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THE GREAT BATTLE OF THE WORLD.

working classes in England, is the question at this epoch. For we may say beforehand, this struggle dividing the upper and lower societies in Europe, and more particularly and notably in England than elsewhere-this too, is a struggle that will end and adjust itself as others do, and have done, by making the right clear and the might clear." But we may now say "the right and the might" are both made clear. All, but tyrants, agree where the right is. Nature, with her ten thousand tongues, utters it, while the history of the past few years tells where the might is. At the outset, this last was a question to be settled. Truth is not always immediately the strongest: but the progress of reform in the last few years has settled it—the right and the might are both with all the people of Europe.

A

XXIII.

LTHOUGH unnoticed, the right in England has for centuries been slowly acquiring the might. Not the people, but their representatives were the first who dared whisper of popular rights, and in the question of monopolies, when Elizabeth yielded, obtained their first triumph. Charles I. dared to hurl Hampden and Elliot from their parliamentary seats into prison for saying less than every Chartist and Liberal in England says with impunity. In that struggle between freedom and despotism, the King and Throne both fell, and with them the House of Peers. Although there was a reaction, then was fought the great battle of the world--the battle between tyranny and liberty-reason and prejudice.

America was its fruit, as also the revolutions that soon after passed over Europe. I might show, step by step, how freedom has made progress among the subjects of Great Britain. Resisted at every step, it has never yielded a single inch. The Catholic Emancipation Bill, though fought by the aristocracy, from first to last, with a desperation deserving a better cause, did pass. The Reform Bill was cast indignantly from the House of Lords, and tossed in scorn to the people, but the peo

SMOOTHLY OR ROUGHLY.

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ple sent it back with a shout that rocked the nation, and it passed.

The Duke of Wellington was compelled to eat his own words, and the King to swallow in silence his indignation. The people again triumphed. Nor is this all: the people ask still more. Then they demanded the correction of flagrant abuses; now they claim general suffrage. A petition of 3,500,000 was carried to Parliament. Like all that preceded it, which asked for reform, it was scornfully rejected, and thrown back to the people. Like all others, it will come back with a shout and a threat that will suddenly change the opinions of noble lords and country gentlemen, or provoke a collision that will be felt the world over, and be remembered while governments shall stand.

H

XXIV.

OW would Elizabeth have regarded a Chartist meeting? How would Charles I. have treated a petition for Universal Suffrage, and a reform in every department of government? How would George III., or even King William, have regarded this last petition? Yet they seem as natural and reasonable as the first faint prayer for redress. Astonishment or opposition makes no alterations. Rejected, they return, backed by stronger power, and fortified with firmer resolution. And, if like causes produce like effects-if the law of progress holds good, a great Reform Bill will pass in England as certainly as the sun will rise over her hills-smoothly or roughly, as the case may be. If the oligarchy, finding that all is going at this rate, shall abide the collision, then revolution must follow. If this be not plain, we know not what is. It requires no political skill to read one of these two results.

If the past can be relied on, this mighty spirit of progress must have way-peacefully or stormfully, it is on, right on, with the strength of awakened millions. Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches, it passes to the

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THE SMITTEN SOUL TURNS.

throne and seat of oppression. It is invulnerable. We see no power to arrest it, which has not already been employed. Everything has been tried-persuasion, threats, bribery, deceit, promises, all: and yet its triumphant march is onward still. I stand not alone in this opinion. Says Lord Brougham: "Where no safety-valve is provided for popular discontent, to prevent an explosion that shall shiver the machine to pieces; where the people the wealth and glory of the British nation—where this most important order of the community are without a regular communication with the legislature-where they feel the load of such grievances, and feel too the power they possess, moral and intellectual, and let me add, without the imputation of a threat, physical; then, and only then, are their combinations formidable; when they are armed by their wrongs far more formidable than any physical force; then, and only then, they become invulnerable." In another place he says, "the support of the people must be sought if government would endure." I know these words were uttered long ago, before the Reform Bill was passed. But they are as true to-day as then-truer.

