certainty that all hope of finding them must for ever be
surrendered. What Mr. Penny asserted last year of
the strong probability of a passage existing, open when
Barrow's Straits are closed, northward and north-west
of the Wellington Channel, is now under active
solution. Sir Edward Belcher has by this time
entered it, if it exists; and there, we can hardly doubt,
whether or not the climate beyond is fitted for the
habitation of man, the fate of Franklin will have left
its trace, if to ascertain it be now in any manner
possible. Let us observe, too, that another high-
spirited Englishman, who had ventured into regions
hardly less forlorn and cold than those of the Arctic
solitudes, has been saved and made his escape at the
cost of something short of ruin. After many years'
pitching about in courts legal and ecclesiastical, sat
upon by bishops, snubbed and stripped of office by
chapters and deans, the learned and honest master of
Rochester Grammar-school finds himself once more
reinstated among his scholars, though with the sum of his
own salary for three years added to the other mal-appropriations
of his opponents, and under enforced obligation
to future silence on the doings of those in authority
over him. Nor let us fail to note, if with a
very different kind of interest, another much-tossed
traveller, not escaped from icy wastes or desarts
episcopal or ecclesiastical, but coming willingly among
us from far southern oceans, and bringing home to us
with a strange vividness one of the most romantic of
all our stories of the sea. Many men still living must
remember the Mutiny of the Bounty, though they
could not know, till many years after its incidents
startled their boyhood, that the dozen Englishmen
who committed that great crime had betaken
themselves immediately after, with three savage women,
to one of the smallest and most lonely islands in the
southern ocean, and there formed a community
preserving civilised habits, practising Bible precepts,
holding land in common, singularly free from crime,
living chiefly on yams and bread fruits, marrying and
giving in marriage, talking a rude English, and now
constituting, after the lapse of about sixty years, a
commonwealth of nearly two hundred souls, all born
upon the island. Our present visitor is their
surgeon and pastor, who comes to get ordination from a
bishop, and to interest people here in his fellow-
islanders; for it is supposed, the little colony being
nearly half-way between Panama and Australia, that
one of the places at which steamers will have to
touch for water, when they begin to run, will be
Pitcairn's Island.

Of the world's wonder which is now being acted
out in France, there is small need to speak. Suffice
it to mark the very great probability which now
exists, that the day which sees the conqueror of
Napoleon laid by the side of Nelson in St. Paul's
Cathedral, will see the nephew of Napoleon installed
at the Tuilleries as his imperial successor, by the
name, style, and title of "Napoleon the Third,
Emperor of the French, King of Algeria, and Protector
of the Sanctuaries!"

NARRATIVE OF POLITICS.

The Gazette of the l6th, contains a royal proclamation
proroguing Parliament from the 21st instant to
Thursday the 4th of November, when it is to meet for
the dispatch of business.

A Parliamentary paper has just been printed, showing
the Public Income and Expenditure for the last Three
Years, ended the 5th of January. The income was
respectively £57,617,392, £57,431,796, and £56,834,711,
while the expenditure was in the three years as follows.
—In 1850, £55,480,656, leaving a surplus of income of
£2,166,736; in 1851, £54,938,534, leaving a surplus of
income of £2,493,262; and in 1852, £54,002,995, leaving
a surplus of income of £2,831,716. The expenditure on
account of the army, navy, and ordnance in the year
ended the 5th of January last was £14,573,856. There
is an appendix to the return, giving the expenditure in
detail. The charges of the collection of the Customs
and Excise last year were £1,300,679. The total charge
of collecting the revenue in the year was £2,708,426.
There has been repaid into the Exchequer on account of
King Leopold's annuity £36,000. Last year £146,392
was expended on account of the abolition of slavery,—
£84,762 as bounty on slaves, £15,150 to the
commissioners to prevent traffic in slaves, and £46,484 bills
drawn on account of captured slaves.

Mr. Beresford, the Secretary at War, in a speech at
an agricultural meeting at Castle Hedingham, on the
12th, denied that the present is a Protectionist Government.
He said:—" It has been said, and I say untruly
said, that her Majesty's Government came into office
upon the principles of Protection; and that, having
come in upon those principles, they have adopted the
tenets of their adversaries, and have seized hold of, and
are ready to carry out, all the dogmas of Free-trade. I
deny that position in toto. I know no reason that any
man has to say that the Government are Free-traders;
and I deny the other position also, that they did come
in in the slightest degree upon the principles of
Protection. That is a strange thing for us to say, but it is
not the less true. There were causes which operated
and produced it; but for one whole year preceding our
assumption of office, we did not as a party, nor did any
individual acknowledged as a leader of that party, bring
forward one single motion in which Protectionist
measures were in the slightest degree involved. How then
can it be said that we came in upon the principles of
Protection?" Then he explained how they came in.
"We came in at the command of her Majesty, to support
her in her just prerogative, and not to allow the official
business of the country to be thrown into the hands of
Sir James Graham and his Irish associates, or of Mr.
Cobden and the Manchester school. Therefore, I say,
we honestly and truly may declare that the first
proposition which was advanced is unfounded and unjust.
We did not come in upon Protectionist principles, or
upon a Protectionist motion; but we came in to do the
duty of the country at the bidding of our Sovereign;
and while that Sovereign and the country uphold us,
we are determined to fulfil those duties; and the country,
I believe, is fully satisfied with the manner in which
they have been performed up to the present moment."
He admitted that "considerable advantages had flowed
from the adoption of Free-trade" to "many interests,"
always excepting "the agricultural class." He thought
all the evil might have been prevented by the adoption
of a "fixed duty on corn." Lord Derby, "even late in
the present session," thought so too; but he had thought
it more fair to abide by the verdict of the constituencies.
"That verdict has been taken. But by the office, if I may
call it so, or rather by the situation which I filled so
long for that party, I am, alas! too well acquainted with
the lists, majorities and minorities, of the House of
Commons, not to be able, in taking up a list of the Parliament
which has just been returned, to perceive that
there is a decided majority of members in the Lower
House inimical to the feeling and the measure of
protection to agriculture." He asked whether it would be
wise "to force that forward when you can gain no
advantage." "They say—it is a Scriptural phrase—
that it is useless 'to kick against the pricks;' and I
firmly believe that in this instance, if we were to stir
this question, and to moot it in an unfortunate moment,
we should only throw further back the interest of those
for whom we would make any sacrifice. There are other
interests in the country, some of them nearly as high,
others higher still, which would be endangered if we
were to moot the question of Protection when we cannot
attain it. Are we to run the risk of sacrificing the
Protestant institutions of the country by bringing in Sir
James Graham and his Irish Brigade? Are we to run
the risk of bringing the Monarchy itself in peril by
bringing in Lord John Russell and the Democratic
principle which you have here alluded to?"