winking Virgin in competition with him who could "make a young lady ascend to the ceiling, and come slowly down like a parachute!"a spiritual fact I have heard from witnesses who really, so far as character went, might challenge any incredulity. If the cardinals were jealous of the conjuror, the thing is intelligible enough, and one must feel a certain degree of sympathy with the oldestablished firm that had spent such enormous sums, and made such stupendous preparations, when a pretender like this could come into competition with them, without any other properties than could be carried conveniently about him. But let us be practical, The Pope's Government demanded of Mr. Home that he should have no dealings with the Evil One during his stay at Rome. Now, I ask, what should we say of the efficacy of our police system if we were to hear that the Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard lived in nightly terror of the pickpockets who frequented that quarter, and came to Parliament with a petition to accord him some greater secu rity against their depredations? Would not the natural reply be an exclamation of astonishment that he who could summon to his aid every alphabetical blue-coat that ever handled a truncheon, should deem an increased security necessary to his peace? And so, would I ask, of what avail these crowd of cardinals-these regiments of monsignori-these battalions of bishops, arch and simple ?-of what use all the incense and these chanted litanies and these eternal processionsand these saintly shin-bones borne in costly array-if one poor mortal, supposed to live on visiting terms with the Evil One, can strike such terror into the whole army led on by Infallibility? If I had been possessed of any peculiar dread of coming unexpectedly on the Devil-as the old ladies of New York used to feel long ago about suddenly meeting with the British army-I should certainly have comforted myself by the thought that I could always go and sit down on the steps of the Vatican. It would immediately have occurred to me, that as Holyrood offers its sanctuary against the sheriff, the Quirinal would be the sure retreat against Old Nick; and I have even pictured to myself the rage of his disappointed malice as he saw me sheltering safely beneath a protection he dared not invade. And now I am told to relinquish all the blessed enjoyment of this immunity; that the Pope and the cardinals and Antonelli himself are not a whit better off than the rest of us; that if Mr. Home gets into Rome, there is nothing to prevent his having the Devil at his tea-parties. What an ignoble confession is this! Who will step forward any longer and contend that this costly system is to be maintained, and all these saintly intercessors to be kept on the most expensive of all pension-lists, if a poor creature like Home can overthrow it all? Can any one conceive such a spectacle as these gorgeous men of scarlet and purple cringing before this poor pretender, and openly avowing before Europe that there is no peace for them till he consents to cross the Tiber? Why-I speak, of course, in the ignorance of a laic-but, I ask, why not fumigate him and cleanse him? When I saw him last, the process would not have been so supererogatory. Why not exorcise and defy him? Why not say, Come, and bring your friend, if you dare; you shall see how we will treat you. Only try it. It is what we have been asking for nigh two thousand years. Let the great culprit step forward and plead to his indictment. I can fancy the Pope saying this I can picture to myself the proud attitude of the Pontiff declaring, "I have had enough of these small devilries. Like Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel, I am sick of Mazzini and his petty followers. Let us deal with the chief of the gang at once; if we cannot convict him, he will be at least open to a compromise." This, I say, I can comprehend; but it is clear and clean beyond me that he should shirk the interview, and own he was afraid of him.' It would not surprise me to-morrow to hear that Lord Derby dreaded the Radicals, and actually feared the debating powers of "Mr. Potter of the Strikes." GAMBLING FOR THE MILLION. Nothing shows what a practical civil servants of the Crown, and people we are more than our Scores of others, whom nothing establishment of insurances against railroad accidents. The spirit of commercial enterprise, by which a man charters himself for a railroad voyage with an insured cargo of his bones, ligaments, cartilage, and adipose tissue, abundantly proves that we are nature's own traders and shopkeepers. Any ordinary people less imbued with Liverpool and Manchester notions would have bestirred themselves how to prevent, or at least lessen, the number of those casualties. They would have set to work to see what provisions could be adopted to give greater security to travel. We, on the contrary, are too business-like to waste time on this inquiry. We are convinced that, let us build ships ever so strong, there will still be shipwrecks. So we feel assured that a certain number of railway accidents, as they are called, will continue to occurbe as broad gauge as you will! We accept the situation, therefore, as the French say, and insure; that is to say, we book a bet of very long odds-say, three to a thousand-that we shall be rolled up, cut in two, flattened into a thin sheeting, and ground into an impalpable powder, between Croydon and Brighton. If we arrive safe, the assurance office pockets a few shillings; if we win our wager, our executor receives a thousand pounds. It is about the grimmest kind of gambling ever man heard of; and yet we see folk of the most unquestionable propriety - dignitaries of the Church, judges, civil and un would tempt into the Cursaal at Ems or Baden, as coolly as possible playing this terrific game, and backing themselves heavily for a dorsal paralysis, a depressed fracture of the cranium, or at least a compound dislocation of the hip-joint. Now, if the Protestant Church entertained what the Romanists call cases of conscience, I should like greatly to ask, Is this right? Is it justifiable to make a contingent profit out of your cerebral vertebræ or your popliteal space? We have long been derided and scoffed at for making connubialism marketable, and putting