The riots and tumults in England and Ireland are natural and reasonable. The people are not to blame for them, but the government for resisting their just claims. The English government is teaching her subjects the most dangerous of all lessons that she is their enemy-that she is not their protector but their spoiler; cares not for their happiness, but cares only for their money and their toil. Nor are we alone in saying that to the government which seizes with unrighteous hand the inalienable, eternal rights of the people, is to be charged the guilt of these fierce outbreaks and fiercer threats. The trampled worm will writhe, the hunted deer turn at bay and shall the smitten soul of man never rise on its smiter?

"Who, indeed, can tell what dangers and what calamities may lie hid within what remains of the present century! Who can tell how intense may be the distress, how fierce the animosities, or how scrupulous the factions that may be let loose upon us!"-Edinb. Rev.

BROUGHAM'S PLEA FOR THE MASSES.

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XXV.

AID Lord Brougham: "Those portentous appearances-the growth of later times-those figures that stalk abroad, of unknown stature and strange form, union of leagues, and mustering of men in myriads, and conspiracies against exchequers, whence do they spring; and how come they to haunt our shores? What power engendered those uncouth shapes; what multiplied the monstrous births till they people the land? Trust me, the same power which called into frightful existence, and carried with resistless force the Irish volunteers of 1782; the same power which rent in twain your empire, and raised up thirteen republics; the same power which created the Catholic Association, and gave it Ireland for a portion. What power is that? Justice denied, rights withheld, wrongs perpetrated, the force which common injuries lend to millions, the wickedness of using the sacred trust of government as a means of indulging private caprice, the idiotcy of treating Englishmen like the children of the South Sea islands, the frenzy of believing, or making believe, that the adults of the Nineteenth Century can be led like children or driven like barbarians. This it is that has conjured up the strange sights, at which we now stand aghast. And shall we persist in the fatal error of controlling the giant progeny, instead of extirpating the execrable parent? Good God! will men never learn wisdom even from their own experience? Will they never believe till it be too late, that the surest way to prevent immoderate desires being formed, aye, and unjust demands being enforced, is to grant, in due season, the moderate demands of justice?"

But even Lord Brougham would probably now wish to define his own language, " moderate demands of justice," and would unhesitatingly decide that what the People demand is the "immoderate desires." But shall the miserable reform which does scarcely more than acknowledge the robbery without abandoning it, the scanty pittance doled out grudgingly to the

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MEN MUST RULE THEMSELVES.

starving millions be called granting "the moderate demands of justice?" But the language of Brougham is as applicable And if to refuse to accede to just demands, will, in the end, cause unjust ones to be enforced, what shall be the final success of those just demands?

now as ever.

It is too late to talk of quieting the people by what noble lords would call "moderate concessions." The prophecy of Brougham has come to pass-the "immoderate desires," as he would term them, will be " enforced." Once I thought immediate relief in the earlier stages of public discontent would have quieted the people. But I am convinced it was a false view. Nothing short of a great and radical Reform Bill will satisfy the British people in this year M.DCCC.LXVI. Lord John Russell cannot cheat the three kingdoms this time with accustomed impunity. The tendency of England and the tendency of all Europe, as De Tocqueville says, is towards the equalization of the higher and lower classes.

E

XXVI.

VERY nation is, sooner or later, to reach the crisis where the reins of government are to be thrown into the hands of the people, and the latter to rule for themselves. Whether it result in anarchy or order, is not the question. Tyrants and people are yet to stand and stare each other in the face, and the long bloody arrears be settled up. The fierceness of the conflict, and the ruin of the victory, are to be in proportion to the oppression that preceded them, and the reluctance with which it was abandoned. As Macaulay has said: "the greatness of the outrage attendant on a revolution, only shows the greater necessity of a revolution." The only hope for England is to attempt to guide, not resist, this awakened energy. It is a fearful thing to trample on the human mind. There is no danger like that of endeavoring to scourge the newly emancipated spirit back to its prison and its chains. It is the frenzy of madness for a government, with the wrong all