are obliged to defend themselves against illegal violence by force. Hence we read of employers whose works or lives have been threatened going about for weeks together equipped with pistols and revolvers; hiring armed watchmen with fierce dogs to garrison their premises; changing their sleeping places continually; adopting vigilant precautions against malicious injuries or fire. Occasionally, when the need for work is urgent, it is carried on in an actual state of siege, as in the notable instance of the New Law Courts at Manchester, described by Mr. J. Bristow, of Manchester, whose evidence is extremely curious:

The new Assize Courts (says this witness) are the best job in Manchester; the woodwork is the best without exception; it was done by Non-Union joiners, who were locked up in the place; they lived, slept, had their washing, had their lodging, in the place, all locked up for fear of the Unionists. It was absolutely done and finished by Non-Union joiners.

'5157. When you say "for fear," you mean for fear of being withdrawn by the Union?-For fear of injury. They had to be taken in cabs to the place.'

We have noticed but a tithe of the matters which this grave and fertile subject presents for observation; but we believe that we have said enough. The peaceable, law-respecting people of England will hear, we think, with some surprise, of the high-handed audacity with which these self-erected jurisdictions defy constituted authority and trample upon private rights. It is well that they should hear of it. We desire nothing better than that the full light of publicity should be let in, and that the free air of public opinion should be allowed to penetrate the dark recesses of the Trade Conclaves. We have no doubt as to the verdict which the country will pronounce upon the facts now elicited, because we are convinced that if anything is abhorrent to the nature of Englishmen, it is an inquisitorial tyranny working through the agency of secret tribunals. But the operation of public opinion alone is not enough. The State has a duty to perform to itself and to those whom it undertakes to protect. The supremacy of the law must be vindicated at all costs and hazards. Impunity must no longer be allowed to foster crime. With the text of the law as it stands at present there is little fault to be found. It draws, we believe, the correct line, permitting on the one hand the peaceable combination of workmen in order to the maintenance of their just rights as regards the wages and the hours of labour, prohibiting on the other all violence, annoyance, obstruction, and interference either with masters or

with workmen. In the recent prosecution at the Old Bailey, Mr. Baron Bramwell laid down these two cardinal propositions: 1. That the law of England protects the liberty not only of the person, but of the will and mind, of every one of the Queen's subjects. 2. That the public has an interest in the manner in which each individual disposes of his capital and labour. From these two maxims he drew the conclusion that to interfere by intimidation, annoyance, or obstruction, whether physical or moral, with the free agency either of employer or workman, is an offence against society and the law.

But though the law be sound in principle, it is almost impotent in practice. A power stronger than the law overrides and defeats its action, rules the reluctant workman with a rod of iron, and smites with its intolerable edicts the skill and enterprise of the capitalist. Such an anomaly must no longer be permitted to endure it has endured much too long already. The conflict between the law of the land and the law of the Unions must be brought to an issue. We look to the Commissioners to suggest means by which the supremacy of rightful authority may be asserted and the hands of justice strengthened. If the aggrieved parties are afraid to act in the repression of violence, the Legislature must no longer dally with the question of a Public Prosecutor. If evidence be stifled by terror, the law must invest itself with greater terrors. Of this let the nation be assured-no intelligent person who has mastered the facts of the case, will doubt it-that unless we would see the sources of our manufacturing prosperity dried up, the arm of our labour paralysed, the sceptre of our trade transferred to other hands, we must grapple firmly and fearlessly, as in a struggle for life or death, with the lawless and overbearing despotism. of the Trades' Unions.

ART. V.-A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, with a Selection from her Letters. By the late Mrs. EDGEWORTH, edited by her Children. Not published. In 3 vols. 1867.

WE E are afraid of appealing so confidently to the present generation, but are there any survivors of the last who do not habitually associate the name of Maria Edgeworth with a variety of agreeable recollections?-with scenes, images, and characters which were the delight of their youth-with the choicest specimens of that school of fiction in which amusement is blended with utility, and the understanding is addressed simultaneously with the fancy and the heart? All these, and they must still be many, will be rejoiced to hear that a Memoir has recently been printed (though it is as yet unpublished) which may enable them to watch the everyday life of their old favourite, to peep into the innermost folds of her mind, to track her genius to its source, to mark the growth of her powers, and fix how much was the gift of nature and how much the product of cultivation or of art. For ourselves, we were led by it at once to a reperusal of her works; and so satisfactory was the result, that we can confidently recommend a fresh or first trial of them to novel-readers of all ages, who are not utterly spoiled by Miss Braddon and Mrs. Wood.

