the prickly pears and other thorny shrubs that grew scantily in the sand, between the ridges which marked the resting-places of the dead, when the sound of two shots, fired in quick succession, struck upon my ear. They were evidently discharged close at hand; and I stood in no enviable situation, for I had clearly distinguished the shrill noise that a bullet made in passing close to my head; and as I had heard too many of such singing birds whistle by me when on actual service not to be well acquainted with the sound, I shouted with all my strength, in order that the persons who discharged the shots should cease firing, unconsciously, and in my haste, using the technical word of command. But the echoes of my words had not yet died away, when they were answered by a repetition of the same sounds; but now no bullet now whistled past for they had reached their destination. At that instant the morning gun from the fort was fired, and answered by the admiral's flag-ship in the bay, followed by the brisk and irregular discharge of small arms from the marines on the gangways of the several men-of-war. The effect of heavy artillery on mists and vapours is well known. The thick, smokelike clouds that hung over the sands slowly rolled aside for a moment in heavy folds, like the withdrawing of a curtain, and again closed, darkening and concealing the surrounding objects; but brief as the interval was, it had permitted me to discover a group of figures, which might serve as a study for a painter, could the artist be found hardened enough to gaze unmoved on such a scene.

Not twenty yards from me, on the ground, lay two officers, one in the uniform of my own regiment, the other in the undress of a naval captain; the surgeon and the second of each were stooping over their friends, and a black servant stood at a trifling distance, in evident alarm; while the smoke from their pistols still hovered over the spot, in dark circles, struggling to rise through the overhanging canopy of mist. I hastened to the spot: one was my brother officer, M'Ivor; the other was the fighting captain of the Elmira; both mortally wounded. The surgeons of each, after a few moments' consultation, declared the impracticability of removing either of them from the ground, as a few moments would most probably terminate their existence; indeed, from the paleness and agony impressed on the features of Ls, and from the crimson flood which widely stained the white sand beneath him, it was evident that the vital spark was about to be extinguished.

Not so M'Ivor: his wound was in the chest, and the bleeding was mostly internal. He had risen upon one elbow; a small stream of blood flowed from between his clenched teeth; but as his dark eye was fixed sternly upon his prostrate antagonist, his whole face was illumined with an expression of exultation and delight, fearfully in contrast with his evident and increasing weakness; and the brilliant hue of pleasure lit up those features, at other times so pale and death-like.

The departing sailor, in faltering and broken accents, gasped out a request to be brought nearer to M'Ivor, that he might grasp his hand and die forgiving him.

A strange expression of contempt played on the blood-stained lips of the latter, as he heard this demand, and beheld the surgeons assisting his adversary to approach him. With pain and difficulty the dying man reached out his trembling hand, and the accents of forgiveness hung upon his lips; when the young Highlander raising himself to a sitting posture, fiercely grasped the extended hand, and, while a gush of blood accompanied every word, exclaimed, in accents never to be eradicated

from my memory, "L

-s, you are now dying on the grave of my brother-in-law, poor Baldwin; he whom you murdered rots in the soil beneath you; but my sister, Jessie M'Ivor, she rests with her forbears, among the green hills of that native land I never shall behold. You wronged a daughter of M'Ivor-a son of M'Ivor has avenged her wrongs." He flung the hand from him with contemptuous violence, and, falling backwards in the effort, ceased to exist; his face retaining, even in death, the same expression of. stern delight. L- -s writhed in redoubled agony, as if the grave on which he lay had been a bed of molten fire his features became convulsed-the glare of his eye bore fearful resemblance to the once insulting glance of the professed and successful duellist. Suddenly he started to his feet-he assumed the posture of a prepared combatant-and, with his arm extended, as if in the act of discharging a pistol, he fell prostrate over the now senseless body of his youthful antagonist.

HOW TO AVERT REVOLUTION

THE whole aspect of the times is threatening. We see the former champions of Reform now its steady opponents, and supported by the determined foes of popular rights. We see the whole of the immense masses of the labouring population disgusted and enraged by the proceedings of the Government; and venting their angry feelings in the most unequivocal manner. Even the middle classes, though not easily roused to take an active part in political movements, are in motion. Some are denouncing the spirit that actuates the Government, as fiercely as the labouring classes; while the more timid and submissive, who have always followed the Whig leaders with undoubting confidence, are becoming uneasy and restive, now that they see their leaders behind them, instead of at their head as usual. Like cattle, on the way to Smithfield, they begin to have a presentiment of the shambles; and turning round their heads, utter many a complaining low, and cast many a look of rueful questioning behind them, to see if it can be their old herds who, with lifted rung, and cries of ho! ho! are driving them along so inauspicious-looking a road.

