American railroads. It is time that all this should end. Mr. Lever and the Galway Company made a great mistake when they abandoned or falsified their proposition to maintain British interests by a direct route vià Galway to and through our own possessions. Amongst others, Sir Allan M'Nab, a stanch and sturdy colonist, was deceived by these representations into an early cooperation with the adventure. Greedy speculation, coupled with shortsighted policy, is not always certain even of an immediate return. Before the Galway line is in full play, or properly established, it will be a question of a change of route, of which the speculators were fully forewarned. If, again, our supposition of the greatest and strongest Union that the world has ever seen, including the whole of the Lake territory, and all the continent of North America, from New Jersey, Arkansas, and California northward, under British swayif all this be a dream, and an insult to free and enlightened citizens (which last emphatically we do not mean), then there remains a second most important consideration before us. In British North America, as it is, there are room and resources for the most magnificent empire in the world. In British North America there exists that of which the united and disunited States cannot boast -a patent highway of communication and traffic between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Upon this, and its vast importance, we shall not now expatiate further than to say that it does exist. In 1850 a bulky volume was published by Messrs. Richards and Wilson, in which not only was the late royal visit to America and its good effects prefigured, but the union of our North American provinces dwelt upon at considerable length. The climate, fertility, resources, and facilities of an interoceanic communication within the limits of British North America were entered upon in this volume, which American journalism attributed to the British government, which sent Asa Whitney to this country, and which caused three separate explorations to be made of United States' territory, with a view of anticipating British enterprise in extending a broad belt of commerce and dcminion round half the globe. In this country the progress of the idea has been sure though not rapid. Truth on so vast a basis cannot fail to erect some edifice, be it palace or mausoleum, workshop or tomb. If the union of British North America be now accomplished, thus much is at least certain, that annexation to the Northern States of America will not take place. On the other hand, we have sufficiently prefigured the possibility of a far different issue. The annexation of the Old Country has long been a favorite topic among our free-spoken kinsmen. Surely, there can be no harm in reversing the situation, and in making every thing ready for them, should they at any time be disposed to annex themselves. From The Economist, 16 March. THE COMPARATIVE MONEYED POWER OF THE SLAVE STATES AND OF THE FREE. THE present state of America suggests many questions which before now no one ever dreamed of considering, and consequently gives many collections of statistics a significance and value which were not anticipated by those who amassed them. We are now constantly discussing the relative power of the Free States and the Slave States, we are continually estimating what the relative force of each will be in time of war, and what its capacity for commerce in time of peace. The vagueness of such speculations makes any accurate and systematic data very valuable, and it fortunately happens that we have one nearly complete set of figures which are exactly fitted to aid our understandings. In whatever respect America is defective, it is not defective in banking statistics. The Democratic government of the United States has exacted from the banks throughout its territory a degree of minute information which no despotism can exceed, and which seems the maximum of inquisitorial tyranny to an English banker. These statistics will now be of use to us. The moneyed wealth of a State is a reasonably approximate index both of its efficiency in war and its capacity in peace. And of its moneyed wealth the deposits in its banks are a fair comparative test. These deposits represent the floating capital which it is able to embark in any pursuit it pleases: they are the sinews which it can apply as well to the task of creation as to that of destruction. If a nation is poor in these accumulated resources, its efforts, whether military or pacific, will probably be weak. If a nation is rich in these, we may reasonably expect that its exertions will be effective and powerful abroad both in war and commerce. then, is the comparative strength of the Slave States and of the Free when estimated by this significant and searching test? What, The aggregate deposits of the whole American Union are a little more than £57,000,1000, and of this a very little more than one fourth belongs to the Slave States. The "New York of the South." enumeration is as follows:— * Alabama Delaware Florida Georgia Kentucky Louisiana Maryland are these, South Carolina The figures Deposits. £ 23,415,811 937,263 A very hopeless comparison for the novel and boastful aspirant. Deposits. 1,091,509 New York 219,650 29,141 1,066,115 1,274,150 4,450,008 1,996,690 We arrive at the same result if we compare the accommodation given to trade in the South and in the North. The loans and discounts of the four Free States which had lent the most were as follows: Loans and Discount. £ Kansas Territory . Pennsylvania Connecticut. 