before you took all this gratuitous trouble." Here is an affront to the Lords, if you like. But mark, the affront will come too late to rejoice the people. The creation will then seem not the courageous providence of a great statesman, but the desperate resource of a falling party. Mark this, my Lord Grey. You are still a great man— may our posterity honour you as such! Those who now watch your motives, will write your history!

While the ark of the Bill rests thus on the doubtful height of Lord Harrowby's shoulders, what other matters will follow the breathing interval of repose? A vast press of questions, deeply important in their nature: "the West India question;" "the Poor-laws;"" the Substitution of a Property-tax for those taxes bearing on industry;" "the Commercial state of the Country;" "the Currency Question;" "the Taxes on Knowledge;" all these are on the Order-book of the House of Commons ;*-all these will be discussed, unless, as they have done some four times, almost consecutively, during the last session, Ministers think fit to put the House of Commons in their pockets to keep company with the Peers that are to be ;-viz. unless Ministers refuse "to make a House." Be it known to the public, that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only days set apart for the motions of independent Members of Parliament; the other days are at the control of Ministers; and whenever, on the said Tuesdays or Thursdays, Ministers anticipate a troublesome motion, no House is made. The motion is dropped sine die; and every other day being already engaged, is probably lost for the whole of the session. This is a trick which savours more of the old system we are to get rid of, than the new one we are wading through fire and water to establish; and while it betrays the feebleness of the Government, it renders them yet more feeble by disgusting every honourable man amongst their supporters.

We cannot dismiss this subject without alluding, in terms of strong censure, to a most unwarrantable reply which Lord Palmerston is said to have made to Mr. Dixon, who had given notice of a motion relative to the Brazilian seizures. On the day the motion was to come on, there was no House! Mr. Dixon seems to have been in a passion at the "accident," and to have attacked my Lord Palmerston pretty sharply for this enlargement on the Roman policyહે Quum solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant." We do not blame Lord Palmerston for replying sharply in return: far from it, such retorts are parliamentary enough, Heaven knows! but we do blame

* And we are happy to say, that Bentham has penetrated among the Tories, and that Mr. Mackinnon has given notice of a Bill for the partial (?) repeal of the Usury laws.

him for this expression, which we would fain hope, for the honour of an English Cabinet, has not been literally reported:-"The honourable member had forgot himself in the importance he attached to himself and his motion, which was viewed with supreme indifference!”

Is it possible that any Minister should dare to tell a Member of the British House of Commons that his motion "was viewed with supreme indifference!"-and what motion? One that related to the property of British subjects the security of British Commercethe honour of the British flag; one that Lord Althorpe himself avowed, with that fair and gallant candour which forms the life of the Treasury benches in the Lower House, brought into notice "acts of a most gross injustice, and wholly unjustifiable on the part of the Brazilian Government." And this was the motion that the Minister for Foreign Affairs dared-we repeat the word-to tell a Member of the English Senate "was viewed with supreme indifference!" Pooh! this will never do! We will spare him at present; he has been too little down at the House of Commons not to have the excuse of recent inexperience in parliamentary business; but another such drawing-room impertinence, and my Lord Palmerston's claim to office must be examined a little more closely.

There is a great deal to admire in the better and higher portion of the Ministry that courage and patience in supporting the Billwhich do not appear to the Public virtues so extraordinary, considering that the fate of the Government depends on their exercise-are nevertheless rare virtues in men who are under the control of those conventional restraints and intimidations engendered in every Aristocracy. At Lord Grey's age, and to his susceptible and proud mind, the reproaches of men with whom he has mixed all his life, and who accuse him of destroying their rights as well as his country's constitution, are not to be despised by him with the same facility that they are by the people. But for certain other functionaries, whom we will not at present name, there are not the same excuses for policy far more vacillating than that which we believe to be Lord Grey's. Their minds have been radically cramped by the narrow commonplaces so dear to parliamentary wisdom. Alas! they have yet to learn that the Public and the House of Commons see things through a very different medium; they are compromising and conciliating one doubtful enemy where they are alienating fifty honest friends, and, like the wise man of Laputa, instead of walking out into the light of Heaven, they busy themselves with the ingenious speculation of extracting their sunbeams from cucumbers.

