gals, it was only fair a woman should be let look after them,"-precisely the kind of feeling, which as its opponents feared, would not be displayed under the ballot. So far from any jealousy existing of social distinctions, scarcely one man of social distinction failed, and only one working man was elected, - a fact on some accounts no doubt to be regretted, but gratifying, because it shows that those who receive wages are not at heart inclined to band together to vote down those who pay them. The apparent sentiment of the people is also their real sentiment, and there is, therefore, nothing like mutiny to fear from secret voting.

that a tenth of the population should carry its nominee to the top of the poll, and thus create a false impression of general influence and organization. The place on the poll does not, it is true, matter to the result; but no system stands long which misrepresents facts, or creates in the minds of those who work it a distinct impression of unfairness, while it must be observed that the very same people who extenuate the Catholic success because place on the list does not signify, exult in the success of Miss Garrett and Miss Davies because it does. The cumulative vote, moreover, is exposed to the objection that to work it fully the small body who are by its means And, finally, there is the great experi- to be represented must be very strongly ment of the cumulative vote. There is organized-so strongly as to surrender not, we consider, upon this point quite so, its independence, contrary to the intenconclusive a result as upon the others, tions of the Legislature. On the whole, though some of the objections recently we should say that, except in cases where, raised are a little far-fetched. There is as on this School Board, the representation no doubt, a very great wasting of votes, of very extreme opinions is advantageous but wasting of votes is not pure loss just because they are very extreme opinto the electoral body. On the contrary, ions, the cumulative vote is a difficult waste implies that the electors are voting weapon to employ, and, if employed, should as they please, and not at the bidding of be so limited as to secure the representaany caucus, clique, or group of agents, such tion only of very considerable minorities, as in America directs elections by dint of and only of them when their representachicane, calculation, and careful drill. tion will not cancel the just influence of There is a good deal of danger to be feared the majority. The scheme works better from that cause, such cliques having a than the one adopted in the three-cornered strong tendency either to become corrupt, boroughs, because it leaves the true maor to select candidates whose single recom- jority votes to bestow on the third candimendation to their favour is personal sub-date, who under the present plan, is almost serviency. It is clear that the cumulative of necessity a minority member; but it vote, more especially when liberally applied, does allow of the representation of minorities-unpopular sects, for example, like the Catholics, securing their full share of the representation to which they are entitled. This is an excellent result, so far as it tends to consolidate and soothe the electorate by preventing a sense of oppression or permanent exclusion from office; but, unfortunately, the scheme also confers a similar power on persons who are only riding a hobby, and even on any wellorganized and numerous "interest." is decidedly bad for the community, the ENGLISH OPINION ON FRENCH AFFAIRS. soundness of a man's opinions on alcohol, Ir is still necessary to point out the trades' unions, the observance of Sunday, amazing illusions to which the English or the management of the Order of Forest-want of imagination sometimes gives rise. ers, being no guarantee for his capacity as Our countrymen every now and then, para legislator, while his willingness to accept ticularly when excited by the spectacle of a nomination from any numerous "inter- victory, suffer their minds to fall into ruts, est" is pro tanto proof that he will be out of which it is almost impossible to exneither capable nor independent. The tricate them, and in which their only creed system to work perfectly will require great seems to be the second sentence of the delicacy of adjustment. It is quite fair, doxology, "as it was in the beginning, is for example, that Catholics should be rep- now, and ever shall be, world without resented on the School Boards, not fair end." Because the Germans have beaten

That

requires adjustment, and tends to the over-representation of unimportant sections of the electorate, that is, to a dangerous diversity between the fact and the representation of the fact. The Catholics are not entitled in any great English borough to seem the strongest section of the community.

From The Spectator.

won Peterloo and who restored authority in a whole district. Our people, to fight splendidly, want the stimulus that fires them, and so do the French; but because it is not the same stimulus, English observers will have it that it is not a stimulus that is wanting, but pluck, and after an experience of six hundred years still believe, because some demoralized Generals surrender at Sedan, therefore the character of their ancient enemy is totally changed, therefore Frenchmen, and especially the Zouaves, who charged by the side of the Guards at Inkerman, have become cowards, incapable of discipline, from whom victory is not to be expected. No general experience seems to teach us to disregard the teaching of the moment.

