-one party or the other would be rooted out for ever. not yet settled; because we see the ministry themselves creating obstacles to that settlement: obstaThis is no exaggeration. We are on the brink cles which seem to be conjured up solely for the purof this precipice. It is not that we need expect de- pose of insulting the French people, wounding feat, or that physically we are unprepared for war. their sense of honour, and thereby exciting them Nothing was ever more false than the representations to anger and open warfare. Before the commenceof the Times newspaper respecting the inefficiency ment of hostilities, the ultimatum sent to Mehemet of our navy. The events of the campaign in | Ali, offered him the hereditary possession of Egypt. Syria have amply shown the mendacity of those Now, when he appears willing to accept of this party appeals of the Tory press. But, still, we offer, the ministerial papers, and among others, the dread war; we dread the confusion that would Morning Chronicle, evidently speaking the sentinecessarily arise throughout the world; we dread ments of the ministry, and more than probably the direful consequences in our land, and among written by some of their agents, declare, that by our own people; and we vainly endeavour to find this offer, the sovereignty of Egypt was not meant, any justification for the minister who wantonly but merely possession under the supreme authority drags us to the brink of this mischief. The war- of the sultan, as heretofore was the case. Every like propensities of Lord Palmerston appear to us one understood the offer originally to signify, an fraught with the most terrible calamities to this offer to make Mehemet Ali an independent sovecountry. What good he may be seeking for him- reign over Egypt. Now, when there is a chance self, we know not: he has, indeed, figured in of an amicable arrangement, it is unblushingly every ministry, except one, that has existed since asserted, that nothing of the kind was intended. 1812. He may wish to spend his last days in Mehemet is to remain pacha-subject to the office, and to that end may be seeking to conciliate sultan, and obedient to the laws of the Turkish those who must soon succeed the Whigs. War empire. Let us hear the Chronicle on this head : with France may be a means of reconciliation. Of all this we know nothing; but of the danger to the country there can be no doubt; and we cannot think this danger wisely incurred, even though it should insure to us the continuance of Lord Palmerston's services as a statesman. Not only should we, if peace could be insured thereby, bear his loss without repining; but we would even go one step further, and attempt to insure it, by at once dismissing him. The public indignation ought to be pointedly expressed against any man, who should, for any reason, bring his country into the dangerous condition in which we now stand: how much more severe, then, ought to be our reprobation of him, who wantonly, and without the shadow of a rational pretext, compels us to run so dangerous a hazard! It behoves the people to be aware of the mischief now hanging over us; and, by proper precautions, to prevent it. If Lord Palmerston's present policy be continued, war is inevitable. On the other hand, if a tone of conciliation be used towards France-if steps be taken to show that we are sincerely grieved that any misunderstanding should have arisen, her people are too generous not frankly to accept our proferred friendship—too wise to scorn the benefits of our alliance. Let it not be said that the apathy of the English nation permitted a flippant, arrogant, and desperate minister to perpetrate a crime in their name, which coming generations will blush to remember. It may be necessary, before we close this article, to notice one objection which may be stated as an answer to our alarms :-"The Syrian affair is settled, and France can have no further reason for complaint; therefore, your fears, as to the probability of a war, are wholly without foundation." Our answer to this, is first: The Syrian affair is not settled at the date of this writing; and, second, if it were, it is plain that other causes for hostility will be found or made. "The allies have already recommended to the Porte to continue Mehemet Ali in the pachalic of Egypt; and there is no doubt that the Porte will concede to him the hereditary administration of that province. That he and his successors will be continued in possession so long as he complies with the terms of the arrangement* cannot be doubted; though we are unable to see in what manner the allies can offer a direct guarantee without trenching, which they have always been anxious to avoid, on the sultan's right of sovereignty. There are subsisting treaties, too, by which the relations between the sultan and the pacha must