Chap. 6th informs us how "Prince Henri makes a march of fifty hours;" and that "the Russians cannot find lodging in Silesia: the march the most extraordinary ever made, through fifty miles of country wholly in the enemy's hands, in fifty-six hours, with two rests of three hours each, which wrecks Daun's campaign for this year." A sketch of the capture of Quebec-" which, itself, as the decision that America is to be English and not French, is surely an epoch in world-history," is here given, and a notice of the ministry of Pitt. In Chap. 7th "Frederick reappears on the field, and in seven days after comes the catastrophe of Maxen, which infernal campaign, as all things do, came actually to an end, in the defeat and disgrace of Finck, and to the terrible annoyance of Frederick." 66 а Chapter 8th supplies "Miscellanea in Winter Quarters;" loose, intercalary chapter," e.g.-the postponement of the Fulda ball of Victoria for the catastrophe of Maxen; the death of Maupertius; how the grand French invasion found its terminus. "We saw Rodney burn the flat-bottom manufactory of Havre; Boscawen chase the Toulon squadron till it ended on the rock of Lagos." From June onwards Hawke had been keeping watch off Brest harbour on Admiral Conflans," whom he defeated at Quiberon Bay, 20th November, 1759; the dismissal of Silhouette the pseudofinancier, and the bankruptcy of France, saved scarcely by platemelting the issue of the Poems of Frederick, King of Prussia ;" the notes on the talk of peace, and on Voltaire's power of duplex movement. The close of the chapter gives us this,-"Stand to thyself; in the wide domain of imagination there is no other certainty of help. No other certainty ?-and yet who knows through what pettinesses Heaven may send help!" 66 Chap. 9th furnishes us with news of the preliminaries to a "fifth campaign," of which the premonitions are very serious. The author, however, gives us hope amid the gloom, by saying, "but let us look into the campaign itself. Perhaps contrary to the world's opinion, and to Frederick's own, when in ultra-lucid moments he gazes into it in the light of cold arithmetic, and finds the aspect of it 'frightful,'-this campaign will be a little luckier to him than the last? Unluckier it cannot well be; or if so, it will at least be final to him." So closes Vol. V., after a long course of most various and varied incident streaming through 639 pages, of which only a scarcely appreciable skimming has been given in this hasty flight, with only a foot-touch here and there in the broad expanse that lay before us and required to be passed over. Many passages of choice beauty and rare emphasis we could have chosen to quote. We have abstained with regretful feelings, for our survey of this volume has brought many things before us of interest and moment; but time and space are among the highest inexorables. Vol. VI. will receive attention in our next. The Topic. OUGHT WE TO HAVE ARBITRATION COURTS FOR THE SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED? AFFIRMATIVE. STRIKES have been tried, and have been found unsuccessful, especially since the plan of lock-outs has been found to give the masters an equivalent force in the war between capital and labour. There is no method of dealing with this vexed question in a spirit of fairness but by abstracting it from an arena in which passions are active, and plot and counter plot are regarded as legitimate. Let all questions regarding the relations between employers and employed be handed over to arbitration courts, established for the purpose of, and with due securities for, the doing evenhanded justice between each, and strikes and lock-outs will be erased from the catalogue of human follies and calamities.-JAMES P. Courts of arbitration are just the things to preserve and protect the dignity of labour. Labour is never so undignified as when it attempts to commit suicide-for a strike is suicidal to annoy capital. Capital has taken the same foolish view of its duty, and acts upon the principle that the true reprisal and check for suicide in one party is attempted murder by the other. Starve labour into unconditional surrender is the modern cry of tyrannous capital. Arbitration courts would bring peace into the field, and get the two great powers to sign effective treaties. There can be no doubt that if these courts were constituted so as to secure equity, they would form one of the triumphs of modern civilization.A READER OF MILL. Arbitration is an equitable mode of procedure for the amicable adjustment of such disputes, being the safest course to protect the interests of all partiest concerned; and arbitration courts ought to be instituted in order that disputed questions be considered by those properly trained and qualified to investigate such matters, that judgment be pronounced by those accustomed by many years' experience to decide similar cases, and not by those who may have only one in all their lives. Besides, professional gentlemen, who would form an arbitration court, would be more able to give a clearer and sounder decision in a shorter time, thus saving damage and loss which delay might occasion, and with less expense than those inexperienced to discriminate upon the intricacies involved in such cases. Arbiters can neither examine witnesses without the express permission of a law court embraced in a decree, which accumulates considerable expense, nor can they put their decision into effect after its delivery, until the law courts of the kingdom interpose their authority; hence the necessity of having courts established to settle differences between "employers and employed."