ster carpet. A neat looking-glass in a carved oak frame was fixed against the wall. A fleecy sheepskin opposed the progress of a draught, that, under normal circumstances, found a passage beneath the doorway. An alabaster lamp, swinging from the ceiling, cast a light sufficient to show the beauties and to conceal the deficiencies.

It was in this little corner that Count Rabelais stood for a moment. With all his frivolity and apparent carelessness of manner, he evidently felt some tremor at his approaching interview with the actress. Pausing, therefore, for a moment, he listened to discover the sound of any voice that might betray the presence of the actress's companion; while, to conceal his purpose from any possible spectator, he arranged his hair, his whiskers, and cravat.

She

At length he opened the door and found Madame Carron alone. was seated near the fireplace reading a volume of Molière. And in the arrangement of the apartment was visible the same woman's hand that had cast a refining influence over the ante-chamber. White muslin curtains, evidently not the choice of a professional lodginghouse keeper, added to the cleanliness, while not destroying the harmony of the furniture,—a few tiger skins and Cashmere shawls, thrown here and there, as though accidentally, over the chairs and sofas, concealed the original dinginess of the chintz coverings. A cloth of rich velvet was spread over the table, and covered with small objects collected from many countries. Rare flowers were placed in a stand near the window, while two alabaster lamps, matching with that we have already seen, cast the same furtive light. A small shaded lamp, placed near the actress on a small stand of Italian mosaic, illuminated the volume before her.

"Am I late, Leontine?" asked the actor, in a tone of voice very different from that in which he had beguiled the fancy of Lady Coxe.

"Too late and too early," re

"You seem to have chosen a nice society for me, Adelgonde. A couturière, I suppose."

"A respectable person, Achille more respectable, perhaps, even than yourself. She is opulent, Achille; you are not."

"I did not know you were worldly enough and English enough to measure respectability by wealth, Madame."

Her livelihood is gained by her own exertions-yours is not." The actress spoke in a tone of some bitterness.

"And do you reproach me, Adelgonde?"

"No, Achille. I only remind you of what you are too apt to forget.' "Well, do not let us quarrel about terms," rejoined Rabelais, querulously. "Who is it that graces your salon this evening?"

"Madame Mélanie."

"And who is Madame Mélanie?" "The first dressmaker in Europe."

"Belle position!"

"It is a position, Achille, to be the first in any line of life."

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And you have forced me away from a pleasant party to spend an evening with a dressmaker. Thank you, Adelgonde, you want me to marry la petite Coxe. I am making great game with Miladi, her mother, getting on famously. I rush away to keep an engagement to meet a person likely to assist my aim, and to fulfil your wishes; and I find that you bring me to exchange confidences with a lingère. Really, Adelgonde, you might have chosen some other occasion."

"Believe me, if you play your cards properly you will not repent it."

(To be continued.)

IN the existing dearth of interest in our domestic politics, some attention has been drawn to the agitation Mr Cobden proposes to undertake. Its object is to alter the Law of Nations so as to prohibit the capture of the enemy's merchant ships or the blockade of his commercial ports. Philanthropic men, moved by the hardships and loss which war inflicts on peaceful industry, are apt to forget that our political arrangements are generally based upon a choice of evils, and that in seeking to escape from those of one class we may create others still more grievous. They become so possessed with their view of one side of a subject as to lose the power of seeing its other side. Nor will a prophet ever be long in this country without some believers. In this instance a few respectable shipowners, without giving themselves to much study of International Law, accept at once the assertion that the Declaration of Paris will be prejudicial, if not ruinous, to our commerce in time of war, and straightway implore a remedy for a disorder which we hope to prove has no existence except in their own imaginations.

To the treaty made in Paris at the close of the Crimean war certain declarations were appended. They were brought forward unexpectedly, and decided with a haste that precluded any such deliberation as the subjects required. One of them, which practically denounced freedom of the press in Belgium, an independent State, was speedily rejected by public opinion, and fell stillborn to the ground. The clauses upon maritime rights, on which the present movement is founded, run thus :

1. Privateering is and remains abolished.

2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, except contraband of war.

3. Neutral goods, except contra

band of war, are not liable to capture under the enemy's flag.

