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tions concerning the improvement of the dwellings of the people, concerning their education, concerning the well-being of the myriads in India and in our colonies, are to be treated as nothing; the one question asked of every candidate is to be "Sir, will you, or will you not, "vote for the abolition of the present "Court of Appeal in questions of doc"trine?" The most reckless adventurer, the most profligate man, who will give the proper answer to the question, is to be preferred to the most mature statesman, to the most virtuous Christian, who answers it wrongly, or refuses to answer it at all. I entreat all Englishmen, I entreat all thoughtful men in the colonies, to read and weigh this programme, to consider from whom it has proceeded, and how deliberate it is. That is Dr. Pusey's way of proving that he is in earnest. I do not say that such earnestness may not be attended with a considerable measure of success. Parties among us are nicely balanced. The number of Tories, or Whigs, or Radicals, who may be ready to take this pledge in hopes of securing the votes of the clergy I cannot the least calculate. Nor can I make another calculation. Dr. Pusey says, "It is a question of immortal souls." It is, indeed! The souls of candidates, which may be made knavish and hypocritical by these engagements-the souls of electors, which may be drawn into drunkenness and ferocity, now as in former days, by the shriek of "The Church in danger"-I believe no man is able to estimate.

The whole system of pledges I hold to be an unconstitutional, immoral, godless one. And there are no persons on whom they operate so mischievously as upon ambitious young men eager to obtain seats in parliament, not debased, but not over scrupulous in conscience, willing to make their way by fair means, if possible, but ready to obtain help by identifying themselves with some opinion which will tell on the hustings, and which may be afterwards explained away in Parliament. How many noble souls have been destroyed by these temptations, none, I should

think, might know better than a Canon of Christ Church. And he is the person himself to bait the hook!

My dear Sir, while I have been talking so much about ourselves, and about the world in general, I have not forgotten you. I thought, as I said at the beginning of my letter, that I should help you best by showing you how much the question which is likely to agitate every colony is the same with that which is now occupying the mother-country and the old world. The word MotherCountry may cease to have a meaning for you. I cannot tell how soon the time of separation may be appointed for any of you. But surely you will strive that it may not occur in its most bitter and aggravated form, and that the clergy may not be the instruments in making the breach. I remember, when the first movement for the establishment of colonial bishoprics was commenced, what sympathy it excited among many statesmen interested in the well-being of the colonies-some from whom I should have expected no such feeling-because it seemed to them the method most likely to make the religious feelings of the colonists a bond of union, and not a cause of separation, among themselves, and between them and the natives. I remember how "beautiful souls," little troubled about political considerations, welcomed it with a sympathy still keener, because they thought the Bishops would teach the new world what a fatherly government is, and so in the best manner link it to the old world.

Are

the hopes of both to be equally disappointed? Whilst you call yourselves our dependencies, are we to think that we have only helped to confuse you respecting all your relations and duties; that we have sent among you that which is to renew the worst contentions of the former ages of Christendom mixed with all the special perplexities of our own? If you should leave us, are we to think that we have cast you off dowered with the curse of a civil and religious war?

My friend, God will assuredly bring good even from the evil if it should be

If

in store for you. The mere condemnation of principles which are dear to many of us should not cause us trouble; that may give them strength and diffusion. the ecclesiastical courts are established here or among you, they will assuredly introduce persecution; and persecution, now as of old, carries blessings with it. I think it seems to have had that effect upon one of the persons most interested in the Capetown controversy. I sympathized as little as you did with the Bishop of Natal, while I thought he was leading our people to question the worth of the Mosaic records, for I find in them the great testimonies to God as the Deliverer of a Nation, and the Author of its law. But I sympathized intensely with his mild and Christianlike "Remarks on the recent proceedings of the Bishop of Capetown," and of his "Letter to the Laity of the Diocese of Natal." There are many passages in both to which I might take exception, but on the whole they seem to me manly and excellent

I am anxious to bear that testimony to you, because you will perceive from the tone of this letter how thoroughly I am convinced the Bible is now, as it was in past time, the great and effectual testimony on behalf of God's kingdom and therefore of human freedom. Whatever weakens its power is, I am satisfied, injurious to both. But I am

also satisfied that all inquiries will strengthen its power, and that ecclesiastical courts, under pretence of exalting it, will do all that in them lies to make it a dead letter, to crush it under their interpretations, to hide it from the people.

