are agreed, and when they are agreed their unanimity is wonderful. The one who now holds the seals of the office says: "As to the Motion "for papers, it is impossible for Government to assent to it. When "correspondence is complete he will have no desire to withhold it "from the public." The other, who last held those seals says: "The "proceedings of the Government of the Straits Settlements were not "at the time challenged in Parliament, and to discuss them now is "like dealing with a matter which belongs to a past history."

But the ex-Secretary added something which must be recorded:"In regard to the details of the intervention and of the Treaty "engagements, he wished to reserve his judgment, as he had no in"formation on the subject beyond what he had derived from the "Press."

This intervention and these Treaty engagements cannot have been planned by the present Colonial Secretary, who is scarcely seated in his office. We have now the avowal that they were not the work of his Predecessor. Who is it that is annexing the Malay Peninsula?

A Petition has been sent from the Lancashire Committees, praying that the Bill may be restricted in its operation to British subjects, and the Keighley Committee has petitioned for the entire rejection of the Bill in the following terms:

"That a Bill which is now under the consideration of your Honourable House intituled "An Act to extend the Jurisdiction of Courts of the Colony of the Straits Settlements to certain Crimes and Offences committed out of the Colony," inasmuch as it purports to give to Her Majesty's Courts of Law jurisdiction over persons not subjects of Her Majesty, and not resident within territories subject to Her Majesty's authority, proposes to do what is inherently and in the nature of things impossible, since by the Law of Nature and of Nations no sovereign can have any legal authority out of his own territories. To pretend, therefore, to confer such authority is a usurpation and act of violence, the more dangerous as it is clothed with the appearance of legality by being put into the shape of an Act of the Legislature of this realm. "That the term not civilised,' used to designate the persons to be so rendered subject to a jurisdiction foreign to them, and to which they are to become subject not merely without their consent, but even without their knowledge, is one which is unknown to the Law.

"That, moreover, such term introduced into a statute is to strike at the foundation of all Law, by rendering the language in which it is conveyed incapable of definition."

P.S.-The Bill has passed the Commons as well as the Lords. But there was much discussion, though, as it was in the small hours of the night, the press gives no report of it. There has, however, this been gained by the Petitions, the term "civilised Power" has been, on the Motion of Sir W. HARCOURT, struck out, to substitute in its place a geographic delimitation which excludes the Chinese, whom it was one object of the Bill to draw in. It only remains for us, therefore, to take to heart the lawlessness of our country and of the spirit of the age always seeking to "legislate" for everybody and to rule everybody. Still one attempt ought to be made by address to the QUEEN, imploring her to withhold her royal sanction to this infamous Act. It is not for us to accept the "Theory " of the Constitution," but, on the contrary, to recollect that we still have a QUEEN, and to recollect it in such fashion as may aid her to recover the prerogatives of which she has been robbed.

A Rule of Business necessary in Public as well as in Private Affairs.

IN the "Four Wars of the French Revolution," the translation of which was commenced in our last number, after explaining that the provisions of the Act of Settlement, 12 and 13 WILLIAM III., which required that every member of the Privy Council should sign his name to the advice he gave, were repealed by the 4th of ANNE, Mr. URQUHART goes on to say:

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"From the moment that there were no longer 'great officers of the "Crown' responsible, each one for his acts in his own department, no one could be prosecuted, and every prosecution, separate or collec"tive, became impossible from the time when the evidence of the acts themselves was effaced, and when it further became impossible "for the House of Commons, called The Great Inquisition,' to ex"hibit articles of impeachment before the House of Peers, called 'The "Great Tribunal.' From that time everything passed in secret. No "one knew, or could know either who had advised a measure, or who "had executed it.

"The House of Commons could not obtain either signatures or "orders; neither had they any authority for consulting records. "Records no longer existed."

