to be a man of great ability and little sense, and undoubtedly of late he has appeared to confirm a part at least of this opinion. In the course of a speech at Retford, Mr. Lowe declared that Her Majesty had twice asked former Premiers to bring in a bill giving her the title of Empress, but until the accession of Mr. Disraeli had found no one willing to carry out her wishes. This statement stirred up an immense amount of loyal dust. The notice of the House of Commons was immediately called to it, and after a debate, during which its truth was positively denied, Mr. Disraeli put an extinguisher on both Mr. Lowe and his assertion, by denying the latter on the authority of the Queen herself. Nothing remained then for the "wretched, rash, intruding" Lowe to do but apologize, which he did in a manner and in words that strike an American as abject. Of course American ways of looking upon royalty are not English, and what might appear to us to be servile flattery would strike English ears as something vastly different. Englishmen, if not satisfied with the result, seem to have accepted Mr. Lowe's apology; and they are too fair and manly a race to strike a man so completely down as is the hero of this incident. Certain it is that if no further allusion be made to this matter, enough has been done to remove Mr. Lowe from among the forces of English politics.

EARLY in the month it looked as if the Sick Man's time were come. The outrage at Salonica, the brutal murder of the French and the German consuls, the insurrection of a fanatical populace in Constantinople, the arming of Christian and Mohammedan for a deadly struggle, seemed to tell of the coming of the end. But the imperial Triumvirate in session in Germany seems to have put off the great catastrophe. New demands, surpassing those of Count Andrassy's previous note, have been made on the Porte, and it seems will be acceded to; although England, consistent to the last in her role of Turkophilist, withholds her assent because too much is asked. What can be too much to ask of Turkey, in view of the continual violation of every previous promise, is a hard question. Certain it is that it is not enough to ask anything without claiming the right to see that the performance corresponds to the promise.

THE argument in the impeachment business goes along slowly. On the side of the managers, Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts, seems to

have made the strongest speech. The question submitted to the Senate is both difficult in itself and disagreeable in its possible consequences. It is very hard for the Senate to accept as true the doc trine that may render gentlemen like Delano, Cresswell and Williams subject to impeachment by future Democratic Congresses; and it is said that the Honorable Zachariah Chandler, being on the rampage, has threatened that he will make it necessary for the Democrats to impeach the Honorable Jacob Thompson, predecessor of the Honorable Zachariah in Mr. Buchanan's days, if they persist in their unmanly persecution of the Honorable Zachariah's friend, Mr. ex-Secretary Belknap. This aspect of the case is indeed threatening and terrible. The prospect of each successive Democratic House of Representatives impeaching all Republicans formerly in office, and vice versa, while the Senate sits as a High Court of Impeachment "en permanence" is calculated to terrify the admirers of our institutions, and may make the boldest Senator hesitate before he helps to establish a precedent which would make such things possible. It would indeed then be impossible to call any man who had ever been in office happy, until he was dead and removed to a sphere in which investigations are no longer necessary, and Congress has no power to send for persons and papers. Impeachment as a political weapon would be a dangerous thing, liable to burst in a friend's hands, and for that purpose was hardly instituted by the fathers. But on the other hand it seems little desirable to lay down the rule that a corrupt officer may escape punishment by timely resignation. The question in respect of consequences is a difficult one, and it will be easier to consider it only in the light in which alone the Senate should regard it, as one of law. Unhappily, however, that body is not likely to look upon it as a court of justice would a legal proposition, and let the consequences, personal and political, take care of themselves.

THE Conference at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, called by Messrs. Bryant, Woolsey, Bullock, White and Schurz, to consider the meaning and the possibilities of the political situation, was such in its composition and its action as to create something of a ripple in the preliminary campaign for the presidency. A very considerable number of men, eminent in literature, in the church and in the learned professions were present. It was foretold by some that the conference would result

in an independent nomination; but while a majority of those who attended made no concealment of their preference for Secretary Bristow, they did nothing that could prejudice his chances at Cincinnati. They issued a notable address to the people of the United States, written it is said by President Mark Hopkins ("Mark the perfect man") of Williams College. They call attention to the dangers of our present political condition, and call upon their countrymen to reform them altogether. Having appointed a committee to sit until after the approaching conventions, they adjourned.

It may fairly be asked, what was the use of the convention? If it was to give an opportunity to a number of excellent persons to get together to comfort one another for having "fallen on evil days and evil tongues," that might have been done without quite so much newspaper talk. If it was to assure the people of the United States that there is still among us a number of people who hold that the Ten Commandments have not ceased to be applicable to politics, we trust that the fact is not new nor unknown, and that there are yet millions among us who have not bowed the knee to Baal. If it was to make up a slate for the Cincinnati convention, it might have been more manly to have spoken out and said so. But the Conference did nothing to organize the moral indignation which the better and larger public feel at the corruption of public men-nothing to direct the attention of the people to those reforms of political method, by which our government may be brought into ethical conformity with the national character-and, in view of the relative merits of of Messrs. Blaine and Bristow, we are constrained to say, nothing to secure us a better and a purer man for the presidential chair than we would have had if it had never met.

