HAWKE'S BAY.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 285, 13 July 1860, Page 3

HAWKE'S BAY.

(From the Herald.)

Masonic Bali,.—This ball in spite of wefe and dirt came off (although the communication with the interior was all but stopped) in the Council Chamber. It was decorated with good taste, and neither money nor trouble was spared. The number present was eighty-three, of whom we are sorry to say, only twenty-five were of tlie fair sex, and of these no less than twenty had entered the matrimonial state. But these did the ' light fantastic' with such devotion, that the disparity of the sexes did.not throw a damper on the proceedings. The supper was laid out in a manner that could not be surpassed in the colony. The toasts were ' The Queen and the Craft,1 c The three Grand Masters,' 'Poor distressed Masons,' ' Masons all round the Globe.' ' The Ladies' was given by Brother Gill, and responded to in a speech by Brother Tucker who said that he believed it was the usual course to select the youngest bachelor to return thanks for the ladies, and probably the selection of himself was intended as a compliment ; or perhaps it was thought he ought to take the hints, and look out without further delay. "Were that the intention, he was sure he was willing—' Burki3 is willing;' lie should be only too happy to do so. Some more toasts were givendancing resumed till morning was far advanced, and yet many left the room with reluctance. Land Sale.—On Tuesday last, pursuant to public proclamation, a sale of land was held at the Crown Lands Office, Napier. The lots in the township of Havelock were all sold but one —25 sections realising .£IBB pounds. Nearly the whole sold at a considerable advance on the upset price, the maximum being £14. Of this township only three lots (Nos. 45, 55, 71) remain in the hands of government. The suburban lots offered were all knocked down but three—the prices ranging from £2 10s. to £6 per acre, and the amount realised for 8 sections, £339. The agricultural land was all sold at ss. per acre to the original applicants—there being no competition. Amount realised (i. c. nine-tenths of the purchase-money) .£7lB 53.

Attempted Suicide.—On. Sunday evening kst, a man named George Haggard, aged 39, late a seaman on board the barque Snaresbrook, but morb recently employed in one ot the road parties in the interior, attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat. The unfortunate man, who was under the influence of delirium tremens, had obtained access to a box opposite Ferrers* hotel, used as a hairdresser's shop, and, with one of the razors lying about, inflicted a deeply incised wound about three inches long, immediately above'the 05 hyoides, and wounding the maxillary artery. Dr. Hitchings, who was engaged upon a case at the spit, was nevertheless promptly in attendance and dressed the wound. The patient, in the meantime, had lost a good deal of blood, and was much exhausted. On the following day, he was removed to the hospital, where he stiil remains. Total Abstinence.—A meeting was held at the School-house, for the purpose of forming a Temperance, or rather Total Abstinence Society, which was presided over by the Rev. P. Barclay. After the chairman had explained the object of &c meeting, a resolution was proposed and carried, Jgthe effect that it would be desirable to form sich a society, and that its name should be ' The Hawke's Bay Total Abstinence Society.' Some 15 or 23 names were then taken down by the chairman as those who were willing to become members. At this stage of the proceedings some confusion was manifested in the meeting, and several speeches both for and against the object in view, were delivered by different speakers. The confusion not having abated, the chairman dissolved the meeting. At its close another was formed of those who had given in their adhesion to its principles, when a secretary and committee were appointed. We trust this young society may do much good in our town and neighborhood. The Weather.—The long continued drought which characterised last summer, has been fully compensated for by the heavy rains of the past few weeks. The effect of them has been to saturate the parched up soil, and to flood the rivers to an extent such as has not been seen for some years. The township of Clive has been completely under water, and much damage we fear, has been sustained throughout the country. Yesterday, the weather had a more settled appearance than it has had for some time, and we hope that a succession of fine days will relieve the dull monotony of unceasing rain. The punt has twice broken adrift from the force of the stream, the second time yesterday morning, when the post to which the rope was attached was torn out of the ground™the punt having had a narrow escape of going out to sea with punt-man and passengers. The late 'robbery, and the prospect of a long winter with trade dull and employment scarce, have directed attention to the subject of the police, which, as a body, does not enjoy the confidence of the public. Individually, the members of the force may do their duty, But there is an obvious want of proper organisation. This want wai3 the subject of discussion in the council during last ses- . sion, and provision was made for the salary of a sergeant of police—such a salary as it was hoped would secure the services of an efficient man. Burglary.