But there are records. The House of Commons publishes, every year, some volumes of correspondence with foreign Powers There is no quarter of the world where such correspondence does not take place, and whenever some particular subject is brought to the light in the course of its orbitular revelation, a subterranean mine is revealed, and with it a sense of fear and danger to all who attempt to explore it. Last Session one of the Committees endeavoured to obtain, through a Member of Parliament, a return of all correspondence of the British Government with Russia, the United States, and the Hudson's Bay Company, respecting the Boundary on the NorthWest Coast of America. The return was refused, not on the grounds that no such correspondence was on record, but that it would take three weeks to copy it all for the printer. How, then, can Mr. URQUHART say "Records no longer exist?" (" Il n'y a plus d'archives").

to

The contradiction is only in appearance. The papers which are to be found in the Foreign Office, and which gradually find their way the public, whole, garbled, distorted, or, as in one memorable case, restored to their original accuracy, no longer record the commencement, the reasons, or the real progress of the negotiations which they profess to record. The Indian Mutiny Papers gave no account of the determination to Grease the Cartridges. The Acheen Papers give no account of any deliberations by the Privy Council, the Cabinet Council, or even the Foreign Secretary, as to the permission granted by the Treaty of November 2nd, 1872, to the Dutch to extend their territory in Sumatra. Even the Affghan Papers, though now published by order of the House of Commons, not merely in

Q

their original state, but with brackets to show where and how they were tampered with, give no account of the reasons for making the Affghan War.

It is possible that there may be an exception to this otherwise invariable rule. From the time of the establishment of the Board of Control, that Board, which in recent times consisted of its President and the Foreign Secretary, was in the habit of dictating orders to the Governor-General of India, which were sent through the Secret Committee. The order for making the Affghan War was sent by that Committee only after a threat of imprisonment, and it was not. printed when the correct version of the Affghan Papers was published by Parliament. It has not yet seen the light. Therefore we say it may be an exception. It may be that the evidenee it would have afforded was such that the conduct of the President of the Board of Control (Lord BROUGHTON), and the Foreign Secretary (Lord PALMERSTON), could not have been mistaken. But the Affghan Papers, when published with the explanation of the forgeries to which they had been subjected, still afforded so little clue to the person of the forger that Mr. DUNLOP, when he moved for a Committee to inquire into that matter, had not the slightest idea that the criminal was Lord PALMERSTON himself. He discovered this only when Lord PALMERSTON defended the falsifications, though without avowing that he was their author.

This same Lord PALMERSTON, who, on the 19th March, 1861, said that "it was perfectly right" to make alterations in the correspondence of Sir ALEXANDER BURNES; had, on the 10th March, 1830, in his Motion on the Affairs of Portugal, laid down the following as the rule to be observed:

"Government should either make its stand on a denial of any information whatever, or they ought to give it in its fullest shape; for to give imperfect information-to mutilate extracts-to offer fragments of correspondence from which the most important parts have been left out, is to make a mockery of Parliament, under pretence of submitting to its jurisdiction."*

We have been frequently misunderstood when we have repeatedly urged on our readers the study of the Blue Books; as if we supposed that in that species of literature there was some intrinsic excellence which would communicate to the ignorant a knowledge, and even a comprehension of public affairs. We point to the Blue Books as a coroner would point to the clothes, the marks on the person, and the other circumstances which indicate that a death has not been natural. The Blue Books are admissions of some things that have been done, and when these things are not set forth in intelligible sequence, they are evidence of something which having been done cannot be avowed. It is only when any stand is made to ascertain what is thus concealed, that any revelation is made of the unbusiness-like manner in which all our foreign transactions are conducted. The Affghan Despatches were demanded from without, that is to say, by the Foreign Affairs Committees. We are now going to relate a demand that was made

from within.

* Opinions of Lord Palmerston, p. 144.

In 1816 England contracted to pay annually a sum of money for a hundred years to Russia, on condition that during all that time Belgium should remain joined to the Kingdom of Holland. This condition was insisted on by Lord CASTLEREAGH, and Russia was compelled to accept it.

In 1830 Belgium revolted against Holland. The five Powers at once accepted the separation, and England and France enforced it by arms. That this separation was contrived by Russian intrigue was not suspected at the time in England, Russia being supposed to be the supporter of all existing authority, and therefore the friend of the King of HOLLAND. Lord PALMERSTON had to persuade the House of Commons that England was bound to go on paying the money to Russia after the consideration had ceased. Not a line of the correspondence respecting the original Treaty was published by Government till 1847, and the true intention of the transaction as a barrier against Russia was only revealed when Lord CASTLEREAGH's private correspondence on public affairs was published by his brother. Lord CASTLEREAGH'S views are at once fully and briefly explained in his letter dated 11th of November, 1814, to Mr. VANSITTART, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He writes:

"The great question in my hands is the Dutch Loan, which connects itself, however, with our claims to retain Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo.