-G. M. Sd. As no wage can be fixed between employer and employed without the mutual consent of both, I think it particularly urgent for the general weal of commerce that this receive judicial consideration, so as at least to form a basis for such an object. The institution of arbitration courts for the settlement of disputes, no doubt, would be a general benefit to commerce, but in a case like the iron manufacturing trade I should doubt the results of jurisdiction being beneficial; the rise and fall of the markets causing a continual grumble between employers and employed, owing to fixed wages. In this case the formation of a committee of delegates representing each side, convening meetings at short periods, and comparing wages paid with the position of the market, adding or deducting same to the ratio of the fluctuation thereof, would, I think, establish uniformity, and consequently fairness, to both, and in a great measure obviate the stubbornness of "strikes." Our present laws relative to these disputes are of too contracted a nature for the growing development of our manufactories; the inadequate supply of hands, together with continual emigration, makes it highly necessary for Government not only to establish "arbitration courts for general disputes of this nature, but to endeavour to establish a basis or principle for the regulation of wages in the largest and most important manufactories, compatible with the rise and fall of the market.-ACKLINGTON. NEGATIVE. em Arbitration courts would be a feast of fat things for lawyers, but would neither subdue workmen nor satisfy employers. They would bandage trade. Laws have already tried to regulate the relations of employers and ployed; but masters and men have alike neglected and disobeyed them. Thus it would place such restrictions on capital as would force it out of the country, and so injuriously oppress labour as to compel emigration. Workmen are jealous of law, and averse to constant interferences, and they know too well that all courts afford facilities to wealth which poverty cannot command. Hence they would not be inclined to bind a new mill-stone about their necks. Wealth is just as jealous of any middlemen between itself and those it employs. It must possess mastery. The usual chicane and deception would be practised in arbitration as in all courts of law, and at last an appeal to the old strike and lock-out would come to be looked on as the short cut to arbitration. Both parties would be as fond of keeping out of the arbitration courts as debtors and creditors are of escaping the clutches of the Bankruptcy Court.-COMMON SENSE. Courts of arbitration would be useless unless there were granted to them powers of enforcement. What powers of law could compel obedience from rebellious labour? Still more, what could subdue rebellious capital? · QUERIST. Are Arbitration is one of those fine, vague, sounding words which people are so fond of using just now. What does it mean? A judgment. working men prepared to allow a stipendiary magistrate to compel them to work at whatever he thinks is a right and reasonable wage? We hope not. Under arbitration courts capital would be free, but labour would not. No court could compel a capitalist to keep open his works if he resolved to shut them up and cause a lock-out. But labour would be exposed to be dragged into court as a mere excuse for getting the screw on. Labour is God's capital. Let us hold it free. Arbitration cannot settle the differences working men may have with their masters. It could only rivet chains upon those who ought to be able to sell their labour in the dearest market in the same manner as the merchant gets selling his goods. Arbitration courts are only a baited trap to ensnare the unwary workman, and get him to consent to virtual enslavement; for arbitration courts would avail nothing unless their awards were made compulsory, and a breach of their decisions punishable. While we have no desire to swell the cry, "Strike for freedom, strike, and trust!" we do not believe that arbitration courts would or could render strikes unnecessary. It would be difficult to convince aggrieved parties that they had got justice.LABOURER. The following excerpt from the Examiner of April 22nd contains a well put negative argument on this month's Topic. It is from a paper on " Mr. Mill on the Chief Political Questions."A. H. B. "The idea of arbitration is always specious, but is it applicable to prices, not to contracts made, but to the making of contracts? Can another law than the law of demand and supply be established for the settlement of questions between buyers and sellers? Strikes and lock-outs are not confined to places with tall chimneys, factories, forges, and mills. When we cease to deal with a tradesman because we cannot afford to pay his prices, it is a lock-out of that man. And should we entertain the proposal of an arbitration to settle the dispute? Could any third party judge to our satisfaction what we could or could not afford to give? When a servant demands higher wages, and we refuse to give them, and he quits us, it is a strike; and here again, should we be content to submit to arbitration of a matter pertaining to our ways and means? The scale of these affairs is different, the private very small, and the manufacturing very large, but the principle applicable is the same. And if the arbitration cannot overrule the laws of demand and supply, reliance upon it is false, and it must break down; and whichever has the upper hand in the wants, workman or master, will have his own way."