necessarily be affected. In the treaty of commerce, for instance, between Turkey and Great Britain, the duties payable on British commodities are regulated throughout the whole extent of the Turkish empire; Egypt, of course, included. In the same manner, the abolition of all monopolies is carefully secured. Now, we need not observe, that Egypt, under Mehemet Ali, has been one great monopoly. He has constituted himself the sole proprietor of the soil: he forces the fellahs to sell all their produce to him, on terms fixed by himself; and he is consequently the only seller in Egypt. Then, again, the French quacks about him, have inoculated him with their system of having protecting duties, in order to make Egypt what it never can be—a manufacturing country. All these things are expressly in the teeth of the treaty between Turkey and Great Britain. Mehemet Ali must administer the country in accordance with the laws of the empire."--December 10, 1840. The purpose of this is to raise up obstacles to any amicable arrangement. The reasons set forth are as contemptible as the end is mischievous. "Egypt, of course, included?" Why, of course? Is Greece included? Greece was as much a part of the empire as Egypt; but the treaty would not, therefore, affect Greece. Suppose Spain had objected when *The Italics are ours. France ceded to England Canada and the West | the hue and cry, while the Standard makes no preIndia islands, conquered during the war preced-tence to good-will, but openly, and so far honestly, ing the peace of 1763,-that there were existing avows its hatred of France. Every opportunity is treaties between Spain and France which affected seized, to bring back the recollection of past hostiliall the dominions of France,-would it not have ties. French defeats are dwelt upon; the valour of been deemed a sufficient answer to say, Canada, the French impugned, their notions of honour &c., do not now form part of the French dominions? and their desire for glory treated with unmitigated So, in the present case, the difficulty started, is at contempt; and all this time great complaints are once obviated by saying, Egypt no longer forms a made, because the French journalists are guilty of portion of the Turkish dominions. The talk about the same errors! If a French journalist, judging monopolies is an appeal to the prevailing feelings of the English people by the conduct of the Engin England respecting commerce, not altogether lish Ministry, expresses indignation and hostility skilfully managed. The contemptuous mention of against the nation, at once a hundred pens are at French quacks may, indeed, give offence to France, work to insist upon the undying hate of France to and thus attain the end at which the writer pro- England. Regardless of the provocation—regardbably aimed. But did it not suggest itself to the less of the peculiar position of France-judging of scribe in the Chronicle that there are quacks nearer her as if she enjoyed our insular position, making home who favour protecting duties? Why should no allowances for the many causes of jealousy and he call it a French system, when the English corn- natural suspicion which beset her people-our laws exist, for the purpose of making England an party writers seize upon every hasty ill-judged agricultural nation? In America, too, there is a expression used by their party writers, and convert tariff expressly for the purpose of making Ameri- it into a means of exciting anger and hatred ca a manufacturing nation. In truth, this system amongst the people of this country against the naof protecting duties is common to all the nations, tion with which, of all others, the interest of ourand is, we are fully willing to allow, a common selves and of mankind should induce us to cultierror. The desire to excite an ill feeling against vate friendly relations. A sudden passion, and the France and French opinions was too strong, how- explosion to which it may give rise, is taken as irever, to be resisted; so the Chronicle hazarded a refragable evidence of a settled hatred and jealousy; false charge rather than make none at all. and having proved to their own satisfaction that the ancient hostility between the two nations has not been allayed, but still subsists in all its former vigour, all these party writers seem overjoyed, as if they had made a most gratifying discovery. When we say all, we are in error. The Examiner stands alone among the Ministerial papers, in its opposition to the mischievous war policy now pursued by its patrons. But with this single and singular exception, all the Ministerial and Conservative papers seem determined to let slip no opportunity of exciting old feuds and creating new. Suppose, however, this difficulty conquered, it is The old Tory policy of 1793 is revived-the old evident, from the language of the