expresses disapprobation of his conduct. As the mass judge of things in their result, a sovereign would now be called tyrannical whose administration should render his people unhappy; at least, he would run great risk of having this odious epithet applied to him, whatever was the goodness of his intention, if he failed to satisfy the people. The word tyrannical is now often applied to acts of governments which are not monarchies ; but this is an improper use of the word. We may say that the laws enacted by the sovereign power in Great Britain are sometimes impolitic, unwise, or injurious to the State generally; they may also be sometimes called oppressive; but they cannot with propriety be called tyrannical, though such an expression may be and often is used in the vulgar sense of characterizing a law, which, for some reason, the person who uses the term does not like."

THE CLAMEUR DE HARO.

In 1870 the States of Jersey gave the English railway company that was forming a line between the towns of St. Helier's and St. Aubin, the site of the slaughter-houses at the head of St. Helier's Harbour, for the erection of a railway station. The grant, however, was attended with certain conditions respectfng the providing of suitable accommodation for slaughtering. The contractor had proceeded to abolish the buildings without complying with the necessary conditions, when Mr. David de Quetteville, one of the judges of the Royal Court, proceeded to the spot, and raised the Clameur de Haro, which consists in the person raising it falling on his knees and crying out, "Haro! Haro! A l'aide, mon prince; on me fait tort!" The workmen immediately. desisted, as they were bound to do under a heavy penalty, and the work was stopped. A special meeting of the

States (the Island Parliament) was convened, and it was resolved, after a stormy discussion, to prevent any farther proceeding with the work until a satisfactory agreement had been made with the company for the erection of new slaughter-houses.

"STOPPING THE SUPPLIES."

By the Statute of Talliage, which was passed at Westminster in the 34th year of Edward I., the right of the Commons representatives to interfere in the granting of supplies was distinctly recognized; for it is provided by that Act" that no talliage or aid shall be taken without the assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the land:" the latter were, unquestionably, the liberi homines of the common law.

THE WORD "TURNCOAT."

The original signification of this word is said to have been created by the circumstance of a Duke of Savoy having had a coat of blue cloth made for him lined with white, so that he might present either colour to whatever party of the French or Spaniards should have the ascendant in the wars which these two rival powers were then carrying on near the confines of his territories, and that for this reason he obtained the name of "Emanuel the Turncoat." This definition is not sustained by any authentic documents of those days; and Mr. Dixon, the barrister, maintains the following to be the true source:-Turncoat is a French word, côte, formerly written coste, or coast; and hence a coaster, or cutter, implying the coast, side, or party, and that a "turncôte," or "turncoat," implied any one who, in the civil, or, what is the same thing, the religious, or party wars, changed, through fear, or

for interest, his coat or side. To impute to any one the baseness of changing his religion was then, as at present, the severest reproach that could be thrown into a man's face, for it branded him as a coward, and one who placed no reliance in the philosophy or religion which he advocated.

The expression of "Turning Cat in Pan," is equivalent. to a "turncoat," for the idea put into good French is, tournant-côte en peine; that is, turning coat or sides in trouble.

WHIG AND TORY.

Gray describes the state of the public mind in 1764 (when the animosities of Whig and Tory were revived) as a parallel to these times: "Grumble, indeed, every one does ; but since Wilkes's affair they fall off their mettle and seem to shrink under the brazen names of Norton and his colleagues. I hear there will be no Parliament till after Christmas. If the French should be so unwise as to suffer the Spanish court to go on in their present measures (for they refuse to pay the ransom of Manilla, and have driven away our logwood-cutters already) down go their friends in the ministry, and all the schemes of right-divine and prerogative, and this is, perhaps, the best chance we have. Are you not struck with the great similarity there is between the first years of Charles the First and the present time?" [The contests of Whig and Tory were never so violent as in the last year of Queen Anne, just fifty years before the above time.]

THE TERM CONSERVATIVE.

The name Conservative, as distinguishing a party in the State, is of so recent an origin as January, 1830. The word was occasionally used in its literal sense by the elder writers, particularly by Sir Thomas Browne, but had become quite

obsolete, when it was revived in the following sentence, which occurs in an article in the Quarterly Review, supposed to be written by Mr. John Wilson Croker:-"We despise and abominate the details of partisan warfare; but we now are, as we always have been, decidedly and conscientiously attached to what is called the Tory, and what might with more propriety be called the Conservative party," &c. (vol. xliii. p. 276). Having been then first used in its present technical sense, the appellative was at once recognized as appropriate; and, in a short time, was universally adopted by the party to which it has since been applied.

GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE.

As we are all prone enough to attribute whatever good we enjoy to our selves, and all the evil that affects us to others, so Government is apt to meet with rather hard measures from us. It is a good, convenient creature on which to lay all the blame of national calamities and discontent, while we impute to our incorruptible selves whatever renders us great or prosperous. To hear many men talk, one would imagine that in place of the salutary fiction of our constitution, that "the king can do no wrong," we had substituted another maxim not quite so innocent, that "the people can do none." The political physician, at all events, has a far less enviable position than he to whom we consign the treatment of our bodily maladies. To this last, easy credulity gives all the praise of cure, and attaches none of the blame of failure. Does a patient recover? It is owing to the preeminent doctor's pre-eminent skill. Does a man die? He dies in the course of nature, or by the visitation of God. In the other case it is exactly the reverse. Is the nation prosperous? It is owing to the virtues, the energies, the industry

of the people. Is it miserable? It is the corruption, oppression, neglect, rapacity of the government. The reason is about equally sound in either case, though the conclusion is different; and in neither is it perfectly Baconian.-Edinburgh Review.

ENGLAND A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS.

The origin of this is explained as follows: "On May 31, 1817, Napoleon I. is reported to have said to Barry O'Meara, 'You were greatly offended with me for having called you a nation of shopkeepers. Had I meant by that that you were a nation of cowards you would have reason to be displeased.

*

* I meant that you were a nation of merchants, and that all your great riches arose from commerce. Moreover, no man of sense ought to be ashamed of being called a shopkeeper.'"- Voice from St. Helena, vol. ii. p.

81.

ENGLISH GIRONDISTS.

There is a class of revolutionists named Girondins, whose fate in history is remarkable enough! Men who rebel and urge the lower classes to rebel ought to have other than formulas to go upon. Men who discern in the misery of the toiling, complaining millions, not misery, but only a raw material which can be wrought upon, and traded in for one's own poor hide-bound theories and egoisms, to whom millions of living fellow-creatures, with beating hearts in their bosoms, beating, suffering, hoping, are 'masses,' mere 'explosive masses for blowing down Bastiles with,' for voting at hustings for us. Such men are of the questionable species.-Carlyle's Chartism, 1840.