once emancipate the tenant from the slavery of dependence upon a landlord's will, and increase the profits of his farming. It must be in bringing the artisan and manufacturer into neighborhood with the farmer,—in creating that balance of the industries, in whose absence no prolonged prosperity is possible. So long as Ireland buys everything, and sells nothing but food and raw material, she will continue to be a proverb for poverty. And so long as her people have nothing to which to turn from farming, they will be the virtual slaves of the landowners, whether those landowners are counted by hundreds or by hundreds of thousands.

FRENCH politics continue of an eminently personal nature. Whether M. Waddington will weather impending storms, through M. Gambetta's alliance, seems to be the only live question, and a foreigner who is more inclined to look for measures than for men as the guiding forces in political movement, finds it difficult to know what is the case for or against the eminent Protestant who stands at the head of the ministry. But it is noticeable that M. Grevy is the one highly placed man who is of no importance in the present situation. The presidency of the French Republic seems to be a sort of honorable banishment, into which some eminent statesman is to be sent, whenever it is desirable to get him out of the way. This arises from the fact that the office is hampered by the restrictions both of the English kingship and of the American presidency. M. Grevy has neither a hereditary position, an unparallelled social prestige, and an immense personal income like Queen Victoria, nor a right to select his own ministers, a real veto on legislation and a freedom from interference during his term of office, like President Hayes. To act as the national figure-head and to exercise the pardoning-power, seems to be the extent of the executive functions; and the latter M. Grevy exercises in every capital case by commuting death to imprisonment, as he is opposed to the infliction of the death penalty.

M. Grevy's chief rival in political position is Prince Napoleon, who, after much hesitation, has made his peace with the Imperialist clergy, and poses as the candidate for the Napoleonic throne. In so doing he has swallowed all of his professions of political principles, but that sort of deglutition has always been easy for the

Bonapartes; none of them ever were choked by it. The Republic shows its good sense by ignoring all its enemies except the communists. Were it to tolerate the reds, it would give its other enemies an excuse for representing it as revolutionary in its tendencies, and would lose its hold upon the peasants, who rallied at the last elections to its support. But so long as it makes the provinces believe that it is not the red, but the conservative, Republic, it can afford to let Imperialists and Royalists play what pranks they may. If it only had as much good sense and moderation in its ecclesiastical policy, it might be perpetual.

SPAIN is at last setting itself to the abolition of slavery in its colonies. The ministry do not propose immediate and unconditional emancipation. The measure they offer is one whose operation will be gradual, but none the less effective. Nearly all peaceable abolitions of slavery, as in our own northern States, were of this sort. That in New Jersey, for instance, operated so slowly that there were still a few left in that state when the census of 1860 was taken. We do not, therefore, think that more rapid movement is necessary to prove the sincerity of the plan; and we hope there are those now living who will see the complete extinction of slavery on the soil of every Christian nation.

Brazil still remains to be thus freed from the burden of slavery. She has been very loud at times in her profession of anti-slavery zeal, and Dom Pedro has been hailed more than once as the crowned Wilberforce of South America. But all this talk has come to nothing, and Brazil alone, of all the South American States, is stained by the dark blot. A general movement on the part of the opponents of slavery throughout the world would probably produce the desired effect; or perhaps a tax on Brazilian coffee, with the pledge of its removal on the completion of emancipation, would do equally well. The retention of slavery in Brazil is but one symptom, out of many, which shows the low moral level of that people. This huge, lumbering, loose-jointed Empire needs the infusion of some new moral energy into its mass, and even its excellent Emperor, though full of the culture and the ideas of more favored lands, has not shown himself exactly "the leaven to leaven the whole lump."

THE November Elections have completed the work begun by those held at an earlier date. The people of the North distrust the Democratic party, and are not prepared to place the government in its hands. As The (London) Spectator points out, the rising generation, who have begun to vote since the war, have decided against the Democracy, and have rallied to the support of that party with which their fathers voted in the time of the nation's perplexities. The one hope that the Democracy had for the future is cut away from them, and when after the census of 1880 the West is awarded from fifty to sixty new members of Congress, and the South loses nearly as many, the chance of putting a President into office by the vote of the Solid South will have disappeared forever.

The result of the November elections is most remarkable in the doubtful States. That Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Minnesota should roll up Republican majorities, was to be expected. The wildest Democratic calculators could not have doubted the result in any of these States. But to have lost New York, and the States on either side of her, is a blow from which the party will not rally. Connecticut and New Jersey have each gone Democratic at such recent elections that both parties have felt uncertain as to their future. No one now entertains any doubt as to their vote in 1880.