Ministerial and play is to be enacted with a new cast of characters. Tory journals respecting France, that although Formerly the Whigs hissed in opposition; but they pretend to deprecate a war, they are actively now, disguised in the cast-off garments of their employed in creating the ill feeling, that must na- old opponents, using their words, their arts, and turally produce one. Not a day passes without all their various deceiving pretences, they have beour seeing in the Chronicle, the Globe, and even in come the actors in the scene. If the people treat journals which pretend to great liberality and them according to their deserts, they will at once kind feelings towards France, every species of at-hoot them with ignominy from the stage. Let the tack upon the self-love, the vain-glory, and the people continue apathetic, and the many little wars boasting of the French nation. The Times joins in of the Whigs WILL END in one LARGE one. But our purpose in quoting the words of the Chronicle, is to show that the question is far from being settled. Mehemet Ali will claim for himself-and he will be supported in his pretensions by France-the sovereignty of Egypt. Having so long lived independent, he will not again formally subject himself to the dominion of the Turk. If we attempt to force him to such subjection, by destroying Alexandria, Louis Philippe will find it impossible to maintain peace between France and England. MAN AND HIS MISSUS! BY N. OR M. Sheridan, when, on being taken up drunk and disorderly by the watch, he was just able to articulate, "Gen-tle-men! I am not-often-in this condi-di-tion !-My-my name-is-W-Wilberforce!" Ir we speak a little thick, beloved public, forgive | We are, in short, pretty much in the condition of us; our thickness, we trust, will be confined to our parts of speech, and not include our parts of understanding. The truth is, we have been drinking potations pottle deep to the health of the Princess Royal! We have been crying, "Long live the Princess," and "Long live the Queen," till we judged it necessary to be able to cry, as well as see, double. Like most other folks similarly overtaken, we are beginning to feel wondrous wise. Like Sheri dan, we want to be mistaken for Mr Wilberforce. We have a mind to prose a bit, and to make ourselves listened to. Other honourable members are listened to when taken prosy; or, if not listened to, are reported, and consequently read. We are in the predicament of being forced to report ourselves -nay, we have reported ourselves as above. It can't be helped. The occasion must plead for us. It is only once a-year. The headach, which we find creeping over us, hath perhaps disposed us to rebel against petticoat government ;-but so it is, that we find ourselves, pen in hand, most splenetically disposed against the sex. What the deuce are they all about? Lady Morgan, Miss Martineau, all the rights-of-womenists! Will they never be quiet?-Will they never let well alone? Can they not be satisfied with having their own way, without wanting to have every body else's way, till every body else wishes them out of the way?-Ladies!-ladies!-be warned!be wise! What is it you want? "POWER!" quoth they!"Knowledge is power: we want a better education—we want a female university!" Are we in order, Mr Speaker? Is not such, Mesdames et Mademoiselles, the tendency of your grumblings? Are you not ambitious of having your confusion of tongues classicized,-your bad language purified? Would you not fain inscribe yourselves M.A., in addition to all the Arts of which you are already mistresses?—As we said before--be wise, be warned! LISTEN! 66 The niggers, in their untaught, innate philosophy," believe the monkeys of their woods to be gifted with speech and understanding; but that they sham stupid for fear of being made to work. We are free to confess that such has always been our secret opinion concerning the weaker sex. There can be no doubt that Greek and Mathematics might be flogged into them (if they choose to be flogged) as readily as into our own dunsical natures,-that they might get up in their places in the Lower House, and make speeches as flat as Salisbury Plain about Syria, or Canada, or Jewish Emancipation, or whatever other bagged fox of politics may have succeeded to the extinct Gog and Magog,-Catholics and Slave Trade, which used to serve as a cockshy for the schoolboy members to try their skill on. They might even, with sufficient prompting and bolstering, make tolerably good incumbrances of the treasury bench,-declaring war with some friendly power, as a preventive against the remote possibility of having war declared upon them by an unfriendly one.-But, bless their darling little souls! What would they gain by this extension of their rights? What would "WOMAN" acquire by flinging off the yoke of her "MASTER?" Work instead of playtoil in lieu of sport!