The ill-treatment of Bonaparte was at this period a favourite topic of lamentation or indignation with those Whigs who could not bear to lose an opportunity of damaging the Government. Early in 1816, we find Hallam answering Horner, who had spoken of the imprisonment at St. Helena as 'odious.' The historian urges, that he (Bonaparte) could not have been left at liberty without prodigious risk of exciting fresh disturbance in the unsettled state of Europe,' a risk which it would have been madness to incur for the sake of obtaining a cheap reputation for magnanimity.' But it is most important to notice Hallam's objection to granting the ex-Emperor's petition for a tranquil asylum in England: When I see the foolish admiration which many persons entertain for that man, and the still more foolish association of his name with the love of liberty, I cannot desire to see his court, as it were, frequented by all the discontented as well as all the idle and curious.' The persons whose follies Hallam thus deplored included not only isolated fanatics of Whiggism like Dr. Parr, but not a few political personages with some pretensions to statesmanship. The impression produced upon the popular mind, which had been growing for ten years and had come to identify the Whigs as the 'friends of the foreigner,' had deepened at this time into general distrust and disgust. A most temperate and fair-minded observer of men and events, Lord Webb Seymour, communicated in a letter to Horner his regretful disapproval of the conduct by which the Whigs had forfeited the confidence of the country. Lord W. Seymour, while conceding to the Opposition the most excellent motives, pointed out that they—and Horner among them-extended their favour and aversion to every person and event, according to their connection with or opposition to the one party or the other.' To this bias he traced 'the indulgent tenderness towards Bonaparte and his adherents, the ready suspicion of meanness, treachery, and selfishness in the Allies, the angry censure of every step that did not accord with the most high-minded notions of political morality, and the insensibility to a generosity and rectitude in the great outlines of their conduct to which the history of the world affords few parallels,' and finally the omission to consider that the restoration of the Bourbons' was connected with the deliverance of Europe from the threatening evils of a military despotism of the most profligate character.' I can conceive no situation (the writer proceeded) more seducing to the mind than to be going on among a set of men, most of whom are united in the harmony of friendship and social enjoyment, all extolling the talents and principles of each other, all ardent for the same objects, though each impelled by a various mixture of public and private motives, all anxious to detect, to communicate, and to enlarge upon whatever is to the disadvantage of their adversaries, and to keep out of sight whatever presents itself in their favour, all vying with each other not only in every public debate, but at every dinner and in every morning walk, to magnify the partial views to which each by himself is naturally led. I wish that your party friends were more aware of the light in which their tempers and conduct appear to many people who, with no strong feeling either for or against ministers, are anxious for the best interests of their country and of mankind. . . . During the last two years they would have found the sentiments of such people at variance with their own; they would have found them sometimes lamenting and sometimes indignant to see men who profess themselves patriots and philanthropists steadily turning away from every joyful event and every bright prospect to dwell only upon the few intermingled occasions of regret, or censure, or despondency, and uttering nought but groans over the fate of Norway, or Spain, or Saxony, or Greece, while our own country and half the civilised world felt as if breathing when first risen from a bed of imminent death. I wish your friends could have heard in secret the opinion of the impartial upon the justice and the expediency of the war last year. I wish they could have heard the expressions I have heard, from some who entertain the soundest Whig principles, of dread at the idea of any man being in office whose indulgent favour of Napoleon might render it, in however small a degree, more likely that he should escape from his confinement and again throw the world into confusion. . . . Opposition in Parliament is generally conducted upon one very false principle, namely, that the measures of ministers must in every case be so far wrong as to deserve, on the whole, very severe reprobation. I will not suppose this principle to be speculatively recognised, but it is at least practically adopted. Do not conceive that I am insensible to the benefits which the country derives from a vigorous Opposition. But I am confident that these benefits might be greatly increased, and every interest of the Opposition party much advanced, if the temper which party is sure to generate were better controlled by those at least whose talents place them at its head. . . . Mr. Whitbread's conduct in Opposition was of a higher character (than Sir F. Burdett's); yet there were occasions when I could not have wished to see Mr. Whitbread in office, from the fear of his acting upon those mistaken notions, and with that vehement and perverse spirit which appeared in his attacks on Government, and which sometimes made him even go beyond the sentiments of his own political friends. By despising or disregarding these sound and honourable maxims of public conduct, the Whig Opposition from 1807 to 1815 gradually sapped its own legitimate influence, and secured the Tory party, even when dominated by men of mediocre abilities, a prolonged and almost undisputed tenure of power. Then this country entered on a period when, as Byron bitterly wrote Nought's permanent among the human race The deplorable effect of political impunity upon the Tory party was soon visible in our domestic policy, but the discipline of sixteen years of misgovernment was needed before the mass of Englishmen could be induced to stake their hopes of reform upon the party they had spurned as