tions to Congress. Changes in this direction appear to me to be of far greater value than any imaginable alteration of the parliamentary suffrage. They would impart elasticity to the over-rigid system, would ennoble every locality, would give to every worthy man a worthy sphere to rise in, would relieve Parliament of overwork, and stop the unhealthy growth of London. But in fact I believe, as soon as the country gives up the cry for "extended suffrage," which has so pre-occupied attention as to exclude thought on other matters, several far more fruitful lines of Organic Reform will presently appear.

Finally, allow me to insist that the influence which any class, which is not the highest, exercises on public affairs, depends, and ought to depend, on its political intelligence. Ill-educated millions cannot use power, if you give it them; and cannot keep it. Contrast South Carolina with Massachusetts, which are the opposite poles of the United States; the one having long been pre-eminent in zeal for freedom, religion, and education-the other for slavery, and a restricted press on account of slavery. Each state has universal suffrage-each might have been equally democratic; yet everybody calls South Carolina a close oligarchy, in which the poor whites have absolutely no influence. It is true that the state-enactments give greater voting power to wealth; the suffrage, though universal, is not equal. That this is a bad regulation I am not saying; I only say, that if the poor whites of Carolina had been as intelligent as those of Massachusetts, any so strong diversity could not be maintained. I may allude here to the case of Rhode Island, which, until within the last thirty years, had a rather aristocratical constitution. The poorer men were, nevertheless, not degraded and ignorant: hence, when they became discontented with their political inequality, the laws of the state were altered in their favour; not without some excitement and turmoil, such as took place at our own great Reform Bill, but without serious conflict. The essence of civilised policy is, that it should be dictated by knowledge, wisdom, and equity, and for this end should listen to argument from all sides before deciding. If argument is not heard, it cannot prevail; if it be heard too late, it can only cause discontent. But where men have enough of leisure and knowledge, and other resources, to unite and debate, and publish their debates, their opinions

cannot go for nothing: and that is why despotic spirits, whether in South Carolina or Russia, will not allow free press or free speech.

No nation has yet discovered how to measure political intelligence, and secure to every class proportionate voting power. But where free meeting and free speech is legal, such as I use to-night, a safety-valve is provided, and (if I may invent a word) a supersuffragial influence of opinion becomes not only possible, but ordinary. I am aware that special associations for special objects, as a league for abolishing the corn laws, are too elaborate and costly for common use; but there is nothing in law to hinder any or every permanent institution from concerning itself in high politics. A trades' union may debate the American question, as recently in London. A town council may pass resolutions concerning the laws of naval warfare and blockade. A coroner and his jury, I suppose, might take the opportunity of their meeting, after its business was ended, to discuss the case of Poland, or the tax on tea. Where this unlimited freedom of speech exists, intelligence will and does make itself felt. Education of the working class, as it is the only thing which can really elevate it, so it is the only thing which can enable it to exercise power. For education, no doubt, leisure is needed; but those who have one day in the week free, are not without leisure. Some spare funds are highly useful; they may generally be had by abstinence from intoxicating drinks and from tobaccoan abstinence which, by experience from childhood, I know to be natural and pleasant. Of course all working men would like a little capital: heartily do I wish it for every one of you. But how are you to get it, but by each retrenching needless expense? and what more needless than drink that makes you thirsty? Keep your money away from the drink-shops; keep it for your wives: learn to cooperate cautiously, not expecting to get rich too fast. Alas! just now the advice will sound satirical. But when freedom has been won in America, when the present hurricane is past, prosperity will return to England, and your destiny will be in your own hands. Already (it is to me quite clear) you are a power in England. It is but lately that Mr. Massey, a nominee of government, came down to Salford and spoke a speech of enmity against President Lincoln and the North, directed to stir the working classes of this city into hostility. It is my firm belief that if you

had swallowed the bait, the year 1861 would not have passed without the world beholding the hateful and disgusting sight of England going to war for the benefit of the Slave Power. The working classes of Salford and Brighton first checked the hopes of those who longed for the success of the rebel slavemasters; the working classes of Manchester and London ultimately saved England from endless infamy. Let us take courage: the future will not be as the past. Hitherto despots have aided one another against law and liberty, but free states have seldom or never supported freedom. Free nations already show mutual sympathies; they will become a mutual support when the mass of the people understands that their welfare depends upon the welfare and content of other nations, and that foreign affairs are a domestic interest. If the working population improves its education in the next twenty years as much as in the last twenty-if it wisely husbands its resources for Co-operation, and becomes a little richer as well as more intelligent-if it exterminate the drink which produces pauperism and every evil-its meetings, its newspapers, and its energy, will be felt through all society; and by reason of its numbers, even if it be not recognised in the technical "franchise," it will more and more become the determining force in every great national question, until it is visibly the most powerful of all classes.

