ation employed in vain to procure peace. Disastrous conduct of the war by the Allies. 23. The Aberdeen Ministry falls. The reserve of the Bank of England reduced from twenty-one to thirteen millions. Lord Palmerston made Prime Minister. The Czar is suddenly removed by death; negotiations renewed; the Russian troops leaving the town of Sevastopol, and encamping on the other side of the harbour. 24. The Treaty of Paris. The Czar allows the Allies to use the harbour of Sevastopol to re-embark their troops. Palmerston directs Lord Clarendon to sign the declaration of Paris, by which the rights of search and privateering are held to be abandoned by Great Britain. The United States refused to sign. A secret treaty between Russia and France follows. 25. Increasing coldness between France and Great Britain. The Portuguese, by virtue of a treaty with this country to suppress the slave trade, capture a French slave ship full of slaves, and condemn her. The French Emperor sends a fleet to the Tagus to compel her release. The Portuguese appeal for aid to their ally, Great Britain. The British Ministers basely advise them to "yield to superior force." 26. Orsini attempts the life of the Emperor of the French. The French press accuses the British nation of complicity. War seems imminent, and great alarm ensues. Dr. Bernard tried as a conspirator, but acquitted. The French army calls upon the Emperor to punish British perfidy. Lord Palmerston introduces "The Conspiracy to Murder Bill," at the dictation of France, into the House of Commons; it is rejected. Resignation of Lord Palmerston. 27. The second Derby administration succeeds a general election, with uncertain results. The Derby Administration introduces a Reform Bill, which is thrown out, on the ground of insufficiency, and the ministers resign; on which the French proceed to attack Austria, and revolutionize Sicily, Naples, and Italy generally. 28. Abraham Lincoln is elected President of the United States by the Republican party, in opposition to the Southern States and the Northern Democrats. Secession of the Southern States, and civil war follows; upon which the Queen issues a proclamation of strict neutrality, and acknowledges the belligerent rights of the seceded States. 29. Arms and ammunition allowed to be freely shipped to the Federal States; whilst to build ships and sell them to the Southern belligerents is declared to be a violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act. 30. The Brazilian Government compelled to break off diplomatic intercourse by the insolence and arbitrary conduct of Earl Russell relative to a wrecked vessel, alleged to have been plundered. 31. Messrs. Mason and Slidell, commissioners from the Southern States, seized under an arrangement with Mr. Seward, one of the Federal Secretaries of State, when on board the British packet Trent, and then released when illegally demanded by the British Government; the manifest intent of this treacherous and lawless act being to create a precedent in favour of the suicidal declaration of Paris. The Alexandru seized as violating the Enlistment Act; Baron Pollock rules against the legality of the seizure. 32. The city of Kagosima, containing 180,000 people, barbarously destroyed with great slaughter of unoffending people, by Admiral Kuper, because Prince Satzuma declined to give up a man charged with killing Mr. Richardson in a quarrel. 33. Earl Russell makes a speech in Scotland, in which he tells the people to "thank God" for the reform they have got, and then drop the subject. He adds that Russia's rights to Poland are forfeited. 34. Earl Russell, in a meek note, concludes a correspondence with Prince Gortschakoff, who, in the course of it, had treated his notes with irony the most contemptuous and insulting, and quietly abandons Poland to barbarities which are filling the rest of Europe with indignation and horror. 35. Austrian and Russian troops invade Holstein; Palmerston, after threatening these powers and in vain begging French aid, leaves the Danes to their fate. The Germans refuse to tell Earl Russell their ultimate design. England isolated. The foregoing induction of particulars is held by their compiler to prove with far more than Aristotelic cogency that " ever since 1819 the foreign policy of Great Britain-if policy it may be styled -has consisted merely of a series of submissions, self-humblings, and trucklings to such powers as Russia, France, and the American United States, disgracefully varied by occasional bullyings of weaker states, such as China, Persia, Brazil, and Japan.' To those who are engaged in debating the principles of administrative policy this book will be valuable as a storehouse of facts, as well as of strongly urged reasons-reasons which, whether accepted or withstood in actual debate, it would be well for many to be thoroughly acquainted with. We do not require to homologate all the opinions in the book, though we affirm that it is a very able and straightforward impeachment of the party in office, which tells heavily unanswered or unexplained. Canada; its History and its People. By GEORGE HILL SMITH. Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co. THIS pamphlet contains an interesting history of one of our oldest colonies,-one that is three times the size of Great Britain and Ireland, and is full of reliable information, that must prove of great value to emigrants and others. We congratulate our friend Mr. Smith on his success in combining the instructive with the interesting. Vital Questions. Six Lectures by the Rev. FREDERICK Fox THOMAS, Torquay. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. THIS little volume contains the substance of a course of Sabbath Evening Lectures, delivered in the early part of last year at Torquay. It is impossible to glance through the book without being convinced that the author is an eminently earnest and faithful preacher. The Lectures are highly illustrative in style, and may be therefore perused with interest as well as profit. The Topic. OUGHT THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER TO HAVE PROPOSED THE ABOLITION OF THE TAX UPON MALT? AFFIRMATIVE. 66 If there is untaxed cotton, why not untaxed malt? The manufactures of the country have been freed from innumerable burdens; why should the agricultural interest groan, sweat, and drudge," under a load of such weight as six millions per annum? If we are to have free manufactures, why not free agriculture? This tax raises the poor man's bit of flesh-meat and keeps up his drop of beer, as well as lowers the wage his master can afford to give him. It is pursuing a bad policy to drive capital out of the agricultural interests of the country, and to make ourselves entirely dependent on manufacturing success. The malt tax ought to have been repealed.-BILL STOKES. To keep on the malt tax is antinational. It is taxing the farmers of this country six millions of money to add to the revenue of France. By keeping beer dear, the consumption of cheap claret is encouraged; and so, in the long run, it turns out that we are taxing the beer of our own country to give greater sales to the vine-growers of France. It is to do worse. It is to put temptation before our beer-sellers to adulterate beer with drugs, and so make it unwholesome. We thus encourage two unwholesome beverages, and a very disadvantageous French-favouring tax. None of these things ought to be done.SPECTATOR. Six millions of temptation to two industries,-farming and brewing; to employ science to reduce taxation dishonestly by destroying the linseed mixture in malt for feeding purposes, that it may be used for brewing, or otherwise escape the vigilance of the revenue officer: that is scarcely a thing 1864. to be borne quietly. Down with the malt tax!-OPPORTUNITY. Continental feeders have all the advantages of the malt tax in their favour. They can feed cattle with untaxed malt. It is highly advisable that we should keep cattle-feeding among our own industries, and hence we should abolish the malt tax,-which is, in reality, a bounty on the import of animals fed on the Continent on duty-free malt.-B. G. H. NEGATIVE. It is not from any love for the malt tax, or any tax in the abstract, that we take the negative of this question. No doubt the malt tax does in many cases press very heavily upon the farmers and others, and produce disagreeable results to portions of the community. But the same could be said about any tax, either actual or possible. All taxation is annoying, inquisitive, and very objectionable, considered in relation to the payers of taxes; and if we could manage to do without any taxation at all, no doubt it would be very desirable. But as long as the feeling of this country maintains the Government in laying upon the shoulders of the people a burden of seventy millions a year, that burden must be borne somehow, and taxes must exist. If the malt tax were to be taken off, the six millions lost to the revenue thereby would just have to be raised in some other and equally objectionable way. The proper manner to deal with these matters is not to advocate the shifting of the State burdens a little to the right or to the left, but to reduce the burden itself by reforming our enormous and wasteful expenditure. Of course the taxes, whatever be 2 H their amount, ought to be adjusted equitably, so as to press as evenly and uniformly as possible; and hence to raise revenue from such things as bread or corn, or any of the other absolute necessaries of life, is bad and impolitic, while other and better sources of revenue lie open; but the malt tax is not a tax of this sort at all. The pressure upon the consumers of malt liquor is very slightly felt, if felt at all; and Mr. Gladstone would have been much to blame if he had proposed the total repeal of the tax, the effect of which would have been an increase to the income tax and to the tea and sugar duties.