a price on a wife's infidelity, but it strikes me this is something worse; for what, after all, is a rib-a false rib, too compared with the whole bony skeleton ? "Allah is Allah," said the Turkish admiral to Lady Hester Stanhope, "but I have got two anchors astern," showing that, with all his fatalism, he did not despise what are technically called human means. So the reverend Archdeacon, going down for his sea-baths, might say, "I am not quite sure they'll carry me safely, but it shall not be all misfortune-I'll take out some of it in money." The system, however, has its difficulties; for though it is a round game, the stakes are apportioned with reference to the rank and condition of the winner-as, for instance, the Solicitor-General's collar-bone is worth a shoemaker's whole body, and a Judge's patella is of more value than a dealer in marine stores and his rising family. This is a tremendous pull against the company, who not only give long, but actually incalculable odds; for while Mr. Briggs of the second class can be crumpled up for two hundred pounds, the Hon. Sackville de Cressy in the coupé cannot be even concussed under a thousand; while, if the noble Duke in the express carriage be only greatly alarmed, the cost may be positively astounding. This I certainly call hard ―very hard. When you book a bet at Newmarket you never have to consider the rank of your opponent, save as regards his solvency. He may be a peer-he is very probably a publican-it is perfectly immaterial to you; but not so here. We all know how a number of what are termed technically serious people went to Exeter Hall to listen to the music of the 'Traviata,' what no possible temptation would have induced them to hear within the walls of a theatre. Now, may not these railway insurances be something of the same kind? May it not be a means by which deans and canons and other broad-hatted dignitaries may enjoy a little gambling without going in" for Blind Hooky or Roulette? Regard for decorum would prevent their sojourning at Homburg or Wiesbaden. They could not, of course, be seen 66 punting at the play-table at Ems; but here is a legitimate game which all may join in, and where, certainly, the anxiety that is said to impart the chief ecstasy to the gamester's passion rises to the very highest. It is heads and tails for a smashing stake, and ought to interest the most sluggish of mortals. What a useful addition, then, would it be for one Bradshaw to have a tabular view of the "odds" on the different lines, so that a speculative individual, desiring to provide for his family, might know where to address himself with best chance of an accident! One can imagine an assurance company puffing its unparalleled advantages and unrivalled opportunity, when four excursion trains were to start at five minutes' intervals, and the prospect of a smash was little short of a certainty. "Great attraction! the late rains have injured the chief portion of the line, so that a disaster is confidently looked for every hour. Make your game, gentlemen-make your game; nothing received after the bell rings." THE INTOXICATING LIQUORS BILL. of lecturers have converted it into a profession. None denied the existence of the disease; what we craved was the cure. Some discrepancy of opinion prevailed as to whether the vice was on the increase or the decrease. Statistics were given, and, of course, statistics supported each assertion. This, however, was a mere skirmish-the grand battle was, how was drunkenness to be put down? Anything more absurd than the late debate in the House on the best means of suppressing intemperance it is very hard to imagine. First of all, in the van, came the grievance to be redressed; and we had a statistical statement of all the gallons of strong drink consumed-all the moneys diverted from the legitimate uses of the family-all the debauchees who rolled drunk through our streets, and all the offences directly originating in this degrading vice. Now, what conceivable order of mind could prompt a man to engage on such a laborious research? Who either doubts the enormity of drunkenness issued. The mover of this proor its frequency? It is a theme posal, curiously enough called this that we hear of incessantly. The bringing public opinion to bear pulpit rings with it, the press pro- on the question." What muddle claims it, the judges declare it in of intelligence could imagine this all their charges, and a special class to be an exercise of public opin Mr. Lawson's plan was: If fourfifths of the ratepayers of any district were agreed that no spirituous liquors should be sold there, that such should become a law, and no licence for their sale should be ion I cannot imagine. Such, however, is the plan. Drunkenness is to be repressed by making it impossible. Did it never occur to the honourable gentleman, that all legislative enactments whatever work not by enforcing what is good, but by punishing what is evil? No law that ever was made would render people honest and true to their engagements; but we arrive at a result not very dissimilar by making dishonesty penal. The Decalogue declares: "Thou shalt not commit a murder." Human law pronounces what will come of it if you do. It is, doubtless, very imperfect legislation, but there is no help for it. We accept such cases, however, as the best defences we can find for our social condition, never for a moment presuming to think that we are rendering a vice impossible by attaching to it a penalty. Mr. Lawson, however, says, There shall be no drunkenness, because there shall be no liquor. Why not extend the principle-for it is a great discovery-and declare that, wherever four-fifths of the ratepayers of a town or borough are of opinion that ingratitude is a great offence to morals, and a stain to human nature, in that district where they reside there shall be no benefits conferred, nor any act of kindly aid or assistance rendered by one man to his neighbour? I have no doubt that, by such legislation, you would put down in gratitude. We use acts in the moral world pretty much as in the physical; and it is entirely by the impossibility of committing the offence that this gentleman proposes to prevent its occurrence. But, in the name of common sense, why do we inveigh against monasteries and nunneries?