land, in the Cape of Good Hope, in the East Indies, in Van Dieman's Land, and in New South Wales? Was it for this that England was raised up to be as a queen and a mistress amongst the nations? Was it for this that her vast colonial empire has been acquired? But we forbear. What we deplore is the fruit of religious indifference; an indifference which would sacrifice the end to the means; an indifference which would purchase the privileges of governing at the expense of the most precious blessings, for the attainment of which good government is most desirable. But we call upon every candid and rational observer of the signs of the times, to say whether our colonial embarrassments have not kept pace with our neglect, as far as the colonies were concerned, of our first and highest duty? Whether they are not obviously traceable to that ignorance and restlessness which are always characteristic of the community in which church institutes are either undervalued or abused; and whether they are not seriously aggravated by the active and malignant hostility of the very sects and factions who have been nursed by our unwise benevolence into their present impor tance? It is our solemn conviction that if Great Britain is to be maintained in her present aggrandisement, it will only be because she is conscious of her high destiny, and determined to fulfil her important moral obligations. Already the symptoms are apparent which show that the enlightened members of the Church of England are conscious of this. Funds have been already provided by private zeal and benevolence which have done much to remove the reproach to which we were exposed for leaving whole communities, which are subject to our laws, destitute of the appointed means of grace, by which the great message of truth and of mercy might be made available for their salvation. But much yet remains to be done; and we trust that those who have undertaken the good work, upon which a divine blessing already seems to descend, will not leave off until a feeling and a spirit has been awakened in the country which may re-act upon our rulers, causing them to feel that even temporal ends are not to be attained by the neglect of religious duties, and that their best hope of maintaining their position in the regards of the best portion of their countrymen, must be founded upon a manifested determination no longer to subordinate religion to policy, but to consecrate policy by subordinating it to true religion. This they would find the cheap defence of the nation against internal and external foes, as well as the true Conservative principle by which our vast colonial empire may be preserved, an honour and an advantage to ourselves and a blessing to the world. In Canada a great mistake was committed when reserved lands were instituted in lieu of tithes. They have proved, as might have been foreseen, unproductive as a source of ecclesiastical revenue, and a grievous impediment to civilization. To part with them now for whatever they may bring, and to husband the proceeds as best we may for the maintenance of the ministers of the Gospel, is the best course which can be pursued; but no time should be lost in procuring statistical returns exhibiting the spiritual destitution of the country, as preparatory to a strenuous effort both abroad and at home to raise funds in order to meet it. It is towards the upper provinces the stream of emigration chiefly flows; it is there our laws, our language, and our religion chiefly prevail; it was there that government found its firmest support during the late disastrous outbreak, when its authority in the lower provinces was a wreck; and it is there, accordingly, that we ought to do all that in us lies to strengthen the habits and usages, and foster the predilections which attach the colonists to British rule, and which operate as so many antiseptics to the contagion of the republicanism by which they are surrounded: nor can we do so more effectually than by providing for their moral wants, by establishing amongst them our scriptural church, and securing to them and to their children all its inestimable advantages. Enough on that part of the subject for the present. Of this we may be sure, that the legislative experiment which is at present being tried, is one by which both the power and the wisdom of the parent state will be severely tested. Already the disaffected in all our colonies are on the tip-toe of expectation that the authority of England is near to its latter end, and that events are rapidly hastening to a crisis which must lead to their emancipation. We trust, and we believe that they mistake the temper in which the late concessions have been made. England has felt herself so strong that she could afford to be very mild; and they mistake her mildness for a proof of weakness. Would that they may discover this mistake, before they necessitate, by acting upon it, any strong measures for its correction. But of this let our rulers be assured, that there never was a period in the history of the country when it was more incumbent upon them to evince an unflinching determination to maintain the supremacy of British rule, than it would be if the recent concessions caused our colonists to halt in their allegiance. Of such a result we have no fear. But as the contingency is one which enters into the calculations of the profligate and seditious as within the range of probability, it is one against which it becomes those in whose hands is reposed the precious deposit of British liberty to be well prepared. In Ireland, the arch-demagogue is holding forth the promotion of those who were of late rebels in Canada, as a powerful encouragement to the agitation which he recommends. England, he says, never made any concession to Ireland but from a motive of fear. And he would impress upon his followers the policy of an organization which would hold them prepared for any contingency, and which might, when the proper time arrived, enable them to express their wishes with an energy that could not be resisted. Only think, he says, of what might be done if we had been in a condition to take advantage of the embarrassment of England, when our late friends the Whigs left the empire in a state of confusion at home and of trouble abroad; with a failing revenue, crippled commerce, and a starving and insurgent population. If Ireland could then have shown two or three millions of repealers, determined by a peaceful agitation to enforce their demands, think you, he asks, with a swaggering confidence, we could not have wrung from her a repeal of the union? Think you another year would have passed over without seeing a parliament sitting in College-green? And well this bloated compound of mendicity and mendacity knows, that he is dealing all this time in arrant falsehood. No