to be candidates for an English popularity, have | old; as old, surely, as that great question of Debbeen modified and altered from their native bent. orah's to recreant Reuben-" Why abodest thou In all his writings, however, you breathe a foreign among the sheep-folds to hear the bleating of the atmosphere, and find very slight sympathy with the flocks?" or that more awful query of the Tishhabits, manners, or tastes of his native country. bite's-" How long halt ye between two opinNot Zanoni alone, of his heroes, is cut off from ions?" That it is, in theory, a robust truth; and country as by a chasm, or if held to it, held only sometimes, in application, an exaggeration and a by ties, which might with equal strength bind fallacy; and that, unless preceded by the words him to other planets: all his leading characters," enlightened" and "virtuous,' earnestness is a whatever their own pretensions, or whatever their quality no more intrinsically admirable, nay, as creator may assert of them, are in reality citizens blind and brutal, as the rush of a bull upon his foeof the world, and have no more genuine relation man, or as the foaming fury of a madman. Bulto the land whence they spring, than have the wer is not, we fear, in the full sense of the term, winds, which linger not over its loveliest land- an earnest man; nay, we have heard of the great scapes, and hurry past its most endeared and con- modern prophet of the quality, pronouncing him secrated spots. Eugene Aram is not an English- the most thoroughly false man of the age; and man; Rienzi is hardly an Italian. Bulwer is per- another of the same school christens him "a douhaps the first instance of a great novelist obtaining ble distilled scent-bottle of cant." In spite of this, popularity without a particle of nationality in his however, we deem him to possess, along with spirit, or in his writings. We do not question his much that is affected, much, also, that is true, and attachment to his own principles in his native much that is deeply sympathetic with sincerity, alcountry; but of that tide of national prejudice, though no devouring fire of purpose has hitherto which Burns says, "shall boil on in his breast till filled his being, or been seen to glare in his eye. the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest," he be- And, as we hinted before, his later writings extrays not one drop. His novels might all have hibit sometimes in mournful and melancholy forms appeared as translations from a foreign language, -a growing depth and truth of feeling. Few, and have lost but little of their interest or veri- indeed, can even sportively wear, for a long time, similitude. This is the more remarkable, as his the yoke of genius, without its iron entering into reign exactly divides the space between that of the soul, and eliciting that cry which becomes imtwo others, who have obtained boundless fame, mortal. greatly in consequence of the very quality, in varied forms, which Bulwer lacks. Scott's knowledge and love of Scotland, Dickens' knowledge and love of London, stand in curious antithesis to Bulwer's intense cosmopolitanism, and ideal indifference.

Akin to this, and connected either as cause or as effect with it, is a certain dignified independence of thought and feeling, inseparable from the motion of Bulwer's mind. He is not a great original | thinker; on no one subject can he be called profound, but on all, he thinks and speaks for himself. He belongs to no school either in literature or in politics, and he has created no school. He is too proud for a radical, and too wide-minded for a tory. He is too definite and decisive to belong to the mystic school of letters; too impetuous and impulsive to cling to the classical; too liberal to be blind to the beauties of either. He has attained, thus, an insulated and original position, and may be viewed as a separate, nor yet a small estate, in our intellectual realm. He may take up for his motto, "Nullius jurare addictus in verba magistri ;" | - he may emblazon on his shield Desdichado. Some are torn, by violence, from the sympathies and attachments of their native soil, without seeking to take root elsewhere; others are early transplanted in heart and intellect, to other countries; a few, again, seem born, rooted up, and remain so forever. To this last class we conceive Bulwer to belong. In the present day, the demand for earnestness, in its leading minds, has become incessant and imperative. Men speak of it as if it had been lately erected into a new test of admission into the privileges alike of St. Stephens and of Parnassus. A large and formidable jury, with Thomas Carlyle for foreman, are diligently occupied in trying each new aspirant, as well as back-speiring the old, on this question: "Earnest or a sham? Heroic, or hearsay? Under which king, Bezonian? speak, or die.' Concerning this cry for earnestness, we can only say, en passant, that it is not, strictly speaking, new, but

