hereafter be able to confirm what would seem, for a day or two after the first shock of the coup d'état, to
have been the prevalent impression amongst us, namely, that with but one exception the English press had
pronounced against its author. But on the other hand it may be said, that, while the somewhat motley
variety of his supporters, and the very differing motives and reasons alleged for their support, are in
themselves a confession that his act must be held, even by his advocates, either to soar above morality or sink
below it, his public opponents in the English press have had no such discrepancies or differences to
reconcile in the part they have taken against him. And though in number less than their opponents
(excluding the country journals, which would greatly turn the scale in that respect), they so infinitely
transcend them in importance, and in the thousands and tens of thousands of readers they represent, as to
leave no doubt whatever of the vast weight and overwhelming preponderance of healthy English opinion
which has through them definitively declared itself against the overthrow of liberty in France. At the same
time the opinion thus expressed has been carefully restricted to a moral judgment on the acts and motives
which stamped the character of the usurpation, and beyond this it has in no respect passed. There has been
no clamour for interference with French affairs; no quixotic proposal to move lance-in-rest against those ever-
moving, ever-shifting sails of French caprice, which may not improbably to-morrow fling down into the dust
the man whom to-day they have lifted to a throne. The view taken has been, that while it is the duty of a public
writer, through all the vicissitudes of political party, to maintain inviolate certain fixed principles by which
alone any form of society can be honestly governed, it yet does not fall within his sphere to urge any hostile
demonstration against a people who may appear content to place itself under a dictatorship based upon their
outrage and overthrow. Nor would it be easy to say, in language that might not seem excessive, how nobly
this line has been taken by the most powerful of English journals. Respecting, for what it may be worth,
any government apparently acknowledged for the time by several millions of the French nation; no more
desirous to take arms against illegal violence in France, than against legalised oppression in Germany or
Russia; upholding the strict necessity of a maintenance of peace, upon the conditions of existing treaties and
a complete forbearance from every hostile act: its writers have yet felt that they owed it to truth, to freedom,
and to history, to demonstrate to the world, that in these late events every pledge of political duty has been
broken; that their moving force has been an unworthy personal ambition, supported by foul and unscrupulous
instruments; and that on such a basis it is impossible to conceive the establishment of a permanent or
honourable power, since it repudiates by its very origin everything on which stability depends. And this
they have enforced and reiterated in a series of articles, unbroken since Wednesday the 3rd of December,
unsurpassed for eloquence and knowledge by any political writing in the language, and not unlikely to be
remembered in England with some pride long after the fraud and violence so gallantly denounced shall
have been expiated by the restoration of constitutional liberty to a people who have made mightier sacrifices
for it than any other nation on the earth.

Meanwhile the offering-up of so illustrious a victim as Lord Palmerston to these altered fortunes of France,
may show what wary walking the new state of the continent is likely to crave from statesmen of every
country. Opinion has of course been busy on this remarkable incident; but the facts are as yet too
imperfectly known to give importance to any judgment passed upon them. All that seems to rest on any
good authority is the fact that the late Foreign Secretary had hastily committed himself to so hearty
an approval of M. Bonaparte's coup d'état, as to involve a separation from colleagues who could not so
readily be brought to regard with equal favour an act originating in treachery so revolting, and accompanied
by such violence and cruelty. Incredible as it seems, that the most inveterate opponent of the continental
despots should have fallen in the act of rejoicing over a new accession to the family, the fact appears to be
admitted. It is supposed that the veteran statesman mistook the probable bearing of the new government
of France, and too eagerly thought it possible to break the pride of the old despots by inviting a good
understanding with a new and formidable competitor. Be this as it may, it is at least certain that Lord
Palmerston has fallen by his own act, and not by any craven or unworthy offering to those hatreds and
intrigues with which the agents and envoys of the despotic courts have so notoriously and unrelentingly
pursued him.

Few home subjects of politics have maintained a reasonable interest in the midst of these foreign
excitements. But opinion continues to declare itself on the question of parliamentary reform, and has
been discussing with its usual freedom certain resolutions which had united several high consenting parties
at a conference in Manchester, and of which the substance would appear to be, that the forthcoming Reform
Bill will be decidedly unsatisfactory if it does not comprise triennial parliaments, a rate-paying suffrage, a
re-distribution of the electoral districts, vote by ballot, and no property qualification for members. Against
the entire of these demands it is argued, that such a scheme does not at this moment appear to be called
for. It is thought that at the conclusion of a period in which parliaments have never averaged beyond a
four years' duration, when representatives have given to their constituents increased facility of intercourse
and controul, and during which the only remarkable breaches of election-engagements have been in favour
of popular measures, no very striking case would appear to have been made out for a return to triennial
parliaments. Again, while it is admitted that the smallness and corruption of certain constituencies demands
prompt and decisive remedy, and that a franchise already much too narrow has been further compressed
by needless technical conditions, it is felt that the instant substitution of the parish rate-book for the electoral
register would be somewhat too near an approach to universal suffrage. Better, say this class of reasoners,
keep your stand upon the ancient ways, than venture any closer appeal to that universality of the people, of
which the state of our neighbour-metropolis would hardly seem to justify a trial. Remember that it is easier
to do than to undo in constitutional changes, and confine your present exertion to such new wants as the
change of the last twenty years may have created, to such new interests as it may have developed, and to
such palpable shortcomings of the Reform Act, or surviving abuses of the old system, as, with reference to
those wants and interests, it may have plainly brought to light. On the other hand, the reasoners are
abundant who treat such arguments as a mere evasion, who declare that the dangers of continued agitation
will only be incurred and prolonged by a compromise, who call for an extension of franchise without regard
to the provisions of the last Reform Act, who see a self-adjusting register of voters in the rate-book, as
suggested by the Lancashire men, which would satisfy a greater number of parties now bent upon reform
than any other mode that could be hit upon, and who are not less resolved to stand out for such an