The state of the country grows every day more critical. By the confession of all parties, there is nothing but the Whig administration between us and revolution; an administration admitted by The Times to be "constantly on the brink of ruin." We are not among those whose wits are scared at the word Revolution. We do not regard revolution as the greatest evil which a nation can suffer: revolution is the violent cure for evils greater than itself. That condition of a people which produces revolution, must surely be more to be deprecated, than the convulsion which accompanies the throwing off of insupportable evils. Still revolution, although the relief from evils, is itself, even in its mildest form, an evil of fearful magnitude. It is not, however, in any case, a necessary evil. In every instance where revolution has happened, it might have been avoided, There are always two parties to revolution: a people roused by a sense of wrong on the one side; and a despot, or an oppressive aristocracy, on the other. By the blind and perverse ob

stinacy of the aristocracy or the despot, alone, can the people ever be driven to revolt. Timely yielding of even less than justice would always prevent revolution. It therefore becomes the aristocracy of this country, to consider well the situation in which the country is placed, while it is yet time to avert, we will not say the horrors, but the miseries of revolution. We address this advice to the aristocracy alone; for it is they only who can avert the evil which threatens the nation. It is in vain to caution the people against revolution. They seek only their rights, and will not be denied. The Tories know this, and have, ever since the introduction of the Reform Bill, predicted revolution. The Whigs cannot dispute that the people's demands are just, they seem, however, as much inclined to delay, as the Tories to deny justice-with a lamentable blindness to the probable consequences. But it is not because, in this contest, the people are in the right, and the aristocracy in the wrong, that we tell the aristocracy that it is they who must yield; nor is it because the people are immeasurably the stronger party. It is because the sufferings of the people are so great that they cannot choose but revolt, unless their distress be alleviated. They want food; and as sure as men will not starve in patience in the midst of plenty, so surely will the people free themselves of the tyrannical yoke of the aristocracy by revolution, if that yoke be not speedily relaxed. We do not mean to indulge in vague declamation; but shall make plain our meaning, at the risk of falling into the opposite error of explaining what scarcely requires explanation. The persons whom we wish to convince labour hard to deceive themselves, as well as those they have an interest in deceiving; and their success in the art of self-deception is not small. When men are educated in the belief of certain doctrines, and have a strong interest in their belief, it is well known how easily, how almost universally, they imbibe a sort of spurious faith in those doctrines, although perhaps such as they would have shrunk from with abhorrence under other circumstances. How small is the hope of converting the priest of a false religion! Can anything be more obvious than the injustice, the violence to natural right, the absolute atrocity of one man telling another, looking him in the face all the while, These arms, these limbs, these eyes, that body is not yours but mine; you are my slave? And yet what slaveholder ever sees what appears to all others so obvious? Our aristocracy have much of the same blindness. Had we nothing to urge but the injustice of their resistance to the popular demands, we should, without thinking them worse than other men would be in their places, absolutely despair of making any impression on their resolves. It is their sense of danger to which we appeal; not their sense of justice.

The two elements of danger to the country, at present, are a sense of political wrongs, and financial distress. Of these, the latter element is the more to be dreaded. Even despotic sway, if unaccompanied by fiscal oppression, may be long borne. For proof, look to the monarchies of the continent. But large masses of men, suffering from extreme want, are always dangerous. When such masses of men have an acute feeling of political wrongs, along with their distressed circumstances, the danger is greatly aggravated; and when they can distinctly trace their sufferings to their wrongs, as effect and cause, great is the irritation against their oppressors, and doubly imminent the danger of violence and insurrection.

At this moment, the country is, beyond doubt, in this last and most

dangerous predicament. Much distress prevails; and that distress is universally ascribed to political wrongs; to profligate expenditure, unequal taxation, and oppressive restrictions on trade. Starving men have their eyes turned on the Corn Laws, as the palpable cause of their misery. The aristocracy, Whigs no less than Tories, have, with an evident consciousness of the indefensibility of the system to which they cling, endeavoured to keep the people in darkness: but in vain. Notwithstanding the heavy taxes on political knowledge, and the pains that have been taken to substitute Penny Magazines for Newspapers, the people know well to what parties in the state they owe the condition of suffering in which they find themselves. They know also what laws work ill for them, and well for the aristocracy. The intelligence of the artisans is too little known. Ask any operative in any of the large towns, what are his politics, and he will tell you he is a radical reformer. Ask him whether he is for or against the Ballot, and he will not declare against it, like almost all the aristocracy, or hesitate in his declaration like many of the middle classes; but tell you, at once, that the ballot must be had. You will find him equally ready with his answers as to short Parliaments, the Corn Laws, &c., and you will find that he does not repeat by rote a string of doctrines which he has caught from some mob orator, but that he can, in every instance, give a reason for the political faith which he holds. In one respect, the efforts to keep the people in darkness have, it is to be feared, been but too successful. The people know their oppressors, and they know the bad laws by means of which they are oppressed; but, by the want of cheap political publications circulating among them periodically, they are left to guess darkly at their means of emancipation. They are kept in partial ignorance of their own irresistible strength when acting in union, in a peaceable though determined manner; and without the means of mutually communicating their sentiments to each other throughout the whole country, so as to act together in any constitutional mode of obtaining justice. Thus, the people are kept in a gloomy state, nourishing a strong feeling of hatred against the aristocracy and the laws under which they live, instead of being actively and cheerfully engaged in canvassing the impolicy of the oppressive parts of our laws, and combining to storm the Houses of Parliament with petitions for relief. In this state of ignorance of their moral force, the people are led to look alone to their brute force, as the means of obtaining justice; and to be actuated by malignant and revengeful feelings, instead of a quiet determination to obtain their rights, founded on perfect intelligence of what these rights are, the proper means of obtaining them, and the certainty of their efforts being crowned with success.

