be favourable, well and good, if otherwise there is a deficiency in the crop, and consequent loss to the planter. In the Brazils on the contrary, larger extents of ground are yearly brought into cultivation, and the supplies at their market seem to keep pace with the demand. The greater portion from both these places is taken for the United States, in which for some years past a short-sighted policy has been pursued, in throwing their sugar plantations into cotton grounds. The result is that with a rapidly increasing population America is becoming totally dependant upon other countries for this necessary, while it has all the means of production within herself. The government have recently seen this, and have sent out a commission to obtain specimens in order to ascertain which description is the most calculated to resuscitate the fields; those sent home however, have turned out quite worthless. At present her traders are visiting our West Indian colonies, and in some instances last year bought up the whole produce of an island, sugar, rum, molasses and all.

When the Emperor Napoleon formed his plan of crippling England by the issue of the famous "Milau decree," the production of sugar from beet root was encouraged in France and Holland

247

The

by every possible means, and to this day the manufacture of it in these countries gives employment to a considerable number of the population. quantity made, however, goes but a small way to supply the total cousumption of either country. Since the failure of the grape vintage in France, it has been found more profitable to use the beet for distillation than in sugar making, and it may be doubtful, from the improved methods of obtaining spirits from it lately introduced into this country, whether the greater portion of the beet will not in future be employed for making spirits rather than sugar. In Great Britain also the experiment has been successfully tried, and in Ire land some extensive works were erected at Hillsborough, for extracting sugar, which, we believe, were abandoned chiefly from the Excise restrictions. A small trade is now carried on in the south of Ireland.

Viewing the whole subject, it would certainly appear that to the East the West must look for the supply of the necessary article. At present the production hardly equals the consumption, which might be indefinitely increased were free trade principles strictly carried out.

THE ELECTIONS.

The

MATTERS move so rapidly now, that while last month we had a Parliament with four or five months expectancy before it, we have seen it rebellious, prorogued, dissolved, and its successor nearly elected, before that month closed. The Earl of Derby's resolutions on the China question were defeated in the House of Peers. But a facsimile of them, correctly photographed but coloured differently, was carried on the motion of Mr. Cobden, in the Commons on the 3rd March, by a majority of 16. The majority consisted of Cobdenites, Derbyites, Peelites, Russellites-a mixed multitude, like the Samaritans, and possessed of no better right to the Treasury benches, which they thought to usurp, than that people to the mountains of Israel. The Peelites had favoured Viscount Paimerston with a vigorous opposition during the session. They are actuated by ecclesiastical as well as political enmity. "The Church is in danger" of becoming evangelical. Premier has given all his dioceses to eminent members of that section of the establishment. Another diccese is nearly vacant, and a similar selec tion will be made. The author of that very dull book, the "Church and the State," and of several fancy budgets, was moved to the deep recesses of his rhetorical spirt by this "pernicious" administration of those good things left yet by the ecclesiastical commissioners to the church; and upon a consultation with Mr. Roundell Palmer, he determined through the session to imitate "the implac. able" in a gale of wind, and be busy. His old friend and contemporary, Lord John Russell, was out of temper, because nobody wanted him, and the world moved almost as if he were out of the world; and he was ready to take his chance of a storm although it might blow hard. Sir James Graham was consulted, and, with a drop of the old blood still warm, he was found ready as usual for a border row.

Mr. Cobden and his friends heard that blood had been shed, and they offered their rewardsnamely, a majority, place, and two quarters' salaries to the men who would run down the manslaughterers-always excepting the actual perpetrators of the crime, who could not be expected to catch themselves.

The Derbyites believed that they had set traps for every party, and they have been grasped tightly by their own springs. Some faint hope was entertained that the Premier would resign in disgust. Another faint hope existed that the Queen would not dissolve Parliament at this season. Measures were adopted to secure the largest quantity of speaking, even if the worse came to the worst. During February, the Government had been badgered respecting duties upon

income, upon sugar, upon tea, upon paper, and upon pepper. In an evil hour, they had resisted Mr. Locke King's very reasonable motion for an extension of the franchise to £10 tenants in counties. The odium of that blunder-down with the war-peace, economy, retrenchment-these were thought good cries to wake up the country.

Parliament was dissolved, and immediately the Earl of Derby's friends perceived their mistake too late to recant. A number of their usual followers refused to vote condemnation of the policy adopted cordially by all our representatives in the Chinese waters, and approved by merchants and missionaries residing there. Even their old and vigilant whipper up, Major Beresford, rebelled, and ran from London.