4. Blockades in order to be binding must be effective - that is, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.

These clauses embody the doctrines usually professed by each of the neutral Powers, except when it chanced to become a belligerent. It has been our own practice hitherto stoutly to maintain the principle of taking the enemy's property wherever found at sea. We adhered consistently to a national policy practised by other Powers, or disputed by them according to their position at the moment. Owing, however, to the considerable number of the neutral States and the great power of disputation to be found among them, the exercise of these ancient rights of war was maintained at the cost of much illwill and inconvenience, and in view of this it was deemed expedient to abandon them. It has been asserted that we made the concession in apprehension of the increased power and authority of the neutral States. No assertion could be more groundless. We insisted on these rights, and made them good throughout a period of modern history, when the maritime power of the neutrals was greatly beyond any they now possess. Spain had once great fleets; those of Holland have held even battle with our own; the Danes were formidable at sea; Sweden, Turkey, Venice, have all been naval powers of some consideration. These fleets have either passed away or are now but shadows of their former strength. It is easily to be proved that the naval power of this country was never so pre-eminent when compared with that of all the other States of Europe as at the present day. Hence the policy that dictated this concession was open to

no imputation of fear. But whilst the material strength of the neutrals had declined during the present century, the influence of moral force has extended-nations are drawn into much closer fellowshipa spirit more genial and considerate than that of old pervades the world; isolation and defiance, if not more difficult, have become more painful. These are the considerations that influenced our action. We made a concession to the spirit of the age.

As it is now proposed to inaugurate a new and untried system of warfare on the basis of this Declaration of Paris, we are led at once to ask if it be an agreement so certain to be respected by others that we can regard it as a safe foundation to rely upon. Its validity is exceedingly doubtful. It is doubtful whether the prerogative of the Crown, acting alone, can extend so far as to alter the law established and administered in this country by its courts. Phillimore speaks of it as "this anomalous Declaration, whatever may be its binding effect." It does not appear to have ever been ratified by the Crown. In the debates in Parliament Lord Derby expressed grave Doubts of its validity, and Mr Gladstone professed himself unable to determine whether it constituted a treaty, and if not, what it did constitute.

As

it only pretends to bind the States that were parties to it, it cannot be regarded as a law of nations, but only as a law of some nations, a thing of very different value. Though commonly called a Declaration, it does not really declare the existing law, but enacts a new one. This being done by a compact of several Powers, its nature is really that of a treaty, and nothing is more certain than that treaties are shattered by the first breath of war. None will dispute Lord Stowell's dictum, war extinguishes treaties;" or that of Vattel, "The conventions made with a nation are broken or annulled by a war arising between the two contracting parties." It has been

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argued, that though this be true with treaties in general, it cannot hold good in regard to those which are to regulate the conduct of war itself. Can any one point out such a treaty that did hold good when war tested it? There are certain rules which regulate the treatment of prisoners, flags of truce, and other details of warfare; these it is to the convenience of all belligerents to adhere to. But these changes are not in details of procedure, but in large questions of policy. A treaty has force, because you can punish a breach of it by going to war; but once you are actually at war, a treaty is as vain as a penal law, for which there is no penalty.

We shall find, as we proceed, that our shipping may derive great advantage from the abolition of privateering. When this is set off against any injury under the other clauses, the advocates of this movement reply thus,-"Do not deceive yourselves. France has indeed agreed not to employ privateers; but her merchants, instead of appearing in that form, will obtain commissions, and come against you as cruisers of the navy — a mere difference of name." Now, taking the assertion as it is made, does it not prove the facility with which compacts of this nature can be evaded? Evaded by one belligerent, the other would instantly declare the compact at an end. Who can place reliance in an agreement when those who defend it point out to us how readily and surely it will be broken? International law is a record of the usage of the civilised Powers. Now, this Declaration is an agreement to depart from previous usage, one Power in the matter of privateering, another. in its claims on neutrals. It has, therefore, no basis in that which is the essence of the Law of Nations, and is void of the power which gives efficiency to those laws-the power of established public opinion. This difference is very material, for there is no machinery to enforce the laws of nations, and the motive that

commands obedience to them is the reluctance of a belligerent to provoke the reprobation of other States. It is this moral force alone that gives effect to International Law. But a new arrangement to deviate from or abandon old usages of war, has not this support in the opinion or sentiment of the world, and therefore rests on no other than the frail foundation of the humour or interests of the parties.

And the efficiency of this Declaration of Paris has already been subjected to the test of experience. The ink was hardly dry in which was written, in another portion of it, the denial of freedom of the press in Belgium, to which we have alluded, when France found it inconvenient to invite action under it, and better to suffer matters to proceed as if no such Declaration had been filed. We too have followed the example. There is the clause declaring that a blockade to be respected must be effective. On the outbreak of the American war, the Federals proceeded to declare a blockade of the entire coast of the South, and this without having at the time in commission a single squadron of ships of war.