Bulwer, as a novelist, has, from a compound of conflicting and imported materials, reared to himself an independent structure. He has united many of the qualities of the fashionable novel, of the Godwin philosophical novel, and of the Waverley tale. He has the levity and thorough-bred air of the first; much of the mental anatomy and philosophical thought which often overpower the narrative in the second; and a portion of the dramatic liveliness, the historical interest, and the elaborate costume of the third. If, on the other hand, he is destitute of the long, solemn, overwhelming swell of Godwin's style of writing, and of the variety, the sweet, natural, and healthy tone of Scott's, he has some qualities peculiar to himself-point, polish-at times a classical elegance, at times a barbaric brilliance and a perpetual mint of short sententious reflections-compact, rounded, and shining as new-made sovereigns. We know no novelist from whose writings we could extract so many striking sentences containing fine thoughts, chased in imagery, "apples of gold in pictures of silver." The wisdom of Scott's sage reflections is homely but commonplace; Godwin beats his gold thin, and you gather his philosophical acumen rather from the whole conduct and tone of the story, and his commentary upon it, than from single and separate thoughts. Dickens, whenever he moralizes, in his own person, becomes insufferably tame and feeble. But it is Bulwer's beauty that he abounds in fine, though not far gleams of insight; and it is his fault that sometimes, while watching these, he allows the story to stand still, or to drag heavily, and sinks the character of novelist in that of brilliant essay-writer, or inditer of smart moral and political apothegms. In fact, his works are too varied and versatile. They are not novels or romances so much as compounds of the newspaper article, the essay, the political squib, the gay and rapid dissertation; which, along with the necessary ingredients of fiction, combine to form a junction, without constituting a true artistic whole.

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Reserving a few remarks upon one or two other of his works till afterwards, we recur to the three which seem to typify the stages of his progress; "Pelham," Eugene Aram," and "Zanoni." "Pelham," like "Anastasius," begins with a prodigious affectation of wit. For several pages the reading is as gay and as wearisome as a jest-book. You sigh for a simple sentence, and would willingly dig even for duiness as for hid treasure. The wit, too, is not an irrepressible and involuntary issue, like that from the teeming brain of Hood; it is an artificial and forced flow; and the author and his reader are equally relieved, when the clear path of the tale at length breaks away from the Juxuriant shrubbery in which it is at first buried, and strikes into more open and elevated ground. It is the same with "Anastasius;" but " Pelham," we must admit, does not reach those heights of tenderness, of nervous description and of solemn moralizing, which have rendered the other the prose "Don Juan," and something better. It is, at most, a series, or rather, string, of clever, dashing, disconnected sketches; and the moral problem it works out seems to be no more than this, that, under the corsets of a dandy, there sometimes beats a heart.

wisdom of quarrel (how vain!) with those austere and awful laws, by which moments of crime expand into centuries of punishment! It is not wonderful that, in the struggle with such self-made difficulties, Bulwer has been defeated. The wonder is, that he has been able to cover his retreat amid such a cloud of beauties; and to attach an interest, almost human, and even profound, to a being whom we cannot, in our wildest dreams, identify with mankind. The whole tale is one of those hazardous experiments which have become so common of late years, in which a scanty success is sought at an infinite peril; like a wild-flower, of no great worth, snatched, by a hardy wanderer, from the very jaws of danger and death. We notice in it, however, with pleasure, the absence of that early levity which marked his writing, the shooting germ of a nobler purpose, and an air of sincerity fast becoming more than an air.