"If the Emperor of RUSSIA shall persist in refusing to acknowledge his Treaties, or to treat in pursuance of them à l'aimable, I shall have no difficulty in stopping that demand, provided that I can secure the Low Countries against his arms and his intrigues; but, if His Imperial Majesty shall change his tone and make a reasonable arrangement of frontier on the side of Poland-if he shall allow the other European arrangements to be equitably settled, including those of Holland, and alter his tariff besides, then, my dear VANSITTART, I must come upon you for my pound of flesh; Or, if I cannot stop his power upon the Vistula, and it breaks loose, and shall carry everything before it to the Meuse, I cannot answer for the consequences. I only. beg you will believe I shall do my best to spare your purse. The engagement with Holland shall be no obstacle to this, as I had rather give the Prince of ORANGE something more to defend and fortify the Low Countries than assist the credit of a Calmuck Prince to overturn Europe.*

Those only who recollect the awe inspired by Russia as the great Conservative Power, at the time of the Belgian revolution, can appreciate the effect that would have been produced if Lord CASTLEREAGH'S epigrammatic description of the Calmuck Prince engaged in the overturning of Europe could have been produced in the House of Commons.

The annuity to Russia was, according to the fifth article of the Treaty, to cease should Belgium be separated from Holland. Lord PALMERSTON represented this as a condition in which Russia had readily acquiesced. But Lord CASTLEREAGH'S Correspondence has now revealed that this was not true. In his letter to Count NESSELRODE, dated 28th of May, 1815, he writes:

"The Count de LIEVEN, with his accustomed zeal for the service of his Court, was desirous that the fifth article should have been confined in its operation to the part of the debt falling to the share of Holland; but this change, whilst it would have been at direct variance with all my arguments, as employed both from Vienna and since my return to reconcile the Government to the measure, would have destroyed

Castlereagh's Correspondence, Third Series, vol. ii. p. 200.

my whole case in Parliament by enabling my opponents to describe the arrangement as one made not upon the principle of a fair equivalent with Holland, but as a gratuitous concession to Russia for an object that might not survive the present crisis.

"The risk to you is, I trust, small, whilst the principle is everything to us, as justifying the measure in Parliament. Although M. de LIEVEN pressed the point earnestly, I am confident you will do justice to the consideration which made it quite impossible for me to accede to his proposal."*

The arguments employed from Vienna have, with one trifling exception, never been given to the world. How much they might reveal we can only guess, but the extract just given would have shown that Russia foresaw the separation of Belgium from Holland. Had these two letters been published, they would have gone a great way to show that what Lord PALMERSTON was trying to do for Russia was what Lord CASTLEREAGH had refused to do for her, and that England was all through duped and cheated by Russia.

But, though the whole of the original negotiations were suppressed, the case presented difficulties-difficulties of a practical nature. Then, as now, the Privy Council was in abeyance as regards both negotiations and hostilities; then, as now, the Foreign Secretary negotiated without consulting his Sovereign, or the Cabinet, or the Prime Minister; but there were rules of business which had to be obeyed, or at least considered, in regard to the payment of money. The money was payable to Russia under an Act of Parliament (55 GEORGE III., cap. 115), which 'gave authority to the Treasury to make the payments, "so long as the same should be payable con"formably to the tenor of His Majesty's engagements.' On the separation of Belgium from Holland, Lord GRENVILLE, the Controller of the Exchequer, demurred to the payment, and asked the Treasury to obtain the opinions of the Law Officers of the Crown as to its legality.

The Attorney-General, afterwards Lord DENMAN, stated to the House, 16th of December, 1831, that he had at first supposed that the Treaty was at an end, but that he had now come to the conclusion that the original parties contemplated a separation by external force, he therefore thought the Treaty was still binding, and, therefore, that the Act founded on the Treaty was still in force. How this change of opinion was created was not known at the time, but in 1847 a letter was published from the Russian Ambassadors, dated 25th of January, 1831, and marked "Confidential," in which this line was taken. It was founded on a secret article, which actually provided that, in case of an invasion of Belgium, the payments should not even be suspended till such invasion should have lasted for a year, and that even after that, when affairs should be settled, the arrears should be determined according to the then state of possession in which the King of HOLLAND should find himself established. This secret article was ordered to be printed on the 6th of July, 1832, but it did not have much weight with the House. What did have weight was another statement contained in the same letter of the Russian Ambassador. It was as follows:

* Castlereagh's Correspondence, Third Serier, vol. ii., p. 365.