There is another reason for reverting to Miss Edgeworth's writings with unabated interest, independently of their attractiveness. They contributed, more than any others that can be named, towards the inauguration of that splendid era of romance which began and reached its full effulgence with the author of Waverley.' In the General Preface to the collected edition of the Novels, after alluding to the two circumstances which led him to this style of composition, Scott says: The first was the extended and well-merited fame of Miss Edgeworth, whose Irish characters have gone 'so far to make the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may be truly said to have done more towards completing the Union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up. Without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact, which pervade the works of my accomplished 'friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country of the same kind with that which she has so fortu'nately achieved for Ireland.'

6

Luckily for her father, and not unluckily for Miss Edgeworth, their lives and labours are so blended and intertwined, that her name and memory cannot be separated from his. They were connected by ties stronger than ties of blood-by community of objects, habits, affections, and modes of thought. He had plausible claims to the title of her literary parent. He divined the natural bent of her genius, and aided without forcing its development. He gave her the most bracing kind of education, moral and intellectual; the groundwork being scrupulous accuracy of statement, patient observation, frankness, self-knowledge, and self-respect. He made her from early girlhood his companion and friend. He read with her, wrote with her, came before an applauding public hand-inhand with her, and (we really believe unconsciously) traded on her. The best description of him in advanced years is given by Lord Byron :

'I have been reading the Life by himself and daughter of Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, the father of the Miss Edgeworth. It is altogether a great name. In 1813 I recollect to have met them in the fashionable world of London, in the assemblies of the hour, and at a breakfast of Sir Humphrey and Lady Davy's, to which I was invited for the nonce. I had been the lion of 1812: Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Staël, with the Cossack, towards the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year. I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow of a clarety, elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk and endless. He was seventy but did not look fifty-no, nor forty-eight I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not very long before-a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things. He tottered-but still talked like a gentleman, though feebly. Edgeworth bounced about, and talked loud and long, but he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly old.

even.

'He was not much admired in London, and I remember a "ryghte merrie" and conceited jest which was rife among the gallants of the day-viz. a paper had been presented for the recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage, to which all men had been called to subscribe. Whereupon Thomas Moore of profane and poetical memory, did propose that a similar paper should be subscribed and circumscribed for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland. The fact was everybody cared more about her. She was a nice little unassuming "Jeannie-Deans-looking body," as we Scotch say; and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking. Her conversation was as quiet as herself. One would never have guessed she could write her name; whereas her father talked, not as if he could write nothing else, but as if nothing else was worth writing.'

Moore denies all participation in the 'ryghte merrie jest.' But Lord Byron himself is said to have proposed a Society for the Suppression of Edgeworth. The efforts of such an

VOL. CXXVI. NO. CCLVIII.

H H

institution would have proved as unavailing as those of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Edgeworth was insuppressible; and, take him for all in all, he was not a man whom it was proper or expedient to suppress. With the simple change of gender, we might apply to him what Talleyrand said of Madame de Staël: Elle est vraiment insupportable;' which he qualified after a short pause by, c'est son seul défaut.' Edgeworth was a useful, an excellent man in many ways; although, like many useful and excellent men, a bore of the first magnitude. He was a patriot, a philanthropist, a good landlord, a good magistrate, a good husband, and (what is most to our present purpose) a good father.

The Edgeworths, of Edgeworth-Town, County Longford, were a family of considerable local distinction, who came into Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth. Their settlement there is clearly traced to Edward Edgeworth, bishop of Down and Connor, in 1593, who, dying without issue, left his fortune to his brother, Francis, in 1619. In the way of historical illustration, they boast of a Lady Edgeworth, a woman of extraordinary beauty and courage, who, in consequence of the gallant attentions of Charles II. at her presentation, refused to attend his court a second time, and afterwards gave an instance of presence of mind which equals or surpasses the Victoriacross exploit of flinging a lighted shell out of a trench. On some sudden alarm at her husband's Irish castle of Lissard, she hurried to a garret for gunpowder, followed by a maidservant carrying a candle without a candlestick. When the lady had taken what she wanted from the barrel, had locked the door, and was halfway down the stairs again, she observed that the girl had left the candle, and asked her what she had done with it. She had left it 'stuck in the barrel of black salt.' Lady Edgeworth returned by herself to the garret, put her hand carefully underneath the candle, and carried it safely out. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the lineal descendant of Francis, and the representative of the family when we take it up, was born at Bath in 1744. His maternal grandfather was a Welsh judge, named Lovell, of whom it is related that, travelling over the sands at Beaumaris as he was going circuit, he was overtaken by the tide: the coach stuck fast in a quicksand; the water rose rapidly, and the registrar, who had crept out of the window and taken refuge on the coach-box, whilst the servants clustered on the roof, earnestly entreated the judge to do the same. With the water nearly touching his lips he gravely replied: I will follow your counsel if you can quote any ' precedent for a judge's mounting a coach-box.'