In saying that "Zanoni" is our chief favorite among Bulwer's writings, we consciously expose ourselves to the charge of paradox. If we err, however, on this matter, we err in company with the author himself; and, we believe, with all Germany, and with many enlightened enthusiasts at home. We refer, too, in our approbation, more In "Eugene Aram," Bulwer evidently aims at to the spirit than to the execution of the work. As a higher mark; and in his own opinion, with con- a whole, as a broad and brilliant picture of a pesiderable success. We gather his estimate of this riod, and its hero, “Rienzi” is perhaps his greatwork from the fact that he inscribes a labored and est work, and "that shield he may hold up against glowing panegyric on Scott with the words, "The all his enemies." "The last Days of Pompeii," Author of Eugene Aram." Now, probably he on the other hand, is calculated to enchant classical would exchange this for "The Author of Zanoni." scholars, and the book glows like a cinder from Nor should we, at least, nor, we think, the public, Vesuvius, and most gorgeously are the reelings of object to the alteration. "Eugene Aram" seems, that fiery drunkard depicted. The "Last of the to us, as lamentable a perversion of talent as the Barons," again, as a cautious, yet skilful filling up literature of the age has exhibited. It is one of of the vast skeleton of Shakspeare, is attractive to those works in which an unfortunate choice of all who relish English story. But we are mistaksubject neutralizes eloquence, genius, and even en, if in that class who love to see the Unknown, interest. It is with it as with the "Curse the Invisible and the Eternal, looking in upon of Kehama," and the "Cenci," where the more them, through the loops and windows of the pressplendid the decorations which surround the dis-ent; whose footsteps turn instinctively towards the gusting object, the more disgusting it becomes. It thick, and the dark places of the "wilderness of is, at best, deformity jewelled and enthroned. Not this world;" or who, by deep disappointment, or content with the native difficulties of the subject— solemn sorrow, have been driven to take up their the triteness of the story-its recent date-its dead permanent mental abode upon the perilous verge level of certainty-the author has, in a sort of dar- of the unseen world, if "Zanoni," do not, on ing perversity, created new difficulties for himself such, exert a mightier spell, and to their feelings to cope withal. He has not bid the real pallid be not more sweetly attuned, than any other of murderer to sit to his pencil, and trusted for suc- this writer's books. It is a book not to be read in cess to the severe accuracy of the portraiture. Him the drawing-room, but in the fields-not in the sunhe has spirited away, and has substituted the most shine but in the twilight shade-not in the sunfantastic of all human fiends, resembling the more shine, unless indeed that sunshine has been sadhideous of heraldic devices, or the more unearthly dened, and sheathed by a recent sorrow. Then of fossil remains. Call him rather a graft from will its wild and mystic measures, its pathos, and Godwin's Falkland, upon the rough reality of the its grandeur, steal in like music, and mingle with actual "Eugene Aram;" for the worst of the mat-the soul's emotions; till, like music, they seem a ter is, that, after fabricating a being entirely new, part of the soul itself. he is compelled, at last, to clash him with the old No term has been more frequently abused than pettifogging murderer, till the compound monstros- that of religious novel. This, as commonly emity is complete and intolerable. The philosopher,ployed, describes an equivocal birth, if not a monthe poet, the lover, the sublime victim fighting with "more devils than vast hell can hold," sinks, in the trial scene, where precisely he should have risen up like a "pyramid of fire," into a sophister so mean and shallow, that you are reminded of the toad into which the lost archangel dwindled his giant stature. The morality, too, of the tale, seems to us detestable. The feelings with which you rise from its perusal, or, at least, with which the author seems to wish you to rise, are of regret and indignation, that, for the sin of an hour, such a noble being should perish, as if he would insinuate the

ster, of which the worst and most popular specimen, is "Celebs in Search of a Wife," where a perfect and perfectly insipid gentleman goes out in search of, and succeeds in finding a perfect and perfectly insipid lady. It is amusing to see how its authoress deals with the fictitious part of her book. Holding it with a half shudder, and at arm's-length, as she might a phial of poison, she pours in the other and the other infusion of prose criticism, common-place moralizing, sage aphorism &c., till it is fairly diluted down to her standard of utility and safety. But a religious novel, in the

high and true sense of the term, is a noble thought: a parable of solemn truth, some great moral law, written out as it were in flowers: a principle old as deity, wreathed with beauty, dramatized in action, incarnated in life, purified by suffering and death. And we confess that to this ideal, we know no novel in this our country, that approaches so nearly as "Zanoni." An intense spirituality, a yearning earnestness, a deep religious feeling, lie like the "soft shadow of an angel's wing," upon its every page. Its beauties are not of the "earth earthy. Its very faults, cloudy, colossal, tower above our petty judgment-seats, towards some higher tribunal.