45,079,500 24,168,897 11,323,610 6,267,776 There are two very important reflections which these statistics will at once suggest at the present moment to the mind of every Englishman. The first is, that the portion of America which will be injuriously affected by the highly stringent provisions of the new protective tariff is far richer than the part which will not be so affected. Our wealthiest customers are in the Free States, and, with an absurd infatuation, those States are endeavoring to exclude the commodities they could best purchase from us, and are fostering a costly system of unhealthy protection within their own boundaries. It is not likely that they will be successful. It is not likely that the great grain-growing States of the interior will be content to be taxed for the exclusive benefit of the manufacturing and Nor does this comparison, instructive mining interest of their Eastern neighbors. though it is, give us by itself an adequate It is not likely, as we have elsewhere obimpression of the exact nature of the un-served, that they will be able to establish a equal rivalry which has at length arisen be- line of custom-houses over a great tract of tween the North and the South. The most country where such an institution is unknown. expressive parallel is to contrast the great Free State of New York with the Slave State of South Carolina, which already anticipates that its capital (Charleston) will be the There are no returns from Arkansas, Mississippi, or Texas, where the banking system seems to be very rudimentary and imperfect. California likewise is not in cluded. These figures are made up according to the return received nearest to 1st of Jan. 1860, the last date up to which the whole of them have been made public. Still, for a time the infatuated effort may have a pernicious effect, and we cannot fail to observe with regret that it will tend to impair our profitable intercourse with our richest Transatlantic neighbors. The second remark is of a different kind. The poorness of the Southern States in loanable capital will tend to attract that capital pointed by the Cabinet of Washington, to represent the views of President Lincoln, and he will arrive almost simultaneously with the rival mission from Montgomery. from hence. Already has this happened to states of Europe the recognition of their some extent, and "cotton bills" have even country as an independent power and to nenow been discounted in Lombard Street, gotiate with them commercial treaties on the which in former times would never, by any footing of reciprocity. These commissioners chance, have found their way there. We are now crossing the Atlantic, and in little may expect this call for our capital will more than a week they will arrive to comlargely augment. Cotton will still be grown mence their important mission at the court in the Southern States, probably for many of St. James. A new minister at the Brityears in enormous and augmenting quanti-ish court has at the same time been apties, and, as capital is scarce there, and the difficulty of getting it at the North must for some time be greater than it has been, we may confidently expect that it will be sought after here. This emigration of capital is The Southern States are confident as to natural and inevitable, and if it were not for the success of their mission, and their confithe peculiar structure of society in the dence is well founded. The principle of the Southern States of America it would not be British government is to recognize every de a subject for regret. It is natural and facto government, and the government of proper that the capital of old and accumu- the Southern Confederacy is as much an aclating countries should be transmitted to as-complished fact as is the kingdom of Italy. sist the industry of young and rising com- The Northern States-the old Union-may munities. Raw cotton is the most pressing not recognize the new Confederacy, any requisite of our manufacturing industry, and more than Austria recognizes the kingdom wherever it is to be raised probably Eng- of Italy; but they have made no attempt to lish capital must go to raise it. Such an in- resist its establishment, and if they do make terchange of benefits between new countries such an attempt they will assuredly fail. and old is a principal instrument of commer- Our government has no choice in this matcial civilization, and if we are wise we should ter. We have no desire to see any undue rather seek for its increase than desire its haste in the recognition of the new power. diminution. But the present social and in- Our government, out of courtesy to the Cabdustrial system of the Southern States of inet of Washington, may delay its answer America is too inseparably bound up with for a few days, until it is fully apprised of slavery to make it possible for us to rejoice the views and intentions of President Linat an increased connection with them. We coln. But any longer delay than is absodo not mean that there is any reason for ap- lutely necessary is most strongly to be depprehending a slave outbreak in consequence recated. We need not say it would be of present events; indeed, we do not believe unseemly that England, who so readily recthat an abrupt termination to American ognizes all governments, should be behind slavery is very likely to happen speedily France in acknowledging a state of her own from any cause. But with such a basis as kindred. It is enough for us that the Cabislavery, every social system must be un-net