counties. But they had not the gilding of high name, nor the support of large aristocratic connection. They affected comparatively smaller masses, and had less chance of meeting with implicit acquiescence. The eye of an industrious, active, commercial community is of itself a check almost equivalent to positive legal control; but this is not within the range of an agricultural population, comparatively isolated, or only acting together at stated periods, and at long intervals, and habitually under the same heads.

We trust we shall have an opportunity of entering fully into this matter, and comparing the existing want of all self-government in the local concerns of the agricultural classes of this country, with the wise and liberal measure which they enjoy in almost every other where a municipal system has been established, as part and parcel of one and the same local code. We are not ignorant of the fierce opposition which such "an innovation" as this will meet with, from those directly concerned in perpetuating the old abuses; but precisely the same clamours we have heard from the old enjoyers or supporters of corporate monopoly. The late debate on Mr. Hume's Bill in the Commons fully attests that the old Tory exclusive spirit is still the same, under every variety of modification, and that it feels not less sensitively when touched in a justice of peace, than in a town clerk. No surprise could be felt at hearing the people refused the management of their own funds, when such had been not the exception, but the rule of Tory political creed and conduct, for more than a century. The people, however, need not for that despair. The period is gradually approaching when, on this point, both the central and local powers will unite to wrest their functions from the hands of their present usurpers.

We intended to have ended as we had begun, with Ireland. We find it now impossible. We shall merely content ourselves with asking a simple, but a comprehensive question. Republics have their municipal government. Constitutional monarchies have theirs; even Despotisms are not without them.-Is Ireland to be held the only country in Europe incapable of exercising, and unworthy of enjoying such rights?

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ARTICLE VI.

Report from the Select Committee on the Consular Establishment: ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 10th August 1835.

WHEN the Committee was sitting from which this report has emanated, the question of accrediting a British consul to the free town of Cracow was already discussed. Mr. Bidwell, the consular clerk in the Foreign Office, admitted “that "it might be of advantage, but that it depended upon the "Secretary of State" (Evidence, 1315): and the general feeling of the members on the committee was, as we have good reason to believe, strongly in favour of the appointment. In September 1835, this Journal first brought the matter before the public, and the arguments which we then used excited some attention in this country, and elicited much discussion on the Continent. A report spread that a consul would be appointed by the English government; but the protecting Powers, whose baneful influence over the free, neutral and independent state we had pointed out, took a decisive measure, which changed the position of the question, by occupying the city. We then demanded that an extraordinary agent should be dispatched to inquire into the circumstances attending this flagrant breach of treaties: the subject was warmly taken up in the House of Commons, and the able statements of Sir Stratford Canning were terminated, to the great satisfaction of all sides of the House, by a formal declaration of Lord Palmerston that the evil was great, the violation of treaties manifest, and that a British consular agent would certainly be sent to Cracow. On the faith of this ministerial promise, expressed in the most emphatic manner, we were content to wait; the parties most interested in the protection which they hoped to receive from the presence of an English consul, still cherished a confident expectation that the measure so boldly announced would ultimately be carried into execution. When on a sudden, without any serious change in the position of affairs, the noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs informs Lord Dudley Stuart and the House of Commons, that he has changed his mind and that no appointment has been or will be made.

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It is scarcely credible that a minister can be guilty of such mischievous vacillation, without forfeiting every claim to the esteem of honest men and the co-operation of any political party. Who was it whose purpose of sending a consul to Cracow, though as yet indistinctly avowed, hastened the unjustifiable encroachments of the three Powers? Who ventured in the House of Commons to declaim on wrongs and injustice which he has never attempted to redress-on rights and duties which he has never dared to assert or to perform? Was this, (to use the very words of the noble Secretary in the speech of the 18th March 1836, to which we refer) was this an involuntary homage to the justice and plain dealing of "this country ?" If, at any future time, Lord Palmerston gives an assurance in his official capacity, either to the senate of England or to the exchange of London, no members of the legislative body are so blind as not to see that he is deluding their hopes-no merchants are so careless as not to suspect that he may be betraying their interests. Or should he ever remonstrate, with more sincerity than on the present occasion, against a violation of promises by foreign powers, those governments may remind the noble viscount that however lax they are in their engagements to their opponents, he outdoes them far in the art of breaking faith with his friends. Time was, when the word of an English minister passed for a deed; and whilst no foreign power could restrain us from the fulfilment of a pledge, no pledge was considered of light importance which a Secretary of State had publicly given in Parliament. That time is, it would seem, no more; but even if the subject now before us were totally devoid of interest and importance in itself, we would still uphold Lord Palmerston's desertion of this measure as a pernicious precedent of ministerial tergiversation, calculated to lower the Foreign minister in the eyes of England, and, what is far worse, to lower England in the eyes of the world.