—Between the night of Saturday and morning of Monday last, the office of the Director of Works was broken into, and a sum of £9 odd in silver abstracted from a press in which it had been deposited. Mr. Wright, it appears, after paying the men on Saturday, removed the surplus gold and notes, but left on this one occasion a quantity of silver and copper. On reaching the office.on Monday morning, he found that the window had been wrenched open with a 'jemmy' or some similar instrument; and upon entering, he found the office in a state of disorder and missed the bag of silver—nothing being left but the coppers, which the thieves did not, seemingly, think worth the labor of removing. There is no clue, so far as we are aware, to the authors of this depredation. The state of the streets after the late heavy rains is really deplorable. Carlyle Street in many; places is a perfect ' slough of despond, and in either of our leading thoroughfares a loaded cart is in some places down to the axles. Milton road issaid to be a more impracticable thoroughfare than before being repaired; and Carlyle street and Shakespeare Road are certainly not improved by the labor expended upon them, lhe cause is in a great measure the late period at which these repairs were begun; but surely works of so comparatively trifling a character might have been cxe~ cuted with more promptitude.

CANTERBURY. {From the Lytleltou Times.) LYTTELTON CHAMBER OP COMMERCE. A special general meeting of the members of this Chamber was held at Mr. Alpovt's rooms yes- . tcrday afternoon according to notice. Mr, I. T. Cookson occupied the chair, and a large number of members were in attendance. Tne minutes of the previous meeting were read and the chairman announced the object for which the present special meeting was convened. The Committee's report upon the question submitted by the Wellington Chamber of Commerce on the subject of the Banking Laws of the Colony was then brought up, and the following memorial to his Excellency the Governor upon the subject | was after discussion agreed to :— MEMORIAL. To His Excellency, Colonel Thomas Gore Browne, Companion of the most Honorable Order of the Bath, Governor and Com-mander-in-chief in and over the Colony of New Zealand and its dependencies, &c, &c. The humble memorial of the Lytteltqn Chamber of Commerce respectfully sheweth,—That your memorialists believe it to be essential to the progress of commerce and to the general interests of the community that Banking operations within the colony of New Zealand should be relieved from those restrictions which vmder the existing laws prevent the issue of notes, and thus virtually preclude the establishment of local or other banks, excepting such as possess a Royal Charter. That your memorialists believe that the 'Paper Currency Ordinance, 1847,' and the ' Bank Paper "Cunency Act, 1856,' obstruct the free use of colonial capital, which might otherwise be employed in supporting banks within the colony. ■ Your Memorialists therefore pray that during the next session of the General Assembly your Excellency's Government will introduce a measure to enable public companies or other parties to form banks and issue notes throughout the colony, under safe conditions. And your memorialists, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c. The draft memorial was adopted -unanimously on the motion of Mr. Campbell, seconded by Mr. Buckley, and was ordered to be engrossed and forwarded to his Excellency through the usual channel. Copies were also directed to be printed and sent to members of the General Assembly and to other Chambers of Commerce in the Colony. At the suggestion of Mr. Buchanan, the Secretary was requested to take an opportunity, prior to the departure of. members of the Assembly to Auckland for the present session, of addressing a circular letter to each, recapitulating the action by the Chamber and the resolutions passed during the year, showing the opinion of the mercantile community in this place on subjects likely to come before the Assembly for consideration.