its amounts of transfiguration? Must Mirza no more be overheard in his soliloquies? And is the road to the "Den," lost forever? We trust, we trow not. In the Student," too, occurs his farfamed attack upon the anonymous in periodical writing. We do not coincide with him in this. We do not think that the use of the anonymous either could, or should be relinquished. It is, to be sure, in some measure relinquishd as it is. The tidings of the authorship of any article of consequence, in a review or magazine, often now pass with the speed of lightning, through the literary world, till it is as well known in the bookshop of the country town, or the post-office of the country village, as in Albemarle or George street.

writing under its shelter. So with Swift, in his

Best of all is that shade of mournful grandeur which rests upon it. Granting all its blemishes, But, in the first place, the anonymous forms a the improbabilities of its story, the occasional ex- very profitable exercise for the acuteness of our travagancies of its language, let it have its praise, young critics, who become, through it, masters in for its pictures of love and grief, of a love leading the science of internal evidence, and learn to detect its votary to sacrifice stupendous privileges, and the fine Roman hand of this and the other writer, reminding you of that which made angels resign even in the strokes of his t's, and the dots of his their starry thrones for the "daughters of men;"i's. Besides, secondly, the anonymous forms for and of a grief, too deep for tears, too sacred for the author an ideal character, fixes him in an lamentation, the grief which he increaseth that in-ideal position as it were, projects him out of himcreaseth knowledge, the grief which not earthly self; and hence many writers have surpassed immortality, which death only can cure. The themselves, both in power and popularity, while tears which the most beautiful and melting close of the tale wrings from our eyes, are not those which wet the last pages of ordinary novels: they come from a deeper source; and as the lovers are united in death, to part no more, triumph blends with the tenderness with which we witness the sad yet glorious union. Bulwer, in the last scene, has apparently in his eye the conclusion of the "Revolt of Islam," where Laon and Laone, springing in spirit from the funeral pile, are united in a happier region, in the " calm dwellings of the mighty dead," where on a fairer landscape rests a "holier day," and where the lesson awaits them, that "Virtue though obscured on earth, no less Survives all mortal change, in lasting loveliness."

Tale of a Tub;" Pascal, Junius, Sydney Smith, Isaac Taylor, Walter Scott; Addison, too, was never so good as when he put on the short face of the Spectator. Wilson is never so good, as when he assumes the glorious alias of Christopher North. And, thirdly, the anonymous, when preserved, piques the curiosity of the reader, mystifies him into interest; and, on the other hand, sometimes allows a bold and honest writer, to shoot folly, expose error, strip false pretension, and denounce wrong, with greater safety and effect. A time may come, when the anonymous will require to be abandoned but we are very doubtful if that time has yet arrived.

