stronger, as if there had been a cross of the bull-dog in their blood. The moment Lieutenant Sprawl stuck his very remarkable snout over the stockade, several of us having scrambled up a-breast of him, the man who was apparently the leader of the party hailed

"Que quieren ustedes-somos Españoles-y unde esta la guerra entre ustedes i nosotros ?"

He was answered by a volley from all our pieces, and half-a-dozen of us tumbled down, right into the soft mud; those who had the luck to fall on their feet sank to their knees in an instant, whilst several who fell head foremost, left a beautiful cast of their phrenological developements in the mire. We struggled with all our might, you may imagine, to extricate ourselves, but three out of the group were instant ly pinned in their clay moulds, by the boarding pikes of the slaver's crew, and died miserably where they fell, while several others were wounded by shot; but our fellows continued to pour in after us, and there we soon were, thirty men at the fewest, struggling, and shouting, and blazing away, using the dead bodies of our fallen comrades as steppingstones, to advance over, while about fifteen more, as a reserve under little Binnacle, had perched themselves on the top of the stockade in our rear, and kept pouring in a most destructive fire over our heads; while the yells of the men, and the barking and worrying of the dogs, who had now been let loose, and who were indiscriminately at tacking whoever was next them, were appalling in the highest degree.

The men who so manfully opposed us, it was our duty and our glory to encounter; but the dogs were the devil,-altogether out of our reckoning. It was curious to see those who feared not the face of man, hanging back when attacked by one of the blood-hounds. So our antagonists, although so largely overmatched in numbers, had, from the ferocity of their allies, and the soundness of their footing, the advantage over us, and made good their position on the wooden stage, where they were in the act of at length getting another of the carronades, no doubt loaded with grape, slewed

round and pointed at us, when five marines, who had scrambled through the brake, took them in flank, and attacked them on the sea face, with unexampled fury. The sergeant of the party instantly shot the leader of the Spanish crew, the powerful and very handsome man already mentioned, between the shoulders, and he fell forward right on the top of me. Still in my dreams I often fancy that I feel the convulsive clutches of the dying man, and the hot blood gurgling from his mouth, down my neck, and the choking gasps, and the death quiver.

I was stunned, and must have been overlaid some time, for when I wriggled myself clear of the horrible load, our fellows had already gained the platform, led by old Davie Doublepipe, who was laying about him with his rusty weapon like a Paladin of old, at one moment shredding away showers of twigs from the branches that overhung us; at another inflicting deep and deadly gashes on his antagonists, his sword raining blood as he whirled it round his head, flashing like lightning, while his loud growl, like the roaring of the surf after a gale, alternated rapidly with his tootletoo, that gushed shrill and sharp from out the infernal noise and smoke and blaze of the tumult. Presently the Gazelles and Midges closed hand to hand with their antagonists, and the next minute the survivors of the latter fairly turned tail, and fled along a narrow path, equally muddy as the one we had entered by, where many of them stuck up to the knees, and were there shot down by our people, but no attempt was made to follow them. A number of men had been terribly torn by the bloodhounds, who, when their masters had fled, noble brutes as they were, stood gasping and barking at the entrance of the opening, covering their retreat as it were

spouting out in a bound or two towards us every now and then, and immediately retiring, and yelling and barking at the top of their pipes. I was going to fire, when the Scotch corporal of marines, already introduced on the scene, took the liberty of putting in his oar," Beg pardon, Mr Brail, but let abee for let abee with mad dogs and daft folk, is an auld but a very true adage." I

"After these miscreants, men," cried I, having previously ordered ten hands back to cover the boats

We now spiked the cannon and capsized them into the mud, where they instantly sank, and I had time to look around on the scene of conflict. There lay six of our people stark and stiff, countersunk into the soft mud, which in two instances was gradually settling over the bodies in a bloody mire, while four wounded men were struggling to extricate themselves from the tenacious clay, and endeavouring to attain the hard footing of the platform of planks. Three of them, with the assistance of their messmates, did accomplish this, but the fourth was too badly hurt, and too faint from the loss of blood, to persevere, and in despair threw himself back, gasping on the bloody quagmire.

"What is that?" said I, while half a dozen dropping shots sparkled out from beneath the thick jungle, and at the very instant one of the boat-keepers stuck his head over the stockade.

"The tide has left us, sir, and the mouth of the creek has not six inches of water in it, sir. The boats must stick hard and fast until next flood."

Startling enough this. What was to be done. To retreat, for the time, was out of the question, so we had no chance but in a forward demonstration.

"Hurrah!" We shoved along the narrow path through which the enemy had vanished, and the first thing we overtook was one poor devil shot through the neck, writhing in agony, and endeavouring to extricate himself from the slough. He was thrust through on the instant, as unceremoniously as if he had been a crushed beetle. A little farther on we encountered in another small by-track that took away to the left of us, three other men, evidently part of the gang, who had been peppering us from beneath the covert of the bushes. These were shot down where they stood, and I cannot forget the imploring glances of the poor fellows as they vainly beseeched our mercy, and the fearful sight of their stretching themselves out, and falling crash back amongst the branches when we fired. Two of them seemed to fall at once quite dead amongst the bloody leaves, but the third, shrieking aloud, had wrestled himself a fathom or two into the brake before he received his quietus from a marine, who walked close up to him, and shot him through the heart. Still we heard the shouts of the rest of the party who had retreated, and were now well ahead of us, and we pushed on in pursuit— when all at once, as if I had been struck by the levin-brand, a flash of light blazed across my eyes, and I came to the ground by the run.

1834.