The feelings of the mercantile classes were expressed in addresses to Viscount Palmerston. Lord John Russell's name was omitted from the list of candidates for the city of London. That omission he decided to correct, and he has been successful in obtaining the third place on the poll, by a well organised canvass, the votes of Conservatives and Jews, and the hourly statements of his committee that he headed the poll, which apparently he never did. Considerable changes have taken place in the metropolitan representation, but they are upon the whole favourable to the Ministry. Many well known men will be missed in the new Parliament. Mr. Cobden left the West Riding and lost Huddersfield, Sir E. Armitage lost Salford, Messrs. Bright and Gibson lost Manchester, in each case by majorities against them of fifty per cent. Mr. Layard is rejected by Aylesbury, Sir Joshua Walmsley by Leicester, and Sir W. Clay by the Tower Hamlets. Mr. Roundell Palmer is a severe loss to the Peelites and Puseyites, and he did not attempt to retain Plymouth. Mr. R. Phillimore lost his old seat, and failed to gain one at Coventry. Sir James Graham had a close run at Carlisle, and was only saved by the friends of the late Manchester school, although no coalition occurred, but a fortuitous concourse of atoms.

The author of "Eothen" has obtained a seat for Bridgnorth; Mr. Oliphant, who is another and a justly celebrated writer on the East and Oriental lands seeks a seat; and we hope will not long seek in vain. Sir Henry Rawlinson was proposed for Greenock. He would have done honour to the constituency; but Mr. A. Murray Dunlop recalled his resignation; and, as one of the few able and active Scottish members, he was re-elected

although he has given several unlikeable votes in his time. The two former members for Edin. burgh, Messrs. Black and Cowan, were returned with a little grumbling, which is cheaper than polling. The Lord Advocate was less fortunate

at Leith, and had a hard contest. Leith naturally looks for a commercial member; but it has been the Lord Advocate's burgh-whatever Whig was Lord Advocate, since the Reform Bill. At present it is represented by the ablest of the series. Dundee has lost the services of the steadiest member of the House of Commons, who never missed a division; and taken Sir John Ogilvie, a new member, in his place. Mr. Thompson, the late member for Aberdeen, has also retired, and the northern city having no person connected with its local interests, sent to England for a choice of gentlemen. Why could the city not have followed the county, and taken the second, and politically the superior son of the Earl of Aberdeen? Has the Hon. Arthur Gordon become much too libe. ral for the granite constituency? He has lost his election for Liskeard, which he would have gained if he had not voted against the Govern. ment when he should have voted with them. was the stupid vote of a promising man. The se cond son of another Prime Minister, Mr. F. Peel, a member of the Government, has been displaced by a local liberal at Bury.

It

Glasgow, which should send exemplary men to Parliament, has taken two of its older merchants, and made candidates of them-not the best way to be well represented; for old gentlemen, unaccustomed to nightwork, are altogether in the wrong place in the House of Commons. Liverpool is divided against itself, as usual, upon everything except Viscount Palmerston's foreign policy. Among the missing men whom we can ill afford to want, is Mr. Apsley Pellatt, who unfortunately went with the majority on the Chinese question, and has lost Southwark-but he was a careful and useful member; and Major Reed, who retired from Abingdon, and stood rather late for Finsbury. Still that constituency derive no credit from their preference of a gentleman whose public services are totally in the future tense, to another, by whose strenuous exertions the agitation against the extra Income-tax in the current year was rendered effective, and to whom the country might have looked for an alteration in the principle on which that tax is levied.

The new Parliament will be less Conservative and more Radical than any of the line from the Reform Bill; and it will produce a new Bill if the people do not continue in an apathetic state.

As for the discipline suffered by the Manchester school, it comes, according to Mr. Duncombe, of Finsbury, from the determination of the country not to have foreigners always represented in the right, and our own countrymen always in the wrong, in our own Legislature.

THE CHINESE QUESTION.

The vote against the Cabinet on the Chinese question by the Commons afforded great satisfaction to several Continental Courts, and very much surprise to the people. The results were not gratifying to the combined opposition. They did

249

not expect a dissolution, but a resignation; and they were met by the former. The Parliament was five years old, and in the ordinary course of the Septennial Act, must have expired of inanity in fifteen months; because a Parliament never lives to its legal age. The Queen adopted therefore a constitutional and a natural step in acceding to the request of the Ministry for a dissolution. The intention to dissolve was suspected in some quarters even on Tuesday night (the 3rd), before Viscount Palmerston addressed the House. No mistake could have existed respecting the course to be taken before he sat down. On Wednesday, the intention was generally known. On Thursday it was announced officially. Before that evening it was also known that the measure would be effective. A requisition was in preparation to the Premier from London. The commercial classes in Liverpool besought him to abide by the Government. The Chamber of Commerce in Manchester repudiated the course adopted by their representatives. The West Riding of Yorkshire, the greatest constituency in England, had taken Mr. Cobden's rash notice to quit. The people of Glasgow were on that day engaged in an election, but either of the candidates was prepared to support the Government. Other mercantile communities imitated Liverpool. The merchants of London connected with the Oriental trade addressed the Premier. London, Liverpool, Hull, Manchester, and the West Riding offered him a seat. True to Tiverton, his quiet old borough, he gave no encouragement to flirtation in politics, but the purpose was not less effectually served.

