"Were we wrong," he says, "when we lately attributed to parties connected with colonial administration a willingness to see the bonds which unite the colonies to the mother country ruptured, out of sheer pique at the progressive curtailment of official jobs and reduction of official emoluments?"

O incredible baseness of hirelings! To wish your master's house burnt; because he objects to your peculations, your enormous wages, your pickings and perquisites, your injustice and your treachery! To fan the flames yourselves; to give no compunctious warning; to see thieves step in-nay, to risk your own houses, where the lost and mislaid articles lie mixed with candle-ends and savings! To betray your country from petty spite-from ignoble malice! Yet such is the depravation of the age, that a paragraph like the one we have quoted excites no surprise and is written almost without indignation. It is what one expects now-a-days. It is the spirit of the times. Alas! when such is the case, what hope remains for England? What chance, we ask, is there for the ship, already within the vortex of a whirlpool, and guided by such perfidious hands, and whose salvation, desperate as it appears, can be accomplished by those alone who have hitherto betrayed her? JANUARY, 1851.

THE GOLDSMID ASSAULT CASE.*

A GOLDEN REPUTATION.

A BUSHEL of "or" has fallen from the blazonry of all the Goldsmids. We have lost our respect for Mammon,

This is considered by the author the more worthy of publication, as his opinion turned out to be a correct one.

butlers, a banking account, and 'Change. So have all our contemporaries. Such an exposure! Oh, dear! such drunkenness and perjury-such a "vulgar prestige of influence," as the Examiner says! As if that influence did not extend everywhere; as if snobs and snob writers, or writers on snobs, were free from it; as if we did not meet it on the front and back stairs, in the street, the public-house -yes, and the ball-room, the dining-room, in the Church, and at Court, as much as anywhere. Let a rich individual be ruined, and try. Does any one know what it is to be a "warm" man? Has he, then, ever essayed a reverse? Are publicans the only individuals who spurn a Timon? Has any one a reduced account at a banker's? We are not in love with the famille Goldsmid-we do not affect the "Blue Posts;" but we hate humbug, and virtuous exaggeration, and moral (pretended) indignation; and so let us analyse this Goldsmid case, with an occasional comparison with the world around. Why should one Goldsmid suffer for all, and Mammon disavow a mere Levite of his own? Come, let us do justice to Goldsmid; but not fancy ourselves in Sparta or Arcadia, and so pile up the pyramid of popular indignation so high on one poor wretch-the whole Christian world around assisting at the grand cairn of morality; each standing in an attitude of virtuous surprise, with his or her uplifted stone.

It is said that when one of a community of rats, or wolves, and, indeed, of other more interesting and amiable quadrupeds, is wounded, the rest immediately turn and rend him in pieces. There are certain hideous eastern religions which require annually their propitiatory victim. This prevailed also in the north, and amongst our own Druids. The moment that victim is selected, there is no

mercy on the part of the rest. Supposing that he is torn to pieces, each bystander likes to have his souvenir, if it should be only a lock of hair or a fragment of clothes, forgetful that he himself was, and still may be, subject to the same fate. In "respectable" society the same custom exists. The monster religion of Mammon requires, now and then, a fierce sacrificial display for the public benefit. Some one thrust forward by something which makes him conspicuous for the moment must be selected for immolation; while the flattered Idol grins approval from the fantastic temple of vice and fashion. Then both the lay mob and priesthood assist. The professional and unprofessional hypocrites run a muck of scornful jubilee. Every finger is pointed; every tongue wags. Each has his instrument of torture. Each sings a stave illustrative of the crimes, real and imaginary, of the victim. When this is done, the ordinary pursuits of life recur, with not one single error mended, no vice chastised, no folly chastened. The demon is propitiated. A new lease is granted. One has fallen that the many may continue.

Do not let our readers imagine that, because we have made these remarks, we are about to defend drunkenness, or debauchery, night-houses, publicans, prostitutes, or that species of assault and battery which once gave such unenviable renown to the name of WATERFORD. Let it not be supposed that we have any predilection for the Stock Exchange, or for any dissipated, or even "respectable" Croesus, be he either Rothschild or Goldsmid. No! we respect wealth when it is charitable and generous, as we do birth when it is illustrated by honourable conduct. But in these public cases we like strict justice. Let us now briefly consider the facts, which not only send an individual to a prison and the treadmill

for we suppose that the gaol authorities will be uninfluenced by the prestige of Mammon-but consign him to public ignominy. A Mr. John Goldsmid appears as the City Amphytrion of a West-end night-house. He He is proved to be in the habit of getting intoxicated there; i. e., he has done so several times. He assaults, in a drunken jocular way, one Trenanen, an Excise-officer, who appears not to have understood the roughness of the joke, and to have been a somewhat sulky and vindictive fellow, who might have extricated himself from the crapulous pawing of the defendant, had he pleased. However, his dress was torn and his feelings were hurt, and so he comes forward, This is always supposing that the assault was really committed by Goldsmid, of which we are not yet quite sure. Now, as to the landlord's remarks, we have only to say that he vulgarly interfered on behalf of a customer. Who does not defend one who brings grist to his mill? We assert that the publican only expressed the general feeling of a monied age, at an epoch when a gentleman had better be cast in a desert of howling wild beasts, than an inhabitant of England without money in his purse. This cannot, of course, be helped; but it is true. Therefore we pardon the publican for being a landlord, and for acting accordingly.

However, Mr. Goldsmid is brought before a magistrate, and refuses to apologise. This we confess to have been foolish, whether he were guilty or not; for it is better even to pay than be the votive offering made by the public to Mammon. Then come the alibi and the imputed perjury. On these we pronounce simply the judgment, that, whatever one Goldsmid may have done, we can hardly believe in so foolish, unbusiness-like a falsehood on the part of all. Why, these must have felt certain of detection! But this applies

to all perjuries. To a certain extent, we reply that it does; but when so deliberate an act is done by a man of the world -accustomed to commerce, with his family around him, in the face of day and the court-it must give us pause ere we believe in a folly so atrocious. What, then, is our opinion? Either that Mr. John Goldsmid, in spite of his dissipated freaks, did not commit the assault; or that the officer stated the wrong day, or that the defendant came surreptitiously to town, from Brighton, unknown to his family.

With regard to Mr. Septimus, who swore that his elder brother was not an habitual drunkard, we really think too much odium was attached to such a feature in the case. Men differ in opinion as to what constitutes, not only the habit, but drunkenness itself. Septimus might think John sober in comparison with some people. Besides, he was giving an opinion of his brother, and, in such a case, where the latitude of opinion is wide, the mind has a gutta-percha power, and the wish often regulates the thought. We think, then, that Serjeant Adams, for whom we have the greatest respect as a most estimable and excellent judge, was carried away too far, when he sentenced Goldsmid to such a long and degrading punishment, on the supposition that his witnesses were perjured.

The legal executive should not be influenced by feeling We would have imprisoned Mr. Goldsmid, for his harmless assault, a fortnight in the Penitentiary, at the outside. Whatever be the benefit that may accrue to his health from exercise, sobriety, reflection, and scanty diet, we consider the punishment cruel and excessive. How many noblemen and gentlemen in station frequent the "Blue Posts" with impunity? How is that establishment supported? How many more Blue Posts" are there? How many a fool or