NUMBER of SCHOOLS and SCHOLARS in ENGLAND and WALES, at several periods, with the proportion of Scholars to the Population.

NUMBER of SCHOOLS and SCHOLARS in SCOTLAND in 1851.

The following passages are worthy of notice :

A SMALL CONGREGATION.- -The Northern Ensign says:-" In one of the parishes on the east coast of Sutherland, where the congregation was composed of two families, it happens that one of these families a late importation from about Dunnet Head-had gone over to the Free Church; the other, two elderly maiden ladies, remaining as the flock of the parish minister. But the minister, in addressing the congregation thus femininely constituted, still uses the words brethren,' and my brethren,' much to the chagrin of these worthy persons, who feel insulted at their being thus masculined. Would it not be more courteous, and indeed more in accordance with the fact, that the gentleman should use the term 'sisters?' If some such change of expression does not take place, we fear it will soon be seen that these birds will also leave their nest and fly away."

A CONTRAST.-A dissenting minister in Wales, who is threatened with a seizure for church rates, writes "I preach every Sabbath to eight or nine hundred colliers, miners, and labourers, and they willingly contribute about one hundred pounds a year towards my support. The rector reads a sermon to some ten or fifteen persons every Sabbath, and receives six or seven hundred pounds a year for his services, and yet it seems that I must be prosecuted for not sup. porting his cause. This is rather a hard case !"-Liberator.

ART. VIII. PEEL'S MEMOIRS-THE PHILOSOPHY OF AGITATION.

Memoirs by the Right Honorable Sir Robert Peel, Bart., M.P., &c.-Published by the Trustees of his Papers, Lord Mahon, now Earl Stanhope, and the Right Honorable Edward Cardwell, M.P.-Part I. Roman Catholic Question. London John Murray. 1856.

Most of the critical journals have noticed Sir Robert Peel's memoirs, and join in the expression of some disappointment at the dryness of the first volume. So far, however, from regarding the justification disclosed by its pages as incomplete, they seem of a mind to consider it superfluous. What the public expectation required was either more amplitude or more anatomy, a warmer pencil, or a more vigorous scalpel. Although the correspondence, of which the book is principally made up, purports to be, and is, in strictness confidential, it retains for the most part a severely official character. There is hardly any freedom, any unreserve, anything unguarded, that may serve to mark the stages or break the abruptness of a change, which we take to have been less sudden than it seems, rather on Sir Robert Peel's credit than on the evidence of his memoirs. The outline, too, of events and circumstances, by which the letters stand connected and explained, is thin although distinct. It is in the nature of a ground plan, where we find everything correct, symmetrical, and intelligible, but without beauty or interest. We must look elsewhere for the philosophy of consistency or change; for any large or abstract principles of statesmanship; for any gloss upon that most difficult chapter of constitutional history for which these memoirs supply materials. Still more hopeless is the prospect of anecdotes, or sketches of character, or smart sayings, or scandal, or sentiment, or anything that constitutes the vulgar merit of memoirs. These things have their own place and fitness, but if the public expected them of Sir Robert Peel, the public has no reason to complain of disappointment. Sir Robert Peel was never more accurately himself than in the compilation of this book. Calculating, but not speculative; regardful of things as he was incurious of ideas; not so nice about a name as studious of a result; governed, but not overawed, by his responsibility; treating politics as a pursuit, while too many

regard it as a game; and the commonwealth as a trust, though it is the high breeding of party to use it as a counter; ambitious yet scrupulous; benevolent without the forms of benevolence; self-sacrificing without the externals of heroism; bold, but not imaginative, and sagacious though not ingenious; he seems exactly the man to have written the book before us from a sense of duty, not as a labour of love, even of self-love; and to have composed his history as he performed his part, for the ease of his conscience and the service of the state.

The book might easily have been rendered more attractive, whether by the author or the editors, but in that case it must have been less characteristic. It might have made been more welcome to the drawing-room, and that without any decrease of value; but its present place is in the closet, and in the hands of the advanced student who can dispense with notes and scholia. The philosophy to be learned in its pages has never been symbolized; it is nowhere to be met in axioms or formulas; it lies at considerable depth beneath the surface; but it will reward the inquirer with some of the most important truths in the ethics of the constitution. "The origin of party may be traced," writes Lord Brougham, "by fond theorists and sanguine votaries of the system to a radical difference of opinion and principle, to the idem sentire de republicá,' which at all times marshalled men in combinations and split them in opposition; but it is pretty plain to any person of ordinary understanding that a far less romantic ground of union and of operation has for the most part excited the individual interests of the parties; the idem velle atque idem nolle,' the desire of power and of plunder which, as all cannot share, each is desirous of snatching and holding. The history of English party is as certainly that of a few great men and powerful families on the one hand, contending for place and power, with a few other on the opposite quarter, as it is the history of the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts. There is nothing more untrue than to represent principle as at the bottom of it-Interest is at the bottom, and the opposition of principles is subservient to the opposition of interest. Accordingly, the result has been that unless, pernaps, where a dynasty was changed, as in 1688 and for some time afterwards, and excepting on questions connected with this change, the very same conduct was held and the same

principles professed by both parties when in office, and by both when in opposition. Of this we have seen sufficiently marked instances in the course of the foregoing pages. The Whig in opposition was for retrenchment and for peace; transplant him into office, he cares little for either. Bills of coercion, suspensions of the constitution, were his abhorrence when propounded by Tories; in place he propounded them himself. Acts of indemnity and of attainder were the favorites of the Tory in power, the Tory in opposition was the enemy of both. The gravest charge ever brought by the Whig against his adversary was the personal proscription of an exalted individual to please a king; the worst charge that the Tory can level against the Whig is the support of a proscription still less justifiable to please a viceroy.

"It cannot surely in these circumstances be deemed extraordinary that plain men uninitiated in the aristocratic mysteries whereof a rigid devotion to party, forms one of the most sacred, should be apt to see a very different connexion between. principle and faction, from the one usually put forward, and that without at all denying a relation between the two things, they discern the account generally given by party men, and suspect them of taking up principles in order to marshal themselves in alliances, and hostilities for their own interests,instead of engaging in these contests because of their conflicting principles-In a word there seems some reason to suppose that interest having really divided them into bands, principles are professed for the purpose of better compassing their objects in maintaining a character and gaining the support of the people.'

This statement, for it is something more than theory, so broadly presented by Lord Brougham, though true to a great extent, is, perhaps, not so universal in its application as even our own experience might lead us to suppose; nor do the facts themselves inevitably lead to the conclusions that have been drawn from them or involve the moral offence imputed in the passage. Many men of vigorous intellect, and incorruptible virtue, having been rocked and dandled into statemanship, connect the well-being of the state as a matter of course with the power of their party; and look upon their own advancement as a happy accident, nay, rather a necessary condition of prosperous government. The weight of authority the sacredness of tradition, the spell of association, accompany them from be

* Historical sketches of Statesmen who flourished in the time of George III. vol. I., p. 137.