A greater mistake has not been committed upon any topic in recent times than that of the Chinese war. The people evidently feel that the foreign policy of the nation cannot be safely made subservient to factious purposes. Even the smaller constituencies rebuke the conduct of those representatives who have been led astray by a "maudlin" sympathy for the executioner of the seventy thousand heads-the number of decapitations ascribed to Commissioner Yeh in one year.

The people evidently think that, if we have formed a treaty with the Chinese, they should observe the terms; and if this treaty provides for personal communication between their authorities and our representatives, that it should be enforced; that if the Arrow possessed a British flag and register, they should be vindicated, even if the dues upon the paper had not been paid to the moment of attack, seeing that Commissioner Yeh had no copy of the colonial cash-book, and never acted upon this pretext; that the employment of colonial and native shipping is essential at places like Hong Kong and Singapore, and is impossible if men and property-even if both be nativecannot be covered by a British captain and registry; and that any pretext for rescuing twelve men, against whom no crime was imputed by Commissioner Yeh, from decapitation, because one of them was supposed to be a rebel, is not a sin so

grievous and unpardonable as to require Parliamentary censure.

All the speakers bore testimony to the high moral character of Admiral Seymour. The opponents of the government endeavoured to set forth his praises in more glowing terms than its supporters. For that reason Sir James Graham and others assigned to him only a subordinate place in these proceedings. They said that he was bound to obey Sir John Bowring. The history of these negotiations and proceedings published by Parliament, however, shows that he was a party to every step, and the public at large believed that if this officer merited the brilliant character for humanity and all the virtues ascribed to him unanimously, he would not have sanctioned a course of action which merited reproach.

Consul Parkes was designated by Mr. Cobden during his speech, a clerk, who might obtain celebrity at some unknown period. This was an error of speech, because nobody is less likely than Mr. Cobden to consider a clerkship in any way calculated to prejudice a man in Parliamentary estimation, even if this be the correct description of a British Consul in a foreign port; still the error wrought on the mind of a nation of shopkeepers and tradesmen, of whom many, like Mr. Cobden himself, feel honoured because they have made their way in the world to an arm-chair from a stool.

Sir John Bowring was assailed bitterly by the opposition of all ranks, from the Peace-at-anyprice party to the Russellites, from the Derbyites to the Peelites; but Sir John had crotchets, like everybody else, in his youth and manhood. The Earl of Derby and his followers in the Peers described him as an "unfortunate," suffering under the monomania of desiring an entrance into Canton. In former times it appears that he laboured under the monomania, in other people's estimation, of supposing that a sinful world can be governed by good advice. Sir John was a conscientious member of the Peace Society. In his early dealings with the Chinese, he was deemed too favourable to the flowery people, or rather, to their authorities. These facts are not considered by the public aggravations of, but rather as apologies for, his proceedings now; upon the ground that he must have seen the absolute necessity of checking the conduct of those parties among the Chinese, who having decapitated seventy thousand rebels in one province, could not consider that a few Europeans were likely to prove hard nuts to crack, and were under temptation on that account to crack them.

blue books teach. As Mr. Disraeli once said, England does not love coalitions." That is so true that the public, giving credit to the Peelites for submission to foreign dictation; to the Russellites for envy and uncharitableness at the moment; to the Cobdenites for mistaken sincerity on one point; gave none to Derby and Disraeli, except for ambition manifested unscrupulouslyhaving no doubt whatever that three-fourths of the majority would have found a pretext for bringing Com nissioner Yeh to a reasonable state of mind, under the discipline of their own friends.

The Earl of Shaftesbury brought forward a motion in the Peers on the 9th ult., against the opium trade, but abandoned it. The proceeding, however, allowed the Earl of Albemarle an opening for the discussion of the trade of spirituous liquors in this country, which he did very effectively.

The great difference between the opium of the Chinese and the beer of the English, the spirits of the Irish, and the whiskey of the Scotch being that our beverages render a man mischievous, while opium turns him into a useless animal.

We understand that the 93rd and 90th Scotch

regiments, the 23rd Welch Fusiliers, and the 82nd regiment, each 1,067 in strength, have orders to embark for China, at Portsmouth. The numbers are given exclusive of officers, and the force may be estimated at 4,500 men, including officers. They will be accompanied by 1,100 Royal Marines, and the ships Sanspareil, of 70 guns, 620 men; Retribution, 22 guns, 300 men; Transit, 4 guns, 190 men; Sidon, 22 guns, and 300 men; the Himalaya, 2 guns, and 188 men, and the Assistance and Adventure. The intelligence received from China at the close of the month, may alter these arrangements.