It has squandered its .English Army in the Crimea ; it has lost its Indian army;, it is invading China ; it has currency laws rendering equivalent for it bankruptcy and invasion. There is for it no God in heaven, as is Bhown by its bloody deeds throughout the globe; and there is for it uo friend on earth, as a conseof these bloody deeds. Finally, ifc has no sense; for it is busy now, not in redeeming the time and repenting of its deeds; not in making reparation for its acts, and thereby restoring its state, but in getting up Rifle Corps meetings! • Faithfnlly your 3, . D. Urquhart.

With respect to an intimation of a rise in freights by steam vessels between Lyttelton and the river, conveyed in a notice of the Canterbury Steam Navigation Company's proceedings in our last, we were requested to state that both the Avon and the Mullogh are still running at rates generally the same but in some cases below those advertised by the Planet. The reduced rates on some goods were adopted for a time, but were never considered permanent and were therefore never published. The public generally, and the members of the Volunteer Rifle .Regiment in particular, will have been surprised to see their names appearing in the long list of persons liable to serve in the Militia of this Province, which has dragged its enormous bulk through our pages for a fortnight at the rate of 600 names an issue. We' are not informed whether the Militia is to be called out, or whether the publication of the list is to be considered as only a caution. We hardly think that the Government can mean actually to levy troops of defence for this Province under compulsion of law: but it has been done in Nelson, where, as Well as in Auckland and Wellington, the Militia service has grown to be very heartily disliked. We have here about 400 able men now or to be enrolled in the Volunteer Corps, and ready to turn out if required; surely Militia are not also wanted The present number of our volunteers is a fair per centage (about one-fifth) of all the men liable to serve in the district; if they had not enrolled themselves, and the Militia had been required, scarcely so many would have been wanted under arms. Those who have enrolled themselves as Riflemen need not be alarmed at finding their names down on the Militia list, for they are in company with a good many others who from, various circumstances are exempt. Volunteers are especially protected from being called out as Militiamen, and the differences between the two corps are very marked. The former choose their dress : the latter are ' equiped;' the former select their own officers: the latter have to serve under whomsoever it may please the Government to appoint;- and the appointments which have been made in other provinces are no slight cause of annoyance to the public. Again, the Militia will have the felicity of popping away with the ancient and futile musket, the distance and direction ot whose carrying powers will ensure the safety of any enemy; while volunteers are to be armed with a very efficient tool.' Militia must turn out, drill, and serve under compulsion of the Mutiny Act, being liable to be treated as deserters for neglect of drill duties; Volunteers are not only saved from more than 20 days' drill in the year, but they have ■ also an option as to the time; and absence is condoned either by a good excuse or a money penalty. Who is he, then, that would be a Militiaman ? As to the list, omissions and mistakes of any sort can be rectified on application to the Juslic«3 named in the notice, on or before the 26th of this month. ! Road Scraping.—Picking our dirty way through the sludge covered streets of Christchurch, we cannot do otherwise than heartily wish that our road conservators would apply themselves to the cleansing of the ways of the people. The means appear to be sufficiently obvious, and would be wholly inexpensive. The water retained in the sludge with which the streets are now covered, is constantly filtering thence into the material of which the road is formed, and disintegrating the traffic bearing arch, which those materials have arranged themselves into. The consequence is, that the wheels of the passing carriages cut through the surface of the road, and the whole becomes a bog, and when the dry weather comes, has to be re-covered with road material. Keeping the surface of the road clean would prevent all this disintegrating process, and the roadway would have only the wear caused by the traffic to be repaired. This desideratum of clean roads, has an obvious remedy in regular road scraping, whenever required. Three or four men with proper hoes and shovels would be quite sufficient for the work, and with the use of carts, for the removing of the scrapings also. Every village in England employs its road scrapers in dirty weather, from motive» both economical and cleanly, and cannot the city of Christchurch afford to do the same ? The result of such street cleanliness here would be, that our ways would ■cost less for repairs, and the wayfarers thereon travel comfortably with clean clothes and even 1 tempers. — /Standard. 1 We have been requested to mention for the satisfaction of northern sheepfarmers that a. dog which has worried many of the flocks in the northern districts for some years, was killed on Sunday last by the shepherd of Mr. Hillyard, on the river Eyre. This dog was swift and crafty, having long defied the attempts to capture him of some known riders. He is supposed to have been an escaped sheep-dog. It is reported that wild dogs (escaped from the domestic state) are much on the increase in the Nelson province; this should stimulate sheep owners to be prepared for such ! visitors by establishing a breed of hounds, for which purpose a cross between the greyhound and boll terrier is recommended.