-It is only by submitting to be called of the weaker sex, that she obtains the immunity of sitting through life, in her easy chair, with her hands crossed. Those hands, oh! foolish and perverse generation! instead of remaining redolent of almond paste and smooth as satin, would become tinged with the filthy ink of Downing treet, or rough with holding in their chargers a review. Were ye raised to our level, these licate cheeks must become freckled with expo sure ;-those ivory brows wrinkled with cogitation; those beaming faces Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. Ye are at present fair as the lilies of the field, which are fair because they toil not, neither do they spin! Believe us, lovely abolitionists! (and we told you just now we were Mr Wilberforce!)-believe us, that the moment ye are enfranchised, ye will have to work like slaves! We call upon you, therefore, in your own sweet interests, to reflect what will be your remorse when you find yourselves growing fretful and frightful from nightly exposure to the foul air, and other irritations of parliament; to the confinement of law-courts; to the torment of chapter-houses.Think what will be your sensations on waking one morning, after a harrassing session, to find your faces on your pillows, transformed into fac-similes of those of my Lords Brougham and Lyndhurst! Think of living to be wigged and gowned, like those illustrious ex-chancellors; think of finding yourselves ghostlified in surplices; think of preaching a Visitation Sermon to the Bishop of Exeter; think of being involved in a controversy with the Right Hon. the Earl of Cardigan; think of being blown up by the Horse Guards; think of being blown up at Acre! And all this, WOMAN will have to undergo should she persist in running it neck-and-neck with her MASTER. At present, pretty dear, she is coaxed and sugar-plumbed through life. Like the monkeys, she is allowed to Leap from tree to tree, And shell her nuts at liberty; or, if deprived of liberty, is allowed to skip about, making faces, and chattering at all the world. Let her only make so much as a wry face, when once she has assumed her position cheek by jowl with lordly man, and see how she will be called to account!— 66 We know something of the world. The better half-(plague take it, and all other better halves!) the better half of a century has passed over our head; and our fifty years' wisdom teaches us more and more excruciatingly, every day of our lives, the bitter severity of the sentence which assigned to the fallen Adam something to do. The world would do very well-that is, we should do very well in the world-if we had only "nothing to do." We fear we do not express ourselves distinctly; but, as we said before, we are not often thus-we are Mr Wilberforce." Soberly speaking, we mean that if, like the ladies, we were privileged to sit in boudoirs, with our feet upon the fender, with a good novel in our hands; to walk in silk attire (not that of a Q. C. ;) to eat the fat of the land, (that fat being the fat of venison;) and taste of the fruits thereof (those fruits being Providence pines and Newington peaches ;) without having to burn the midnight oil in our youth, or rise with the lark in our middle age,-either because, like the lark, we are on the turf,-or because, like an unlucky dog, we are professional; we should think twice before we voted for a reform-bill to relegislate our condition. Who, in their senses, would not rather belong to the ornamental than the useful part of the creation? Who would not rather be a rose than a stalk of hemp-a myrtle than a carrot-a lyre than a pulley-an ostrich feather than a birch broom? Was ever such folly as to wish to abjure universal impunity-general irresponsibility? Was ever such a thing heard of, as for an angel deliberately to cut off its ethereal wings to moult (with premeditation) its angelic pinions? We had heard before of fallen angels; but, for beings of a higher sphere to fling themselves head foremost into Tophet, like some love-sick apprentice, from the top of the Monument or Sam Patch from Niagara, is a wantonness of selfsacrifice that lacks a name in the category of angelic follies. Ye lady novelists!-Ye right honourable annual spinners!