one will catch him, like old Papineau, poking his head into a halter. He is far too sagacious not to have learned by this time, that any serious attempt at rebellion in this country would be met by an indignant loyalty, by which his knavish devices would be frustrated, and his wretched dupes put to shame. There is nothing that he dreams of less. But the topic is a good one to keep discontent and sedition up to blood heat, and to inspire the vague and shadowy hopes by which, as by a phantasmagoria, his hearers are best amused and deluded, Daniel seeks to fill his coffers, and gives, like our friend "The Commissioner," for his penny to the ragged man, and for his halfpenny to the starving man, a ticket of admission to the moon. But not the less should a wise government be on its guard against the mischievous charlatanry by which the peace of a kingdom is thus wantonly disturbed, and a profligate mountebank enabled to drive a profitable trade by working upon the passions and the prejudices of a mercurial people. But there are other places in which the same preservative does not exist in the state of society against the machinations of the public disturber. Of this we may be sure, that throughout all our colonies a spirit has been diffused, since the Durham mission and manifesto, by which their hope of liberal institutions had been excited, which will render the extreme of caution necessary in their management, until they shall have passed the crisis of the political fever. The thunder clouds are rolling around them, surcharged with elemental strife, and most skilful should be the disposition of the conducting rods by which the discharge, when it does take place, may be rendered harmless. The result of the experiment in Canada is pregnant with consequences which can scarcely be deemed too momentous. Should it succeed, the project of responsible government must be tried in all our colonies; should it fail, a ferment may be the consequence, such as might render it very difficult to maintain them as this we have no manner of doubt, that if the Whigs were in power, our colonial empire would not be worth five years' purchase. Our only hope of treading with safety the perils which beset us on every side is, that our affairs are now in the hands of men who are not dependent upon the dregs of a populace for support; and whose interest it is not, to drug that populace with deleterious doctrines, both moral and political, so as to render them ten times more the children of sedition than they were before. Yes, readers, if you desire not the dismemberment of the British empire, rejoice that we now have Conservative rulers. Let no little dissatisfaction that these rulers have not, in all things, acted agreeably to your wishes and expectations, disturb the settled conviction in your minds, that upon the firm maintenance of them in power at the present moment depends our preservation. The only other alternative is one fearful to behold, and from which, if we can forget our recent providential deliverance, we must be both stolid and unthankful. No; a due allowance must be made for the difficulties of ministers, occasioned by the extent to which the work of a disorganizing sedition had been suffered to go on before it could be arrested. The taint had been communicated; the disease had appeared; the poison was working in the whole system, when the attendance of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues was required. They could not perform miracles. The very utmost which they could venture to undertake for was, to render the nostrums of the former quacks in the least possible degree injurious. With the condition of the patient, as affected by these nostrums, they have now to deal. The Canadian constitution had been fixed; responsible government had been practically conceded: all that was managed bofore the Whigs were shaken from their convulsive grasp of power. Such was the state of things over which the present premier was called to preside; and if he has found it difficult to manage matters without appearing to give a triumph to the disaffected, how much more would not sedition have waxed strong and vigorous, if it continued still under the protecting patronage of those from whom it derived its being? That is the true way to look at the question. If a Conservative ministry have been obliged to go so far, how much farther would not the Whig-Radical have willingly gone?— and how much farther still would they not have been compelled to go by the anarchists and levellers who consented to appear to be their slaves, only that they might be, in reality, their masters. Such, reader, is the true state of the case. We cannot part with the present ministers without getting worse. Sir Robert Peel, we have no doubt, will act with his characteristic caution; and while he keeps good faith with the colonists, will not be wanting in his care of the interests of the empire. But he can do nothing effectually unless he is powerfully sustained; and if the Conservatives rally around him as they ought, we have very little doubt that, as he has shown us the way out of financial embarrassment, so he will do all that can be done to render responsible government in the colonies compatible with the security of the British empire. INDEX TO VOL. XX. Abideno, Nicesti, I Tre Giulj, o sieno Affghan War, narrative of the, in a se- Alison's History of the French Revolu- Bancroft, George, History of the Colo- Barry the Painter.-Gallery of Illus- 403. Boucher, P., L'Homme en face de la Bowden, John William, the Life and Bullar's Winter in the Azores, and Canada, 735. Carleton's Traits and Stories of the Continental Countries-No. I. Belgium, Costello, Louisa Stewart, a Day at the Dennie, the late Col. W. H., Letters of, Exeter, the Bishop of-Sketches of Pub- Flower growing out of a skull, lines Follett, Sir William Sketches of Pub- Freiligrath, Ferdinand, the Lion's Ride, Gallery of Illustrious Irishmen, No. Geibler, Emanuel, Charlemagne and the Gilfillan, Robert, Song inscribed to his niece, Miss Marion Law Gilfillan, 39. Half-Crowns, the Three, 682. Husband-Lover, the, a True Story, Income-Tax, the, and New Tariff, 364. Italy, Letters from, No. V., 155; No. Jack Hinton the Guardsman - Chap. The High Road, 268; Chap. XLIII., Kishoge Papers, No. III., Levawn's Kügler's Handbook of the History of Letters from Italy-No. V., 155; No. Madden, R. R., M.D., The United Irish- Man and the Bible, 109. Maxwell's Life of Wellington, reviewed, Medical Charities of Ireland, 88. Nursery Rhymes, by J. A.-1. Der Wirthin Töchterlein. 2. Song from Our Mess, by Harry Lorrequer, 1, 127, Passports, the Two, being a Passage in Poetry Song by Robert Gilfillan, 39; Poets, the, versus the Public; Defen- Polignac, a Day at the Rock of, by Reviews-Handbook of the History of |