In pursuing, at the commencement of this paper, Amid the prodigious number of Bulwer's other a parallel between Byron and Bulwer, we omitted productions, we may mention one or two "dearer to note a stage, the last in the former's literary than the rest." The "Student," from its dis- progress. Toward the close of his career,_his connected plan, and the fact that the majority of wild shrieking earnestness, subsided into Epiits papers appeared previously, has seemed to curean derision. He became dissolved into one many a mere published portfolio, if not an aimless contemptuous and unhappy sneer. Beginning collection of its author's study sweepings. This, with the satiric bitterness of "English Bards," he however, is not a fair or correct estimate of its ended with the fiendish gaiety of "Don Juan." merits. It in reality contains the cream of Bul- He laughed at first that he might not weep" wer's periodical writings. And the New Monthly but ultimately this miserable mirth drowned his Magazine, during his editorship, approached our enthusiasm, his heart, and put out the few flickerideal of a perfect magazine; combining as it did ing embers of his natural piety. The deep tragedy impartiality, variety, and power. His "Conver-dissolved in a "poor pickle herring," yet mournful sations with an Ambitious Student in ill health," farce. We trust that our novelist will not comthough hardly equal to the dialogues of Plato, con- plete his resemblance to the poet, by sinking into tain many rich meditations and criticisms, suspend- a satirist. 'T is indeed a pitiful sight that, of one ed round a simple and affecting story. The word who has passed the meridian of life and reputation, "ambitious," however, is unfortunate; for what grinning back in helpless mockery, and toothless student is not, and should not be ambitious? To laughter, upon the brilliant way which he has study, is to climb "higher still, and higher, like a traversed, but to which he can return no more. cloud of fire." Talk of an ambitious chamois, or We anticipate for Bulwer a better destiny. He of an ambitious lark, as lief as of an ambitious stu- who has mated with the mighty spirit, which had dent. The allegories in the "Student," strike us almost reared again the fallen Titanic form of reas eminently fine, with glimpses of a more creative publican Rome; whose genius has travelled up the imagination, than we can find in any of his writ-Rhine, like a breeze of music." stealing and giving ings, save "Zanoni." We have often regretted, odor;" who, in "Paul Clifford," has searched that the serious allegory, once too much affected, some "dark bosoms," and not in vain, for pathos is now almost obsolete. Why should it be so? and for poetry; who in "England and the English," why should not more heads be laid down upon John Bunyan's pillow, to see more visions and dream more dreams? Shall truth no more have

has cast a rapid but vigorous glance upon the tendencies of our wondrous age; who, in his verse, has so admirably pictured the stages of romance ir.

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Milton's story; who has gone down a "diver leannies, his settled and proclaimed opinions, his inand strong," after Schiller, into the "innermost dustry, and the earnestness not to say wilfulness main," lifting with a fearless hand, the "veil that of his character, we may be very sure that he will is woven with Night and with Terror;" and in put his own mark on whatever may be done. The Zanoni," has essayed to relume the mystic fires Russell government and the public will gain by the of the Rosicrucians, and to reveal the dread secrets superior efficiency of the office under Lord Grey of the spiritual world; must worthily close a career as an instrument of colonial reform; but Lord so illustrious. May the clouds and mists of detrac- John Russell individually will not gain the partion, against which he strove so long, not fail, (to ticular increase of reputation which he might have use the words of Hall,) to "form, at evening, a secured. He would find, however, if he could get magnificent theatre for his reception, and to sur- at Sir Robert Peel's feelings at this time, that the round with augmented glories, the luminary which other sort of fame is by much the more agreeable they cannot hide!" of the two; not to mention the comfortable whispers of an approving conscience.

THE NEW COLONIAL OFFICE.

an under-secretary known for laborious habits, and for having opinions of his own on all the questions which the present colonial office will have to decide. Those opinions, it is true, are the same as Lord Grey's; but Mr. Hawes has a position in the house of commons which will enable him to give utterance to his views, and take an important share in making the public acquainted with the policy, the objects, and the plans, of the new colonial office; whilst his habits of business and unusual powers of labor must procure him work and consequence in Downing street.

