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countries which are governed in this way, a totally different method is still employed in the transaction of private affairs. Doubtless the political system is encroaching upon them, as is evidenced by the bankruptcy of public companies, the ruin of life insurance societies, and the disappearance of benefit societies. But these are still only exceptions. The rule is that there is in every firm an established method of business, and that every servant is bound to conform to it. All that is required for England to recover herself is that the method of business, by which she still carries on successfully individual transactions, should be once more applied to the transactions of the State with other States.

While Lord PALMERSTON was alive this most desirable object presented great difficulties. The Minister had a plan to carry out, and he would carry it out. He adopted, first secretly and then openly, the system of falsehood. That is to say, first he imposed upon Parliament and his colleagues by telling them what was false and getting them to believe that it was true, and afterwards, when it was found out that he habitually used falsehood, he compelled everybody to act as if they believed him, because nobody would make, in the manner required by the rules of Parliament, a charge of falsehood.

At the present moment the difficulty is very much lessened. There is no definite evil purpose in the English Government; the habit of allowing a Minister to do as he likes is so rooted in the people that, even if he were to act legally, he would not meet with serious opposition. The restoration of the authority of the Privy Council might be accomplished almost without an effort, if Mr. DISRAELI and his Cabinet were to attempt it.

To restore the Privy Council means simply that neither negotiation nor hostility shall be commenced without its authority, and that any servant of the Crown doing either should be punished for his usurpation, whatever might be the manner or the motives of it, just as a sheriff's officer would be punished if he were to distrain, without a legal warrant, even for a real debt.

There is only one instance in recent times of the judicial examination and punishment of treason; at least, of that treason which consists in an understanding with a foreign Power. In our last number we referred to this event in the following words :—

"Marshal BAZAINE was tried for treason; the advocate who de"fended him opened his speech with the question, 'Is, then, the greatest of our soldiers a traitor?' He was convicted, because he "could not effect his treachery without breaking the rules of the "service. So plain are these rules, that his judges could not have ac"quitted him. Had no rules existed, it is equally certain that he could "not even have been tried, much less convicted; the value to France "of which conviction may be estimated in the anger expressed on the "occasion by the Prussian journals. But military treason is only the "result of political treason, and the latter remains absolutely un"touched. Why? Because no rule whatever exists, either in France, "in England, or any other modern country, by which the acts of "political authorities can be made subject to the law."

We conclude with the following from "Constitutional Remedies":"In all matters the King could only act by and with the consent of "the Privy Council, every member signing his name to the minutes "of Council, and so the means of impeachment lay against the recom"menders of measures if found to contain criminal matter. The "change which has been brought about takes away the whole liberties "of the country-in taking away the power of impeachment. This "record of advice would have prevented those clandestine intrigues "which, during the last twenty-five (forty-four) years, have brought "such evil on the world.

Question: "Is it possible to restore this by an Act of Parliament? Mr. URQUHART:"Certainly.

Q.: "Could you draw up an Act of Parliament for that purpose? Ans.: "The Act exists, though in part repealed."

You have only to re-enact all that portion of the 12 and 13 WILLIAM III., cap. 2, which was repealed by the 4 ANNE, cap. 8, and

TO ENFORCE IT.

C. D. C.

The Ashantee War, the Declaration of Paris, and the Privy Council.

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(Omitted, for want of space, from our last Number.) EVERYBODY knows and everybody has said that the Ashantee War was caused by gross mismanagement. Mr. GLADSTONE himself has attributed it to engagements equivocal and entangling." Governor MACDONNEL and Mr. SWANZY, who represent the English official and mercantile classes on the Gold Coast, declared at the Royal Colonial Institute that the Ashantees were exactly the people that we could and should have taken for customers, allies, and fast friends, and Mr. DISRAELI denounces the Dutch aggression in the Straits of Malacca; for which we have given our permission, as a price for the luxury of an Ashantee War. Yet everybody rejoices in the destruction of Coomassie and the probable dispersion of Ashantee power; Mr. DISRAELI moves a vote of thanks to the troops, the QUEEN reviews them, the Lord Mayor invites them to dinner, and the feeling of the whole nation is that some very desirable acquisition has been obtained for which the three farthings per pound of Income Tax which has to be paid is on no account to be grudged. For the expedition has, it must be admitted, been carried on with consummate skill and unvaried good fortune.

