services; and of that party some hundred or more were outlawed as rebels. The Honourable Gentleman's logic is at fault somewhere, to say nothing of his morality.

For a last example, Mr. Roebuck put the real question (of the Irish Transportation Bill) before the House. Some Englishmen, said he, had been transported for sedition. If the Irishmen were not also transported he would ask for a mitigation of the Englishmen's sentence. This is a crowning instance of parliamentary logic, of real Whig morality. The broad question of justice, whether as regards Irishmen or Englishmen, is utterly blinked. Does he think the sentence of the Englishmen just? If so, where is he with his promise to seek mitigation if some others are not dealt with in the same fashion? That would simply mean, 'If you do not act in this case as I think justly, I will in revenge, act in that other case as I think unjustly. Or does he think the Englishmen's sentence unjust? Then, he says 'I will seek to remedy this injustice only in case you refuse to commit another;' nay, he makes a compact with the House that the second injustice shall give impunity (so far as he is concerned) to the first. The Chartists of Sheffield should make some account of so sympathising a member. He will help your friends if he may not wreak his spite upon some one else.

Let us, however, be thankful for anything that tends so certainly to bring a certain House into the contempt it has long merited. We may learn at least from such exposures what is the honour of diplomatists, the real meaning of parliamentary language, the amount of parliamentary ability; we may learn, too, how some men whom we have wished to respect and trust are neither trustworthy nor respectable, and to estimate better than was done at Sheffield the difference between the principles we profess, and those which move a querulous lawyer who has no sympathy with Irishmen, nor with rebels who do not hire his service.

W. J. LINTON.

MEMORIAL TO THE QUEEN, TO PROCLAIM AN
AMNESTY OF POLITICAL PRISONERS.

[AT a public meeting held at Milton Street, June 18, by our friends the Chartists, a memorial was adopted to the Queen, on behalf of the political prisoners of the Crown. The following memorial is on the same model, but abreviated. It presents some variation of argument, but the object is the same, and it has been prepared to suggest to our friends the propriety of adopting it at as many public meetings as possible. An abstract of the same document should be thrown into the form of a memorial to the Commons, and adopted at the same time.--ED.]

'That during and from the years 1847-1848, to the present time, a great dearth of employment prevailed and prevails amongst your Majesty's industrial subjects.

That such want of Employment has led to much destitution, and disaffection.

.

That great masses of your Majesty's industrial subjects consequently became excited by legislatorial inattention to their manifold wrongs.

'That men of talent and humanity, moved by the suffering of their fellow-men, devoted themselves as advocates of enlarged Political Freedom, and Social Amelioration.

'That in their zeal they were led to sundry indiscretions not allowed by law.

That your Majesty's officers, in vindicating the law, have caused many of those men to be incarcerated for lengthened periods in your Majesty's gaols of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and others to be expatriated to foreign climes.

That Great Britain and Ireland is at the present time in a state of profound peace and quiet, notwithstanding the continued dearth of employment, and the existence of social misery.

That your memorialists are of opinion that the imprisonment that the men now suffering for political offences have already endured, will be, on the serious consideration of your Majesty, deemed sufficient to expiate the illegal acts of which they have been pronounced guilty.

'Your memorialists therefore pray that your Majesty, in consideration of the various reasons herein assigned, will cause an amnesty to be proclaimed to all Political Prisoners, now confined in any of your Majesty's gaols, in either Great Britain or Ireland, or undergoing sentence of transportation in any of your Majesty's colonial possessions, that they may be restored to their desolate and sorrowing families.

And your Majesty's Memorialists

Will not fail to appreciate such an act of leniency.

ASPIRATIONS OF COLONISTS.

[THE subject of the following passage is from Roebuck's 'Colonies of England.' The inferiority of position occupied by a colonist has been lately dwelt upon by Mr. Wakefield; as it was touched upon by Adam Smith, when he gave that advice which, if acted on, might have stopped the American war. The question, however, is of great interest to intelligent Emigrants-for the perusal of such, and who may not see it in the original, we transcribe it. We will take this occasion of saying that we entirely dissent from Mr. Roebuck as to the low estimate he forms of the majority of the people. The desires of the lowest population are much nobler than he pictures them. They may not be manifested vigourously, or very consistently, but they exist; and the statesman should seek their development by encouraging words, not chill them by blank denials. -ED.]

The character of a people is always determined by that of the educated classes, and individuals belonging to them. The mass of the population must always be destined to win their daily bread by daily toil. They may pass a quiet and happy life, but it must be in a certain sense monotonous and obscure. Beyond the narrow horizon of their ordinary hopes they seek not to look. Their desires are limited to a wish for the means of comfortable subsistence; which they only hope or desire to attain by steady toil, and which they hope also may be the happy and quiet lot of their children after them. But the educated man, and they who are above the pains and anxieties of absolute want, and the fear of