The public-spirit evinced by Lord John Russell in this matter seems to pervade the arrangements HABITUAL readers of the Spectator will have un- by which the new colonial office has been comderstood that, at the time of writing the sugges- posed. If Lord Grey had thought only of himself, tions last week, under the title, Some Things he would have chosen an under-secretary from the which the Russell government might do presently, numerous class of "sticks ;" would have perfor the public good and its own," we were not formed himself, as he is very capable of doing, all aware of the present composition of the colonial the most important business within the office; and office. It was then supposed that Lord Grey would have monopolized the pleasant work of planwould not be a member of the Russell govern- ning improvements and expounding them in parliament; that Mr. Charles Buller likewise might ment. He would not have deliberately shared continue out of office; and that Mr. Hawes would with others an occupation so sure to be agreeable probably be the under-secretary for the home- to a man of his ambition and capacity. He obtains department. So far as the personnel of the new government gave hopes of great improvement in the administration of colonial affairs, the sole reliance was upon Lord John Russell. But although Lord John Russell's proceedings as colonial minister six years ago, and his recent declarations on the subject of colonial government, made it likely that he would endeavor to promote valuable colonial reforms, still it was to be feared that, as prime minister, his hands would be full of other business; and there was no assurance that the colonial office would not continue to prove an impediment to changes of any importance. Presto, the scene Lord Grey and Mr. Hawes would have been a changes, and we behold the very colonial office capital colonial office without help from anybody itself composed of three out-and-out colonial re-else: they appear to have concurred in wishing to formers.* Lord John Russell's address to the electors of London contains a promise of colonial reform he has already fulfilled it to the uttermost of his power within the time, by making Lord Grey colonial minister, and letting him choose such assistants as Mr. Hawes and Mr. Buller. For this act Lord John Russell will obtain some of that credit which is just now the most conspicuous feather in Sir Robert Peel's cap he will be honored for having made a personal sacrifice to the public service. For Lord John Russell's reputation as a practical statesman rests chiefly on his brief administration of the colonial office; and there can be no doubt that if he had now placed at the head of that department a person not conversant with colonial questions, and had himself as prime minister directed the changes of policy and practice which were at all events inevitable, he would have consulted his own immediate interest more than he has done by handing over the task to Lord Grey. The changes would have been less complete and valuable, but they would have been Lord John Russell's. Considering Lord Grey's intimate acquaintance with the subject in its two main divisions of colonization and government of colo

make a perfect one, by giving to Mr. Charles Buller that large share of the work in hand, and of the honor of its success, which must necessarily, under the arrangement they have made with him, fall to one as familiarly versed as he is in colonial subjects, and whose name is even more before the public in connection with those subjects than either of theirs. We cannot help saying that it is a striking proof of freedom from jealousy of disposition on the part of Lord Grey and Mr. Hawes, to have wished that Mr. Buller should be associated with them in the performance of their official and parliamentary duties. Mr. Hawes, in particular, might have been excused as a son of Adam for objecting to an arrangement which so obviously tends to diminish his merely personal consequence in the house of commons, and of which the suggestion would have been taken as an affront by the common run of aspiring politicians. One observes now and then a peculiar moral nature as ignorant of jealousy as Nelson's was of fear; but we must confess that it never occurred to us till now to entertain for Mr. Hawes the deep respect which this character commands. Nor is Mr. Buller quite distanced in the race of generosity. Whatever merit in this respect may be awarded to Lord John *It is known in the official and political circles, though Russell, Lord Grey, and Mr. Hawes, a consideranot formally stated in any list of the new appointments, ble portion belongs to Mr. Buller, who, with his that the place of judge-advocate-general is not to be almost a sinecure as heretofore, but that Mr. Charles complete mastery of the subject of colonization and Buller is to perform the duties of an additional parlia-colonial government, with the reputation acquired mentary under-secretary for the colonies. by his great speech of 1843 and in subsequent de

bates, and with his command of the ear of the house of commons, might have hesitated to undertake irregular and undefined official functions in relation to that subject, as the subordinate of even so eminent a person as Lord Grey. All the four, however, seem to have thought only of getting the public work done in the best way, without regard to personal considerations. We have now, at all events, a thoroughly competent colonial office: thanks to Lord John Russell. After waging for sixteen years a scarcely interrupted war with the great house at the bottom of Downing street, the Spectator declares itself not merely satisfied but delighted. We venture to add, that this avowal will be the signal for many an illumination in the distant portions of the British empire, and for no little rejoicing among the colonizing and commercial classes at home.

SUGAR TRADE-WEST INDIES.