-who accomplish your thousands and tens of thousands by smiling upon quires of Bath post, whereupon romances and sonnets appear like a palace raised by the bat of Harlequin :-reflect, we conjure you, upon your weariness of spirit, when, instead of weighing out these literary comfits to us at a guinea an ounce, ye have to write politics like Fonblanque, or to compile Bridgewater Treatises;-to steam it once a-year in search of the British Association; and having found it, go breaking stones on the road with it, or starhunting into the skies. Instead of prattling about "Gems of Beauty," certain that your Bristol stones will pass for diamonds, you will have to talk about greywacke and molybdena. Instead of "Flowers of Loveliness," you will be forced to defile your crow-quills with cotyledons and classification. We shall insist on Algebra, Natural and Moral Philosophy, and the Ologies by cart-loads. No more nonsense-no more fiddlefaddle; there must be grain in your chaff. If you make yourselves morally responsible to us, we require that your "Gems" be not paste, nor your "Flowers" weeds. It was only on your plea of being of inferior mind, that we addressed the jury in your favour when convicted of passing base coin for silver. If you make yourselves out compos mentis, to the tread-mill with you, as impostors! You are welcome to shoot your rubbish, but not to call it building materials. MAN, over whom you pretend to be MISSUS, has a conscience in such matters; or if not a conscience, he is a duelling animal, and amenable to cannon law. Oh! happy Mrs Glass-Mrs Glass of blessed memory, who, with the simplicity becoming thy sex, the guilelessness of the dove, the pluckability of the pigeon, didst counsel thy clients to catch the hare ere they attempted to seethe it in the pot, canst thou imagine, in those Elysian fields, where thou dost probably enjoy a seventh heaven in tossing up omelets for evermore, in a frying-pan of gold; canst thou imagine, we say, the weakness of those, who, like the frog in the fable, bursting to pass for a bœuf à la mode, disdain thy modest immortality. Venerated woman! whose flycap we have ever admired in her frontispiece, as secondary in truly feminine dignity only to the mother of the Gracchi-it seems to us a desecration of thy memory, to hear of Female Political Economists, and Feminine Architects of the Heavens. The pretension of teaching their grandmothers, &c., appears to us an act of profanation. To us there is something fifty times more touching in the simplicity of such as thou: like the spindle which, in the chaste bas-reliefs of antiquity, we find in the hands of Penelope! Be assured, thou classic of our infancy, that for one man who admires Madame de Stäel, a thousand venerate Mrs Glass! But is it a true bill, dear sex-dear prattling, rattling, battling sex-that you pretend to become top sawyer?-Have you not been led away by some Louis Napoleon, to invade a great country, when you fancied you were embarking on a trip to Margate? Has not some demagogue abused your ear for especial purposes? Have you not been promised, like the settlers in New Zealand, a region where ortolans fly about ready roasted, and canvass-back ducks quack upon the waters, all stuffed with sage and sundries? Are you not deluded by promises of a kingdom that is not of this world, like the simple Mexicans, when bribed to discover their hidden treasures to Pizarro ?—If so, desist from your rash act !-Pause, ere you cut your own throat!-Madame Roland assures us, that congregating together in popular assemblies causes people's ears to lengthen. Have ye not been indulging in secret meetings?-Not at Almacks, not at Exeter Hall; but in some such assemblage as that academic gathering which, the other day, made a defender of the faith of Lord Lyndhurst?— If so, curtail the auricular appendages that have been made to sprout, and become simple woman again. As Horace Twiss used to sing, before he began to say (for he was a poet before he became a politician,) Prerogative seems not the basis Best suited to woman's command, And gives them the rule of the land! We are not certain that this quotation from Horace is verbally correct; but, as we have already pleaded, we have been drinking the Princess Royal's health. "We are not often in-thiscondition! Gen-tle-men! Our name-is-WILBERFORCE!" 9 NEW NOVELS. THE HOUR AND THE MAN. WHETHER Miss Martineau's novel of "Deerbrook," a tale of English life and the domestic affections, or this historical romance, be the work most deserving admiration, must be determined by the varying characters and tastes of her readers; though there can, we imagine, be no doubt that the new story will, as a literary performance, tell much more quickly and forcibly. The HOUR is that in which the doctrines and influence of the French Revolution in the colonies, and especially that decree of the Convention, which recognised the slaves of St Domingo as free citizens, tolled the hour of the begun-redemption of the negro race :-The MAN is Toussaint L'Ouverture, in whom is found the Deliverer, the Opener of the way, the Spartacus of Africa. The subject is one peculiarly adapted to the tastes of the author, and, in many respects, to her powers. If inadequate to the production of the grander effects of the historical painter, she is happily qualified to imagine, sketch, and colour the thousand little details and accessories