It might indeed be thought from the tone assumed by the Press in general, that these qualities were not expected by the nation; the tone of admiration for the courage of the troops engaged has reached the point of surprise, as if it were an unexpected and unheard-of thing for British soldiers to make a forced march and to stand fire.

Foreign journalists have not been slow to criticise this, as well as the sickening tone of exultation at the havoc produced among the black men by case-shot from the small field-guns at a range of a few

hundred paces, to which they could only reply by firing slugs from Birmingham muskets warranted not to carry two hundred feet. Nevertheless the General and the troops-taken as troops and Generalacted well.

Without the exercise of certain qualities which always command respect, we might have suffered, instead of inflicting, a terrible disaster. If, for instance, Lord GRANVILLE, instead of Sir GARNET WOLSELEY, had conducted the expedition, and had managed it in the same slovenly manner in which he conducted the negotiation which led to the war, the Ashantees might, if so minded, have destroyed the British settlements, overrun the territories of our allies the Fantees, and massacred all of an army who had not been already stricken down by disease the result of mismanagement.

From the beginning till now the British Government has had no purpose. It did not plan the Ashantee invasion, it did not order the destruction of Coomassie. It neither projected the destruction nor the encouragement of the trade which the Ashantees were so anxious to carry on with our settlements, and which the British inhabitants were so desirous of carrying on with them. It has succeeded in dispersing the Ashantees, but the army has gone away without a Treaty of Peace, and our future relations with them are yet undecided.

We are unable to join in the admiration which is satisfied with a mischievous destruction which has only the one excuse, that previous mismanagement had put us in the alternative of either resisting a justly provoked invasion, or succumbing before it.

But so far as admiration may be justly excited by the skilful combination of a series of designs, and their execution with very slender means, without consideration for the morality of those designs, we cannot refuse our admiration to the Cabinet that has carried out the combination whose success now fills the British mind with triumph, but which, nevertheless, threatens to bring upon the British Empire the fate of the Ashantee kingdom.

The scheme which the Russian Cabinet is so successfully carrying out is not limited to the Gold Coast, or confined within the Straits of Malacca. It is not only part of her general scheme of universal dominion, but it is intimately connected with her immediate work, the acquisition of Turkistan, and with her coming acquisition, we do not say conquest, of the East Indies.

The equivalent for our acquisition on the Gold Coast is the permission given to the Dutch by the Treaty of November 2, 1871, to possess themselves of Acheen. The Sultan of Acheen is a vassal of the Sultan of Turkey, and has claimed his assistance, as well as that of England, to which he is entitled by the Treaty of 1819. But the Ruler of Constantinople is too much hampered by his European alliances to give any help to his co-religionists, and England is in alliance with Russia. It is by the alliance with England that Russia has been enabled to place Khiva, Bokhara, and Kokand in the position of mediatised States. These are to the North of British IndiaAcheen is to the South. Here Holland is put forward, but the result

is the same; the whole of the Mahometans in Asia are told from every quarter that no help is to be had against Russia from England. Unable to stand alone, unable to combine against England and Russia, the Mussulmans have no alternative but to accept the aid of Russia against England, and of these Mussulmans some millions are British subjects. Such is the advantage which Russia gains by the few lines which formed the letter of license to the Dutch to take possession of Acheen.

What considerations were urged upon Lord GRANVILLE to induce him to sign this Treaty is still a secret, but if Russia had made up her mind that the time was come for the operation, it is not difficult to see how she could enforce her determination. For if Holland announced her intention to commence operations against Acheen, what could Lord GRANVILLE say in reply? He could not threaten Holland with war. For Prussia would then have been at liberty to take Holland's part. Holland would have joined the North German Confederation in order to obtain the aid of Prussia, and the war, instead of being on the coasts of the Straits of Malacca, would have been ont the English coast of the German Ocean. The English navy, with the Declaration of Paris round its neck, could do nothing against the enemy's commerce, and the Dutch navy and merchant vessels would have been at liberty to bring the Prussian spiked helmets to that part of our coast which is least defended, and where no Autumn Manœuvres accustom the army or the volunteers to the ground. For to the men who rule our destinies if the Straits of Malacca are as the kingdom of Brobdignag, the Port of Yahde is as that of Lilliput.

