conflagration. The Europe of Charlemagne and What advantages, then, do we derive from the the Europe of the treaties of 1815, the Roman pa-possession of these remote and cumbrous colonies? pacy and all the western royalties are falling from We believe none whatever, except such as they their high places. Catholicism and Protestantism have had their day; faith is lost and reason has would yield, and to a far greater extent, were they entered its dotage; present order is impracticable, independent of us to-morrow. Mercantile profit future liberty impossible, and civilization falls by its own hands on the ruin it has made. The deluge is immense, but like a holy ark one empire still floats on its surface. Who will doubt its mission? Shall we, its children, be unbelieving and faint of heart? was the main object of their foundation; but our commerce is far more extensive with the old colonies which are independent of us, than with those for which we have sedulously and selfishly legis lated in pursuit of our own peculiar advantage. A quarter of a million of emigrants now quit the These extracts furnish sufficient evidence of the shores of the united kingdom yearly, but the great fact that Russia is awake to her interest in the majority of them find a place of rest, not in the present crisis. She is aware that this is a contest colonies which we maintain at a heavy cost, but having for its result, either that Europe will sub-in those which were once ours, and cost us mit to the domination of that rigid stolidity which the amiable convert of the Russian writer designates as orthodox-or that Russian countries themselves will be roused to adopt the liberal ideas and institutions of Europe. Russia would then cease to be herself; but the author, a prey to religious fanaticism, courts the contest with a bigoted conviction of the success of his party. From the Examiner, 19 May. ARE not the British North American colonies, one can hardly help asking, beginning reasonably to think that they are too old and mature to walk any longer in leading-strings; the cords held, too, by parties far too distant and uninformed to handle them with any adroitness? Our seven North American colonies contain at the present moment between two and three millions of inhabitants; in fact, a somewhat larger population than the "thirteen United States" at the declaration of independence; and if it falls short of the vigor of the Anglo-Saxon colonists of 1776, by the prevalence of a race of different European origin, it exceeds it by the absence of an African population of slaves. Each of our seven colonies, in fact, is sufficient to constitute an independent federal state; and some of them have a population equal to several of those of the United States according to the last census of the republic. Thus, Lower Canada is as populous as Massachusetts, Upper Canada is equal to Indiana, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are, each, on a par with Michigan. The total number of men borne on the rolls of the militia for the seven colonies amounts to very nearly 400,000, which would imply a total population of 2,800,000. Countries of this maturity are, unquestionably, quite fit to walk alone, and no one can hope that they can ever be well or satisfactorily governed at the distance of 4,000 miles. The tools by which we contrived heretofore to manage rather than to govern them, have nearly disappeared, one after the other. We governed them through the interests of a faction among themselves, and this has most properly vanished. They were bound to us by monopolies of our markets, and these have perished, one after the other, to the great advantage of both parties. nothing. As to the military strength of the empire, instead of contributing to, they obviously derogate from it, by scattering and isolating our force, and wasting our means. By a recent return made to Parliament, it appears that in 1846 the number of officers serving in Canada alone was 384, and the rank and file 6,101, making the whole military force 6,485. The cost of this force for mere pay and commissariat, excluding transport, dead weight, and fortifications, was £268,681. Thus is maintained and paid, from the pockets of the British people, an army for the protection of about a million and a half of people, more numerous and more costly than that of the United States for the defence of near twelve times the number of inhabitants. For the five years ending with 1847, the cost of the forces serving in all our North American colonies amounted to £2,646,094. If to this, which includes mere pay and food, be added barracks. fortifications, half-pay, and pensions, £6,000,000 would certainly not cover the charge. We may judge, then, what would be the expense of a war with a population as hostile and united as that of the old colonies in 1776, getting sympathy and assistance, not from a French population on the opposite shore of the Atlantic, but from an AngloSaxon one on the opposite shore of the St. Lawrence. With respect to the benefits which we, on our parts, have conferred on the American colonies, we are of Adam Smith's opinion, who, after a searching and impartial investigation, comes to the conclusion that they amount to one, and to one only. We have supplied them with the great raw material from which prosperous empires are constructed-with the man and his institutionsand, as the result has shown, we alone could do