1

Assembly, the session is declared closed, how long she waited, without loss of one or members howl till they are hoarse. jot or tittle of her passion.

The

very notion that discussion does no

harm, but good, that if debate is free, all can hit as hard as they like, is as foreign to the Deputies' minds as the idea of obeying their own elected Speaker,

From The Pall Mall Gazette.

whether he is right or wrong, reserving a THE DISRUPTION OF PARTIES AND THE

IRISH REPRESENTATION.

right to remove him if he is intolerably partial. It is this inability as of public THE disorganization of the present school-boys to bear public scolding which House of Commons is now so complete seems to us the danger of France, and that no parallel to it can be found except not any desire for a potential equality. by going back to events only just within It is not inability to bear argument. A the memory of the elder men of this genbureau will listen. calmly to statements eration. The first House of Commons which cut like sword-thrusts without a elected after the first Reform Bill had a yell, and the members of a Conseil de very strong resemblance to the House Famille will sit like judges under a storm elected in 1869, and it included the same of insult, weeping, and protestation, but vast majority which went to pieces in the the French cannot bear to sit under hard same way. It has become evident that words publicly. Then they sound like English parliamentary institutions, which insults, to be answered by the sword, and are never so much put to the strain as it is only by an allusion to the singular after great organic changes such as ocbasis of common-sense in the French curred in 1832 and 1867, will only work character that we can explain why weap- with decent regularity and smoothness ons are never actually drawn in the As- under two sets of conditions. The assembly. Why do the majority not kill sembly which really governs the country the minority out, and so terminate the has no counterpart in any similar body fracas? It would not be one whit more in any country as respects the multituunfair. Scenes of this kind are fatal to dinousness of its composition, and it can France, for France has no idea of free- be made to transact the business of govdom except under an Assembly, and no ernment with exactness when one side idea how to keep that Assembly, if free, has a very great majority over the other. in decent order. It has never elected a In that case the House of Commons, so ruler absolute within a limited preroga- to speak, works itself. The House of tive. No Assembly there submits to Commons can again be worked under rules when once insulted by free debate, very different circumstances, when both till France, raging with contempt, elects sides are very nearly balanced, when the a tyrant, and then breaking loose from two great parties sit watching one anhim, begins to rage again through an other like hostile armies, and when all Assembly in an everlasting sterile round. the resources of parliamentary manageThe Government Bill in this case is a ment are systematically and patiently oppression, but still it is the used to seize the smallest chance of adBill of the majority, and the Left should vantage and to prevent a surprise. Neithaccept it as such, instead of howling like er state of things now exists. Mr. Gladdemons over their defeat. They are stone's great majority is practically gone, nearly equal to their foes, their own right not so much from the discontent of small of speech in the interior is clear, and they sections such as the pure Whigs or the can influence opinion by quiet talk almost pure Nonconformists, as from the unconas strongly as through the Press. Their cealed disaffection of the Irish members, majority is inevitable if no coup d'état is who are said to be so constantly on the tried, and a coup d'état requires the sup-look-out for opportunities of joining the port of an army which, be it what it may, Opposition that they positively frighten is not devoted to the dynasties whom the the Conservative leaders. On the other majority wish to enthrone. They are hand, the period of skilful tactical manmad, to abandon the policy of Order which M. Thiers impresses on them, aud to wince, and rage, and foam under insults which fall on their more trusted leader, with his Genoese blood, like flakes They cannot wait, they say, or they will lose their fervour. Ask Venice

monstrous

of snow.

agement has not yet arrived. On the Liberal side, at all events, the evidence points to the extremest slackness or unskilfulness, or rather the tactics are those of generals at the head of a beaten and dissolving army.