which give reality and life to every picture. The Patriot hero, the Christian chief, whom she has designed after the purest models which the study of the Christian system, and of whatever is noblest in heathen philosophy, can suggest-may not be, nay, cannot be, the sagacious and bold negro who was born, and for half a century remained, a slave; and whom great native energy, vigorous if uninstructed intellect, and, above all, a fortuitous combination of the most extraordinary circumstances, forced into so remarkable a position. This incarnation in ebony of every imaginable human, or rather superhuman, perfection,-Miss Martineau's beautiful ideal of the king, the statesman, the husband, the father, the friend, or, in a word, of the Christian in every social aspect, cannot be Toussaint, the slave postilion of the Breda estate; any more than the Wallace of Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs is the Wallace of Scottish history, or would have been the Wallace of a Waverley novel: but he is, notwithstanding, a lofty and pure conception; and he forms the noble central figure of an historical group, having a more real existence in nature; enriched, moreover, by nameless rare accessories, and relieved by the most magnificent and gorgeous back-ground which the sublimities and beautiful accidents of tropical scenery and cli mate furnish to the skilful limner. The romance opens finely; though its progress hardly keeps the promise of the first volume; at least if critics be entitled to insist that the interest of every story shall continue to augment until it is wound up by the denouement. That denouement, so far as the fate of Toussaint is connected with one of the foulest of the many crimes against liberty and humanity which blacken the career of Napoleon, history has left in that obscurity which fully devolves the matter into the hands of the fictionist; and, in this instance, it has suited the artist to exhibit the brave and ill-starred chief expiring in the dungeon of Joux, like a Christian Socrates-calm, hopeful, forgiving, god-like. In the details of the emeuté, which awakened and brought to light the sleeping soul of the negro chief, Miss Martineau has more strictly taken history for her ground-work. She gives a brief retrospect of those events in the colony which followed the revolution in the mother-country. The whites had early caught the contagious frenzy of that pseudo liberty and equality, with which they could no more imagine that blacks or mulattoes had any business, than the mongrel race could fancy any right that pure blacks could have to participate, in the freedom which they claimed for themselves, equally with the whites. There were, in short, then three parties in St Domingo, each jealous and watchful of the other two; and not unlike, in some of their ideas, the men we see around us. There were the pure aristocrats, or whites; the ten-pound voters, or mulattoes; and the chartists, those who claim the suffrage, or negroes. The republicanism of the whites had been suddenly converted, if not into loyalty to the Bourbons, into disaffection to the Convention, by its recognition of equal rights and privileges, and of the citizenship of coloured men. They openly despised the decree, and talked of transferring their allegiance to England. In this temper the Colonial Assembly of the island was elected; and the angry deputies, before meeting, passed many vigorous and patriotic resolutions, and held daily carousals at Cap Français. While they were meeting and speechifying, their slaves were also idling and rambling about, scheming insurrection, and upon a sultry August night, one of high festival among the planters collected in the town, fires were seen bursting out simultaneously on many estates, both in the mountains and the plain. Among the planters none was more good-natured and indulgent to his slaves than M. Bayou, who had gone to carouse with his friends in the town, while his sedate and philosophic postilion is thus introduced, and thus occupied : In the piazza of his dwelling sat Toussaint this evening, evidently waiting for some one to arrive; for he frequently put down his book to listen for footsteps, and His wife, who was within, cooking supper, and his daughter and little boy who were beside him in the piazza, observed his restlessness; for Touissant was a great reader, and seldom looked off the page for a moment of any spare hour that he might have for reading, either the books M. Bayou lent him, or the three or four volumes which he had been permitted to purchase for himself. more than once walked round the house to look abroad. "Do you see Jean?" asked the wife from within. "Shall we wait supper for him?" "Wait a little longer," said Toussaint. "It will be strange if he does not come." mother?" asked Génifrède from the piazza. |