so. Had America been left to its native inhabitants, it would have now contained, as it did 355 years ago, only men that ate each other, or sacrificed each other on the altars of imaginary divinities. Had it been left to Spaniards and Portuguese, it would have yielded only a bastard civilization, not equal to, but much below that of any respectable European society. We hesitate not to say, then, that if we and the North American colonies could part in peace and friendship, the separation would undoubtedly be a gain to both, foretell the issue with any certainty; but the inparties, but more especially to ourselves. When terests of this country cannot permanently stand Lord St. Vincent was informed of the peace con- separate from the issue of the struggle between cluded with the Americans in 1815, his only re- the great political elements on the continent: as mark was, 66 I hope we have made them a present | victory remains with absolutism, dictating from the of the Canadas." White Sea to the Mediterranean, with republicanism prevailing from Venice and Marseilles perchance to Warsaw and to Moscow, or with the milder and more opportune influence of limited monarchy, the reflective consequences to this country must be momentous. In the progress of the struggle, the moral influence of England, backed by her material weight, might be very considerable, largely modifying the balance of the victory. What then are the resources with which England is endowed, to invigorate and enliven her action for the protection of her own interests-for the service of her allies, whose political intelligence and energies her friendship might develop-for the service of mankind, whose permanent interests are so largely at stake? Meanwhile it is our bounden duty to prepare the Canadas for a separation should it be inevitable, and the exercise of responsible governments is the proper training for this purpose. Lord Elgin is acting on this principle honestly, ably, manfully, and temperately; and it becomes every man of liberal sentiments in this country to support him against the senseless roaring of the colonial party egregiously miscalled "British." From the Spectator. THE PILLARS OF HERCULES. To be beaten on the navigation laws, is for the remnant of the old tory party to be exterminated; and Lord Stanley's brave stand is but like that of Orlando at Roncesvalles, where Charlemagne and all his host were laid low. In this country, then, the long-waged contest ceases between tyranny and freedom, between absolutism and liberalism. The right divine is a forgotten dogma; and the liberty of the subject is a title uncontested, and therefore no longer needing to be defended. The surviving differences concern degree, and not fundamental principles. All parties assent to the expediency of political reorganization, more or less general, more or less rapid. Chartism, Conservatism, and modern liberalism, have common doctrines, and only dissent as to specific measures. The abandonment of the navigation laws puts the finishingstroke to the old régime. Are we then entering a political millennium? Is Britain really the island of the blessed, where dissension ceases; where man will help his brother, each bent on promoting the common good of all, all of each? Hardly. Wakefield hazards a novelty in political economy in reörganizing any future for chartism and socialism. We have a long way to travel before we can even think of harmony as the rule of political life-a long and a doubtful way. Rather, we have entered upon a new and unploughed sea. Free trade and free navigation are the pillars of Hercules, marking the end of the region which we have known from earliest history, and the opening of a wide unknown ocean of the future. Under what circumstances, with what resources, what councils, do we enter upon that wide unsurveyed ocean! The subsiding of political antagonisms which we have noted in this country has not yet begun on the continent generally. Nay, we seem to be almost on the verge of a war between absolutism and freedom, in which the extremes of divine right and republicanism are likely to take an active part. That the doctrines of limited monarchy are rising in favor, is not incompatible with a very considerable amount of influence remaining to the two extremes. It is not in human knowledge to A difficult and doubtful question. Both as respects internal and external action, England enters upon the future under circumstances greatly altered. With free trade, we must henceforth openly and avowedly depend less upon home supplies, more upon foreign supplies: that is not in itself, commercially and materially, a bad thing; but it tends more to constitute trade the sole or chief basis of political science and action. Our statesmanship, abroad and at home, must more than ever turn upon the till. With the fall of the navigation laws we give up all pretension to our old colonial system; while by the conduct of our administration we are abandoning fot only the formula but the substance -the uses of the colonies, the colonies themselves. With the disuse of the navigation laws in keeping up a nursery of seamen we avowedly abandon a cardinal point in the maintenance of our navy; impressment too has probably become impossible; so that some wholly new expedient for securing an effective supply of seamen is imperatively demanded. But the want of certain measures is not the most alarming fact: one