It was

obvious to all the world that such a blockade could not be effective. Each of our consuls in the Southern ports, and several of our naval commanders, reported to Government that it was not an effective blockade. Yet we shut our eyes to the fact; no word, argument, or remonstrance escaped our lips. The Foreign Office deemed it the highest duty of this country to avoid giving offence. It is true that the people of the South had a right to expect that we should enforce the rules so recently laid down. It is true that the livelihood of our operatives hung upon the balance. What are these things to a quiet life and the convenience of the hour? Nor is this a fate peculiar to this Declaration. No compact of this nature was ever so solemn as that of the armed neutrality of 1780, upon which Phillimore remarks, that

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"Every one of these Powers departed from the obligations they had contracted as neutrals as soon as they became belligerents, and returned without shame or humiliation to the practice of the ancient law." As Sir William Molesworth observes, During peace men's minds have a tendency to conform to what ought to be the rule of international law. But in war, passion, hatred, and the fancied interest of the moment are apt to determine the actions of powerful belligerents." Hence ample experience past and present teaches that a compact of this nature is no more to be relied upon than a quicksand. Let us see whether the structure to be raised upon it be in any wise more stable than the foundation.

Of the two alterations proposed we will take first the question of terminating the right of commercial blockade. The arguments in favour of this change are plainly set forth by Mr Cobden in the lucid language of which he is so perfect a master. We take his Manchester address as published, and accept the challenge it contains. We shall examine his arguments with no other desire than to arrive at sound conclusions, and if we are compelled to pronounce them, as a whole, utterly fallacious, it will be with a feeling of regret that one so competent to benefit his country by practical measures should waste time and rare natural gifts in pursuit. of visionary schemes, adapted only to the circumstances of the millennium, and unlikely to be realised until the date of that remote event.

The first position taken by Mr Cobden is, that the suffering now endured by our operatives results from our having declined the overtures which the American Government made, in 1859, to abolish commercial blockades. A powerful description of that suffering leads to an ad captandum argument, that if the change proposed had then been made in the law of nations, we should have escaped all our dis

tress. Now we appeal to all who have studied the course of this deplorable war-we appeal to the judgment of every man who has the slightest knowledge of American affairs, when we affirm that, if such an alteration had been made, our sufferings would not have been diminished one jot or one tittle. The Federal Government would have blockaded the Southern ports; we should have called their attention to the compact, and the reply would have been this :-" True, we as sented to that change in international law-indeed we proposed it, as being greatly to our interest-and, further, we mean to keep it. When next we are at war with you we shall abstain from blockading your ports, and you will leave ours open. But where is the application to the present case? We are not at war with a party to that convention, with a separate Power or nation of any kind; we are engaged in putting down certain pirates, rebels, and malefactors who mock at our authority. What place have you between us and our criminal subjects? We act under our municipal law within ourselves, which stands wholly apart from the law of independent nations. If your sepoys had obtained possession of a port, and if you had blockaded that port, we should not have pleaded this compact in order to interfere." This is the answer, every one knows, we should have received. In truth, Mr Cobden suspects it; for he meets the case by saying, "If they had attempted to establish such a blockade, in violation of their international engagements, they would have involved themselves in hostilities with the rest of the world." How so? They would have involved themselves in a dispute whether international law embraced or excluded the case-nothing more. As to hostilities, so long as the sole rule of our foreign policy is that of meek subserviency and amiable avoidance of offence except in the case of some weak, respectable Power like Denmark-why should

we have acted under a clause open to dispute, when we had ample undisputed ground in the original inefficiency of the blockade, and declined to act upon it? Plainly, then, this the first position we encounter-is untenable, and opposed to the knowledge of every observer of recent events.

The next argument, and the main one, assumes that it is to the interest of England to abolish these commercial blockades. If this be proved, we join hands at once, and rejoice over a discovery that, at the same time, will advance our own interests and remove an evil from other Powers. But we must examine the proofs. Let us take each of them fairly in the order in which they appear. The first case given is that of France, and here we are told that the introduction of railways has caused the power of blockade to lose its force. In former times, when France was blockaded, she obtained supplies from other parts of the Continent by means of roads, canals, rivers. She can now do so with much greater facility by railways. Unquestionably, in this particular, there is a diminution of the effects of blockade. But in another direction it will be more effective than of old. In the last war it was found impossible to prevent a large coasting trade in vessels that crept along the shore, using sweeps during a calm. This will be wholly impossible against the steam gunboat of the present day. Again, our blockading fleet was frequently blown off in heavy weather, leaving the port open, or fell to leeward of the port, and failed for a time to stop the entrance or exit of vessels. Steam, though it lessens the power of naval blockade as against steamships of war, greatly increases its efficiency as against sailing merchant ships. The argument that one change lessens the effect of blockade, is neutralised by the fact that another increases it. And apart from this, it has but a limited force. It is not the chief object of