This aggression on Acheen, therefore, which threatens to give all the Mussulmans of Asia into the hands of Russia is obtained, so far as England is concerned, by the mere fact that the late Lord CLARENDON, and the still surviving Lord COWLEY, put their names without authority to a piece of paper at Paris after the Crimean War. How Holland's consent to commence a dangerous war was obtained, whether by working upon her fears or upon her lust of conquest, or upon both, does not appear. But the genius of the Russian Cabinet, as regards England, is shown in this, that she did not make England accept this danger to herself without purchasing it as if it had been a privilege. In our October number we explained how the English Government was induced to accept from Holland that which Holland had neither the right nor the power to grant. We have explained over and over again that the Russian Cabinet is not formed from any dominant class in Russia, and that in order to hold its power it has to bribe the landed proprietors by procuring them a market for their raw produce. As Russia produces nothing which cannot be had as good and as cheap from some other part of the world, it is necessary that the competition of those other parts of the world should be suppressed. This she does by means of diplomacy, employing for that purpose not only her own but that of other nations, and particularly of England and France.

The palm-oil trade on the coast of Africa has long been an object of jealousy to Russia as interfering with the tallow trade. In spite of

various attempts she has not been able to avert the competition of the United States. In 1868 we imported from Russia 1,034,4847. worth of tallow; from the United States 271,9187. In 1872 we imported from the United States 698,9187. against 297,1471. from Russia. In the same year the value of the palm-oil imported from the West Coast of Africa was 1,754,4947. Of this 252,9327. is reported by the Board of Trade as coming from the British possessions on the Gold Coast.

The palm-oil trade has been affected by disturbances at other times and in other parts of the West Coast of Africa, but the Ashantees not having penetrated to the coast, the Ashantee War has not interfered with the export from the Gold Coast. It will be well, therefore, to watch the other parts of the coast where a different result may perhaps take place.

The Treaty with Holland respecting the Gold Coast is open to three objections:

1. Holland had no right to make over her protectorate to England. 2. The Negotiation was commenced and concluded without the intervention of the Privy Council.

3. The proceedings in Africa were conducted with undue haste, and in bad faith.

The proceedings by which the hostility of the inhabitants of Elmina was insured, and the means taken to induce the King of ASHANTEE to invade the protectorate, have not been fully stated, far less subjected to analysis. One thing, however, is quite clear, that their communication with the coast was interrupted, and that they had reason to fear that their trade would be destroyed. Colonel HARLEY opened the British Protectorate by burning Elmina, which is very much as if the Turks, on the evacuation of the Principalities after the Crimean War had burned Bucharest. Almost simultaneously with the burning of the town which we had undertaken to protect, came on the Ashantee invasion. It is remarkable how everything then followed as a matter of course, and how every part of the original plan was carried out, without the British Government having any plan at all. The burning of Elmina would probably have been visited with censure, or at least with reproach, had not the subject been superseded by the Ashantee invasion. The invasion superseded the necessity of a Declaration of War, so far as the Ashantees were concerned, and at home the absence of such a formality in war with barbarians is too common to excite remark. The hostilities not being ordered by the Privy Council, were, as regards the people of England, illegal from first to last. This point is neglected; the only complaint is, that Parliament was not consulted. The excuse is ready, it would have been a loss of time, and loss of time might have ruined the expedition. The Times began by proposing the destruction of Coomassie by fire. It soon had to bate its breath. It was evident that the English Government was not actuated by revenge. It does not appear that Sir GARNET WOLSELEY attempted to deceive the King of ASHANTEE; nor does he appear to have wished to destroy either the palace or the town, but the King flees from his capital, and the British Commander, compelled by the climate to return to the coast, and fearful lest he should lose prestige

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