacturers and wealthy bankers understand that to them, who cannot enrich themselves without benefiting their country at the same time, the way is open to the highest honours of the state. But if the day ever come when it shall be in the power of the Prime Minister pitchfork, even by fours at a time, his toadies and sycophants into the House of Lords, our readers may depend upon it that the end of that august assembly as the constitutional bulwark of the throne is not far distant. And we do not hesitate to charge upon the present Government that, inspired by Mr. Bright, they contemplate such an issue with complacency. What did Lord Granville mean by objecting to Earl Russell's bill, that its chief fault was that it did not go far enough? Is he prepared, in case the necessity should arise, to swamp the Lords rather than lose his bill? And would he prefer, naturally enough, to swamp it with persons whose individual votes might serve his purpose, undashed by the reflection that possibly, having served order to

fall

ad

perhaps, equally critical occasion. Be it so. For the present it is satisfactory to know that his views in this direction are for the present thwarted. The Lords are not as yet prepared to abdicate their own functions, and the Ministers must take the disappointment as well as they can.

It is not, however, in the House of Lords, but in the House of Commons that the battle of the constitution is at this moment going on. On the fate of the Irish Church hangs the issue of that battle. Our conservative champions do their work well, and they have reason and justice on their side; but what can reason, justice, and bravery combined effect against overwhelming majorities. Our champions, gallant and true, are few in number. Irish Romanists, Scotch voluntaries, and Welsh dissenters, prove, in combination, too strong for us, somewhat disunited as we were at the hustings; and let us not seek to hide the truth from ourselves, we owe our present weakness almost as much to the disunion that prevails within our own ranks, as to the vigour of the enemy. Even now, to their shame be it spoken, there is a section of the English clergy-a small one, we admit, but still a noisy one, and an arrogant-which looks forward to disestablishment and disendowment here as well as in Ireland with satisfaction. These have done us immense harm. But, on the other side, there are not a few whom the attitude which they have been forced to assume in the House by no means pleases, and who need only a fair and honest reason for changing it. So long as the country is

quiet they will abide where they are. They are committed to a certain course, and cannot of their own free. motion escape from it. But if the country can be persuaded to speak out, very many of them, being redeemed from hustings pledges, will be moved by it. Now, we do not hesitate to say that the country is bound to speak out, and that churchmen are especially called upon to awaken the laity to a sense of the danger which threatens. What are our bishops about? why do they not organise in every diocese such assemblies as have met, separately and in the aggregate, to deliver their minds in Ireland? Is it supposed that the English people will refuse to listen to the voice of reason if reasonable men appeal to thein? We do not believe it. Let a beginning be made in every parish, in every rural deanery, in every archdeaconry, in every diocese-the rector appealing to his parishionere, the bishop to his people, lay not less than clerical. Let us have in London such aggregate meetings of English churchmen, as the Irish have had of Irish churchmen in Dublin. Would the Government be able to stand against such a gathering? No; it would shiver their majority in a day. At all events, it would encourage the Lords to do their duty; and the bill, if not thrown out, would be so modified as to render it comparatively harmless. On the other hand, if nothing of this sort be done, the bill will pass, either this session or the next, in its integrity, and England will discover, when it is too late, that she has ceased to be a great constitutional monarchy.

Ir was dead low-water at Wansford Road Station. The tide of trains, express, ordinary, and goods, which dashed by between the hours of 8 and 10 A.M. (for but few of them stopped at that small roadside halting-place) had run out, and for the last three-quarters of an hour the precincts had been as silent and undisturbed as the aisles of a fashionable church on a weekday. Mr. Morgan-book-keeper, clerk, and superintendent, all in one was immersed in a study of long ledgers, which seem to have been invented to keep the minds of the officials in such places from stagnating. Jem Dobbs, the sole porter and pointsman on duty, was Occupying the horsehair seat invented by the company for the punishment of their passengers, sunk in that professional half-slumber which has still an eye and an ear open for any sounds of business. Seeing that he was on duty for an average fourteen hours a-day, it was very well for him that he had acquired something of the faculty ascribed to great military commanders,

VOL. OV.NO. DOXLIV.

Suddenly Dobbs jumped up, and was out on the platform in a second. The distant rumble of the up-train from E- for London had mingled with his blissful dream of the tap of the " Railway Hotel," and roused him to his duty of bellringing. Mr. Morgan had not heard the sound, apparently, though he was wide awake. But then it was not his special business.

"She's before her time this morning, Jem," said he to his subordinate when he re-entered, casting a look at the office clock as he spoke.

"It's Buster as is driving," said Jem; "he's allus either afore his time or arter; he were brought up on the Westland Junction, where they does all their work on their own premises, and the platelayers makes the chronometers."

"Ye're early to-day, Joe," remarked the porter, as the engine drew up at the platform.

"Well, I were late yesterday,"

2 x