lar
agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government
contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence
necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the
present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be
running into the contrary extreme, when we allow almost all the
important offices of our government to be monopolized by a chamber where
there is small scope for rhetorical ability, and the short sittings and
unbusiness-like habits of which make it very unsuited for the
enforcement of ministerial responsibility. The statesmen who have charge
of large departments of expenditure, like the army and navy, and of the
highest interests of the nation, ought to be in the House of Commons, is
necessarily superior to a member of the House of the House of Lords, but
it is to the House of Commons that these high functionaries are
principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of
the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The
matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that
the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the
structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House
of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto
been its pride to enjoy."

This distribution of power in the English Cabinet furnishes a sufficient
solution of the present attitude of the English Government towards this
country. The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with
the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They
give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is
essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a
successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights,
civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is
impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an
imperious necessity. Compared with the importance of securing this
result, all other considerations weigh as nothing. Brothers by blood,
language, and religion, as they have been accustomed to call us while we
were united and formidable, we are now, since civil war has weakened us
and great national questions have distracted our councils, treated as
aliens, if not as enemies. On the other hand, the South, whose leaders
have ever been first to take hostile ground against