*Times," April 14th.

PASSAGES TRANSLATED FROM THE IPHIGENIA OF GOETHE.

JOY OF PYLADES ON HEARING HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE.

O SWEETEST Voice! O blest, familiar sound
Of mother-words heard in the stranger's land!
I see the blue hills of my native shore,
The far blue hills again!-those cordial tones
Before the Captive bid them freshly rise,
For ever welcome!-Oh! by this deep joy,
Know the true son of Greece!

EXCLAMATION OF IPHIGENIA ON SEEING HER BROTHER.

Oh! hear me, look upon me!—how my heart
After long desolation, now unfolds

Unto this new delight!-to kiss thy head,
Thou dearest, dearest one of all on earth!
To clasp thee with my arms, which were but thrown
On the void winds before !-Oh! give me way,
Give my soul's rapture way!-Th' eternal fount
Leaps not more brightly forth from rock to rock
Of high Parnassus down the golden vale,

Than the strong joy bursts gushing from my heart,
And swells around me to a flood of bliss-
Orestes! O my
brother!

FATE OF MAN AND WOMAN COMPARED BY IPHIGENIA.

Man, by the battle's hour immortalized,
May fall, yet leaves his name to living song.
But, of forsaken woman's countless tears,
What recks the after-world ?-The poet's voice
Tells nought of all the slow, sad, weary days,
And long, long nights, through which the lonely soul
Pour'd itself forth, consumed itself away,
In passionate adjurings, vain desires,
And ceaseless weepings for the early lost,
The lov'd and vanish'd friend!

LONGING OF ORESTES FOR REPOSE.

One draught from Lethe's flood!-reach me one draught!
One last cool goblet fill'd with dewy peace!
Soon will the spasm of life departing, leave
My bosom free-soon shall my spirit flow
Along the deep waves of forgetfulness,
Calmly and silently !-Away to you,
Ye dead! ye dwellers of th' eternal cloud!
Take home the son of earth, and let him steep
His o'erworn senses in your dim repose,
For evermore!

Hark! from the trembling leaves,
Mysterious whispers !-Hark! a rushing sound

Sweeps through yon twilight depth !-E'en now they come,
They throng to greet their guest!-And who are they?
Rejoicing each with each in stately joy,

As a king's children gather'd for the hour

Of some high festival!-Exultingly,

And kindred-like, and God-like, on they pass,
The glorious wandering shapes!-Aged and young,
Proud men and regal women!-Lo! my race,
My sire's ancestral race!

F. H.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE WEST INDIES?

SOMETHING must be done with the Indies! Yes: but what? Oh! fiat justitia ruat cælum, cries the Abolitionist. Let us alone, says the Planter, and we shall get on very well. The advice of neither is to be taken, decides a third: we must not emancipate, and ruin the Colonies: we must not leave the Slave in the power of the Planter, nor, what is more likely, the Planter in the power of the Slave.

The Fiat Justitia principle is, that the Slave is his own property; that to retain him, is to rob him of himself; to do justice, therefore, means to restore the stolen goods. The ruat calum which follows, is the establishment of another Hayti, and a race of Boyers and Petions : this is not a consummation to be wished, either for the blacks or the whites.

To do nothing in the matter, is a recommendation that cannot be followed, for all parties are in motion; and to do nothing, is simply to be left behind. The Slaves will be free, the Abolitionists will emancipate, and nobody temporizes but the British Government, the eternal temporizer.

The question is, undoubtedly, a scabrous one; and its discussion is rendered more difficult by the combined power of ignorance and eloquence that has been brought to bear on it. The contest has been one of bugbears; it has been who shall frighten the other out of the field. For this goodly purpose, there is scarcely any kind of horror that has not been tried. The result is, that both parties absolutely foam at the mouth, are bespread with the pallor of affright, and suffer under an excitement of the imagination extremely inimical to the progress of truth.