French armies for a month, therefore they | frightened the manhood out of a great will always beat them. Because Metz ca- city. A French, or Italian, or Spanish pitulated, therefore Paris, which is to Metz mob would have eaten those fellows who what a Mirabeau is to a serjeant-major, is certain also to capitulate. Because the German telegrams, when truth was more effective than romance, were always accurate, therefore those telegrams will be accurate when romance tells more effectively than truth. And conversely, because the French when beaten fight badly, therefore they will fight badly when victorious; and because, in their wounded vanity, they hide defeat in lyrical phrases, therefore in their gratified pride they are sure to indulge in lying bombast. Everybody in fact is, like a Teuton, to be always true to one and the same character. The Teuton, whether German, or Englishman, or American, is always pretty much the same man, does his duty gravely and without chatter, fights as hard when beaten as The truth is, that the French are before when successful, and with his day's work all things an imaginative people; that their cut out for him, does not care two straws weakness, as their strength, is sentiment; whether he has been beaten elsewhere or and that till their imagination has been not. Englishmen have fought magnifi- fired, or their sentiment fairly roused, they cently in retreat, as witness Corunna; are no more good fighters than the English and we have not the least doubt that if are till it is their duty to fight. Their senVon Moltke's hosts were whittled away to timent has been roused to fierce vigour by a battalion, that battalion would charge what they think the harshness with which as one battalion charged at Amiens, "as if they have been treated, by the insults lavit were on parade;" and the last surviving ished upon men whom they obey, and by officer would be obeyed as if he could sum- the demand that they should desert their mon the whole military hierarchy to his fellow-citizens in misfortune. They have, support. English admiration of that kind therefore, filled up the armies, and now of conduct is well justified, and is in itself suddenly a hope of victory has stirred rather a splendid trait in the national the imagination without which their courcharacter, but it is none the less stupid to age sinks like the courage of an Englishbe unable to perceive that there are other man without food, and the French armies characters in the world-men who are not have become armies of soldiers again. If always alike, soldiers who require stimu- suddenly defeated once more their courage lants other than beef and beer, who must may sink again; but if not, the war is but have hope, and confidence, and excitement, just begun, for army after army will rise before what is in them can come out. in France just as brave and determined Englishmen without legally appointed and enduring as the Germans, inferior to leaders, or without a consciousness that them only in the training of their officers, law is on their side, or without a sense of and far superior to them in numbers. duty of some sort, so far from fighting Should the Germans begin to retreat, all well, fight infamously, shrinking from at-France will hurl itself upon them, till it tack like the most volatile of Southerners. may be that in January English journals There is scarcely a creditable émeute in our will be criticizing with imperturbable inhistory, scarcely an instance recorded in consistency "the reckless contempt of life which an English or an American crowd and common-sense so characteristic of the has not fled before a few soldiers or police- French in war." The very soldiers who men, or, as in the Forrest riot in New ran will fight then, to the surprise of EngYork, a few untried volunteers, in a style lish mankind, who next day will quote with which in any other race would have indi- approval the description of Clive's felons, cated abject cowardice. A troop of lanc- who in their first battle shrieked with fear, ers would have scattered the London and in their last, under the same chief, crowd that welcomed Garibaldi like so conquered Bengal at odds of one to thirty. many sheep, and a squad of yeomanry Cannot our people, who are par excellence scarcely able to ride have repeatedly the people of travellers, understand that

something other than "a strip of silver the war had been declared, and left sea" separates us from France; that a race matters much in the condition in which full of sentiment and emotion, of impulse they were before. Literally speaking, the and of vanity, of genius and of daring, ut- remark may be true, and yet in point of terly dependent on its leaders, needing the fact it is the very opposite of truth. brandy of success to evoke its courage, Great Britain, in terms, yielded nothing of will not, in great crises, act like a stub- the pretentions she had advanced before born borné people, as incapable of forming the war. It is not her habit, nor the habit a device as of abandoning one when of any great nation, to humiliate itself formed; which derives, if not new courage, unnecessarily. On the other hand, from new energy from defeat; and is as free the date of that treaty down to this from the liability to despair as it is want- moment not a question has been raised, ing in the power to recruit its vigour on not a complaint made of the repetition of mere hope? Cannot a nation of mechan- any such scenes on the ocean as were hapics imagine that a people "unstable as pening every day before. The barbarous water" may be as incompressible as that practice of impressment has been volunelement, or believe that water, once rigidly tarily abandoned. The claim of a right bound, may force its way through iron? to the services of a subject in despite of and above all, cannot we, with our unique experience in Ireland, where the bravest race in the world skulk in frieze from the cause of their hearts, and fight like heroes in red for causes which they detest, comprehend that there are races to whose success in war there are certain precedent conditions, who need stimulants differing utterly in kind from those that we require?

From The New York Evening Post.
NEUTRALITY IN AMERICA.

MR. C. F. ADAMS in his recent able address before the N. Y. Historical Society on neutrality in America spoke thus of Albert Gallatin.

"Calm in discussion, quick in mastering the points at issue, ready in resource and adroit in giving shape to acceptable propositions, his influence upon the thread of the negotiation is apparent not less in the intercourse with the opposite side than in reconciling the jarring interests of his own. It may justly be said of him that in this most important emergency, when the scales were trembling in the balance, his peculiar qualifications came in to give just the weight adequate to secure the de

sired result. Thus it turned out that on the 24th December, 1814, the treaty of peace with Great Britain was made, which has secured the pacific relations of the two countries for a period now extending beyond half a century.