211

· ENGLISH SATIRISTS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

BY

J. K. SPENDER, ESQ.

[Concluded from p. 192.]

HERE were small poets in Butler's day as in ours; they still answer to the description of being "haberdashers of small poetry, with a very small stock and no credit." In what a vivid way a melancholy man is pictured to us, when he is drawn as 66 one that keeps the worst company in the world that is, his own." Not less epigrammatic is the definition of a traveller:-"He is a native of all countries, and an alien to his own." Some one must have been a special enemy to poor Butler, when he is referred to as a person who "" says his prayers often, but never prays." Except in old pictures, we don't see an astrologer now; but Butler hit him off well, for he "talks with the stars by dumb signs, and can tell what they mean by their twinkling and squinting upon one another, as well as they do themselves. He is clerk of the committee to the stars, draws up all their orders, and keeps all their accounts for them." Our legal friends must not quarrel with poor Butler for being rather harsh to them: perhaps he had a lawsuit; at all events, a lawyer of his day is described as a "retailer of justice that uses false lights, false weights, and false measures. He undoes a man with the same privilege that a doctor kills him, and is paid for it. He believes it is not fault in himself to err in judgment, because that part of the law belongs to the judge, and not to him. His opinion is one thing while it is his own, and another when it is paid for." The whole chapter on lawyers is very clever, but it winds up with a fearful malediction. No wittier epigrammatist ever lived than Butler; but for all that, he sketches the epigrammatist in few words, as one whose "muse is short-winded and quickly out of breath. She flies like a goose, that is no sooner upon the wing but down again." I think aldermen in our times are better than they were two centuries ago, for they no longer "dispatch no public affair until they have dined

upon it, and are fully satisfied with quince-pie and custard.” Knaves are always fair game, and one of this pretty large tribe is said to be "like a tooth-drawer, that maintains his own teeth in constant eating by pulling out those of other men. He will swallow a fool a great deal bigger than himself; and if he can but get his head within his jaws, will carry the rest of him hanging out of his mouth until by degrees he has digested him all."

In transferring to my paper the many good things to be found almost everywhere in Butler's prose works, I have not as yet, for obvious reasons, quoted any of the bitter, bilious satire stirred up by the religious and political controversies of his age. But, on second thoughts, I found that I should not do complete justice to Butler's ample humour and powers of sarcasm if I did not offer you a specimen of what he did in this department. How laughable is his delineation of an Anabaptist as 66 a water-saint, that, like a crocodile, sees clearly in the water, but dully on land. He does not only live in two elements, like a goose, but in two worlds at once-this and one of the next. He is contrary to a fisher of men; for, instead of pulling them out of the water, he dips them in it. He dips men all under water but their hands, which he holds them up by those do still continue pagan; and that's the reason why, when they get power into their hands, they act the most barbarous inhumanities in the world. His dipping makes him more obstinate and stiff in his opinions, like a piece of hot iron that grows hard by being quenched in cold water." Nor are Butler's religious sympathies less plainly indicated when he tells the Quaker that he keeps his hat on lest his sickly brains, if he have any, should

take cold.

We say farewell to Samuel Butler with admiration for his genius, and with a tribute of regret for his melancholy end. He died poor-but this was his least trouble. He was neglected by the party he had served so well; worst of all, he was forgotten by the king he had almost worshipped, and for whom head, heart, and hand were always ready. His career points to the old moral-that it is better to follow truth than put one's trust in princes.

We now turn to Bishop Hall- -a contemporary of Shakspere, and himself of Shaksperian variety, and bulk of his writin quality in the strength,

gs.

It was not until I re