THE RIFLE CORPS OF ENGLANp. (addressed to a london clergyman.) My dear Sir, I am much pained that our conversation was broken off yesterday by the announcement of dinner. And faint and imperfect, when not utterly useless, as a substitute for the interchange of human thoughts ias is the pen, still, failing the other means, I must use it for my present need. . I have to render reason for what I said in reference to using epithets in the case of the Bifle Corps, as destroying the value of the proposition itself. Your proposition was, that the joining a Rifle Corps made a man better or worse; contingent upon a full possession of the circumstances under which they were created. In' conveying my sense of the value of this proposition, I used the word " miracle;" that is to say, something not only admirable in itself but of such rare occurrence as to be out of the ordinary course of nature, and equivalent to a divine interposition. . Herein converged two paths untrodden in our times, and, iudeed, for more than one generation before us; one logical, the/other reli gious. The first laying down a method by which a given subject shall be approached; the second laying down that all duty is a religious duty, and that every duty is to be logically examined before it. can be conscientiously performed. The enunciation, however, was called forth only by the ignorance of the nature of the assumed duty in question; and the very injunction conveyed was, to examine and fiud whether it was a duty or not. An examination involving labor the most difficult and abstruse, if not impossible ; being as you have characterised it, a full and accurate possession of all the circumstances in.which this nation has been involved for a quarter of a .century. But if at this point you characterise the Rifle Corps by applying to them^ epithets, whether reprobatory or commendation, cadit questio? We then relapse into the ordinary condition of the nation; which is, arriving upon, every subject, at a conclusion without inquiry made; except that in their ease, the idea of inquiry has never so much as presented itself. . It was in this sense that I said to you, just at the moment that our conversation wag broken off, " You have arrived at the point where you want me." Yon have reached to the pomt —a wonderful one for apy man without the diplomatic circle to arrive at—that you don't kuow where you stand, and that it is needful for you to know it. Unless you happened to fall in with some one who did know and would tell, the inevitable consequence would be, as in millions of instances repeated, that the desire of being right would be crushed by the impossibility of being so. And this is the history of all speculations, religious, and political. 1 I mentioned to you having once before met with a fellow-countryman, like yourself, with the sense of right in his mind. I have lost sight of him for years. He must have lapsed Into the nation. He was a curate of Dr. Hook's at Leeds; but on my first meeting him, I think in 1842, he mentioned to me this incident. Mr. Gladstone had called upou him to ask for his vote, whereupon this conversation occurred : Q t « Have you not denounced the war in China as a crime ? Jl % —"l have. q "Were you not a member of the administration which received the money exacted as an indemnity from the Chinese ? A.—-" I was. Q.—« Do you consider me to be a man and a Christian ? A, —" Certainly. Q. —« How then can you come to me to ask me for my vote ?. You are one with whom, aa a man, and as a Christian, I can have nothing further to say." I refer to this incident for two reasons. First, to show by the singleness of the exception, the universality of that corruption, which, agreeiug with me in its nature, you hesitated to admit as to its extent. Secondly, to show that where the eye is single, no depth of study is required to appreciate the nature of the acts, which the placing of men and money at the1 disposal of this land, enables it to penetrate. Our task—l have pride iv using the word " our," if you will permit me—is to couch the eye so that it shall see, and not to assemble the figures for the sight." That, of course, is also to be done ; but it is of no avail if the first is left undone. I now wish to recal another of the remarkable expressions of your sermon, which had also escaped your own memory, but which had raade so deep an impression on some of your hearers. I give it to the best of my recollection, as you repeated it in this house last week. " Whilst you (members of the Rifle Corps) remain in this ignorance, how can you tell whether your embodying of yourselves, may not be producing the very danger against which you arm ? May this not be a scheme to lead to invasion by provoking the passions of other countries?" What renders these words still more remarkable is this, that when you spoke them, you were, of course, under the impression that the