The question of Free Trade was a much | qualifications. Nine-tenths of the House of clearer one. Here it was not real power so Commons were ignorant even of the alphamuch as supposed wealth that was at stake. bet of that science; its own teachers were It was not political influence which had de- not wholly agreed about its doctrines; and scended to them from their ancestors, but the country at large knew scarcely more of artificial prices which their own legislation them than its chiefs. We have no right, had secured, of which it was proposed to therefore, even in imagination, to charge the deprive the country gentlemen of England. advocates of commercial restrictions with Hence it was much more difficult to persuade any heavier accusation than that of being either themselves or others, that in strug- rather duller to learn, and rather slower to gling against the repeal of the Corn Laws admit new views than their opponents. They they were contending for any thing more were not dishonest, but arrièrés. noble than their own pecuniary interests. A gain. We have witnessed in the last It was a question, too, much more of simple five-and-twenty years changes in party comscience. Its solution lay much nearer the sur- binations scarcely equalled for magnitude and face. It required profound philosophy to strangeness by any other period-severings judge of the remote and collateral bearings of of friends and junctions of foes, such as seem Schedules A and B. It needed only sound ele at first sight utterly bewildering and unacmentary views of political economy to esti- countable. "Consistency," in its old sense mate the effects of unrestricted importation.-i. e., steady adherence to the same alliThe lessons of experience could be appealed ances and the same political connections-has to in the one case: there was no experience been set at naught by nearly every man of to guide us in the other. Moreover, it any great eminence or merit. Lord Grey, seemed difficult to believe that any thing save indeed, ended his career before the confusion obstinate and wilful blindness could resist began, and Lord John Russell and Sir Robert the lucid arguments, often amounting to ab- Peel never sat in the same Cabinet. But solute demonstration, which year after year those are nearly the only "constants" of our issued from the press, from the cross recent party history. Sir James Graham, benches, from the treasury and opposition almost a Radical, sat for some time in the benches, from Wilson, from Villiers, from same Cabinet with Sir Robert Peel, the colCobden, from Peel. Yet nothing can be league of Lord Sidmouth, Lord Liverpool, more certain than that most of the oppo- and the Duke of Wellington. Lord Derby nents of Free Trade were honest to begin was first the vigorous assailant of Peel, then with, and that many remained to the last his colleague, then again his foe. He sat sincerely convinced that Free Trade would first with Lord Grey, then with Lord Grey's be the ruin of the country, destructive to great rival. Lord Palmerston, once the collandlords, fatal to farmers, pauperizing to la league of Peel and Canning, is now the colborers. To be convinced of this, we have league of Russell and of Molesworth. only to remember how slowly conviction Foreign Secretary of Lord Grey and the Fordawned, even upon the minds of the liberals; eign Secretary of Lord Grey's antagonist sit how few years have elapsed since the idea of in the same Cabinet. Sir James Graham and the total abolition of the Corn Laws was Lord Derby were once fast friends in office, scouted as monstrous by the leading Whigs; then fast friends in opposition, then leaders how many of them dreaded it to the last; of opposing parties. They sat together under in what year it was that Lord Melbourne Lord Grey; they sat together under Peel; pronounced it," before God, the wildest and one now sits with the Coalition, while the maddest scheme he had ever heard of;" and other leads the Tories. We might go through when Lord John Russell refused the petition a long list of similar incongruities. Scarcely of its advocates to be heard at the bar of any man has not changed sides, changed the House of Commons; how in 1841 he opinions, changed party associates. Yet wished for an import duty of eight shillings; scarcely any man has lost character by so and how he and Sir Robert Peel were only doing, because scarcely any one can be sefinally and completely converted in the same riously suspected of having done so from coryear and by the same fearful visitation. The rupt or indefensible considerations. The only truth is, that the principles of political eco- desertion of party that is regarded as an nomy have made their way into parliament-" apostasy," was that of Mr. Scarlett, Canary life only at a very recent date. Till ten years ago, an acquaintance with them was considered no necessary part of a statesman's