In New York the result is not so decided as elsewhere. Each party put into the field a ticket which could not command the support of the whole party. On the Democratic side, Mr. Kelly's bolt assured the defeat of the regular nominee; while Mr. Cornell, although elected by this movement, ran far behind the rest of the Republican Ticket. The Republican leaders, it is to be hoped, will not fail to profit by this lesson. If a man who was really acceptable to the whole party, had been put in nomination, the party would have secured a clear victory, and would have entered upon the Presidential campaign of next year with the certainty of success. As it is, although the Republican vote for Lieutenant Governor and other lesser officials is a few thousands ahead of the whole Democratic vote, it is less so than if the enthusiasm of the party had been generally aroused. The placing of Mr. Cornell at the head of the ticket in a pivotal state, will cost the party vast sums of money and vast outlays of effort in the campaign work of next year. It will make the campaign one of intense excitement, and much bitterness, whereas,

had it not been for that nomination, the Republican candidate might have walked over the course.

Still the chances, however reduced, are on the Republican side, and the South begins to appreciate the fact. Its "solid" vote cannot elect a President without the help of Indiana and New York, and one of the two is lost. Of even the other they are not sure, for the enthusiasm which has so mightily affected the Western vote in other States will doubtless extend to that one; and the revival of prosperity will, as elsewhere weaken the hold of the Democrats and Nationalists upon the discontented classes. Next year may see a "Solid North" arrayed against the "Solid South."

THE meaning of the vote is variously interpreted by various judges. Mr. Sherman and his New York friends see in it the popular approval of the resumption policy. We do not believe that they are justified in so interpreting it. The people are not at all awake to fine points of fiscal policy. They have relapsed into their normal condition of indifference to financial questions, which do not directly pinch themselves. So long as hard times lasted they listened to speculations on such topics, and often fell in with very vague and wild notions. But now that they are no longer directly and consciously pressed by monetary difficulty, they are not much disposed to give them any attention. They hear Mr. Sherman and his like descant on the glories and benefits of resumption, but do not feel bound to have any opinion on the subject. He may be right or he may be wrong; they are indifferent which. With or without the help of specie payments, prosperity has come back, and prosperity for them removes the money question out of the sphere of theory into that of practice. When we have another Era of depression, they will take up the question with renewed interest, and will run after Ewing and his like as eagerly as ever.

The real issue of the campaign, the one issue to which our people are thoroughly awake, was the imperilment of the results of the war by the Solid South and its Democratic allies in the North. This is a point upon which the American people have made up their mind. They reached definite conclusions by the light of war's lightning flashes, which gave things a vividness they will never forget. The maintenance of the Union against the heresy of State Sovereignty, the assertion of the national authority against claims of

State Rights, and the protection of the emancipated slaves from the living spirit as well as the dead form of slavery, are not open questions with the North. The northern people mean to make every man in this wide world know and feel that this is a nation and not a confederacy, and to make it safe for every man, white or black, to think as he pleases, and vote as he pleases, on every yard of soil over which the American flag floats. And nothing will rally them so swiftly to the support of the Republican party as the conviction that these results are imperilled by the purposes of its opponents.

The South seem to be fully aware of this, but they are intrenching themselves behind the guarantee furnished by the Constitution. The bulwark that defended slavery, they hope will save them from the exercise of national authority on behalf of their slaves. They will have to submit, as they see, to national control of national elections; but they really care far more for the power to govern and misgovern their own States, than for the chance to put a southerner in the White House. And nothing that has happened as yet threatens them with the loss of their State governments. We hope they will continue to flaunt these constitutional guarantees in the face of the nation, until the people are driven to change the constitution itself, and exorcise the demon of State Rights from his last stronghold in the body politic. This is, of course, impossible in the present condition of the distribution of States, but with the formation of New States out of the Territories which will soon be knocking for admission, the two-thirds majority needed for a revision of the Constitution will be obtained at no distant day.

THE elections in the South were not of much significance. That in Virginia must have pained every American who remembers what that commonwealth once was, and sees to what a depth she has been humiliated by the votes of her own children. The Repudiators have carried both branches of the Legislature, and only the veto of an upright governor, Mr. Holliday, stands between the state and the shame of dishonesty. To the result, the vote of the colored people has very largely contributed, but partly through the mismanagement of their opponents. The opponents of repudiation assumed the party name of Conservatives, the name associated with every severe measure against the colored people of the state.