It is a favourite topic of consolation

with men of both political parties that the anything like a closer approximation of next general election will set all this the Papal and Nationalist party to the right. We do not share the belief. The Conservative. Among the least of them increasing disposition of the Irish mem- we place the sense of obligation to the bers to organize themselves as a sepa- Liberals; for, in fact, the repudiation of rate party, and to make terms with either all gratitude to them is the first and funside indifferently, seems to us one of the damental tenet of the Home Rule faction. most serious symptoms of our times. But, to many important sections of the We have the smallest possible faith in Conservative party, the alliance above the prognostications of ardent partisans pointed at would be absolutely hateful. about the composition of the next Par- It will be long before the Church of Engliament, but certain broad assertions may land looks back with patience on the disbe confidently made. The representa- establishment of the sister Church, and tion of Scotland will be very slightly the stanch band of Irish Protestant Conchanged, if at all. In England there will servatives, for which the more old-fashin all probability be a very considerable ioned portion of the English territorial transfer of seats from the Liberal to the aristocracy has strong affinities, would Conservative interest. The British rep-regard measures adapted to "Irish ideas" resentation will therefore be very near- simply as the abomination of desolation. ly divided between the two great politi- But there are various reasons why the cal parties, and it is immaterial to con- approximation we have spoken of should sider which of them is likely to have an not be considered out of the bounds of advantage over the other; the difference possibility. In the first place, all politimust be small. The state of the Irish cal tendencies are becoming more and representation will therefore be all-im- more cosmopolitan, and those of the portant, and it is tolerably clear what its English Conservatives like the rest of colour will be. All its members will be the world. Outside England, Conservapledged to some form of Home Rule, tism, Catholicism, and Clericalism are inand a few of them to a form of it distin- terchangeable terms; and strong as are guishable from Fenianism only by the the historical influences which separate faintest shades. It is even possible that them here, they are not all-powerful; for one or two seats now held by Protestant when an English Conservative nobleman Conservatives will be won by Home has been grappled by the long filaments Rulers. Beyond the limits of the North- of the Roman Catholic converting maern Province, however, every single Irish chinery in this country, he obviously member will have openly or impliedly finds no difficulty in continuing to vote acquiesced in the claims of the Catholic with the Conservative party. Indeed, Episcopate to dictate Irish policy. There careful observers may remark that from are some, no doubt, who see no danger time to time a Roman Catholic prelate in all this to Liberal ascendency. When takes care to make the prospects of his Home Rulers first made their appear- Church safe by laying down that its alance in the House of Commons they are liance with Liberalism in this country is known to have delighted the Liberal temporary, accidental, and provisional. whips." They might have strange But a still more powerful influence which opinions on some points, but they voted tends to modify the relation of the Papal remarkably straight. But that is all and Nationalist members to existing changed; and while the whole Irish rep- parties is the strong attraction of the resentation is drifting towards Home" Irish idea" policy for large classes of Rule, it is also more and more divorcing minds. The historians of Ireland tell us itself from English Liberalism, and showing a more and more pronounced inclination to set up in political business for itself. We expect not only that these tendencies of the Irish members will become more and more marked in the new Parliament, but that they will become their distinctive tendencies. If this expectation is fulfilled, we say again that no graver political symptom has appeared in our time.

66

We are very far from insensible to the difficulties which seem to 'forbid

many

that this is an old story, and that if Ireland, her life and her notions, have often been abhorrent to the English nation, they have constantly been attractive in the highest degree to Englishmen as individuals. There are all sorts of elements in the thought and feeling of the present day for which such a policy has affinities. It commends itself to the sentimental respect felt by numbers of men for the newborn theories of the rights of nationalities. It falls in with the equally powerful laissez-faire, or devil-take-the-hindmost,

From The Spectator.
THE CONQUEST OF KHIVA.

The

set of principles. It saves trouble, it ap- Nothing of the kind occurred. peals to the emotional side of character, numbing sense that they were fighting and it has an air of novelty and original- the irresistible the feeling which Theoity. By one of these characteristics it dore expressed when he said he could not has laid hold of Mr. Gladstone; by an- be expected to resist weapons like the other it may lay hold of Mr. Disraeli. rockets, which kept searching out his palisading seems to have struck the Khivese, and from first to last they never offered serious battle to the invaders. If the desert turned them back, well. If not, God had ordered the victory of the Infidel. If a body of Khivese cavalry THE grand fact made evident by the approached the Russians they were driven conquest of Khiva, now officially ascer-off by a few rockets, which they probably tained, is the weakness, moral and physi- had never previously seen, and which will cal, of the soldiery of Central Asia. With sometimes drive horses mad with terror. their flight before inferior foes expires a If the Russians threatened a fortified superstition which has lasted down from place, the garrison, after receiving a shell the siege of Vienna in 1529, the belief or two, decamped in a body, and at last that at some always receding point in Khiva itself was surrendered uncondiCentral Asia there would be found an tionally without a shot, and with an intiarmy capable of defeating Europeans. mation that the Khanate also was at Somewhere or other there must be force Russian service. The defence was that in those regions, which had twice sent of men whose hearts were broken. The out their myriads to ravage Europe. Turcomans are not cowards, they have When a new country was conquered, say fought well in intestine wars, they belong by Clive, with 3,000 men, or a "hidden" to tribes whose life is passed in the saddle capital entered like Pekin, by a few bri- and on the desert, who under competent gades of English and Frenchmen, or a leaders once conquered "the world," who vast State like Persia compelled to sub- do not differ in any outward condition mit to Outram and his few men, or Japan from the Kashgarees, who seem to be compelled to alter her whole policy by a building an empire in Yarkund, and who, few war-ships, the inferiority of the Asi- if we have not forgotten Mr. T. Prinsep's atic organization was acknowledged, but paper about their fathers, he deemed forthe superstition only altered its locale. midable to the Indian Empire. They had One-half of the English people still speak fair arms, and strong walls, and large of Afghanistan as if it were some mighty numbers. They are only, dismayed by State, whose friendship or enmity were of the contact with civilization, fly before it the last importance; and if Sir H. Raw- as we should all fly before genii; as Thelinson or Lord Lawrence were to tell them odore fled before Lord Napier of Magdala, what they know, that 10,000 men would as the army surrounding Lucknow fled conquer Afghanistan and hold it as se- before Havelock and his brigade, or as curely as 7,000 police hold London, they hitherto the Anamese have fled before the would be simply disbelieved. Think, say French. So far as we can judge from the unreflecting folk, of the hills and the accounts as yet published, there is nothvalleys, which are really easier, far easier ing except the danger of differences with in a military sense, than those of Ceylon. England to prevent General Kaufman About Persia and Turkey the people are from annexing all Central Asia, and holdno doubt more or less disenchanted, but ing it as safely as the Governor-General about Central Asia the old opinion till of Tobolsk holds Siberia. Bokhara actuyesterday still held firm. The people, ally assisted him. The desert has been fanatically brave, were defended by their fatal to one column, but it has not stopped deserts, by their rude but strong fortifica- the march of three other columns, and tions, and by their readiness to die at with that march the deadly charm of the their Khan's summons. We ourselves, Steppe is disenchanted. The Europeans who certainly ought to have known better, are rulers of the Steppe Road, they are believed that the Khan would defend masters of the spell which fetters the Khiva as the old Sikh Moolraj, would desert, the artesian well, and if Russia is have thrown his horsemen on the artillery, resolute to maintain her possession, the as we did at Chillianwallah, and have died route from the Caspian to Khiva can sword in hand upon the ruins of his fort, never be closed again except by war. As as Turkish Pachas have so often done. feudatories, or allies, or subjects, all of