OUR West Indian colonies, the great producers of sugar for the British market, are threatened with damage from competition with countries still employing slaves, after we have forbidden the West Indian planters to possess slaves. They have never believed it possible that the English government could be guilty of that practical inconsistency; forgetting that the English government is not immortal-does not last through a generation-has not the average life of a cab-horse: nor have they believed till now, when the event has It is not generous, therefore, but simply come. just, to give them time to prepare for the unexpected competition. Time is not unneeded. The West Indian planter possessed a certain number of black laborers, all of whom, under the institution of slavery, he could keep at the appointed work of sugar-making. As soon as slavery was abolished, the blacks were free to take their choice in a wider range of employments; many abandoned the sugar-fields, and those who remained have bestowed only a portion of their time. It has become necessary for the planter not only to supply the deficiency of hands, but also as much as possible to diminish his own dependence on mere human labor by improved implements and methods of cultivation or manufacture. Both processes take time; up to this moment, both have been impeded by official obstructions. But the allowance of time would not be inconsistent with the immediate settlement of the question: a bill, passed next week, may provide for the prospective and gradual abandonment of the differential sugar-duties; just as Sir Robert Peel's corn bill provided for the prospective abandonment of corn-duties. With free trade to their detriment, the West Indians justly demanded free trade to their advantagefree admission to this country of their rum at duty equal to that on home spirits; free admission for their molasses, at an equivalent (say) to our maltduty, to be used in British manufactures. And above all, they have a right to a free supply of labor, whencesoever they can procure it. Simul

For this case has no parallel with regard to hopes of performance by a department of government, resting on the bare fact of certain appointments. On every question connected with colonies and the progress of colonization, the views of Lord Grey, Mr. Buller, and Mr. Hawes, are matured, definite, and so completely in unison as to form one policy. The combination of various talents in the official triunity, as well as their appropriate distribution for conception and command, for exposition and persuasion, and for practical efficiency, is most singular. And the opinions of the new colonial office are not merely speculative or theoretical; they consist of specific and earnest purposes. What Lord Grey and his assistants may be expected to do, having the power, is just what they have for years been vainly striving to get done by other hands which had the power but not the will. The will and the power are now conjoined and we may be as sure of what is going to happen with respect to the extension and gov. ernment of colonies, as we should have been of the nature of coming changes in the post-office if Rowland Hill had been put at the head of St. Martin's-le-Grand just before the adoption of his plan. Nay, more sure; for the scheme of a uniform penny-postage must at all events have met with formidable opposition on the score of reve-taneously with the new sugar bill, let them have nue: whereas Lord Grey's plans of colonial reform, being cordially supported, as there is every reason to suppose they will be, by Sir James Graham and Sir Robert Peel, have now only to be proposed in order to be carried into effect.

Lord John Russell's promise that free trade shall extend its benefits also to them. New regulations for the free ingress of tropical labor might at once be adopted by the executive government, without troubling the parliament.

What these plans are is not generally known, The other great risk involves moral considerabut simply because public opinion in this country tions touching slavery and the civilization of the When once slave-sugar is admitted takes little heed of colonial questions. Hansard negro race. must be searched, by most people, before they can to the British markets, its value will rise; with it even comprehend what colonizers and colonists will rise the value of slave-labor, the premium on have long expected as results of Lord Grey's the slave-trade. Yes, unpleasant as it is, that fact much-desired accession to power in colonial mat- must be admitted. The confession, however, is ters. Hence a singular property of the task which but another term for admitting a truth which has he has undertaken the public at large will esti- gradually been creeping on the conviction of all mate its importance solely by its fruits. Lord unbiassed observers-that the pertinacious attempt Grey's position resembles that of the general in of this country forcibly to suppress the slave-trade battle, whose capacity will be measured by the carried on by other countries, alien to our laws, is event; who will bear the whole blame of failure, impracticable. Our devices to effect it, our reor obtain nearly all the honor of success. Vain sources to disguise the ruinous cost to ourselves, would be any attempt on his part to induce the are exhausted. But we need not abandon our public to share responsibility with him by sanction-generous aspirations in despair: there is still hope. ing his plans before trial. If his plans are as Those of our readers who are new to the subject sound and great as those believe who have cared will find suggestions for relinquishing the crusade to understand them, it is a happy accident that against the slave-trade, without abandoning the self-reliance and active energy unite in his charac- emancipation of the negro race, fully developed in ter with the contemplative faculties.-Spectator, a Supplement which we published on the 15th of July 11.