Let us try for this reason, and not for any fear of what they may do against us, to hinder their establishment. But let us resort to no election cries, no contrivances for bribing candidates and electors, or terrifying Prime Ministers. Those whose aim is to promote secularity in the clergy and laity will adopt such practices, to show that they are in earnest. Those who love God and His

protests against injustice and oppres- truth, I trust, will utterly despise them.

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Little

you know of broken hearts,
My Kitty, blithe and wise,
Grave Mary, with the woman soul
Dawning through childish eyes.

And long, long distant may God keep

The day when each shall know
The entrance to His kingdom through
His baptism of woe!

But yet 'tis good to hear of grief
Which He permits to be;
Even as in our green inland home
We talk of wrecks at sea.

So on this lovely day, when spring
Wakes soft o'er moor and dale,

I'll tell-not quite your wish-but yet
A noble "fairy" tale.

'Twas six o'clock in the morning, The sea like crystal lay,

When the good troop-slip "Birkenhead"
Set sail from Simon's Bay.

The Cape of Good Hope on her right
Gloomed at her through the noon :
Brief tropic twilight fled, and night
Fell suddenly and soon.

At eight o'clock in the evening

Dim grew the pleasant land;
O'er smoothest seas the southern heaven
Its starry arch out-spanned.

The soldiers on the bulwarks leaned,
Smoked, chatted; and below.
The soldiers' wives sang babes to sleep,
While on the ship sailed slow.

Six hundred and thirty souls held she,
Good, bad, old, young, rich, poor;
Six hundred and thirty living souls-
God knew them all.-Secure.

He counted them in His right hand,
That held the hungering seas;
And to four hundred came a voice-
"The Master hath need of these."

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She filled. Not hours, not minutes left; Each second a life's gone :

Drowned in their berths, washed overboard,

Lost, swimming, one by one;

Till, o'er this chaos of despair

Rose, like celestial breath, The law of order, discipline,

Obedience unto death.

The soldiers mustered upon deck,
As mute as on parade;
"Women and children to the boats!"
And not a man gainsaid.

Without a murmur or a moan

They stood, formed rank and file, Between the dreadful crystal seas And the sky's dreadful smile.

In face of death they did their work
As they in life would do,
Embarking at a quiet quay-
A quiet, silent crew.

"Now each man for himself. To the boats!"

Arose a passing cry.

The soldier-captain answered, "Swamp

The women and babes ?—No, die!"

And so they died. Each in his place, Obedient to command

They went down with the sinking ship, Went down in sight of land.

The great sea oped her mouth, and closed
O'er them. Awhile they trod
The valley of the shadow of death,
And then were safe with God.

My little girlies-What! your tears
Are dropping on the grass,
Over my more than "fairy" tale,
A tale that "really was!"

Nay, dry them. If we could but see
The joy in angels' eyes

O'er good lives, or heroic deaths
Of pure self-sacrifice,-

I

We should not weep o'er these that sleep,

Their short, sharp struggle o'er,— Under the rolling waves that break Upon the Afric shore.

God works not as man works, nor sees As man sees: though we mark Ofttimes the moving of His hands Beneath the eternal Dark.

But yet we know that all is well : That He, who loved all these, Loves children laughing on the moor, Birds singing in the trees;

That He, who made both life and death,

He knoweth which is best : We live to Him, we die to Him, And leave Him all the rest.

D. M. MULOCK.

ON "INTERVENTION," MATERIAL AND MORAL.

BY LORD HOBART.

IN an ordinary community violence and bloodshed are prevented, and the rights of individuals so far as is possible secured to them, by legal institutions. Laws, and executive arrangements under the sanction of laws, are made for the protection of person and property; tribunals are erected, some for the trial of persons charged with offences against those laws, others for the settlement of disputes and conflicting claims which cannot be amicably arranged; and means are provided to prevent any attempt at a violent solution of such differences. These institutions depend for their efficacy mainly upon their fulfilment of two conditions,-first, that the tribunals thus created are impartial, that is, that they are composed of men who have no personal interest in the result of their decisions; and, secondly, that the community has at its disposal such an amount of physical force as precludes all chance of successful resistance to their decrees. If the first condition were wanting, such measures might prevent violence and bloodshed, but they would do so at the cost of justice, while they would entirely fail to afford security for just dealing as between the members of the community. If the second condition were wanting, they would accomplish neither one nor the other of these objects.