traitorous during the struggle with a despotism that threatened to crush out the most elementary forms of liberty. Many Whigs had quitted the party ranks, many of the interests' for Mr. Whitbread destroyed himself on the 6th of July, 1815, less than three weeks after the battle of Waterloo. It was generally believed on the continent, and Las been asserted by French authors, that what he regarded as 'that dishonest victory' drove him to his death. The calumny was founded upon the vehemence with which in April Mr. Whitbread had opposed the renewal of the war with Napoleon. It seems certain, however, that the Whig leader fell a victim to overwork. which Brougham was so solicitous had formed new connections.' The most high-minded men of the party looked back with pain and longing for oblivion upon the discreditable history of the time when they used all their powers to defeat the most glorious and fruitful of national enterprises. Let the Liberals of our day see well to it, that they may not have to pass through the same sad and humiliating experience. EDWARD D. J. WILSON. THE FUTURE OF ENGLISHWOMEN: MRS. SUTHERLAND ORR has discharged a shot into the camp of what is called, for want of a better name, 'the woman's movement.' Hers is the serious argument of a candid antagonist, and I think that no one will desire to treat it otherwise than respectfully. It is refreshing rather than the reverse to hear on this subject something that can be called an argument. Too often our opponents base their remarks on such an observation as 'Adam was first made, then Eve,' and appear to believe that no one will be tempted to complete the implied analogy and say Adam first had household suffrage, then Eve; or Adam first studied medicine, then Eve.' But this is not the method adopted by Mrs. Orr. I will attempt to summarise her argument for the benefit of those who may have missed reading her article called 'The Future of English women' in this Review for June. Mrs. Orr says that the question of the good or evil of the emancipation of women is one of degree. It is, notwithstanding, a movement which involves not a revolution but the actual decomposition of society. So far this decomposition has only done good. The women who will be, for several generations to come, most influenced by the movement will probably be the very best of which our race is capable. In them may be embodied the historic climax of the English race.' So far the inherent 'organic' characteristics of physical and moral womanhood will not have been touched by the decomposing elements of the new movement. The women brought under its influence will have a wider intellectual horizon; the range of their sympathies will be enlarged; they will have more dignity and more happiness in their lives than the average woman of the old régime: their intercourse with women will be free from littleness, their manner towards men from ungraceful extremes of reserve or freedom:' in a word, we shall see the utmost expansion of which the female nature is capable.' All these good results are likely to flow from the movement if only it could be arrested at the point it has already reached. But if it continues to advance and runs its course unchecked, dire and terrible evils are to be expected 6 from it. If female emancipation reaches its full and final attainment, not only the power of love in women, but for either sex its possibility, will have passed away.' The miserable man of the future will vainly seek the woman's love he can no longer find, and then in prophetic vision Mrs. Orr imagines that she sees Nature, outraged and no longer to be eluded, avenging herself.' The women of the future will probably refuse to bear children; or if they are mothers, their qualifications to become truly motherly mothers will be of the feeblest, and their children may be expected to be puny and miserable, alike in body, intellect, and soul. Mrs. Orr appears to attribute to this yet unborn woman of the future the views of the German philosopher, who is said to have regarded the universe as a bad joke; and she imagines that the 'regenerate' woman, with a practical feminine turn, will bring one act of the farce to an end as quickly as possible. Be this movement for the emancipation of women, says Mrs. Orr, slow or rapid, indirect or direct, if it is allowed to run its whole course, the new era which it is said to inaugurate will prove the beginning of the end. Such, as well as I have been able to gather it after two careful readings, is the argument of Mrs. Orr's article. The main flaw in it as an argument, I think, consists in her admission that the movement which she attacks is, at one and the same time, good so far as it has gone, and that it tends in its very nature to the decomposition of society. I should have thought that decomposition-that is, rottenness or decay-was bad from beginning to end, and that you could not say the process of decay is entirely good so far as it has gone. But I do not wish to dwell on this point, which after all may be construed thus: the same process which in a fruit causes it to ripen, may, if continued after a certain point, cause it to become rotten. So far, then, we may have the satisfaction of believing that from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,' and that the fatal 'rot and rot,' even if it comes at all, is still in the distant future. What every one who reads Mrs. Orr's article with attention will ask is, 'Where does she find the slightest foundation in actual facts for her gloomy predictions as to the effect of freedom upon Englishwomen?' There has been already much experience on which an opinion may be formed. I do not now refer to the handful of women in the upper and middle ranks of life who have made professional careers for themselves, although the fact that many of them have married and have become loving wives and tender mothers weighs for something against Mrs. Orr's argument. But they, perhaps it may be said, are exceptional. Still it is worth something to know that the power of emotion and sympathy has not been dried up in them, that it has been rather intensified and strengthened. Much more useful experience than any that can be gathered from such a limited number of cases may be found if we consider the circum |