The

ning's Whig Attorney General, who could not make up his mind to leave office when the Tories came in. The reason of the general

estly or conscientiously maintained: but the country has given him plenary absolution. even for this unparalleled tergiversation. The nation reveres him as its greatest statesman, and reveres him in spite of, or rather in consequence of, his apostasies,-acknowledging them to have been the apostasies, not of the renegade, but of the convert.

amnesty that has been passed for all acts of party inconstancy, is, that all, or nearly all, are believed to have been honest-or rather, perhaps, that we have ceased to consider "consistency" as primâ facie a merit. So many new, important, and difficult subjects have in these years come under discussion on which it is felt to be impossible that all colleagues should agree or all antagonists differ that unchanging adherence to one set of men would have been suspicious rather than creditable. It is felt that men who agree about retrenchment may naturally differ about religion; that men who agree about Parliamentary Reform may differ about foreign policy; that men who agree about the corn-laws may differ about the Church ;-and that, in such cases, it is quite right and honest that they should coalesce when one set of questions are under discussion, and separate when another set come upon the tapis. Further, during the last quarter of a century the national mind has been in a state of progress; questions are better understood; sound principles are more diffused; we have been educating in political science; truths which formerly were perceived only by the few are now reached by the many; opinions which formerly were scouted are now almost universally adopted. It was impossible that statesmen should not participate in this advance; it was impossible that they should all participate in it in equal degrees; it was impossible, therefore, that they should always adhere either to their old opinions or to their old colleagues. Those who think what they always thought are become laughing stocks; those who stand where they always stood are self-condemned: they convict themselves of having stood still. No, men in our time have been so steady and consistent as Lord Eldon and Col. Sibthorp; and the one is looked upon as the incarnation of obstinate blindness, and the other of ludicrous eccentricity. On the other hand, no man changed more completely or on more important questions than Sir Robert Peel; yet he is now reverenced, and justly, as one of our honestest and wisest statesmen, because it is felt that he never changed except reluctantly, from conviction, and to his own injury. The bigots, whose shield and glory he was so long, were furious with him for finally conceding emancipation to the Catholics: we know now how ample, cogent, and disinterested were his motives for that great apostasy. The country gentlemen, whose champion and trust he was for years, could not forgive him for surrendering however, includes many items scarcely to be cona cause which he felt could no longer be hon-sidered as pensions in our sense of the word.

From low pecuniary sins our age is, we may say, entirely free. We have spoken of the flagrant jobs which were perpetrated in former days. We have given statements of the emoluments of great men in the days of Marlborough and Walpole. The pension list, even in the year 1829, contains much to astonish weak minds. Its sum total was above £750,000:* it is now limited to one-tenth of that amount. We find in the list of "places, pensions, sinecures, and grants," published in 1830, six Bathursts, with aggregate receipts of £10,715; four Beresfords, with £6700; five Dundases. with £9700; the Duke of Grafton holding £10,280 in three sinecures or pensions; and several similar facetia. Nothing of the kind could be found now. It is, alas! scarcely possible to do a job, or to find a sinecure. The salaries of public offices have been largely and, we think, unwisely reduced. The first Lord of the Treasury has been reduced from £7430 to £5000; the Secretaries of State from £6000 to £5000; the Viceroy of Ireland from £30,000 to £20,000. No Cabinet minister receives above £5000 a year; whereas (as Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell informed the "Official Salaries Committee") it was formerly an understood and established practice for these ministers to combine some comfortable sinecure with their appointment, by which means their emoluments were often doubled. Thus the Prime Minister was generally also Warden of the Cinque Ports; and from this and other sources his official income was often very large. Lord North, Mr. Pitt, and Lord Liverpool all held this sinecure in conjunction with the Premiership. Lord North's official salary was thus £10,400; Mr. Pitt's £11,400; Mr. Addington had £7400; Lord Grenville, Lord Liverpool, and Mr. Canning each £9000; and Mr. Percival £8700. In these days no minister would dream of appointing himself to any sinecure office with a view of augmenting his salary, even were such sinecures still in existence. In former times, too, these sinecures and an unlimited pension-list afforded, as we have seen, to ministers an opportunity * Extraordinary Black Book, p. 401. This sum,