FOREIGN.

The public verdict on the whole question at home is also clearly expressed in this way. gentlemen be appointed to conduct our affairs at distant stations, they must be treated with confidence, and supposed to know more of the measures necessary at their own doors than other gentlemen, not naturally cleverer or mentally more endowed, who know nothing more upon the subject than

supposed that he is wiser. More recent proceedings, however, tend to show that Mr. Buchanan wants a pacific Presidency.

Diplomatic relations between Austria and Sardinia have been suspended at the instance of the former power; but no serious evil is expected.

The peasantry of Gallicia and some other districts of Poland have arrived at the conclusion that the world is to terminate on the 13th June next. The worst of the matter is that they will not work, deeming that unnecessary.

The Parisians suffer in a moderate way from similar fears, originating in the suspicion that the great comet which gets in our way every three centuries or so, will be upon us this year. Even in London certain people, we have heard, are not comfortable on the subject.

Astronomers are uncertain that the comet will visit our neighbourhood before 1860; while other scientific men, who know the whole particulars of the subject say that it can have no imaginable weight-neither four ounces nor four pounds. The government of the universe is happily not exposed to accidents or collisions. That is perfect; and comets, when they appear, will keep their own path in space-which will not cross the earth's

route.

A new line of railway-new, especially in its plan-has been brought out. The cost of the railway will be half the common price in the more costly portions, and generally little more than one. fourth. The traffic will be carried at a slower rate than by heavy engines on expensive lines; but the cost will be small, and the line will bring down the produce of the Himalaya slopes, and the fertile regions between them, Delhi and Meerut, to join the Punjaub line and the Indus river.

It gives the example of a speed with which, a few years sinee, any part of the world was satisfied for passenger traffic, applied to the conveyance of produce where water carriage is not available at a similar rate of speed, aud at a cost which consumers or growers can afford to pay.

An unfortunate event has occurred near Bushire, resembling the battle of Toulouse. The British forces attacked the Persians and drove them from their position, with a loss in killed of nearly seven hundred men. The battle was fought after a treaty had been closed here, and before it could be known there.

A run of brilliant contests at the hustings have not helped the Government so much as five minutes at the telegraphic station. The Emperor of China, according to the electric current, has instructed Commissioner Yeh to make peace on the British terms. So the mission of the Earl of Elgin ends.

COMMERCIAL.

The weather for the month hitherto has been cold; but the corn markets have receded, while this week rice has advanced slightly.

The funds during the month have been remarkably sensitive, and dullness was the general cha

251

racteristic of the market for securities. Towards the close, however, there has been more business done, and, owing to the pacific intelligence from China, the funds experienced a rise.

There has been a considerable demand for money during the last ten days, but without any change in the rate of discount; this has now totally subsided, and accommodation is easily obtainable. The arrivals of gold have been extensive-a very small portion of which, however, has found its way to the Bank of England, the bulk baving been taken for the continent, to meet the great demand for silver for the East, and which is still going on in anticipation of the 4th proximo; neither is it considered probable that the drain for this purpose will subside, since, until further notice, arrange. ments have been entered into to forward mails fortnightly to China, when beside the ordinary commercial requirements, the expenses of the troops will have to be met. The wants of India also seem to be increasing from the new undertakings at present in progress, so much so, that the idea of having a double standard is again seriously mooted, in order to meet any scarcity of silver, which it is feared may arise in consequence of the heavy shipments. The Credit Mobilier, at Paris, have also been large buyers of that metal to pay their instalments for the Austrian railroads. Though but little of the gold so recently come in has been taken to the Bank of England, the stock shows but a trifling reduction, the withdrawals from that establishment have been supplied, partly by sovereigns received from Australia, and partly from the payments made into it on account of the public revenue. Early this month a large sum will be thrown into the market from the dividends, and on the 8th of May, the first series of Exche. quer Bonds, to the value of two millions, will be cancelled. Besides these two items tending to ease, several ships from Melbourne are so near at hand as to be shortly due.

Among the mercantile failures is that of the London and Eastern Banking Corporation.The losses will fall upon the shareholders, of whom we regret that there are several native merchants of Bombay and Calcutta. So far as we have yet read the details, it appears to us that the shareholders will obtain little or nothing. The affair very much resembles the Royal British Bank mess; only the business has proceeded for a short period.

Two directors have had advances upon the security of shares to the extent of £5,350 aud £5,500. The manager, has succeeded in obtaining £27,000 on various securities not valued yet. The grand transaction was, however, the in vestment of £237,000 upon the estates of one gen. tleman, also a director. Ten per cent. was given for the money. This was made the excuse for the investment. It should have been the cause for avoiding the temptation. The chairman of the company, has a loan, it is also said, of some £12,000 upon securities.