House of Lords a motion condemning the conduct of Sir John Bowring, and, two days later, Mr. Cobden moved in the House of Commons that "the papers which have been laid upon the table fail to establish satisfactory grounds for the violent measures resorted to at Canton," and also asked for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the state of the commercial relations of Great Britain with China. The aged Lord Lyndhurst condemned the violence which had been employed towards the Chinese, with all the weight of his eloquence and great legal attainments. "When we are talking of treaty transactions with Eastern nations," he said, "we have a kind of loose law and loose notion of morality in regard to them." In the House of Commons Mr. Cobden's motion was supported by men of all parties, convinced of the injustice of the proceedings and the principles that had been applied to the Chinese. The vote of censure in the House of Lords failed by a minority of thirty-six ; the measure proposed in the House of Commons was carried by two hundred and sixty-three votes against two hundred and forty-seven.

Mr. Disraeli challenged the government to appeal to the country. "I should like," he exclaimed, "to see the programme of the proud leaders of the liberal party, no reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Pekin invaded." Lord Palmerston took at his words the bold spokesman of the Tories. He announced a dissolution, and his appeal to the electors of Tiverton proved that he well understood the temper of the English mind. The national excitability, smouldering since the Crimean war, blazed up at the prime minister's voice, against the "insolent barbarian," who had "violated the British flag, broken the engagements of treaties, offered rewards for the heads of British subjects and planned their destruction by murder, assassination and poison." This was enough for the voters, in vain did the advocates of peace maintain that the Chinese were not

barbarians, that their logic was older than Aristotle's, and their moral code antedated that of Socrates. Lord Palmerston de

clared that the measures taken by the government had been censured by a faction which, if it were to come into power, would make advances to the Chinese government and offer it compensations. "Will the British nation," he asked "give their support to men who have thus endeavored to make the humiliation and degradation of their country the stepping-stone to power?" The electors responded with enthusiasm to the premier's adroit appeal; his adversaries were defeated in their very strongholds. The supporters of peace at any price, as they were called, Messrs. Cobden, Bright, Milner, Gibson, Layard, and others, were not re-elected. The authority of Lord Palmerston emerged from the conflict consolidated and strengthened. The queen's speech on the opening of Parliament announced that her Majesty had sent to China a plenipotentiary fully entrusted to deal with all matters of difference, and that he would be supported by an adequate military and naval force in the event of such assistance becoming necessary. At this very time English troops were fighting in Cabul, in the cause of their old enemy Dost Mohammed, aiding him to repulse the Shah of Persia, who had seized upon Herat in defiance of existing treaties. An expedition commanded by Sir James Outram had set out from Bombay for the Persian Gulf. The campaign proved successful; the Shah of Persia withdrew from Afghanistan and abandoned his claims to Herat. In March, 1857, peace was concluded between England and Persia.

The haughty attitude of England, and her promptness to intervene in oriental quarrels, caused a secret feeling in the depths of the little native courts all through the regions of India which were under English supremacy. At the moment when England had been victorious over Persia, and was making ready

to coerce the Chinese, a terrible revolt, whose germs were as remote as its outburst was violent and unlooked-for, broke out suddenly at many different points throughout British India. A few days after the celebration in London of the hundredth anniversary of the battle of Plassey, the news of the mutiny arrived there. For six weeks India had been in a blaze, and English rule had been shaken to its foundations; Mahommedans and Buddhists, former conquerors or native population, all who had been subjected to the yoke of the white race, were in arms against it, and labored for its destruction.

The immediate pretexts seemed trivial, and easy to have been avoided by the English rulers of India. It had been determined to arm the Sepoys with the Enfield rifle, and it was said that the cartridges employed with this weapon were greased with a mixture of bullock's fat and hog's lard. It was usual at that time to bite off the end of the cartridge in order to pour out the powder. To taste hog's lard was an abomination to the Mahommedan; to taste the grease of their sacred animal was a profanation to the Hindoo; the former believed themselves defiled, the latter would at once and forever lose caste; both protested against the use of the English cartridges. The Indian government were conscious of their danger, and a proclamation at once denied the wide-spread report of the fatal mixture used upon the cartridges. The use of them was discontinued by order, in January, 1857. Still the rumor spread among the Sepoys that designs fatal to their religion were cherished in high quarters. Manifestations of a mutinous spirit appeared here and there, and several native regiments were actually disbanded.

The half-concealed anxiety of the native troops in respect to some attack upon their religion was not the only thing cast into the scale against British rule; a vast network of secret intrigues, independent one of another, yet all directed against the British government of India, spread through the courts of the various