W. G.

EVERY man of common observation must now see to what the headstrong passion for innovation is rapidly leading. It is in vain to conceal, it would be folly to attempt to deny, that, under the influence of the prodigious changes of recent times, a spirit has been nurtured, which at length threatens the very elements of society with dissolution. As long as the lower orders were deluded by the cry for Reform; as long as they were infatuated enough to believe that, by supporting the Whigs in office, they would convert the age of iron into that of gold; as long as they were deceived by the assurance, that, by obtaining the command of the Legislature, they would readily find a remedy for all their sufferings, they were kept tolerably quiet, as against their rulers, and their fury turned exclusively upon their devoted opponents of the Conservative party. Now, however, that device will no longer answer its purpose. The battle has been fought; the victory has been gained; Tory misrule is at end; Whig wisdom and liberality have been for three years and a half in full operation; and the people naturally ask, what is the end of these things? What have we gained by all the efforts we have made? Where are the fields, the wages, the plenty, which were promised us? Finding that they have gained nothing by all they have done, that wages are as low, taxes as burdensome, employment as scarce, suffering as general, as before the arrival of the promised millennium, they return in gloomy discontent to their firesides, and, throwing aside all confidence in public men, and all hope of relief derived from the Legislature, sternly resolve to take the matter into their own hands, and,

by the force of numbers, and the terror of combination, obtain that instant and practical relief, which they have sought in vain in the delusive theories of their deceivers.

The TRADES' UNIONS, therefore, which have now spread with such portentous rapidity through the whole country; which have arrayed millions of Englishmen in combination against the authority of law, and the order of society; which threaten to overwhelm industry by the accumulation of numbers, and extinguish opposition by the terrors of self-authorized punishment ;* which lay the axe to the root of the national resources, by suspending the labour by which it is created, and lock up the fountains of prosperity, by paralysing the capital which must maintain its producers, are a natural and inevitable, but not uninstructive step in the progress of revolution. They indicate, and that, too, in a voice of thunder, the arrival of the period when the vanity of hope has been felt, and the falsehood of promises experienced; when the hollowness of professions has become apparent, and the selfishness of ambition manifested itself; when Whig aristocracy can no longer employ the multitude as the instruments of its will, and democratic flattery can no longer supply the want of real relief. The manufacturing classes seem now resolved to take the matter into their own hands; they disdain to make any appeal to their own Legislature, or give any instructions to their darling representatives; but boldly fixing a rate of wages, a period of labour, and a set of regulations for themselves, they bid open defiance to all the constituted authorities in the state, and invite Government and

their masters into an open contest with millions of desperate men, upon whose labour great part of the national resources is dependent.

This fearful revolutionary system, therefore, need excite no surprise in any thinking mind; we have long foreseen it, and foretold it, in this Magazine, an hundred times over. It is the reaction of experience and suffering against the delusive hopes nursed by the predictions and changes of former times; the proclamation, in the hundred-mouthed trumpet of the national voice, of the vanity of all former innovations; the public admission, that, from the regenerated Legislature, the people have nothing to hope; and that, for any real alleviation of their sufferings, they must look to their own right arms and their own firm resolution. It is to be regarded as a natural and necessary step in the progress of the disease under which we are labouring; as the painful, but inevitable and well-foretold result of the insane innovations of which we have so long been the victims; and as indicating that step to amendment at least which arises from a perception of the deadly tendency of the remedies which have hitherto been administered.

The people, indeed, are not, for the most part, aware of this; they would not admit, if it was put to them, that their present distresses, which have prompted them to form these formidable combinations, are the natural result of the bitter disappointment experienced from the contrast between the promises which were held out to them, and the results which have attended the measures which were pursued; they would perhaps answer, if such a thing was seriously stated in their presence, that it was not because their rulers are, but because they are not democratic, that their confidence in them is gone; and that the substantial benefits which they were told would follow the Reform Bill can never now be hoped for, until the nest of Whig rotten boroughs is as thoroughly exterminated as that of Tory has been, and Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and Vote by Ballot, have completely and finally admitted the people to the full powers and blessings of self

government. All this, we have no doubt, they would say ; and all this, we have no doubt, they sincerely believe. It is not the vanity of democratic principles and self-govern. ment which is as yet felt and demonstrated by the existence of the Trades' Unions; it is the vanity of the Reform Bill, and the ruinous tendency of Whig measures, which is proved to have been experienced; it is the loud voice of the manufacturing classes, at whose instigation, and, professedly,' for whose behoof, all the changes were made, which is heard, announcing that they have been cheated and deceived, and that direct self-government can alone admit them to the social benefits to which they are entitled.

That the true friends of the working classes are the Conservatives,that their worst enemies are the demagogues who lure them by the voice of flattery to perdition, must be obvious from the consideration, that labour and industry of every sort can only flourish during the sunshine of tranquillity and ease, and that they necessarily wither and die amidst the storms and the agitation of Revolution. If a tree is cut down, the leaves and distant branches are the first to wither; and they languish and die long before any symptoms of decay appear in the stem and larger branches, because the sap which vivifies the whole is first stopped in its ascent to the farthest extremities. It is the same with the circulation of capital through the not less extensive and curiously constructed filaments of society. If any shock is given to the heart, the working classes are the first to suffer, because they are the last whom the life-blood reaches, they receive it in the smallest quantities, and have the least stock to enable them to subsist during its interruption. The rich, by a cessation of credit, or a suspension of industry, may be abridged of their luxuries; the middling ranks straitened in their comforts; but the labouring poor are instantly deprived of bread, and thrown without employment upon the world, disabled, by the same cause which has prostrated them, from adminis. tering any effectual relief.

The stage in the progress of innovation, which the simultaneous growth