In a community composed of nations no such institutions are possible. Tri

bunals might indeed be established, consisting of one or more states, for the settlement of disputes and claims which did not admit of amicable adjustment, and for the trial of offences against the recognised rights of property or sovereignty resident in each state; but such tribunals would be inefficacious, because it would be in the power of any nation, unless to an exceptional degree deficient. in physical force, to resist their decisions with more or less probability of success, and because the condition of international relations is such that, in almost every case brought before a state thus armed with judicial authority, its own interests would in some way or other be concerned. Thus the first of the conditions above mentioned, that of impar tiality, as well as the second, that of sufficient coercive power, would be absent from such authorities. Regular executive arrangements for the preservation of order and the prompt suppression of violence are for the same reasons impracticable in such a society. Its members may, and do, agree among themselves, tacitly or explicitly, that certain proceedings on the part of one towards another, analogous to outrages upon person and property in an individual community, are crimes, and if possible to repress them; and they may agree, and have agreed, with a view to the general welfare, upon rules for the settlement of certain questions of inter

national equity which experience has shown to be constantly arising in their dealings with each other whether in peace or war. But even these arrangements, expressed or understood, which are dignified with the name of "International law," and which, if enforced without resistance, would mitigate only to a small extent the evils consequent on the absence of legal institutions, they have no absolute power to enforce. Any nation may, if it pleases, resist to the utmost the application of such regulations to itself; and even in the event of a combination of powerful states to enforce them, which international jealousies make difficult and rare, an expensive and calamitous war might be necessary for the purpose.

Is

The community of nations, then, is a community in which law, in the ordinary sense of the term,-the sense in which it subsists and is effectual in an ordinary society,-has no existence. The natural consequences of anarchy follow. The military power possessed by each nation being its only means of defence against aggression or insult, and of obtaining that to which it considers itself entitled, or which, without any such consideration, it is resolved to obtain, blood will from time to time be shed, and acts of injustice will be committed or contemplated, either by means of successful war, or, where there is a great superiority of force, without any disturbance of the peace of the world. it, then, or is it not, the right or the duty of a nation, besides providing for the defence of its own territory and for the maintenance of its own rights and interests, to interfere by force with the proceedings of one state towards another, or between two parties in the same state, for the purpose either of preventing bloodshed, or of securing justice, or for both these objects combined? Such is the question which the more powerful nations are perpetually called upon to solve, but of which, though it has become the battleground of conflicting opinions whose watchwords are "intervention " and non-intervention," very little attempt has yet been made at a scientific solution.

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Now it is obvious that there are many cases in which a nation may, as it would ordinarily be expressed, have the "right" to intervene, but in which it may be deterred from doing so by the consideration that intervention could only be successful either at the cost to itself of irresistible armaments, or at the cost to itself and to the world at large of actual war. In order therefore to determine whether, in a given state of affairs, not requiring action on account of its own rights or interests, a nation ought to intervene, it is necessary to inquire, first, whether the case is one in which it might properly intervene supposing that it could do so without expense to itself, and without actual war; and, secondly, if so, how far it is justified in intervening, if one or both of these evils must be the consequence of the measure. If the distinction between these two questions had been borne in mind, much. confusion of thought and misapprehension on this subject would have been avoided. It is objected, for instance, to the supporters of non-intervention, that they are advocating a "selfish policy. It is clear, however, that the objection cannot possibly apply to an advocacy of it which is based upon the ground that a negative answer must be given to the first of these questions. It is only where non-intervention is the result of considerations such as those to which the second question relates, that any pretext whatever is afforded for imputing selfishness to the policy. How far such an imputation would be wellfounded we shall presently have occasion to consider.

First, then, what are the cases in which a nation would have a right to intervene, supposing that it could do so without expense to itself, and without having recourse to war? It seems probable that, in the general opinion, there would, on such a supposition, be scarcely any limit to that right, at least as between distinct nations. Yet it is certain that in a large class even of international dissensions no such right would exist. The disputes or conflicts in which any two nations may engage are, many of

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