Parliament. He had not been long enough in the Home Office, it would seem, to understand thoroughly the temper of his countrymen. Indeed, in this instance he made a mistake every way. When he assented to the introduction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill he was right in thinking that English public opinion wished to have something done; but in this case the inclination of public opinion was the other way; it wished to have nothing done; at least, just at that moment. Mr. Kinglake moved an amendment, formally expressing the sympathy of the House with the French people, on account of the attempt made against the emperor, but declaring it inexpedient to legislate, in compliance with the demand made in Count Walewski's dispatch of January 20th, "until further information is before it of the communications of the two governments subsequent to the date of that dispatch." A discussion took place, in which Mr. Roebuck pointed out, very properly, that in any new measure of legislation it was not punishment of crime accomplished that was required, but discovery of crime meditated; and he also showed, with much effect, that in some cases, when the English Government had actually warned the Government of France that some plot was afoot, and that the plotters had left for Paris, the Paris police were unable to find them out, or to benefit in any way by the action of the English authorities. Mr. Disraeli voted for the bringing in of the bill, and made a cautious speech, in which he showed himself in favor of some sort of legislation, but did not commit himself to approval of that particular measure. This prudence proved convenient afterward, when the crisis of the debate showed that it would be well for him to throw himself into the ranks of the opponents of the measure. The bill was read a first time. Two hundred and ninety-nine votes were for it; only ninety-nine against. But before it came on for a second reading public opinion was beginning to declare ominously against it. The

fact that the government had not answered the dispatch of Count Walewski told heavily against them. It was afterward explained that Lord Cowley had been instructed to answer it verbally, and that Lord Palmerston thought his course the more prudent, and the more likely to avoid an increase of irritation between the two countries. But public opinion in England was not now to be propitiated by counsels of moderation. The idea had gone abroad that Lord Palmerston was truckling to the Emperor of the French, and that the very right of asylum which England had so long afforded to the exiles of all nations was to be sacrificed at the bidding of one who had been glad to avail himself of it in his hour of need.

This idea received support from the arrest of Dr. Simon Bernard, a French refugee, who was immediately put on trial as an accomplice in Orsini's plot. Bernard was a native of the south of France, a surgeon by profession, and had lived a long time in England. He must have been, in outward aspect at least, the very type of a French Red Republican conspirator, to judge by the description given of him in the papers of the day. He is described as thin and worn, "with dark restless eyes, sallow complexion, a thick mustache, and a profusion of long black hair combed backward and reaching nearly to his shoulders, and exposing a broad but low and receding forehead." The arrest of Bernard may have been a very proper thing, but it came in with most untimely effect upon the government. It was understood to have been made by virtue of information sent over from Paris, and no one could have failed to observe that the loosest accusations of that kind were always coming from the French capital. Many persons were influenced in their belief of Bernard's innocence by the fact, which does assuredly account for something, that Orsini himself had almost with his dying breath declared that Bernard knew nothing of the intended assasination. Not a few made up

their minds that he was innocent because the French Government accused him of guilt; and still more declared that, innocent or guilty, he ought not to be arrested by English authorities at the bidding of a French emperor. At the same time the Cantillion story was revived; the story of the legacy left by the First Napoleon to the man who attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington, and it was insisted that the legacy had been paid to Cantillion by the authority of Napoleon III.

The debate was over and the Conspiracy Bill disposed of before the Bernard trial came to an end, but we may anticipate by a few days, and finish the Bernard story. Bernard was tried at the Central Criminal Court under existing law; he was defended by Mr. Edwin James, a well-known criminal lawyer, and he was acquitted. The trial was a practical evidence of the inutility of such special legislation as that which Lord Palmerston attempted to introduce. A new law of conspiracy could not have furnished any new evidence against Bernard or persuaded a jury to convict him on such evidence as there was. In the prevailing temper of the public the evidence should have been very clear indeed to induce an ordinary English jury to convict a man like Bernard, and the evidence of his knowledge of an intended assassination was anything but clear. Mr. Edwin James improved the hour. He made the trial an occasion for a speech denunciatory of tyrants generally, and he appealed in impassioned language to the British jury to answer the French tyrant by their verdict; which they did accordingly. Mr. James became a sort of popular hero for the time in consequence of his oration. He had rhetorical talent enough to make him a sort of Old Bailey Erskine, a Buzfuz Berryer. He set up for a liberal politician and tribune of the people. and was enabled after a while to transfer his eloquence to the House of Commons. He vapored about as a friend of Italy and Garibaidi and oppressed nationalities generally

for a year or two after; got into money and other difficulties, and had to extinguish his political career suddenly and ignominiously. He was indeed heard of after. He went to America, and he came back again. But we need not speak of him any more.

In the midst of the commotion caused by Bernard's arrest, and by the offer of two hundred pounds reward for the detection of an Englishman named Allsopp, also charged with complicity in the plot, Mr. Milner Gibson quietly gave notice of an amendment to the second reading of the Conspiracy Bill. The amendment proposed to declare that while the House heard with regret the allegation that the recent crime had been devised in England, and was always ready to assist in remedying any proved defects in the criminal law, "yet it cannot but regret that her Majesty's Government, previously to inviting the House to amend the law of conspiracy by the second reading of this bill at the present time, have not felt it to be their duty to make some reply to the important dispatch received from the French Government, dated Paris, January 20th, 1858, and which has been laid before Parliament." It might have been seen at once that this was a more serious business for the government than Mr. Kinglake's amendment. In forecasting the result of a motion in the House of Commons much depends on the person who brings it forward. Has he a party behind him? If so, then the thing is important. If not, let his ability be what it will, his motion is looked on as a mere expression of personal opinion; interesting perhaps, but without political consequence. Mr. Kinglake was emphatically a man without a party behind him; Mr. Gibson was emphatically a man of party and of practical politics. Mr. Kinglake was a brilliant literary man who had proved little better than a failure in the House; Mr. Gibson was a successful member of Parliament and nothing else. No one could have supposed that Mr. Gibson was likely to get up a discussion for

the mere sake of expressing his own opinion or making a display. He was one of those who had been turned out of Parliament when Palmerston made his triumphant appeal to the country on the China question. He was one of those whom Punch made fun of by a new adaptation of the old "il n'y a pas de quoi" story; one of those who could not sit because they had no seats. Now he had just been returned to Parliament by another constituency; and he was not likely to be the mouthpiece of a merely formal challenge to the policy of the government. When the debate on the second reading came on it began soon to be seen that the condition of things was grave for Lord Palmerston. Every hour and every speech made it more ominous. Mr. Gladstone spoke eloquently against the government. Mr. Disraeli suddenly discovered that he was bound to vote against the second reading, although he had voted for the first. The government, he argued, had not yet answered the dispatch as they might have done in the interval, and as they had not vindicated the honor of England, the House of Commons could not intrust them with the measure they demanded. Lord Palmerston saw that, in homely phrase, the game was up. He was greatly annoyed; he lost his temper, and did not even try to conceal the fact that he had lost it. He attacked Mr. Milner Gibson fiercely; declared that "he appears for the first time in my memory as the champion of the dignity and honor of the country." He wandered off into an attack on the whole Peace party, or Manchester School, and told some story about one of their newspapers which laid it down as a doctrine, that it would not matter if a foreign enemy conquered and occupied England so long as they were allowed to work their mills. All this was in curiously bad taste. For a genial and kindly as well as a graceful man, it was singular how completely Lord Palmerston always lost his good manners when he lost his temper. Under the influence of sudden anger, luckily a rare influence