which words mean, for warlike purposes, ished, and each side allowed to do as it the same thing, the Czar will be obeyed pleases, a remark we recommend to the by all chiefs from the Polar sea to the consideration of American merchants in frontier of Afghanistan. No power can Shanghai. They may not like to be put hinder him except England, and England in prison in heaps every day for doing only by direct alliance with the Shah, or nothing, and forcibly shaven besides. direct force applied through the Shah's We do not wish to believe and do not bedominions. A few score wells sunk, and lieve half the stories repeated by the his Cossacks may ride whither they will. alarmists, but it is quite clear, from the It is a strange, though an explicable sudden and tremendous defeat of the change which has passed over these Chinese Mohammedans in Yunan, a detribes, and indeed all Asiatic sovereign- feat which seems to involve the stampties, and it is difficult to resist the temp-ing-out of their power, that some new tation of speculating whether it will be force, it may be only a new General, but permanent. Are Russia and England it may also be a new army, has accrued allied perhaps with Holland, which has a to the Chinese Government. What if very distinct function to perform in Asia, that Government provided itself with new and has just telegraphed that she means and heavy guns, light steel batteries, a to go on performing it really to mould good desert cavalry, and infantry without these populations for centuries to come, numbers, all taught, as it is quite clear absorbing their wealth, abolishing their Chinese can be taught, to die steadily in politics, and training their people? or is their ranks? Our own Coolie corps did the spell laid on these vast multitudes one that. Could Europe, with its vast diswhich can be removed? As yet the an- tances to cross, again hope to enter swer is in the negative, for no attempt Pekin? The Ánamese might readily could be more desperately made to shake draw similar help from within China, and the West off than that which is called as to India, nothing can prevent the enthe Mutiny, and none could have been try, if not of great guns, at least of rifles more thoroughly suppressed. But Eu- and repeating carbines and revolvers. rope, nevertheless, has only a moral hold Lord Napier would have a pleasant chase on Ásia, which is daily losing its force. after Hyder Ali and 50,000 horsemen We cannot help an uneasy feeling that armed and drilled to use repeating carthe moral yoke is giving way; that the bines. Even as it is, the people of the East is reckoning with its difficulties, or Khanates may be taught by some exile as it says, its enemies; that it is begin- the secret of their proper warfare, the ning to feel that if it knew the truth use of cavalry to harass and desolate, but strength might come to it. That clearly not to fight, and may import weapons, is the motive of the Shah's visit to Eu- particularly revolvers, through the Gulf. rope, and though he may go back over- There is an ugly little sentence in the whelmed with the signs of power he sees Russian official account that the Khan around him, that was not the effect of and his cavalry, "over-persuaded by the England on Azimoollah, the Cawnpore war-party," have rushed into the desert. murderer, and we are told is not the One real defeat of the Europeans would effect of recent conflicts on the rulers of enlighten all Asia, and Asia can wait China. They are arming in the Western long and quietly for her news. She is fashion, are mounting, it is stated, steel now nearly subjugated, and we do not cannon on the forts of Tientsin, are im- doubt will remain so for a time; but porting rifles, and are disciplining their there may be terrible struggles yet, troops to strict European obedience un- struggles so fierce that the curious federder regular officers. Their people in San ation of Europe which now governs Francisco, who have been insulted, tor- Shanghai may be called into existence tured, and plundered for months, seem to keep Asia down till her education is suddenly to have been emboldened by complete. The thorough extinction of tidings from the East, and in an extremely clever remonstrance have warned the municipality that if the Americans will not keep the Treaty neither will the Chinese; that the Treaty will be abol-I

the white man in China would call Europe to very different work than its present one of squabbling whether dead dynasties are corpses or sacred mummies.

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