discovery of guilt in both. Provocation for the act of
firing, as an act of self-defence, was admitted to
the fullest extent. It was clear that there had
been a desperate scuffle between the mob and the
military; that voters had been dragged off the cars,
stones showered on the escort, and some of the
soldiers even flung to the ground, before a shot was
discharged; nor can it be matter of surprise, however
lamentable, that some degree of violence and
intemperance should have been manifested by the soldiers
when this restraint was once broken through. To
the coroner, even after fourteen days' listening to the
hardest swearing, it had not seemed possible that
such a verdict as murder could be returned. But to
Irish patriotism many things are possible; and,
having lodged the soldiers and magistrate safely in
Ennis gaol on its coroner's warrant, it now excites
itself by measuring prospectively the height and
aspect of the gallows that may possibly put the
finishing stroke to the affair—as its organs tersely
express it, "a sixty-feet gallows for the Six-mile
murderers!" But as many other things are greatly
more possible to happen before any such "mortal
instrument" appears upon the scene, it is hardly
worth while to say more of this as a point of pressing
interest.

Of much nearer concern to us is the question,
whether some grand railway amalgamation and
consolidation may not some fine morning monopolise all
the roads, withdraw such scanty competition and
protection as may still be said to exist, diminish
trains, raise fares, curtail accommodation, and more
wantonly even than at present sacrifice life. Or it
may be the question whether a few hard rainy days
may not some wet morning turn all the present
occupants out of Downing-street. Or, peradventure, the
question whether we are to continue to waste £50,000
a month in war with savages for the possession of a
territory that has never been anything but an
unprofitable burthen to us. Or, it is not unlikely, the
question whether it be just that three generations of
men shall remain saddled with payment of a sinecure
of £10,000 a year which an act of parliament has only
thought good to abolish in the fourth generation?
Or, above all, the question whether an Asiatic Cholera
shall be permitted again to visit us without any of the
preparations due to so formidable a visitor. It is quite
certain, as to the latter point, that none as yet have
been made, notwithstanding the years of experience
and warning vouchsafed to us. Indeed the only public
exploit in a sanitary direction which has signalised
the last few months, is of a kind that indicates
either wonderful indifference on the subject or
portentous courage in relation to it. Smithfield
Market is to be moved to a neighbourhood closely
adjoining the most frequented parts of London, itself
thickly peopled, crowded with houses and villas,
open, clear, healthy, and the inhabitants of which in
loud but unavailing complaints are daily protesting
against the wrong. The law allows it, and the court
awards it. The "law" being that which so strangely
gave the right to manage the new market to
precisely those who had notoriously mismanaged the old
one; and the "court" being that which has never
been known to do anything well which it had the
power or the opportunity to do ill—to wit, the Court
of Common Council.

They manage these things, at any rate, better
in France, much as they mismanage other things.
Active as the police and the prefects have for some
time been, however, in managing and mismanaging the
interests of M. Louis Bonaparte, the way seems hardly
prepared just at present for the scheme to make an
Emperor of him. The pre-imperial fêtes the other
day were a huge failure. The mimic fights pleased
nobody, and not a Vive l'Empereur rewarded them.
Even the gas eagle of the triumphal arch refused to
shine; and all that could be lighted up of him, as if
to typify the tendencies to rapine and spoil which
form the only claims of the candidate-imperator,
were his beak and claws. The crest, the wings, the
plumage, all his nobler and freer attributes implying
the capacity and means to soar, remained
stubbornly and hopelessly dark and invisible. The
very tools of the more human sort created by M.
Bonaparte's government, have refused to do the
servile work for which they were specifically created.
Not a fourth of the Councils of Arrondissement
have voted for the Empire, still fewer of the
Councils General are now expected to send in
petitions for it, and even the most ignorant of what are
called the constituencies of these Councils are beginning
to discover what a farce it is to enjoy or exercise
universal suffrage at the point of the bayonet. It is.
therefore, quite upon the cards that the last step of
ambition may be again, what it so often has been, the
first of downfal and degradation; nor is it the part of
any honest man to wish it should be otherwise.

And talking of honest men, let us close our
month's glance at such public affairs as the Three
Kingdoms have most call to feel interested in, by
remarking a strong existing probability that the
attempt to make honest men of the Belgian
booksellers by means of the French Copyright Convention
will end in its overthrow by the overthrow of the
ministry that sanctions it. Also, that a very
different sort of French interference is at this moment
threatening to override the Turkish empire, which
already it has deprived of its most honest man, by
turning Reschid Pasha out of the Sultan's councils.
Finally, that the so-called honest man, General
Urquiza, the liberator of the Argentine Confederation,
who but the other day overthrew the government
of Rosas in the name of freedom and civilisation,
has already suspended the constitution he affected to
restore, has dissolved the legislature, and has set up
a despotism to all appearance as exclusive, arbitrary,
and irresponsible as that of the cruel and reckless
tyrant so lately thrust out of Buenos Ayres with
curses and contempt. It is now to be seen how long
Urquiza will remain, and whether English toryism
will join with French tyranny in a ready eagerness to
support him.

NARRATIVE OF POLITICS.

In the List of Members Returned to serve in the New
Parliament, given in our last number, the following
were not included:—

The Paris Journal, Le Pays, states that a note has
been addressed by the Cabinet of St. James's to the
Austrian Government, in which the assurance is given
that all measures of precaution will be taken to prevent
the presence of Kossuth at London, from troubling the
good relations established between England and Austria.

Preliminary proceedings have commenced in various
counties for raising their quotas of Militia. The Lord-
Lieutenants have issued addresses and delivered speeches
inviting young men to volunteer; and holding out as a