more alarming is the change which has taken place through the altered habits and avocations of the people, the bulk of which is no longer a maritime people. An Englishman is no longer a born sailor-nor one Englishman in ten, nor one in a hundred. Still that is not the most formidable change. With the abolition of "toryism" has expired the power of public organization by means of the government; but no equally effective faculty of organization has sprung up in its place. With the increased preponderancy of trading objects, the objects of national feeling have fallen into contempt: there is no reverence for the traditions of the past, no personal attachment for leading men, nor any other natural motive of spontaneous organization. The mechanical organization of "leagues" for special objects is a miserable substitute, without vitality or virtue. To crown our deficiencies, we have statesmen who show a total incapacity to understand the drift | upon him, ten to one he is only playing possum, of contemporary history-who boast ignorance of and will presently gather up his mangled remains the peril which menaces our colonies, think that and hobble off to his mud hole, there to meditate the special constables slew the dragon of Chartism upon the cruelty and inhumanity of man. on the 10th of April, 1848, and smile at the idea of any hazardous elements existing in our own society. Thus England is launched into the wide sea of the future without a maritime people, without nationality, without a policy. The following extract from a letter dated New Orleans, May 27th, we append as a finishing touch to the above picture: With the influx of water reptiles of all kinds have been driven into the city, and already many deaths have occurred from the bites of the venomous congar moccasin and rattlesnakes. Alligators of all sizes are about, but they will not be seen unNEW ORLEANS AMUSEMENTS. The people of til the waters commence receding. Night is made New Orleans, though doomed to a sort of am- hideous by the deep bellowing of millions of bullphibious existence, derive some advantages from frogs, and the shrill music of their younger breththe overflow, and adapt themselves to circumstan-able gentlemen have taken up their abode, and ren. Immediately under my window three venerces with commendable resignation. The Delta drive me almost frantic with their infernal noise. says: The fashionable circles have abandoned their fine coaches, with silver-mounted harness and English drivers, and taken to gondolas, vulgarly called skiffs. Gay parties of ladies may be seen in the afternoon fluttering in neat pretty little skiffs, which, with their snowy sails, skim pleasantly over the inundated districts. It is only requisite to adopt the guitar, and this, with our musical population, would be quite easy, to make New Orleans at present a fac simile of Venice. We observe one good effect of the overflow, in the abridged skirts of the ladies' dresses. Instead of the long, draggling, street-sweeping and gutter-skimming style of dress, our fair have adopted the more convenient, neat and graceful style of the Italian and French girls, who are not ashamed to reveal the beauties of well-turned ankles. The same paper describes in the following terms a charming juvenile amusement, which the crevasse has rendered at once convenient and abundant : Though the juveniles are somewhat pestered by the scarcity of solid ground on which to spin their tops-it being now the top season-they find ample compensation in the exciting sport of chasing the snakes and congos, that swarm in the immediate region. The water moccasin has come forth from his swampy lair, and now swims unconcernedly through streets that awhile ago rattled with the sound of carriage wheels, and as he proudly lifts his crest above the water, some snake-baiting and fun-loving urchin sends a piece of slate, a pebble, or a stick at him with unerring certainty; and then the viper, after a slight wriggle on the water, disappears, and presently his inanimate body rises again, his white belly shining in the sun, and our urchin hauls him in and bears him away in triumph, on a pole. Not so easily managed, however, is that hideous creature, the congo, with its horrible sharp body, and little, almost invisible legs. The congo is cautious and wiry. He has no spirit of enterprise-no adventurous turn. He will creep forth, no doubt, to gobble up some garbage-but he has always a place of retreat near at hand, into which he will wriggle before you can say Jack Robinson. His skin, too, is so tough that it might defy the spear of Ithuriel, and is perfectly impervious to the impelle telum of urchindom. Like an absconding felon he has to be caught before he is killed. And whenever the insatient ire of juvenility is wreaked They get into a narrow alley, and when all three get started, their bellowing and the echoes they wake up are enough to raise the dead.—Transcript. Dermot dear! And are you ready, darlin'? Turn round, and bid farewell To the roof-tree of the cabin that has sheltered us so well Leave a blessing on the threshold, and on the old hearthstone, T will be a comfort to my heart, when I sit there alone. And often at the twilight hour, when day and work are done, I'll dream the old time's back again-when you were there, my son. When you were there-a little thing that prattled at my knee! Long ere the evil days had come to part my child and me. |