want, are rendered happy or miserable by hope. If they may hope to win renown, gain power for themselves-if a career by which these may be achieved lies before them, they will as a class be content, and love the country which affords this field for their ambition. But there is vet something wanting-this class of man desires to derive honour from his country. As he and his generations derive advantage from the wealth which preceding generations have stored up and left in various shapes to posterity, so all men desire to enjoy the benefit derived from the glory and great deeds achieved, stored up, and left in many shapes, by their predecessors, to be the estate of renown for generations yet to come who bear the same name and will be the same people. In a petty colony there is really no such career; and the hallucination by which sometimes minute and utterly insignificant dots of land, and handfuls of men are led to think themselves important, and assume airs of consequence and grandeur, has long been a subject of ridicule and contempt. In such circumstances of real insignificance, to revel in ideas of fancied greatness is a folly of which no sane and sensible person can be guilty. The intelligent members of such a community are therefore discontented with their position, and curse the fate which has condemned them to hopeless inferiority. Generally speaking, such is the usual lot of a colonial gentry; and if as colonists they have no hope of escaping from it, the educated classes of colonists will bend their eyes towards the future, which is to bring them independence, and open to them the path of renown and power. The career that lies before two men, one of whom has been born and lives on the Southern shore of the St. Lawrence, and the other on the North of that river, is a striking example of the observation here made. The one is a citizen of the United States; the other a subject of England, a Canadian colonist. The one has a country which he can call his own; a great country, already distinguished in arms, in arts, and in some degree in literature. In his country's honour and fame the American has a share, and he enters on his career in life with lofty aspirations, hoping to achieve fame himself in some of the many paths to renown which his country offers. She has a senate, an army, a navy, a bar, many powerful and wealthy churches; her men of science, her physicians, philosophers, are all a national brotherhood, giving and receiving distinction. How galling to the poor colonist is the contrast to this which his inglorious career affords. He has no country; the place where he was born, and where he is to linger out his life, unknown to fame, has no historyno past glory, no present renown. What there is of note is England's! Canada is not a nation; she is a colony-a tiny sphere, the satellite of a mighty star, in whose brightness she is lost. Canada has no navy, no army, no literature, no brotherhood of science. If, then, a Canadian looks for honour in any of these various fields, he must seek it as an Englishman; he must forget and desert his country before he can be known to fame. We must not then wonder if we find every intelligent and ambitious Canadian with a feeling of bitterness in his heart, because of his own inferiority of condition. Few will own to entertaining this feeling if they be prudent, even to friends; some, indeed, contrive to hide it from themselves; nevertheless, there it is, and must be, so long as his country remains a colony.'

Illustrative Notices.

RESPECTING the New Series of the Reasoner, a correspondent, whose occasional communications have always been welcome to the readers of this paper, thus expresses himself:- The Reasoner falls short, as all stories oft told must do. There is an end to all forms. Take further trouble about the atheism when the opposite is attempted to be forced on you; but now that you have manfully and somewhat triumphantly vindicated your own right of conscience, look to what else may be needed. In short to the political—of much more import just now. As an earnest advocate of political and religious liberty-and of irreligious liberty—and as a chronicle of all those popular and unpopular matters tabooed by our respectable press, the Reasoner might yet, I think, hold a good place. I quite agree with many of your strictures upon its pages. The Reasoner's New Series I want more universal, less sectarian-a chronicle open to all those records and discussions shut out elsewhere. That a matter was worth noting, and could get no place elsewhere, should be its qualification for a place in the Reasoner. The People's proceedings, Chartist or Socialist, condensed so as to serve a future historian. Notices, critical too, of passing events, political, religious, or social—and of any current topics, books or else, such as from their opposition to respectable prejudice would get no notice elsewhere. Gatherings from high sources when the present did not fill the paper. So I think the Reasoner would get widely spread. Every man with a heresy would take it; and not be repelled because he found a constantly recurring prominence to the one most unpopular of all heresies. It would appeal to all. Much of what I want has already been done. But it has been rather an invasion -against the rule of the Reasoner. I would have it the rule. For myself I am not afraid of atheism. But I have often refrained from giving the Reasoner to my friends because I did not choose to be identified with its prominent opinions.'

The usual idea of authority seems to mean an unreasoning submission to the opinion or decision of persons whether living or dead. The Romanist who surrenders his reason to a living Pope, the disciple who blindly swears by the words of some dead master, both submit to authority. But the man who in either case examines for himself, can scarcely be said to be so influenced.

Those who blindly

Past Party.-Those who rake up what was and should not be. follow what is, whether it should or should not be. Present Party.-Those who make the best of what is, without venturing on what should be.

Future Party.-Those who rush on what should be, without reference to what is. Those who use what is as a means to realise what should be. S. D. C.

Some curious petitions have lately been sent to Parliament and the Queen, which induce us to advise careful consideration of the objects sought by the petitioners. If an act of grace' is asked, the parties requested to perform it ought not to be reproached in the same document, as no man ought to expect to propitiate those whom he at the same time castigates. There should be neither bitterness nor servility, nor double purpose manifested.

A Reply (which we shall find an opportunity of commending to our readers) to the Rev. E. Noyes's Sermon, on the Freedom of the Human Will, by X. G.B., of Market Harbro' has just been published by Mr. Watson.

Mr. A. Campbell's Citizen-of which advertisements in this publication have made readers aware-bears upon it the representation of the All-Seeing-Eye, from which it may be inferred that its circulation is well looked after. But though apparently under such elevated superintendence, it is not above such assistance as ordinary mortals can render by ordering it of their booksellers.

Can (and will) any one of our readers inform J. A.' who among the Catholic clergy have or do disprove of the law of compulsory celibacy enforced by the Church of Rome on the Catholic priesthood? G. J. H.