" FRASER" AND '" BLACKWOOD " ON TAT PRESENT STATE
OF POLITICS.
"Who is the prosecutor of M. de Montalembert ? None other than the Emperor, whom we are in the habit of calling our most faithful ally, whom Lord Derby (shame, for ever shame on him) calls a great and illustrious man ' ; whom poor simple Lord Malmesbury calls his great friend' ; and whom Lord Pahncrston was so forward to acknow- ledge in 1851, and so over-zealous to oblige in January 1858. This, however, is not the worst. The men so complaisant in producing a Conspiracy Bill in the beginning of the present year have chosen the moment when Lisbon has been menaced and the King of Portugal in- sulted by the crew of a French frigate ; when the slave-trade has been openly advocated in French Government journals ; when Rome has LNen seven years in the possession of a French army ; when Belgiume- Switzerland have been repeatedly threatened ; when new and unheçd of rights have been asserted as to fishing in Newfoundland waters ; when Cherbourg has been enlarged and fortified; when a despotism the most absolute weighs on France ; when new outrages to humanity and civil- ization have been disclosed in the recently published work of Colonel Walmsley on Algeria; and when the gulf separating the educated, the intelligent, the calm-thinking, and the foreseeing of France is day by day widening—at such a time, we say, two of the late Ministers of Eng- land, who were so over-complaisant in introducing a Conspiracy Bill, have inappropriately and inauspiciously chosen to pay a visit to Louis Napoleon at Compiegne. Possibly, before they leave the French soil, Lords Palmerston and Clarendon may hear in the capital of France that M. de Montalembert has been convicted and expatriated from the French soil for the heinous crime of pronouncing a panegyric on English insti- tutions. Are these the men who can look to return an'0'6, to power in this country as the Ministers of a free people ? Are these noble lords, in a word, the servants of England, or the slaves and adulators of France? Coupling the acknowledgment of the hero of the coup d'elat of 1851 with the events of January 1858, and the present discreditable and untimely visit, we shall be much surprised if this last event will not go far to sink the name of Palmerston in the estimation of thinking Eng- lishmen. The late First Minister may peradventure be able to explain and defend his conduct : all we can wish him is a safe deliverance. he to Lord Clarendon nobody expected from that noble lord much either of independence or dignity. A mere formalist, without any of the higher qualities of mind, he is neither far-seeing nor discerning. But from Lord Palmerston who has played a leading part for a quarter of a cen- tury, far better things were indeed expected. It ill became the Minister who baffled Louis Philippe and his able Minister Guizot, to become the adulator or abettor of the oppressor of the French people—of the man whose policy it is alternately to pique and soothe the English nation, to- day menacing, tomorrow making the amende honorable. The acts of this potentate are infinitely too rash, violent, unjust, and despotic, to win the suffrages of the English people or to command the respect and adhesion of any honest or dignified British statesman."
MR. BRIGHT AND THE REFORM MOVEMENT. (From Blackwood's Magazine.)
"There is very little desire in the country for Parliamentary Reform. Were each voter questioned separately, we believe a great majority' would express aversion or disinclination to change at present, and very few indeed would exhibit the least enthusiasm on its behalf. Punch's sketch of John Bright blowing the bellows in the hope of kindling a heat for Reform, portrays the simple truth. No practical grievance is felt to arise from the present regime,—unless it be that the House of Commons is too full of inane mediocrities, who know nothing of states- manship and imperial interests, but who pledge themselves to look well after the interests of their own town or city : a defect not likely to be mended by any further lowering of the franchise. Reform in its pre- sent aspect is a mere theory. It is not that the present Act does not work well enough : what is wanted is one which will look better. No wonder, then, that amongst a practical nation like ours, there should 14 little enthusiasm on the subject, and that Mr. Bright should have to puff with his bellows so strongly and unscrupulously." (.gaineralabittrlitiaiWaral itiat3Hou,0 labittO Saa.I) Am. _— '3"I! 11FTMA' • -4' d'A azrle. ! zuthsar.t. I iiiiii di is. cpuel a p - ON MO: titte448 cogRog ort,lips• countrtNittlfral need lwarr_artd . resolute Eiloplitztille he of .:::Igamitg:Tuplieatia y afs e-;- ntiii:$111.60. l'IPTINear el 041, 1,10.i•often1 Stems a e n oter purposestf Rosi- den,i At NM. WM . DatalleilW tl$01itti484444114ti
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