and overcame the difficulties in Ireland. In a country of foolish factions the Queen's Vicegerent prudently steered his course, so as to uphold the interests of all classes, which were jeoparded by a crisis of common danger. Sagely, graciously, and with timely acceptableness (though certainly not too soon), our amiable Queen resolved to visit her Irish dominions; and her reception was just what it would have been any year since her auspicious accession. Affable sovereigns can never want affectionate and loyal subjects; and, as Queen Victoria possesses many valuable qualities that invite and secure attachment, the royal advent to Ireland was hailed with an enthusiasm for which the natives of the sister isle are proverbial! Some extravagant expectations of immediate national prosperity were prematurely connected with her Majesty's visit; but setting aside these ebullitions of pardonable patriotic feeling, we may unhesitatingly express our belief that the Irish people have derived no small advantage from the presence of their Queen. Loyalty has, we trust, been warmed and re-invigorated; and the professors of agitation will no longer have to accuse royalty of neglecting one of its most endearing opportunities-the privilege of being personally known. But agitation itself is at a discount in Ireland as Mr John O'Connell's empty benches, and ill-supplied poor's-box, very significantly denote! Notwithstanding the plentifulness of the harvest, the general distress of the people of Ireland is perhaps greater than that of any other population, savage or civilised. Her proprietors are mainly bankrupts-her peasantry are paupers-and a period has been reached which exhibits the inability of whole districts to supply the least amount of funds for the legal support of pauperism. The only ray of distant relief seems to twinkle from the operation of the Encumbered Estates Act-which, if rightly carried out, will infallibly cause some millions of property to change hands. Our imperial legislation was distinguished in June last by the repeal of the navigation laws-one of the necessary consequences of the renunciation of the principle of protection. All interests which were preternaturally promoted by legislation, must now, by means of popular power acting upon our legislators, gradually give way, and be driven to support themselves by uncrutched industry and skill. The poor protectionists cannot see that their day of domination is gone by, and are still struggling to get rich at the ex pense of the community. But all their efforts will prove unavailing Like those who tug in little boat, To pull to them the ship afloat. The revelation of railway fraud and swindling in the personal delinquences imputed to Mr Hudson, forms no insignificant part of the past year's domestic history. To an impartial examiner the whole railway system presents itself as a mass of cheating errorthe product of professional rapacity-commercial, corporate cupidity and individual greediness of gain. By a monstrous oversight, the Government suffered the Queen's highways to become the property of trading companies, which in nine cases out of ten had been dishonestly organized by pettifogging lawyers. All the arterial inter-communication of a great nation thus fell into the hands of sordid associations, destitute of all principle to guide, liberalize, or conscientiously curb them; and the merchandise in shares became the mania of a people of railway traffickers. Can it be a matter of wonder that hundreds of great and little Hudsons should have been spawned and nurtured by such a system as this-corrupt in its Mammon concoction, and rotten in all its ramifications? That swindling schemers and fraudulent chairmen and directors should be detected, exposed, and made to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, is a most righteous retribution-but there are many persons of probity who became bona fide investers in railway property, whose losses have been ruinous from the destructive depression of railway securities. We doubt whether public confidence can ever be restored until the present railway system shall have been thoroughly purged; for the management of railway interests is still in the corrupt clutch of the knavish parties who got up railway projects, and the taint of jobbery leavens the whole lump. By far the most exciting portion of England's history during the year 1849, is associated with the misgoverment and mutinous spirit of our Colonial possessions. Canada, the Cape of Good Hope, and New South Wales, have been special scenes of outrage and daring resistance against the Queen's authority. Earl Grey is blamed for all these misdoings; but if the Colonial minister is allowed to pursue a faulty system, the whole Cabinet must be liable to censure. One thing, however, seems tolerably clear, namely, that no fixed principles direct or animate our pseudo-system of Colonial government. Rash experiments, hollow expedients, despotic decrees to-day, and timid truckling to popular violence tomorrow, make up the sum of our Colonial policy, and the just authority of the mother country is fatally impaired by rule without power, and haughtiness without dignity. Probably the wisest course would be to quietly surrender our sovereignty over such of our contumacious colonies as may be desirous of governing themselves. We should be sure to save the cost of controlling turbulent dependencies; and insubordinate subjects might be transformed into amicable allies. We have reserved, for our concluding remarks, the splendid achievements and enormous acquisitions which have taken place in our Indian empire. The year 1848 closed with some suspicions of the ability of Lord Gough, and he was hastily superseded by Sir Charles Napier, who was dispatched to retrieve our presumed fallen fortunes. But before Sir Charles could reach India, the victory of Chillianwallah, laid the Sikhs, Shere Sing, and eventually the Punjaub, at the feet of the distrusted British commander, and with the annexation of Runjeet Singh's former territory, we have now an extent of dominion in the East which