at Montgomery is a de facto government, stable and unsatisfactory; and it must be with regret that we contemplate the evident probabilities of a new tie between us and any industrial system resting upon an essentially false and dangerous foundation. From The Press,* 6 April. ENGLAND AND THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. THE hour is at hand when a new power will take its place among the states of Christendom. The British government has just made a formal recognition of the kingdom of Italy, and already commissioners from another new state are on their way to claim a similar recognition of accomplished facts. The government of the new Southern Confederacy of America has despatched three commissioners to obtain from the leading *The Press is D'Israelite-Tory. and accordingly entitled to be recognized by us as an independent power, with whom diplomatic relations have to be established and commercial treaties negotiated. The recognition of the Southern Confederacy cannot be avoided, nor do we desire to avoid it. The regret of the English people at the rupture of the American Union was a feeling most honorable to them, and which testified, in a most striking manner, the attachment and good-will of the parent nation to its noble offspring beyond the Atlantic. The regret was genuine and universal, and yet the calamity to the Union which we deplored was evidently favorable to our own interests, both political and commercial. When his house is divided against itself, Brother Jonathan can no longer bully us, as with generous patience we have so often permitted him to do. And also, with the establishment of a Confederacy of purely agricultural States in the South, the restric tive tariff of the old Union, and the still more restrictive one recently adopted, will no longer suffice to prevent the entry of our manufactures into the American continent. Free-trade pure and simple-free-trade of the most absolute kind is opened to us by the new Confederacy; not as a bait-though it is a powerful one-but because such a commercial system is of all others most in accordance with its own interests. Even our shipping interest will benefit largely by this change in the political organization of North America; for the Cabinet of Washington will find it hard to maintain any longer its preposterous assertion that the maritime traffic between New York and California is a portion of its "coasting-trade." WE do not think the debates either in the Senate or the Corps Legislatif_can be quite pleasant to the emperor. To hear himself denounced as the enemy of the Church and the tool of England must be far from agreeable. To hear it said that he has lost all hold over the Italian movement and weakly permitted France to be entirely surrounded by kingdoms of the first order, cannot be agreeable to any Frenchman, least of all to a Napoleon. But we think there are several counterbalancing advantages which so shrewd a politician as the emperor will not be slow to discern. And these we will attempt to point out. In the first place, then, it will do much to set him right with the other governments of Europe to exonerate him from the charge of having stimulated a selfish and greedy spirit in the French people. It is only candid to admit that the more we hear of the true political aspirations of the French people, the more highly we appreciate the difficulties of the French government, and the more credit we are disposed to give it for the generally liberal course it has taken in Italian affairs. It would certainly seem, not only that the emperor was driven on by the public opinion of France in the annexation of Savoy and Nice, for that we knew before, but that it exerted a great pressure upon him to carry out a thoroughly French policy in Italy, that it would have obliged him, if it could have done so, to force the Villafranca treaty on the people of Italy, to defeat the plans of Garibaldi, to take an active part in the defence of the King of Naples, and to maintain by French arms the temporal authority of the pope. All this, as we learn by the divisions and debates in the French Chambers, would have been a highly popular policy in France, would have gained for the emperor the enthusiastic support of all the women and all the priests, and, in consequence, the active if not the enthusiastic support of a very considerable number of the men. We cannot deny, in the face of the strong opposition which has manifested itself in both Chambers, that the emperor has at least represented a policy of a more moderate, a more statesman-like, and a far more liberal cast, than that which would have gained him the greatest popularity at home. Nor is it difficult to imagine that in acting as he did about Savoy and Nice,-nay, even in breaking, as he did, his pledge to give Chablais and Faucigny to Switzerland, he might have been carried away by a selfish tide of public opinion which he thought too strong to resist. Certainly, from the three most discreditable features of the French Opposition, the dread of a United Italy, the hatred of England, and the subserviency to the Papal See,-the emperor's policy has shown itself far more free than the opinions of the nation at large would appear to be. In foreign policy at least, there has been far less divergence between the actual diplomacy of the empire and the views of such men as M. Jules Favre, than between the recommendations of the latter and those of the party represented by M. Plichon, or M. Keller. If the debates, then, were of no other use to the