principles;" in vain does it, at another, seek to intimidate electors by declaring that "unprincipled constituencies make unscrupulous Governments." We should have thought that "unprincipled constituencies" were the very ones to support a Premier with no "principles." However, as the subsequent election at Totnes showed, the threat was no idle word: and Government influence and the most tyrannical pressure were employed to coerce the free action of that constituency. But this course also has failed. At Totnes the Government simply escaped defeat: Liberals were returned as Liberals had been before. But at Devonport, another pocket borough of the Ministry, the Government was defeated, and for the first time for several elections a Conservative headed the poll. Ministerial tyranny had been car ried too far. It succeeded in the first instance, but would not be brooked in the second. The "unscrupulous Government" has received a check in the corrupt exercise of its powers which it can never forget. It was at once a triumph for Conservatism and for the principle of freedom of election. We

do not wonder that Mr Ferrand, when he took his seat in the House, should be received with hearty acclamations from the Conservatives, who crowded the Opposition benches to do him honour. The Conservative party is now stronger by eleven votes-counting twenty-two on a division-since June 1859, when the united Whigs and Radicals succeeded in overthrowing Lord Derby's Government by a majority of only thirteen.

It is amusing to see the subterfuges by which the Whigs seek to conceal their discomfiture. Feeling themselves going downhill very fast, disintegrating, expiring, they cry out that "there are no parties nowadays." Some of them even go the length of saying that there are "no principles;" the correct

ness of which statement we shall not dispute as regards themselves. They should know best; and, indeed, as all their old principles are dead and gone, dismissed into the limbo of vanities, we do not see how they can have any left. It is certainly suspicious that the Whigs should have innocently discovered that the age of party is past, at the very time that the Tory party has regained its old ascendancy in the Legislature. Plain people will not be at a loss to assign a reason. The Whigs as a party are extinct, and, like Chesterfield and Tyrawley, "they don't wish it to be known." The only thing that can keep the Whigs alive in the imagination of the public, is to show that party is dead. Happily the country has only to look at the Opposition side of the House to see that the Tory party is alive, and exuberant in strength and hope. It is fortunate for the interests of the State that they are so. The main attack upon the bulwarks of the Constitution has been decisively repulsed-the legions of Reform have been scattered in such hopeless rout that their leaders have thrown away their standards and disavow their cause. But the fight still goes on against another front of the Constitution, which, until lately, was but ill defended. This combat, so interesting and important, is itself a test of party; and seldom have the organisation and discipline of party been more strikingly displayed than in this keen warfare. Party dead! No, truly. "An opinion has been industriously promulgated of late," justly observes a contemporary, "that party distinctions have ceased in public life, and that there are no contested principles between the two great political connections of the State. Yet simultaneous with the propagation of this doctrine has been the most systematic and successful assault in Parliament upon the Church of England that it has encountered since 1640."

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Repulsed from the political front of the Constitution, the waves of combat still dash furiously against our religious institutions. It is time that the Conservatives should overthrow the enemies of the Constitution in this quarter also by a decisive victory. It will be their crowning triumph. In truth there is no other beyond it. When they have terminated this combat, the Conservative triumph is complete in the Legislature, as it already is in the country. The Church is part and parcel of the British Constitution; and very heartily do we approve of our ecclesiastical contemporary's exhortations to Churchmen to look after their special interests. The Church is a party question like any other; and in the intense competition of a constitutional country, the Church must organise its press, like the other institutions of the land.

There is a good time coming sure enough, and the cause of its coming is easily understood. The Conservative party are superior alike in sincerity and in statesmanlike ability to the party which has so long prided itself in the advocacy of organic changes. Moreover, they represent the normal feeling of Englishmen. Conservatism is the distinguishing feature of the British character. The public of this country has no love for those theoretic ideals of government, those paper-constitutions, which have so often fascinated and brought misery upon other nations. The reign of Innovation is ever shortlived with us; and the supremacy of the party who represent that principle must be equally transi