outshines the lustre of all recorded greatness of empire. Now comes the severest trial of British wisdom, integrity, and impartiality. Can we rule righteously what we have gained gloriously? Are truth, justice, mercy, and good faith to signalize our sway over nations more numerous than Alexander the Great subdued? These are important questions, on which hang the destinies of our empire in the East. We confess our fears preponderate over our hopes for our system of aggrandisement in India has had such elements of unjust usurpation as to render questionable the possibility of honourably exercised power. We cannot terminate this summary of national incidents during the past year, without reverting to the awful visitation of the cholera, and to the divine interposition which mercifully restrained its ravages. This fatal disease remains as much a mystery as ever— eluding all the investigations of medical science as to the certainty of its cause or cure; and thus enforcing upon men an added reverence for that inscrutable sovereignty of God in destroying or sparing-which is the prerogative of the King of kings and Lord of lords. 172 MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D., BY HIS SON-IN-LAW, THE REV. W. HANNA, LL.D. LL.D. We have of late years been often impressed with the sorrowful certainty that the biographers of our so-styled great men have wrought very effectually to disparage, degrade, and, in some instances, needlessly to blacken the memory of the distinguished persons whose lives they had laid hold of as the subject-matter of interesting record. Moore, as the biographer of Sheridan and Byron, is a noted transgressor in this way-studiously accumulating every discreditable and disgraceful anecdote which could be associated with the darker and more depraved parts of the story of the eminent orator and dramatist, or of the prince of English poets. Lockhart's Life of Scott offers no exception to our censure; for who can travel through the many-volumed life of poor Sir Walter without being offended with many puerile details, utterly unnecessary for the illustration of the character of the renowned bard and novelist? But of all the transgressions of this sort, by far the most flagrantly inexcusable is the Life of Wilberforce, got together by his sons. Wilberforce was an excellent man. We had the honour and gratification of knowing him personally, and we can truly affirm that a more amiable, kindly-disposed, generousspirited gentleman never adorned the rank of society in which his lot was cast. His great aim as a pietist was to popularise religion, and to deck the surface of society with the blandishments of Christianity. We are sure that he meant well, although we have strong doubts as to the spiritual success of his zealous exertions; but one unquestionable result was the signal extension of religious profession, which the "Practical View" was designed to aid. This, of course, enlarged the sphere of religious reading; and here we arrive at the somewhat disreputable solution of the mystery of book-making, so prevalent in our day, and from which it would seem evangelical litterateurs do not scruple to derive pecuniary advantage. Mr Wilberforce's sons had to negotiate with the late Mr Murray, as the proposed publisher of their revered father's life. There was abundant matter in the Christian career of the departed worthy to supply a narrative redolent of the useful activity,—the sweet simplicity and sincerity of a good man's eventenored existence. But this was not enough for a biography which was to emanate from the fashionable bibliopolist of Albemarle Street! It must be a book of garrulous gossiping-of spicy disclosure of privacy revealed, and secluded sanctity laid bare to the public gaze! And such a book the sons of Wilberforce stipulated to furnish, in consideration of some thousands of guineas to be duly paid by Mr Murray! We all know what was the result of this unhallowed bargain. A work appeared, in which all the errors, all the levities, all the inane trivialities of poor Wilberforce's life were raked up and recited with a methodical minuteness more resembling the accusatorial accuracy of an enemy, than the conscientious candour of a friend. But this was not enough. Wilberforce had forgotten to commit to the flames diaries in which he was accustomed (and a very bad custom we aver it to be) to register the fluctuations of his religious feelings. "He kept a book in which his faults were noted;" and out of these chronicles of frailty, inconsistency, and self-shrouded infirmity of purpose and practice, the sons of the deceased diarist resolved to draw additional materials for a bloated biography. Nothing was omitted— no not even the probationary pebbles, which their poor papa, as emulator of the austere Pascal, had secretly thrust into his Protestant shoes! A more monstrous, unfilial breach of confidence was, to our thinking, never perpetrated. Because no interdictory mention was made of these idly-scrawled memoranda-long devoted to oblivion-the love of lucre interposed in favour of bargain and sale, and pretty much as Joseph's brethren sold him to the Midianite merchants, Mr Wilberforce's memory was sold to the tradesman-like cupidity of calculating Mr Murray, whose part in the transaction we are, however, by no means inclined to condemn. Now it gives us no light pain to be compelled, in faithfulness, to state that the reverend biographer of Dr Chalmers has, in one instance, pursued the erring tracks of Moore-of Lockhart-and of the degenerate sons of Wilberforce. The mercantile mania of book-making has penetrated the most evangelical recesses, so that the AURI SACRA FAMES has even an ecclesiastical force of application which the heathen poet could never have dreamed of! While Doctor Chalmers was hardly cold in his grave, we well remember that newspaper rumours were rife of the large sums of money which adventurous publishers were offering for the MSS. remains of the great departed; and although we thought this trafficking had an air of premature unseemliness, we were willing to acknowledge |