emperor, they would at least do much to explain the difficulties under which he has labored in attempting to reconcile the wishes. of France and Italy. We do not suppose that it was disagreeable to him to annex Savoy and Nice, nor that he was glad to see the terms of the Villafranca treaty cast to the winds,-but we do now know that if such had been his feelings, he could scarcely have dared to express them openly and without finesse in the present condition of French opinion. There is so large a mass of that opinion far more illiberal than that of the emperor's government, that the actual policy of his government seems benignant and wise in the comparison. Already the fruits of this debate are telling on the English press, and papers that have been for years pleading for the stifled opinion of France against the tyranny of the empire, are now,-not certainly deploring the new freedom,-but devoting all their strength to defending the policy of the empire against the opinion of France. A French Opposition that openly declares for war with England, cannot but in some measure gain over English opinion to the side of the French government. Another advantage resulting from this USE OF FRENCH DEBATES. so 443 new freedom of invective will be, that it advantage to the ministerial officials of the must soon evoke an unofficial party in de- empire that they should be obliged to plead fence of the more liberal acts of the French the cause of the government before a veheGovernment within the nation as well as ment French Opposition. Hitherto no caboutside; and nothing, we know, would inet in Europe has been more contemptible than the so-called French cabinet, which mere staff of secretares. strengthen the imperial government much as some really independent support. was indeed a Sometimes their views have Previously the true Liberals were too anx- Often perhaps they have had no views of ious for a still more liberal policy in Italy, their own. -were too anxious for a still closer co-op-been known to be at issue with those of eration with England, to appear as advo- their master. They have regarded themcates of the French government, and they selves, and consequently have been rewere, moreover, too much disgusted with garded, as the mere tools of his will. This the restrictive interior policy of the em- can scarcely remain the same, or at least peror for such a step. But it is of the es- can scarcely remain so much so as before,sence of a violent Opposition to condense if once the ministers acquire the habit of the ranks of the supporters of government, identifying themselves with the government and the French Liberals cannot help giving in an assembly where free discussion is perfar warmer support to the foreign policy of mitted. The result is, and must be, to imthe empire than they have ever been dis- bue them far more thoroughly with the polposed to give to its policy before, in the icy they defend, than any of their purely face of such assaults. No doubt, too, this official duties can be conceived to do. In advocacy of its foreign policy will to a cer- the warmth of such argument a certain tain extent induce the government to con- amount of genuine conviction is generated, cede something to the same party in do- even where it did not exist before, and we mestic policy, so that little by little the are sure that the debates in the French emperor may gain a band of really inde- Chambers will result in giving Louis Napendent supporters, if the Papal and anti- poleon a better and more coherent-minded English party are foolish enough to perse- cabinet, if he choose to use it, than he ever vere in their invectives. Again, it will be, we think, a very great had before. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, HAD SHE A DAUGH-| TER?-By a strange coincidence I had just been reading Mr. Reid's curious paper on Mary and Douglas of Lochleven (antè, p. 50.) when I met with a bookseller's catalogue in which Castelnau's Memoires are spoken of as the only book containing an account of Mary's having given birth to a daughter by Bothwell. I was about on the instant to send off to "N. and Q.," a Query as to the fact; but on second thoughts first referred to its indices to see if it contained any thing upon the subject. I was rewarded for so doing (as one generally is for doing right) by finding a long and valuable Query by A. S. A., in the sixth volume of the present Series. A. S. A.'s paper seems almost to settle in the affirmative his own inquiry; but not so completely, I dare say, as to satisfy those who think the beautiful Scottish queen could do wrong. A. S. A.'s Query has, however, not called forth a single reply. You have among your many learned correspondents one at least no (I mean J. M., who has done so much in your columns to illustrate Early Scottish History and Literature) capable of throwing light upon this will indulge me with the small space necessary very curious point of history, and I hope you to recall attention to it by the present communication.-Notes and Queries. PASQUINADES.-Would Cuthbert Bede, or some other correspondent who has turned his attention to the subject, furnish the readers of N. and Q." with a list of the rival publications to Punch? If the entire list should be too long for insertion, one supplemental to that in the Quarterly, would be most acceptable to many.-Notes and Queries. ADAM WITH A BEARD.-Can you inform me if there is any picture or statue by old or modern artists and sculptors in which Adam is represented with a beard?—Notes and Queries. |