"Of the character of that treaty there were opposite opinions held at the time, though the event was hailed with universal joy. It was objected to it that in terms it settled none of the great questions of neutral rights, for the defence of which

naturalization elsewhere has never since been advanced, and has very lately been explicitly surrendered; and from being a fierce enemy to the maintenance of neutral rights, Great Britain has gradually been becoming our aptest scholar. Indeed, she has outrun her preceptor. For in 1856 she gave in her adhesion to the treaty of Paris, which abandoned the piratical practice of privateering, and recognized the principle she had so long contested, of free ships, free goods. Nay, even more than that. In the late unhappy conflict between ourselves, it happened to be my particular duty to make many complaints of her alleged violations of neutrality, the favorite mode of replying to which was by appeals to our own construction of neutral doctrines. This being so, I think it may justly be claimed that the treaty of Ghent was our greatest triumph, inasmuch as from that date has commenced the change of policy, which has at last placed the most ruthless belligerent known to the world in the ranks of those who recognize the principle upon which Washington started, and which Mr. Wheaton has put into language which I now ask leave to repeat: The right of every independent state to remain at peace whilst other states are engaged in war, is an incontestible attribute of sovereignty."

"Happy day of a treaty which witnessed the establishment of so grand a revolution. Worthy, indeed, of being signed on the

eve of that blessed morn, the anniversary of that declaration from on high of a mission of peace and good will to all mankind."

At the conclusion of the address Mr. Bryant said:

"I have listened with great delight

"Mr. Clinton listened to him patiently, and then suggested that there was one difficulty in the plan. "Going down one steep mountain and going up another would be hard work, particularly for the women and be likely to prevent much intercourse between the two cities."

66 6

Ah,' said the Quaker, Han on, I believe was his name, 'I never thought of that. What does thee advise in the matter?'

and deep interest to the address of our lands of the Hudson, on two mountains. eminent friend from Boston, and wonder Thither he wanted them all to go and be not that he has so perfectly enchained | happy. They might, he added, make frethe attention of the audience. I have quent visits to each other, passing from heard with admiration the wise maxims of mountain to mountain, and so give much public policy which he has so clearly of their time to social intercourse. stated, and rendered luminous by so many illustrations from our history, happily chosen, woven into one symmetrical whole, and interfused with his own individual thought. I have listened with a special interest to that part of his address which related to Citizen Genet, who had the contest with Washington, in which he was so ingloriously worsted, because I knew the man, and remember him very vividly. Some forty-five years since he came occasionally to New York, where I saw him. He was a tall man, with a reddish wig and a full round voice, speaking English in a sort of oratorical manner, like a man making a speech, but very well for a Frenchman. He was a dreamer in some respects, and I remember had a plan for navigating the air in balloons. A pamphlet of his was published a little before the time I knew him, entitled " Aerial Navigation," illustrated by an engraving of a balloon shaped like a fish, propelled by sails and guided by a rudder in which he maintained that man could navigate the air as well as he could navigate the ocean in a ship.

"When De Witt Clinton was Governor of this state, a Quaker, who had, as the Scotch say, a bee in his bonnet, called on him and said that he had a project to submit to him, in behalf of which he wanted his influence. It was to gather the Jewish people from their dispersion and build for them two cities in the High

"There is a gentleman at Troy,' answered Clinton, Mr. Genet, who has a plan by which, perhaps, the difficulty might be obviated. Suppose you consult him."

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The Quaker went and consulted Genet, who explained to him his system of aerial navigation, and assured him that there was nothing to prevent the people of the two cities from passing from one to the other horizontally through the air.

"Afterwards Hanson met with Mr. Clinton, who asked him, "Well, did you see Citizen Genet?'

"I did,' answered Hanson, and then assuming a confidential tone, but don't thee think that friend Genet is a little visionary?'

"He was visionary, and one of his visionary projects was his appeal to the American people against the firm resolve of Washington to persevere in the assertion of our neutrality in the war between France and Great Britain."

THE latest accounts of the state of affairs at templated elsewhere, so that in view of the Tien-tsin and the action of the Chinese Govern- great influence still possessed at Court by the ment subsequent to the massacre are not reas-anti-foreign party, this danger is far from over. suring. The Times' correspondent at Shang- Meanwhile proclamations are openly posted on hai, writing on August 4, gives horrible details the walls, in which the Roman Catholics are acof the tortures to which the native converts who cused of exercising witchcraft on Chinese with were released had been subjected, but seems in- a view to the commission of horrible and fanclined to believe that the so called "pro-for-tastic cruelties, and under cover of giving a eign" party is at present powerful in the coun- magical talisman against such spells, the popucils of the Emperor, and quotes the proclamation lace is called upon to join in the "expulsion of in which he condemns the popular charges the foreigner." In Tien-tsin the mob becomes against the missionaries as false. One edict, daily more insolent, and the cry that nothing however, not intended for foreign eyes, reveals but strong external pressure can secure the only too plainly the Emperor's consciousness safety of foreigners throughout China is again that the massacre was directly instigated by the raised with too much semblance of truth. officials, and that further outrages of the kind, against all Christians indiscriminately, are con

Spectator.