of providing for many members of their fam- | charges of sinister behavior are felt to be not ily; and so universally was it understood unnatural, nor, when directed against Engthat the opportunity would be so employed, lishmen, of much importance. When Irish that it was reckoned as part of the ordinary members assail their own countrymen, pelt emoluments of office. In 1810, the number them with native mud, and trot each other of sinecures was 242, and their emoluments out for the diverson of the public, the House reached to £279,486 a year; by 1834 they listens sometimes with amusement, sometimes were reduced to £97,800;-they do not now with weariness, sometimes with belief;-when exceed £17,000, and are in yearly process of they accuse English statesmen of conduct extinction. In the reign of George III., the which in Ireland might be possible, we listen pension-list of the three kingdoms exceeded with incredulity and disgust. The prevailing £200,000 a year; even at a later period than feeling on such occasions is, however, one of 1810 it was £145,000: it is now limited to pain and indignation at exhibitions which tend £75,000; and no more than £1200 can be to assimilate the tone of an assembly of gengranted in any one year." tlemen to that of a rotunda of unbridled Celts. With the exception of these extra-national

more and more introduced into public discussions. Men accustomed to meet in society, and cognizant of each other's estimable qualities in private life, cannot well treat each other in public as infamous delinquents; and as each man's standard of political morality and range of political vision is amended, he is less likely to deem his antagonist either rogue or fool.*

The vice of virulence and acrimony is far from being as completely weeded out of pub-proceedings, the amenities of social life are lic life as that of corruption. Party warfare is still disfigured by occasional displays of bitter feeling and reckless accusation, belong. ing more fitly to a ruder age. Noble lords and honorable gentlemen still indulge in taunts and invectives alike indecorous and unjust. Men who live in houses of glass still sometimes throw stones, and get their own windows broken in return. But, on the whole, the chief sins in this line are confined to those whose birth and education exempt them from the expectation of good breeding; or to the immigrants from the sister island, whose indecent language and wholesale

*The above facts are gleaned from the Report and Evidence of the Official Salaries Committee which sat in 1849-50.

*When savage things are said now, they are commonly in the form of a bon mot. It is now many years since this story was told in the House of Lords:-A nobleman holding a high judicial situation, for some reason or other, at a Lord Mayor's dinner, returned thanks for "The Navy," when that toast was given. "C!" (called out a brother judge to him)-"what business have you to return thanks for the Navy Navy is not spelt with a K!"

From Dickens's Household Words.

FAITHFUL MARGARET.

hearts were worshipping with them before the holy shrine of nature.

They had been on the balcony for a long time, looking out on the scene before them; Horace resting against the pillar, and Margaret standing near him. A curtain of creep

THE moonlight was lying broad and calm on the mountains and the lake, silvering the fir trees massed against the sky, and quivering through the leaves of the birch and the ash, as they trembled in the light air which could not move the heavy horse chestnut growing by them. The call of the corneraiking plants hung far down, and their leaves from the meadow, and the far-off barking of threw Horace into deep shadow; but the a sheep-dog on the fells, were the only sounds moonlight fell full and bright over the wothat broke through the evening stillness; man by his side; yet not to show any thing except whenever now and then the plash of that art or fancy could call lovely. oars in the lake, and the subdued voices of and care worn face, with nothing but a pair men and women gliding by, recalled to the of dark eyes lying beneath the shadow of a listeners standing on the balcony, that other broad brow, and a mass of raven hair resting

A grave