Ittttro to tbt Crain.
IMPARTIAL EVIDENCE TO CHARACTER.
"0 that some power the gift wad gie us.
To see ourselves as others see us."
Sin—As you have shown a strong attachment to representative government, through good report and ill, and as you are, indeed, the only one of the "lead- ers of opinion" who has invariably written upon the subject in a rational and philosophical spirit, perhaps you will permit me to call the attention of yourself and your readers to a passage in the last number of La .Revue des Deux Mendes, which shows that there are even in France some who have not bowed their knees to that Baal of bureaucratic despotism which has even found worshipers in this country among some who affect the canting formula of " Parliaments are worn out." The following is an attempt to translate this striking passage which occurs in an article signed Ch. De Mixed°, that does honour to the very able periodical in which it appears. "The late crises have produced in England a striking spectacle, which we may study with profit. We have heard a great deal of the impossibility, of directing a great question of foreign policy in the midst of the endleaa discussions of the Constitutional system. But now we see that such a question has arisen, and assuredly a graver question never did arise : Parliament was sitting ; it naturally followed the successive incidents of these complicated negotiations, and addressed questions to the Go- vernment; but from the moment that the Cabinet based its refu- sal to answer upon the ground of regard for the public interest, the questions ceased. There are French journals which have indulged their whim of making themselves merry at the expense of England, because in England, they say, people know nothing of the Government, while France has the Moniteur. It would have been better if they had had the good sense to admire that firm aspect of a free people which restrains itself from embarrassing its government in the pursuit of an interest of the first order. It is thus that England has gained the power of remaining unshaken in the midst of the revolutions which have overthrown Europe, and of continuing constitutional and free in the midst of the re- actions to which those revolutions have given birth. At the moment when men are denying the vitality of the Parliamentary system, England has shown this system in all its power and self-restrained force. One of the dangers which threatened the constitutional government of England was the almost complete dissolution of parties which has taken place of late years. The present Ministry has come expressly to arrest this dissolution—to en- deavour to create by a coalition of different forces a new system of politics ; and it is no small proof of Britishpatriotism, that it supports the Ministry in this work. England forms coalitions for her preservation, as we have formed ours for our own destruction."
If" fas eat et ab hoste doceri," there are surely some even of those fine gentlemanly exquisites of politics now deeming "Parliaments a bore" who will listen to this voice from over the Channel, so wise, so candid, and so true.
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