Before we proceed to comment upon the motives which have been assigned for this discrepancy between the promises and the acts of Lord Palmerston's policy, we propose to take a rapid survey of the condition of Cracow in the course of the last twelve months; although the feeling of sorrow with which we record these arbitrary breaches of right and law, these

blots and stains of wrong, is deepened by the recollection that a minister of England has only responded to the cry of an oppressed population, in whose fate the interests and sympathies of our countrymen were largely concerned, by powerless denunciations and by impotent projects. If our readers are of the same opinion which Lord Palmerston professed to entertain last year," that it is as of much importance "to us to see that the independence of a state like Cracow "be not causelessly and wantonly disturbed, as if the case were "that of Prussia or any other powerful nation"-they may read a curious and not uninstructive lesson in the history of the events which have taken place in that venerable city. Our statement is compiled from the official documents and correspondence between the Conference and the Senate, a large portion of which we have in our hands.

No doubt can be now entertained that the occupation of Cracow by the troops of Austria, Russia and Prussia had been gradually prepared for a length of time before hand. Within six months from the termination of the Polish campaign, a convention was concluded between the three courts, on the demand of the Russian Resident, by which it was agreed that the territory of the republic might be occupied by equal detachments of the troops of the three Powers, on the joint demand of two of the Residents. In 1833 the Commissions were sent down, which imposed a new Constitution and a new Statute of the University on the Cracovians. Since that time the citizens have had no appeal from the three Powers, which, in the words of the last article of the constitution, "étant "garantes du présent Acte constitutionnel, se reservent le "droit de veiller à sa stricte observation." Unfortunately no fourth party claimed a right of enforcing its strict observance by the three powers themselves; and as it had been imposed upon the republic without our knowledge, it was broken without fear of our remonstrance. Nor was it easy for the citizens of Cracow to make a direct appeal to the protection of the other states which had joined in guaranteeing their former Constitution as it stood in the treaty of Vienna: such a proceeding would have been construed into a violent aggression on the rights of the Russian, Prussian and Austrian residents; and it is self-evident that a weak member of the

family of European states requires support most, when it is least able to call loudly for it.

No due official warning seems to have preceded the occupa tion; but for some months previously, such startling assertions had been spread by the German newspapers and the Russian and Austrian police-Cracow was painted in such frightful colours, and such alarming disturbances were represented to have actually taken place, that even the inhabitants of the adjacent Polish provinces were panic-struck. It was asserted that the Senate had been hung, and General Chlopicki (who resides in the city) assassinated. A part of these tales found their way into the Algemeine Zeitung, and when it was proposed by the Senate of Cracow to publish a contradiction of these notorious calumnies in the city gazette, the article which had been prepared for that purpose under the direction of the President of the Republic, was cancelled by the Censorship, at the instigation of the Residents! Of the utter falsehood of all these reports the most complete evidence is furnished by the unanimous declarations of the inhabitants; by the absence of all proof of the contrary, notwithstanding the domiciliary visits and the odious inquisitorial measures of the residents; by the energetic note addressed to Prince Metternich by M. Wieloglowski*, 25th Feb. 1836, to which we shall shortly refer; and by the frivolous nature of the only facts which ever were brought to light, namely, that a Jew of bad character was murdered near Cracow by a personal enemy not belonging to the city, that a stone was thrown at an illuminated window, and a cracker let off in a citizen's ball. Such are the topics which have been dignified by diplomatic correspondence, and magnified into an importance which might belong to the rockets and shells of an insurgent population! Yet such is the mysterious justice of despotic policy, and the stern necessity to which Lord Palmerston has been obliged to bow, that the freak of a schoolboy has robbed a thousand exiles of their country, and an independent European State has been effaced from the map by the explosion of a petard. But even this extraordinary event of the cracker had failed to rouse the inhabitants of

A translation of this valuable document has appeared in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. XXXVI., p. 428.