rifle and volunteer corps, were capable of arousing some passion, of the nature of animosity. Whereas, the reverse is the fact. The Rifle Corps are An active instrument in bringing about, an invasion, and that by arousing a passion. But the passion is cupidity. For they are a standing, and insuppressible exhibition, being the contemptible failure that they are, of the powerless-, ness of England to defend her shores. I have been repeatedly urged to write something on the Rifle Corps. I have refused to do 80. I have been urged because several of our fellow-laborers have been tampering with them. My refusal was grounded upon this: ,Thafc if it was necessary to warn the bird against the snare laid before its face, there was none in whom you could trust. To you I can give my reasons, although not to them. '■•• The grounds of our association are twofold,— the will to do right in our own hearts, and the knowledge of the wrong that is done by others. That wrong, in its. gross and aggregate cha> racter, is a felonious government. Those ■in office ordering the felonies to the soldiers, sailors, and diplomatic agents, servants of the Queen, and paid by the people, and. who are sent about the world to commit the felonies,> leaving no portion of that world bloodless and unpolluted. There is not one who has been'engaged with me for the last thirty years, who is not so on the grounds of his perception, that the license thus

accorded to the Admiralty, the Horse' Guards, and the Foreign Office, brings upon himself, aa upon every one of his fellow-citizens, the guilt of that which is done by;; those offices, amongst others, that of murder, in so far as he strives not against it. That it, moreover,- brings upon each, one of tbe subjects of the Queen, not striving against it, the extinction of th 9 character of citizen, and of gentlemen, as much as it brings upou them the extinction of the character of Christian ; whilst there are other penalties of a seculiar nature, affecting alike those who protest and those who consent, affecting alike the innocent and the guilty:—which are,—pressure of present taxation ; increase of debt; ultimately anarchy and convulsion; insurrection iv our streets, death of individual friends and relatives, dismemberment of territory, foreign wars and invasion, and at length national extinction. I have not ceased to put the case in tbi3 form. "You must put down your Foreign Office, or you must, reduce it to obedierioe to the laws. If you will not put down your Foreign Office, or if you will not raise above it the Law, then must you put down your Army and Navy. An irresponsible Foreign Office, if it be deprived of arms, will not injure you ; an army and navy will not injure you,: if you obey the laws. But if you will retain a felonious Foreign Office, and place men and ships at its disposal, this empire must and ought to •! perish." Never has one of these men dissented from these propositions; never have they been uttered by me without vehement applause—l will not say from those engaged in the same rank—but even from the uninstructed multitude. Repeatedly have I heard tens of thousands of voices joining in spontaneous an<l unanimous cheers when they have been uttered in their hearing. Therefore, failing to impose the restraints of law, it becomes our chief business to deprive the Government of arms; and this is what we have been actually engaged in. What then must be the condition of those who, professing still to be thus engaged, not only" go and do something else, but make that something else a Conscription; volunteering to the Government a "blood tax" beyond the amount forced from us by the vote of a servile Parliament. For me, at tbi'3 moment, there exists, and has long existed, a cause of troubled conscience; namely, the payment, without resistance, of money in the shape of taxes, which are used for such unlawful ends. This trouble has also its counterpart in the minds of others. Recently I have had several communications from persons so situated. See, then, the perdicament of a body of men separating themselves from the nation because of that nation's wickedness, some of whom are writhing under the guilt of unresisted payment of taxes, and others of whom are voluntarily contributing additional sums to the hand which they know and declare to be that of an assassin. But putting aside all that we know, the case on its very surface tells its own tale. When in 1806, the country armed for its protection, there was war with France. There is no war at present. The Governments profess to be on the best of terms. No rational being could look at the subject for two minutes without coming to the conclusion, or to the hypothesis, as you have placed it. For a , rational person would have instantly to ask himself, "On what footing are the two Governments ?" Either the English Government dreads an invasion from France, or it does not. If