philosophy, ingeniously to turn it into "all for the best."
The outlook is bad, and the only best thing we can make
of it, or the reader can make of it, is to admit as much;
with the reassuring addition that there is nevertheless
little call for despondency, and not the remotest
for despair. It may turn out that we really wanted
such a warning to set our house in order; and that,
having got rid of that noisy fellow Brag, we shall
find ourselves on a better understanding with our
more discreet friend Holdfast. There is no saying
whether even the successive tocsins of alarm now sounding
with every touch of the electric wire submerged
beneath the Channel, may not prove to be the very best
counter-irritants that in such a state of things could
happen to us. After the first few shocks the nerves
recover strength, and confidence becomes habitual.
We begin to perceive that there are worse things than
Caffrarian wars; that the disasters of a too easy and
idle way of governing are better borne than the whips
and scorns of another kind of government; that what
a free people sees to be necessary, involves no great
trouble or time to obtain, when once the determination
is taken; and that we should take at the same
time the hint of danger supplied by an unscrupulous
neighbour to ascertain what it really is that we want
for our own security,—straightway setting about its
acquisition, concentrating our future care on our own
concerns, and abating our Quixotic propensity to settle
the concerns of other people. All which being
perceived and acted upon, it is not at all impossible but
that the student above described may yet be able to
find our next month's Narrative a miscellany of
agreeable reading. It may even have the pleasant
task of announcing to him that already our soldiers
are better clad, our sailors better fed, and a better
understanding exists between our workmen and
their masters; that thus early the dreaded chances
of a war have become remotely distant, because
our fleets, recalled from Portuguese and African
waters, are once more riding in the English Channel;
that a common danger has happily re-knitted classes and
interests too long divided, in England, by a supposed
unassailable security; that even our Government has
had spirit to strengthen itself, in the extremity, by a
sufficient measure of reform; and that, confident of
the best because provided against the worst, the good
citizens of London in their intervals of rifle-practice,
to which, as a manly amusement, they have very
recently had the good sense to resort, are again able
to look steadily and calmly in the direction of the
French coast, and ask themselves, not without grave
interest for the fate of a gallant people,—what Government
next?

It is a question which M. Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte will probably at that very time again be asking
of himself. He has had some eight or ten in the
course of as many months, and each has marked
broadly a definite step in his course, whether downward
or upward it would as yet be premature to say.
M. Odillon Barrot was unfit for the work which M. Leon
Faucher did not scruple to undertake. M. Leon
Faucher could not handle the work which M. Baroche
was found perfectly at home in. M. Baroche had
perforce stopped for breath when M. de Thorigny
came in and relieved him. But even M. de Thorigny
started back when the work of the 2nd of December
was to be done, and left his place to be taken by
M. de Morny. And now M. de Morny himself, the
gay, the audacious, the unscrupulous, even he appears
among the

"broken tools that tyrants cast away,"

and the scene is filled by M. de Persigny. How long
will it so be filled? When will the lower deeps than
that lowest importunately gape and be filled again?
What remains to be done which M. de. Persigny
himself may be found a too delicate instrument to do,
after seizing upon private property with as little
scruple as his predecessor laid hands on the public
liberties? One feels it must be much that will arrest
a service so eager and unblushing; and upon the
work that may yet await the successor of M. de
Persigny, therefore, the imagination forbears to dwell.

NARRATIVE OF POLITICS.

IT appears from the Revenue Returns for the year and
quarter ending the 5th instant, that the revenue of 1851
has fallen short of that of 1850 by rather more than
half a million. The receipts in the first and third
quarters of 1851 were greater than in 1850; in the
second and fourth they were less; but the fourth has
been the most unfavourable. In that quarter, the decrease
in 1851, as compared with the corresponding period of
1850, is £713,547. The decrease on the year has taken
place principally in the Stamps, Taxes, and Property-tax.
The falling-off in the receipts from Stamps (£162,092)
may be traced to the working of the new Stamp Act
(which has lightened the burdens on the transfer of
property); and the falling off in the receipts from
Taxes (£796,216) to the circumstance that the Window-tax
has ceased to be levied before the House-tax has
come into play. In the Customs, there is an increase of
£146,189 on the year; in the Excise, of £89,209; in the
Post-office, of £244,000. The increase in the last item
has been attributed in a great measure to the Industrial
Exhibition: and the falling-off in the receipts from
Customs (£37,193) and Excise (£162,950) during the
last quarter of the year, has been ascribed to a reaction
among the spending part of the community—a disposition
to economise in order to make up for the extra
expenditure incurred by visits to the Great Exhibition.

A large public meeting has been held at Newcastle to
petition Parliament against the renewal of the Property-
tax in any shape whatever. Mr. Hodgson Hinde moved
the principal resolution, with arguments that no
proposal would unite all interests in its favour except that
of total abolition; but at last it was resolved, that the
original resolution should be modified so as to demand
the abolition of the tax only so far as it applies to
income derived from trades and professions. In this
shape the resolution was carried by a large majority;
and it was resolved that a petition in accordance with
the resolution should be sent to the House of Commons.

A Declaration in support of the decision in the Gorham
Case, signed by 3262 names, nearly one fourth of the
officiating clergy of the Church of England, has been
forwarded to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York
who have expressed their approbation of its tenor. The
document contained these passages;—

"We, the undersigned clergy of the Church of England, viewing
with surprise and concern the attempts made by parties
holding office in the Church to invalidate and nullify the judgment
recently delivered by the Sovereign, as 'supreme governor
of this realm, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things
or causes as temporal,' by the advice of the Privy Council and
the Primates of the Church; in the case of 'Gorham versus the
Bishop of Exeter,' hereby testify our thankfulness for the judgment
so delivered; and feel ourselves called upon, under present
circumstances, (whether holding or not the view which called
forth the judgment,) humbly to state our conviction that it was
a wise and just sentence, in accordance with the principles of
the Church of England. . . . Such attempts we hold to be equivalent
to the enforcement of a standard of doctrine in our Church,
by unauthorised individuals, opposed to that established by its
supreme authority; and consequently, to be irreconcileable with
the first principles of all church polity, and necessarily to lead
to a state of disorder, strife, and confusion in the Church."

The Archbishop of Canterbury replied, that he had
great satisfaction in receiving the declaration. He
observed—

"There are many questions in theology upon which Christians
may differ without reproach to themselves or injury to
others. From the Reformation until the present time, numbers
of our clergy have subscribed the same articles, have used the
same formularies, have ministered in the same churches, whose
sentiments, if they had been obliged to state them with logical
precision, would have been found to vary, more or less from one
another, both with regard to regeneration and to the effect of infant
baptism. But this difference has not prevented their harmonious