Now, as to a slave's right to be free. Do they who enunciate this proposition with the greatest confidence understand the nature of this right? It may be just as well said a slave has a right to be happy, and generally, that every man has the right to be happy. How many of us get our rights? That, it is true, is the best state in which the most of us have this same right. Freedom is said to be one of the grand constituents of this happiness; it is, however, a rare luxury. Look at the condition of three parts of the globe; three-quarters of the population of the globe may be divided into tyrants and slaves: in the countries more especially whence we derive our Colonial slaves, man is at a discount-life is a drug-blood is spilt like water, and always has been. The African tyrant says of his subjects, "Kill a few:" as the proprietor of a rabbit-warren observes to his friend with a fowling-piece over his shoulder.

Slavery has many degrees: in the extremest form, the slave is wholly at the disposition of the master, life, limb, and labour. This is the common idea attached to the word, and which ordinarily arises in the mind on the mention of the subject. The form in which it exists in the West Indies is a mild one, milder than the form of New South Wales. The master claims the labour only of an individual, and that labour is restricted in quantity. In return, he is supplied with ample subsistence, habitation, and attire. It is certainly an inconvenient form of society we are all slaves, more or less, but it is better that an abstract idea, necessity, should be the general master, and that no fellow-creature should be placed in that relation to another. The truth, however, is,

that though freemen are often changing their masters, they generally have one. Take the agricultural labourer of England, in the most favourable point of view: he shall have worked from dawn to sunset, Sundays and fevers excepted, for perhaps fifteen years, and under the same master. In illness, he has applied to the parish for the support of his family; in health, he has earned just so much as would purchase the necessaries of life. If this man were turned off by his employer, work being scarce, he would probably experience an interval of destitution, or at best, scanty relief: he would job a day here and there, at a low rate, and perhaps lose a year or more before he ensured a regular supply of the necessaries of life, by again falling into a place of constant employment. When his wife is brought to bed, he must have been provident enough, or starved enough, to have saved the doctor's guinea, or the doctor will not come; nay, will parley with him in the night, while the wretched woman is in the agonies of labour, to learn, before he stirs from his bed-room, whether the one-and-twenty shillings have been duly garnered in the broken pitcher on the shelf-the poor man's bank! True, at this time, the lady-patronesses of the neighbourhood are bountiful; they are charitable of caudle and condolence; but heavily falls the voice of condescension on the unhappy father. Here this man's labour is the property of no particular master-he would be glad if it were a commodity his master were bound to take-but is it his own? or is it not something, being his own, he must exchange, but is with difficulty able to meet with one who will take the burthen from his arms? Say what we please, such a man is the slave of any one who will constantly employ him. His only retreat from slavery is the parish-a worse slavery. There is much in a name. A Manchester weaver is similarly situated-the difference is for the worse; the filth, and vice, and uncharitableness of towns, being added to the chances of utter destitution. Here, as in other cases, the resort is the prison or the parish-the two great retreats of the noble Briton, whose flag flies from the groves of the Antilles to the jungles of Arracan!*

In the West India question, names have had far greater force than things. Cruelty is exercised everywhere-would it were not! Sometimes the iron is burnt into the soul, sometimes upon the back. The fact of our being contemporary with suffering, makes it neither more nor less; and the idea that it exists at the same moment with us, ought not to transport the mind beyond the bounds of reason. It is our duty to mitigate suffering and diminish cruelty wherever found; but one generation cannot do everything, and a too hurried course of procedure may aggravate the wound we would heal.

In England, a man is compelled to labour by the fear of starvation

We know the liberal opinions as well as the talents and information of our correspondent; but we are not quite satisfied with his comparison between the slave and the peasant for supposing them on a par as to the comforts they enjoy, which, we fear, is more than probable, we must remember, that slavery itself, on the one side, is a barrier to amelioration, which does not exist on the other. This is no inconsiderable difference: for to legislate wisely, it is not enough to provide for man as he is, but to see that there is no obstacle to his advancement and in all comparisons between one state of mankind and another, we must give the preference to that which, though not better in itself at present, affords the greatest facilities for being better hereafter. This we consider the true reason why there can be no just comparison between the free man, however impoverished, and the slave, however supported.-ED.