tory. The Whig party, who became champions of innovation in order to regain the power which they had lost, now find that their old vantage-ground has slipped from under them. They have had their day as rough-hewers of the Constitution, and now give place again to the more masterly artists who know how to chisel the marble while preserving the lineaments of the noble design. This natural decline of the Reform party has been rendered more inevitable by the very efforts they have made to maintain themselves in power. Everything portends the speedy ascendancy of the Conservative party in Parliament; and the leaders of the party are the very men to lend to such a cause the lustre of personal renown. Derby, Malmesbury, Disraeli, Bulwer Lytton, Pakington, Walpole, Stanley, Cairns, Whiteside, are names of which any party and any cause might be proud. They have the advantage of years, too, on their side; for, compared with their rivals, they are all in the vigour of life, and in the prime of statesmanhood. The tide of public opinion has long been rising in their favour, and they have not long to wait. They are strong, and therefore are calm; they are patriotic, and will not imitate the factious tactics of their rivals. But their final success is at hand; and their triumph will be all the more glorious, inasmuch as it promises to partake less of the character of a party-victory, than of an ovation offered to them by the whole enlightened classes of the community.

Ir is one of the most singular features of our institutions that, when our diplomatic relations with remote and semi-barbarous countries become so involved that even the Government is at a loss to know what course to pursue, the public take up the question in a confident offhand way; and though, by the force of circumstances, deprived of the information possessed by the Foreign Office, they do not hesitate either to denounce or to approve the policy recommended by those who have studied the subject on the spot, and who alone can be competent to form an opinion on the matter. It is true that papers are occasionally laid before Parliament, but what proportion of those who hold such decided views have read them? In the case of the Arrow, when people voted for peace or war with China, how many members of Parliament had informed themselves on the merits of the question? and what did their constituents know about it? Yet so it is; the ultimate decision upon all important and complicated questions of foreign policy necessarily rests with the

most ill-informed class. If they generally decide wrong, we must console ourselves by the consideration that even free institutions have their drawbacks, but in compensation have made us so rich and powerful, that we can always scramble out of any scrape they may get us into. In countries despotically governed, the merits of a secret diplomacy are inestimable; but where the Government is responsible, though it would be difficult to substitute an open system, secret diplomacy is attended with grave inconveniences, for it becomes impossible to furnish that public who sit, as it were, in appeal, with the whole facts of the case upon which they are called to decide. It is then clearly the interest of the Foreign Office to encourage the dissemination of accurate political information in a popular form, when the publication of it does not involve a breach of confidence; and inasmuch as Blue-Books are not generally considered light or agreeable reading, and are somewhat inaccessible, the diplomatist who has a political story to tell, and can do

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it without betraying State secrets, is a public benefactor. In these days of official responsibility, it is not only due to the public but to himself that he should have an opportunity of stating his case. It may happen that his conduct will be brought publicly in question and decided upon before he has an opportunity of laying before the world all the facts. Great injustice is frequently done to officials serving in distant parts of the world, who

even at last are unable to remove the erroneous impressions formed upon incorrect or insufficient information. This has been specially the case in China and the East: a policy based upon an acquaintance with the local conditions as intimate as it was possible for a foreigner to obtain, has been upset by a majority of ignorant legislators, who too often receive their impressions from superficial travellers, or residents with special interests at stake. It is clear that the opinion of a merchant is not so likely to be right in diplomatic questions as that of a trained official, who has passed half his life in studying the language, institutions, and people of the country to which he has been accredited; yet when it comes to be a question between the mercantile community and the minister, the latter is in danger of going to the wall.

While, on the one hand, the traditions of the Foreign Office are opposed to what may be termed diplomatic literature-and they dole

out their own information with a somewhat niggard hand-the British community resident in the East, hampered by no such restraints, and aided by a scurrilous press, may prejudice the public mind at home to such an extent that no subsequent defence is of much avail. We cannot wonder then, if, after fiveand-twenty years' experience of China and Japan, Sir Rutherford Alcock should take the opportunity of giving a full, true, and particular statement of the political difficulties by which he is surrounded, in antici

pation of a crisis which he sees impending, which no diplomacy will be able to avert, but in which he will on his return probably find himself involved.