Before the Reformed Parliament met, so many symptoms had appeared of an intention to go on upon the old system-doing only what was easy or agreeable to the aristocracy, rather than what was just,-and relying on well-trained ministerial majorities, rather than on honest and independ ent support, that confidence in either the Parliament or the Ministry had disappeared: but hope was not extinguished; and their proceedings were waited for with anxious expectation-with mingled hopes and fears. The fears have been confirmed, and the hopes disappointed. It has plainly appeared that not to the Whig Ministry and the Reformed Parliament are the people to look for any abatement of extravagant expenditure, any adjustment of the burden of taxation upon fair principles, or any farther constitutional reforms required to afford protection against the Tory party's once more coming into power.

What relief from a taxation greater than the country can bear have the Ministry and the Parliament given us? what adjustment of taxation to the parties who should bear it? Have they reduced our enor mous military and naval establishments? No. The army is maintained still at the old war complement, although foreign foe there is none, and scarcely a possibility of a war occurring in which it would be either necessary or expedient to use the army,—our wooden walls being our best and cheapest mode both of defence and aggression. So that, were the Whigs to go out, (and they do not seem to be sure of a week's tenure of office,) were the King to be so ill-advised as to call the Tories to power, and the Tories so fool-hardy as to take office, the old and determined enemies of the people would find things just as they left them; with the addition of Ireland chained down under the Coercion Bill, and that glorious precedent for coercing any part of England or Scotland which is likely to be troublesome. Short as the rule of the Whig Ministry and the Reformed Parliament has been, it has been long enough to afford many useful precedents to the Tories, were they again in a situation to make use of them. Let us trace these precedents for one moment :Suppose, then, the Whigs out, and the Tories in. A dissolution of Parliament takes place of course; and here the people are met at once by the two rival factions united, and experience the full effects of the restriction of the elective franchise to £10, of Lord Chandos's clause, giving the franchise to £50 agricultural tenants-at-will, and of the want of that grand protection of dependent shopkeepers and tenants-the ballot. The influence of the whole aristocracy of each neighbourhood would be brought to bear upon the £10 voters, to the effect, probably, of returning a great many Conservatives-Whig and Tory being alike sunk under that appellation. Well, Parliament is met. A strong King's speech is read, full of resolutions to maintain our matchless constitution, the rights of property, &c., with denunciations of incendiary demagogues, who are determined to drive the people to anarchy and spoliation; and concluding with an expression of confidence, that powers will be given to enforce obedience to the laws, and prevent the assembling of tumultuary mobs, for seditious purposes, by which the constitution may be endangered. A Tory Speaker is elected of course; there is Whig precedent for that. Birmingham is proclaimed, and attempted to be coerced; there is Whig precedent for that too. Motions are made by the Reformers for the abolition of pensions, for the reduction of the army, for the ballot, for short Parliaments; all which are negatived, with appeals to the acts of the Whigs when in power. As for reforms of the Irish Church and of the Scottish Entail Law, to take effect one generation after date, there would be Whig authority for granting these; but nobody would ask for such a mockery of reform. Repeal of the taxes on knowledge would be sought, but sought in vain. What the Whigs durst not give, from the conviction that it would lead directly to revolution, although by refusing they had falsified their promises of many a year, it would be in vain to expect from the Tories; who could tell us, moreover, that things were in a much more dangerous state than when the Whigs refused freedom of political discussion by the press.

It is not uncommon to hear timid or ignorant men, blame the Radicals for not allowing the Whigs more time to accomplish the beneficial measures which it is supposed they have in view. Such silly remarks are not worth an answer. To say nothing of what they might have done in the last Parliament, the Whigs, since the present Parliament met, have