-A. H. B. VANITY OF VANITIES.-What a world of toil this is! Not more busy in laying the foundation of future islands and continents are the little builders in the waters of the southern seas than are the sons of men in pursuing each his own appointed toil. One man pursues his labours in the recesses of the earth. He blasts its rocks and unlocks its hidden treasures. Far from the eye of man he toils, during the dark night, and to him almost equally dark day. Holding the pickaxe in one hand and his lamp in the other, he threads his way through passages which seem to lead to the regions of the dead rather than to be a part of the world of the living. And mark the vanity of his toil-the lamp he carries in his hand kindles the air he breathes into living flame, and he who toiled till the drop stood on his brow and his sinews started from their places is stretched out on the floor of the mine a blackened and unsightly corpse. There is another man: he toils in a different field-science is his calling, and the sublimest of all the sciences,-that of astronomy. Whilst other men sleep he watches the stars in their courses; while other men live luxuriously he brings his body into subjection; while other men toil for gold he cares nothing for it. His home is among the stars, and he finds his way on wings furnished by philosophy and science through the circuits of immensity. Is the labour of this man doomed also to be in vain? It is often. His mind reels under the burden of the discoveries he makes; the eminence he reaches turns him giddy; and he who lived amongst the stars comes sometimes at the close of life to be the companion of the moping idiot whom he would at one time have pitied or despised; and thus it is through all the varieties of human experience.J. M. WHITELAW. 385 66 The Inquirer. QUESTIONS REQUIRING ANSWERS. 531. Has the Cabinet Edition of the 'Encyclopædia Metropolitana," commenced in 1849, been completed? and, if so, does it contain treatises or articles on the whole of subjects usually treated of in encyclopædias, so as to make it what its prospectus professed it to be a system of universal knowledge?-A NEW SUBSCRIBER. 532. Will any reader kindly define the term "schoolmen," as applied to writers or teachers of the early portions of the present era, with a reference to any work where I may find further information concerning them?-A NEW SUBSCRIBER. 533. Which is the most comprehensive and reliable Encyclopædia, or like work of reference? also the price of same, and the best means of procuring it at lowest price?--IOTA. 534. I read, and too frequently forget what and when I have read : can you give me any help for such a defective state of mind?-HISTORICUS. 535. Would any of your readers state the title and price of a work giving specific directions for the criticism and analysis of books. J. H. M. 536. The patent laws are still an incubus on invention; for by them the poor inventor is still further impoverished by the advantage taken by the wealthy of the law of patents. Can you tell me where to find a handy and intelligible outline or epitome of the laws relating to patents?-A THINKING WORKING MAN. ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS. 514. A jury is to all intents and purposes a business meeting, requiring a president and an official head. 1865. The right of election must, therefore, be vested in those who constitute the meeting-that is, the jurors. Were the jury not to choose their own foreman there would be a strong doubt in the public mind as to the justice of the decisions come to. I am not aware of any express law on the subject, but I think the common sense of equity decides that every English jury has a right to choose its own foreman.-GLAWDD 515. A thought of which the human mind cannot even imagine the contradictory cannot be enunciated as an assertion, and hence cannot be presented to the intellect for acceptance. Any thought of which we can enunciate a contradictory may be made the subject of reasoning and proof, but the other cannot; hence these are regarded as necessary truths.-R. M. A. 524. "Pit Lad" will find "Modern Geography for the Use of Schools," by Robert Anderson, in Nelson's School Series (Nelson, London and Edinburgh), price 1s. 6d., a very good text-book for the purpose. The General Geography, in Chambers' Educational Course," price 3s., is a highly valuable treatise, -containing seven maps, twenty woodcuts, and a key to the pronunciation of the most difficult foreign words. To our own mind, Dr. Clyde's "Geography," in Constable's series, price 4s., is the best adapted for conveying a good general knowledge of the different countries, their life, manners, condition, peculiarities, external features, and internal communications.-MERCATOR. 525. A useful work on railways is "Railways: a Plan for the Systematic Reform of the Railways of the United Kingdom by Legislative Enactment." 2nd Edition, post 8vo., 3s. 6d. Jan., 1865. Longman and Co.-OMICRON. 2 c |