"By whatever measures," he remarks, "of a coercive nature, we might seek to attain this object" (the execution of the Treaty in all its stipulations), "it should be clearly seen that there is war in the background, more or less near, but tolerably certain sooner or later to come. During the last two years, whatever a conciliatory spirit could suggest, with temper, patience, and forbearance in all things, had been tried. Diplomacy had wellnigh exhausted its resources to induce the Japanese Government to take a different view of its interests, and to act in accordance with the spirit of the treaties entered into. Little more remained to be tried in this direction, nor could much hope be entertained that better success would follow a longer persistence in the same course.'

The nature of our political relations with Japan is such, that a history of three years' diplomacy in that country is not attended with the inconveniences which would be

incidental to a similar narrative from a European court. Our relations with other friendly nations are in no way involved, and there can be no objection to such a work as that now before us, even in a red-tape point of view. Still, we are not aware of a work of this kind, from the pen of a minister actually at his post, ever having appeared; and although our author gives us a most detailed and graphic account of the moral and social state of Japan, it is the record of his diplomatic relations with the Government of the Tycoon that we regard as being at once the most novel and interesting feature of his book.

"I should probably have hesitated," says Sir Rutherford in his preface, "had it not seemed important to furnish materials for a right judgment in matters of national concern connected with Japan, yet be time to avert, by the intelligent and our relations there, while it might appreciation of our true situation, griev ous disappointment, as well as increased complications and calamities. A free

expression of opinion in matters of public interest is not to be lightly adventured upon, however, and in many cases those holding office are altogether precluded from such action. At the same time, much mischief is often done by undue reticence in matters which must, in a country like ours, be the subject of public discussion. It so happened that I was relieved from any difficulty on this head by the publication in extenso of the greater number of my despatches, which were printed and laid before Parliament. And not only was the necessity for silence obviated by such publication in this country, but a similar course was followed at Washington in respect of the despatches of my colleague, the American Minister, during the same period. As in each of these series there is a very unreserved expression of opinion as to the political situation of the country, the action of the Japanese authorities, the views entertained by colleagues, and the conduct of the foreign communities, the decision of the respective Governments of both countries to make the despatches public, and this so freely as to leave little of a confidential character unprinted, effectually removed all the impediments which might otherwise have existed."

The general reader must not suppose, however, that because politics engage a large share of the work before us, he will, on that account, find it dull. Japan is probably the only country in the world in which diplomacy becomes a pursuit of thrilling excitement. Sometimes it leads to some curious discovery, and reveals to us some part of the political machinery in the government of the country heretofore unsuspected and unknown. Some times it furnishes amusing illustrations of the Japanese mode of diplomatic fencing; at others, it involves a frightful tragedy or a quaint official ceremony. Without these details to illustrate each phase through which our political relations have passed, we should never have been able to realise the difficulties with which our officials in those remote regions have to contend, or the nature of the opposition persistently offered by the Japanese Government.

The task of permanently install

ing for the first time a legation in a city of upwards of two millions of people having been safely accomplished, Mr Alcock entered upon his first diplomatic struggle, the point of which was merely to fix a day for the purpose of exchanging the ratifications of Lord Elgin's Treaty. The discussion preliminary to this formality occupied no less than seven days. At last the details are arranged, and it is decided that the Treaty is to be carried in procession through the city, under a canopy ornamented with flags and evergreens, surrounded by a guard of marines, and followed by fifty blue-jackets; Captain Hand, with a large number of his officers in uniform and on horseback, following immediately after the four petty officers carrying the Treaty. which so novel a procession was We can well imagine the effect likely to produce upon the inhabitants of Yedo. When the formalities were accomplished, "signals, arranged by the Japanese in advance (by fans from street to street) conveyed the news to the Sampson with telegraphic speed in a minute and a half, a distance of six miles." So our Minister hoists his flag, and settles himself down in solitary grandeur, to pass his life of exile in solving the difficult problem of reconciling the civilisation he represents with that which surrounds him, but which the jealousy of the Government will not permit him to investigate. This does not, however, prevent our author from entering upon lengthy and interesting philosophical disquisitions upon the many moral, social, and political questions which must, under such circumstances, present themselves to a thoughtful mind. He has not been six weeks so employed when he is suddenly roused from his speculations by a tragical event which occurs at Yokuhama. As this is the first of a series of exciting incidents, we will give our readers an epitome of those which occurred during three years, and the particulars of which are detailed