It is said that the New York members of the Conference, or at least some of them, do not understand that they are at all committed to Mr. Bristow for the first place on the slate. They are using what prestige the Conference had to bring the name of Mr. Wm. M. Evarts before the public, with Mr. Bristow as the candidate for VicePresident.

MEANWHILE the State Conventions go on with the election of the Cincinnati Convention, and all the indications point to Mr. Blaine as likely to be chosen on the first ballot. Senator Morton of course commands some Western votes, and Mr. Bristow divides some dele

gations; but on the whole Mr. Blaine keeps clearly ahead. We are not of the number of his admirers, and we shall not rejoice very greatly in his nomination or his election; but neither shall we greatly bewail the vote that prefers him to either of his two foremost competitors. Mr. Blaine is not an ideal statesman; there is too much of the politician's smartness in his composition for him to command the high regard of those who look to see the stuff a man is made of.

THE tone adopted by the Western Democrats in regard to Governor Tilden makes his nomination by the Democratic Convention exceedingly doubtful. His speeches in which the Western softmoney men were denounced as thieves and rogues, are now brought up against him, and his friends bewail his indiscretion in not remembering the coming of a national election. Mr. Tilden probably counted on the dissolution of the existing parties and their reconstruction on new lines before that event came off. Or perhaps he is less of a politician, and more of a statesman, than his past record at Rochester and elsewhere would indicate; he was "thinking of the next generation, not of the next election." Should he receive the nomination, his early connection with the Tweed faction will receive a pretty thorough overhauling.

The World does itself honor by proposing General Hancock of this State for the nomination. Should he receive it, he will command a great number of Republican votes wherever he is known, either as a man or as a soldier. Nothing would be so likely to place Pennsylvania squarely on the Democratic side.

THE change in the Cabinet which puts Don Cameron in the Secretaryship of War would have excited more remark were it not that public attention is so largely directed to other matters. We are looking with so much intentness to see who the rising sun is to be, that we cease to care much what the setting sun is doing. But we are convinced that this new move will not fail to have a bearing on the coming campaign. It means an alliance of the Cameron and the Grant influence for some purpose. These two men hold the greatest amount of personal political power that is united in two men anywhere on this continent. The President has a great army of dependent office-holders, whose ultimate tenure depends on the issue of the campaign, and whose immediate tenure is at the pleasure

of the President. Simon Cameron owns the great majority of the politicians of both parties in this State. He is as free from the offence of "bribery" as any rich man who has gone into politics. But he has so steadily and systematically "befriended" every young and rising man who would accept of his favors, that he can depend upon an incalculable amount of political support. His "friends" have been procured by a wholesale generosity, which asked nothing and made no terms. Only those whose consciences were very wideawake and (as some people would say) very scrupulous, resisted these advances as coming from a man whom they might be conscientiously constrained to differ from and oppose.

The new coalition may possibly indicate an effort to give the Cincinnati nomination to Mr. Conkling, in case of a failure to nominate Blaine on the first ballot. In case that succeeded, not even Simon Cameron could secure the vote of our commonwealth to the Republican candidate.

THE last fortnight has been marked by the meeting of several State Conventions of both parties. Massachusetts chose Dana, Forbes, Hoar, Chadbourne, Bullock, and notably James Freeman Clarke and James Russell Lowell, as her delegates to Cincinnati, most of whom are earnest advocates of Mr. Bristow, and few of whom will find much congenial society in the Pennsylvania delegation. The Kentucky Republicans present the name of Mr. Bristow, absurdly enough coupling it with the statement that " Kentucky gave Mr. Lincoln to his country"-when the truth is that Kentucky would at most periods of that great man's career have done something rather different to him if she could have got hold of his ungainly person. The reform wing of the Republicans in Alabama also chose a Bristow delegation, but the Spencerites will clip it effectually if they can when the right time comes at Cincinnati. Delaware, after a fight and a split, instructs her six delegates for Blaine. The most noticeable of all the conventions was that of Ohio, where the struggle lay between Allen and Thurman, in which the soft money champion triumphed and laid his nephew low-a result not to be wondered at or lamented, considering how well Judge Thurman deserved his fate after his course last fall. The result is quite in keeping with the general course of that extraordinary school of statesmanship called the Democratic party, inasmuch as it put an extin