it dreads an invasion from France, it must come to a rupture with France, and take other means for its protection. If it does not dread a rupture with France, then it must put a stop to the Rifle Corps, which are a standing insult to France. Now, as the Government have prompted the Rifle Corps just as they did the Indian Relief Fund, they have been propagating the idea of a French invasion throughout England. And the effect being to demonstrate the utter deficiency of military means and spirit, they have concurrently propagated in France the idea of the iuvasion of England, by presenting the English nation.to them at once as suspicious and powerless. It is, therefore, in its very face a snare—a snare not laid by a fowler for a bird, but by the shepherd for is own flock. Again, glance at the progression of military establishments. We have three epochs. The feudal; when the people was armed a*\d the Government was not. The Constitutional; when, despite the patriots, enlisted troops became standing armies; but to whom orders were still issued from the legitimate authorities, who were held responsible for the lawfulness of the orders. We have now arrived at the third stage ; a .stage in advance of any ever reached by any people before us—that in which the executive can use at its own absolute caprice the forces of the people in defiance of the law, either as. restraint or puuishment; in defiance of the Sovereign, either iv a supreme or consultative point of view; in defiance of the people, either in respect of their will, as lo what is done, or their vengeance for disasters, thafc may ebaue. There have been, before this, dark pages in the history of man, but their gloomiest portraitures extended no further, than to a tyrant ambitious, or a people lustful. Out of this abomination of'a people bloody, without jwill, ambition, or lust, men arise out of its very hideou3ness into the assertion of justice as a remedy, as well as a maxim, and these men go down on their craven knees to offer to the managers of the tragedy the service of their uniforms and the iucense of their coin. : •..-.... | Our religion, making sacramental the abjuring of evil, converts the assent to evil into sacrilege.. It is upon this ground that, in a wordly seuse, I say, on ■ the Church now rests alone, the safety, of the State. : 'For no man,.can dare t.o place himself agaiusfc worldly wrong, except a new berth has taken place in him.- , When, some years ago, I contested the borough of Sheffield, a placard was issued signed by every clergyman belonging to the Established Church in the place, calling upon their flocks to give me their support as a matter of conscience amongst these clergymen, amounting to about a dozen, there was, of course, /every variety of political opinion After the election these gentlemen dined with me, and the Rector laughingly; put to me this question ; "What fascination-have you created over us to bring us all to one mind, and to make us do a thing so perfectly at variance, with all our habits and ideas ?" I answered: ,thus: "You looked upon, me as a- political person; you' made then the discovery -that I was engaged in that which was your mission— the reproving of sin. The wrong of mw

to' man being the sin of man against h ls Maker." : ' , ■■:.■:■■, One word more, and I have done. We have rejoiced this morning. At. a meeting for the establishment of a Rifle Corps in St. Pancras,. the protest- of one of our number hag had the effect of inducing one of those present to join a Committee. We rejoice over the rescuing of a single soul from out the generation in which he lives, and; we do so from the knowledge of what has passed within ourselves when the like conversion has happened to us, not because we are; told that the angels rejoice over the reclaiming of a single sinner. I have been speaking of the matter in reference to particular incidents;—the case taken by itself, however stands as follows :— A people arming itself acknowledges danger; danger is the breakdown of your whole system. The rational conclusion is to examine the position in which you stand. Instead of this you go to arm; you no longer fancy yourselves in danger ; your self-love imposes upon you the belief that you have averted the danger. The argument of danger is lost by the act that is hastening the danger which you had commenced by believing. I have been for thirty years telling this people that it was in danger, and have been laughed at for my pains. They now jump to the same conclusion, and pass from indifference, not to sense, but to idiotcy and frenzy—to idiotcy, because it is nothing else to believe that England, a country destitute of all natural and artificial means of defence, can resist an army such as France can land on her shores. Even in the former times, when Englishman was armed, and when the country did present natural obstacles to an invader from the absence