-J. G. J. The repeal of the malt tax would either have lowered the price of beer or not. If the former, it would have been disadvantageous to have abolished it, for that would have promoted intemperance; if the latter, it would have enriched the brewers, beer-sellers, and growers of malt for brewing purposes, without advantaging the people; and hence would have been highly injudicious. Brewers and beer-drinkers must still pay the malt tax as a portion of the ingredients for giving beer its bitters.G. H. G. If the malt tax had been repealed, cheap beer would have been increased in consumption, and spirits would have gone so far out of use as greatly to have reduced the revenue. Why should beer-malt be untaxed and spirit stuffs remain as heavily laden by the exciseman as before? Malt may be used as food for cattle, but it is not so employed in such quantities as to require a change in our policy of taxation to free that branch of industry from an incubus.— F. W. The income tax produces rather more than a million per penny. To exchange indirect taxation-taxation in which those who indulge in the article only pay the tax-for direct taxation may be good enough in theory, but bad in practice. To raise the six millions which the abolition of the malt tax would subtract from the revenue, fivepence or so of income tax must be put on. That is to say, that I am to pay fivepence per pound out of my income, that I may heighten the profit of the farmer and lessen the price of his jolly pint to the beer-drinker. It would be charity thrown away upon both. That farmers are not the suffering class they represent themselves to be is evident from the high rental they are willing to give for land. This they would not do unless it paid They do not prove a special need, and it is quite certain that the remission of taxation could never reach the general mass of the community; for farmer, forestaller, brewer, wholesaler and retailer, either of beef or beer, would be sure to have their share of the saving first.-L. D. The Inquirer. QUESTIONS REQUIRING ANSWERS. 457. Will you kindly inform me, in the study of the German language, what Grammar would I be best served by using, its price, and by whom published? -HOLGER DANSKE. 458. Be so good as to inform me of the nature of Buchner's "Matter and Force," tell me the price of the translation of it, and supply me with the publisher's name.-H. G. 459. Would you, or any of your naval architectural contributors oblige me by recommending a work on "Shipbuilding." calculated to give me a thorough knowledge of that art ?-W. DART. 460. I shall feel obliged if some gentleman will give the particulars of what is called a 66 trade edition" of any work. -S. S. 461. In the discussion on thedestruc 462. I shall feel greatly obliged if some gentleman will furnish some account of the shilling volumes about to be issued of "Bell's Annotated Edition of the English Poets," and say what poets it includes the works of; also whether it contains all their works, and whether the works it contains are at all abridged.-S. S. ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS. 448. Roget's" Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases" is a work containing a classified vocabulary of the chief words employed in the English language, according to the main ideas they express, arranged in six primary classes of categories. 1. The first of these classes comprehends ideas derived from the more general and abstract relations among things, such as existence, resemblance, quantity, order, number, time, and power. 2. The second class refers to space and its various relations, including motion, or change of place. 3. The third class includes all ideas that relate to the material world; namely, the properties of matter, such as solidity, fluidity, heat, sound, light, and the phenomena they present, as well as the simple perceptions to which they give rise. 4. The fourth class embraces all ideas of phenomena relating to the intellect and its operations; comprising the acquisition, the retention, and the communication of ideas. 5. The fifth class includes the ideas derived from the exercise of volition; embracing the phenomena and results of our voluntary and active powers,— such as choice, intention, utility, action, 4. Moral. 5. Religious. The various words referring to these several classes of ideas are in the controversial fashion placed pro and con..-each with its opposing word or phrase in the column over against where the primary words are placed. A copious index makes reference easy. Its uses are at least twofold: 1. Verbal-to supply or suggest words of a suitable sort in composition for the precise expression of thought. 2. Intellectual-te lay before the mind the various expressions employed as the signs of ideas, to indicate how numerous are the aspects under which they may be considered, and to indicate how many are the slight accidents of experience which have permanently affected speech, and therefore thought. |