-why are we so severe on a system that substitutes restraint for reason, and instead of correction supplies coercion? Surely this plan is based on exactly the same principle. Would it, I ask, cure a man of lying -I mean the vice, not the practiceto place him in a community where no party was permitted to talk? The example of the higher classes was somewhat ostentatiously paraded in the debate, and members vied with each other in declaring how often they dined out without meeting a drunkard in the company. This is very gratifying and reassuring; but I am not aware that anybody ascribed the happy change to the paucity of the decanters, and the difficulty of getting the bottle; or whether it was that four-fifths of the party had declared an embargo on the sherry, and realised the old proverb by elevating necessity to the rank of virtue. Let me ask, who ever imagined that the best way to render a soldier brave in battle was to take care that he never saw an enemy, and only frequented the society of Quakers? and yet this is precisely what Mr. Lawson suggests. If his system be true, what becomes of all moral discipline and all self-restraint? It is not through my own convictions that I am sober; it is through no sense of the degradation that pertains to drunkenness, and the loss of social estimation that follows it, that I am temperate. It is because four-fifths of the ratepayers declare that I shall have no drink nearer than the next parish; and this reminds of another weak point in the plan. The Americans, who understand something of the evils of drink, on the principle that made Doctor Pangloss a good man, because he knew what wickedness was, lately passed a law in Congress forbidding the use of fermented liquors on board all the ships of war. It was one of those sweeping pieces of legislation that men enact when driven to do something, they know not exactly what, by the enormity of some great abuse. Now, I have taken considerable pains to inquire how the plan operates, and what success has waited on it. From every officer that I have questioned I have received the same exact testimony: so long as the ships are at sea the men only grumble at the privation but once they touch port, and boats' crews are permitted to go ashore, drunkenness breaks out with tenfold violence. For a while all real 1 discipline is at an end; parties are despatched to bring back defaulters, who themselves get reeling drunk; petty officers are insulted, and scenes of violence enacted that give the unhappy locality where they have landed the aspect of a town taken by assault and given up to pillage. I am not now describing altogether from hearsay; I have witnessed something of what I speak. As drunkenness, when the ship was at sea, was the rarest of all events, and the good conduct of the men when on shore was the great object to be obtained, this system may be, so far as the navy is concerned, pronounced a decided failure. Whatever may be said about the policy of sowing a man's wild oats, nobody, so far as I know, ever hinted that the crop should be perennial. Legislation can no more make men temperate than it can make them cleanly or courteous. If Parliament could work miracles of this sort, it would make one really in love with constitutional government. But what a crotchety thing all this amateur law-making is! Why did it not occur to this well-intentioned gentleman to inquire how it is that drunkenness is unknown, or nearly unknown, in what are called the better classes? How is it that the orgies our grandfathers liked so well, and deemed the great essence of hospitality, are no longer heard of? The three-bottle inan now could no more be found than the Plesiosaurus. He belongs to a past totally and essentially irrevocable. things; and even they who, so to say, "liked their wine" too well, were slow to disparage themselves by an indulgence which good taste declared to be ungentlemanlike. Is it completely impossible to introduce some such sentiment as this into other orders of society? We see it certainly in some foreign countries-why not in our own? Radical orators are incessantly telling us of the mental powers and the intellectual cultivation of the working-classes, and I am well-disposed to believe there is much truth in what they say. Why not then adapt, to men so highly civilized, some of those sentiments that sway the classes more favoured of fortune? The French artisan would deem it a disgrace to be drunkso the Italian; even the German would only go as far es a sort of Beery bemuddlement that made him a more ideal representative of the Vaterland: why must the Englishman, of necessity, be the inferior in civilization to these? I am not willing to believe the task of such a reformation hopeless, though I am perfectly convinced that no greater folly could be committed than to attempt it by an Act of Parliament. When legislation has led men to be agreeable in society, unassuming in manners, and gentle in deportment, it may make them temperate in their liquor, but not before. The thing cannot be done in committee, nor by a vote of the House. It is only to be accomplished by the filtering process, by which the good habits of a nation drop down and permeate the strata beneath; so that, in course of time, the whole mass, leavened by the same ingredients, becomes one as completely in sentiment as in interest. And by what has this happy change been effected? Surely not by withdrawing temptation. Not only have we an infinitely wider choice in fluids than our forefathers, but they are served and ministered with appliances far more tasteful and seductive. It is, however, to the higher tone of society the revolution is owing. Men saw that drunkenness was disgraceful: it rendered society disorderly and riotous; it intertered with all real conversational pleasure; it led to unmannerly ex-"My children, be chaste till you are tempted cesses, and to quarrels. A higher cultivation repudiated all these "Four firths of the ratepayers" will not effect this. After all, Mr. Lawson is only a second-hand discoverer. His bill was a mere plagiarisin from beginning to end. The whole text of his argument was said and sung by poor Curran, full fifty odd years ago While sober, be wise and discreet; And humble your bodies with fasting Whenever you've nothing to eat." |