of roads, what invasion has ever been repelled ? Our early history is a series of succesful invasion. England was the prey of every wandering pirate until she became a maritime Power. ' An island such as ours, looked merely in a geographical point of view, is gone as an independent state from the moment that it becomes a question of how she is to defend herself; her only possible defence lies in her power of injuring those who may wish to attack her, and in so acting amongst the nations of the earth as to make it their iuterest that she should be free and powerful. It is only within the memory of us both that both these defences have been broken down. At the beginning of this century England had afleet superior to that of all other maritime powen united. She had not given away by a voluntary act, the means of coercion that such a fleet could exercise—the destroying the commerce of her enemies. At the conclusion of the French war her position was unparelleled. There was but one other Power besides herself that came out of it anscratched both in territory and in character (I do not count those fictitiously created as its result). That Power was Russia; and it was over that very Power that she had during its continuance, most triumphantly exercised her maritime control, and proved that she lay at her mercy. What I refer to is the known fact (only that nothing is known now-a-days) that the Emperor Paul was put to death because he declared war against her; so certain and deadly was the ruin to the Russian landed proprietors of England's privateers stopping their trade. So ended our only war with Russia until that one which we began by suspending the exercise of our rights over the commerce of our enemy—that commerce at the time being Russian—and ended by converting the temporary and internal act into a perpetual regulation and that in the shape of an engagement with Foreign Powers. By standing aloof from the Holy Allianoe; by setting her face against the pretentions of the greater Powers to govern the lesser, and against all interference by any state in the internal concerns of its neighbors, she was guarded by the second defence to which I have alluded. Independent states look to her for defence; France herself amongst the number, and all from the same Power. For, in the words of Chateabriand, "Napoleon had bequeathed Europe to Alexander." If, then, she emerged out of the struggle—the most unnecessary struggle with Napoleon—so powerful, notwithstanding her load of debt, and waste of blood, what would have been her position when ! the enemy she had to meet was one absolutely at her mercy, and one with no friend ? making a step in advance, only just so far as she was j able to deceive, and doing so, to cajole or to threaten. What has happened? Not that England has not acted against Russia, but that, ever in activity, she has done her work for her, whether in Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Poland, Hungary, France, Persia, Central Asja, Spain, China, India, North and South America—everywhere. The change since 1854 is that not merely have we lost respect and confidence, but for such feelings have been substituted both contempt and hatred. What I now am writing is plain to every child that does not live on this side of the channel. What must be the effect upon them of seeing us, at the same moment, avow our defenceless state, and rush to repair it by praotising at targets, making speeches, and putting ou uniforms ? . Yet all these considerations as regards the immediate subject are rendered entirely superfluous by another. It is this. England is now not merely a commercial system but a credit.system, and a currency system.' Even in 1797 the mere rumor Of invasion stopped payment at the Bank. And men are found to discuss the question of 'the power of resisting an invasion now, when it only requires the fall of a few per cent, in the Funds; the rise of a few per cent, in the Bank discount, to produce bankruptcy—-and bankruptcy means not ruin, or even revolution, but cutting each others throats for bread. If you do not clearly/ see this, go by rail from Manchester, to Bradford, and picture to yourself, those mills closed, and their swarms of occupants, instead of. attending upon, their engines, hungry in the streets. !. . Does any one of these creatures, made in God's image, who,attend these meetings, consider any one of these things ? ; Is there anything in his mind save the passion, the vanity, the competition of the hour? And yet here is a people wholly destitute of the individual discipline/dexterity, hardihood, experience which. constitutes a warlike raoe imagining that it is in danger, and, that it. can be saved by its individual arm. . .;:. It has no fastnesses,; no mountains,* no morasses, ,no sandy wastes, .no impassable rivers, ,no tribe associations, po depandenc^a of suDetiQrity; no fortieses j ft has W'wajj*