The Sun.
London, England, 1856-06-17 00:00:00

MR. BESTE'S NEW WORK.

Modern Society in, Row:. A N3vel. By J.
Richard Baste. 3 vols. Hurst and Biackett.
Encouraged by the brilliant success of " The
Wabash," Mr. Baste, we are delighted to find, has
followed up that very charming record of travels
And adventures in America by a work yet more

remarkable of its kind, yet more valuable as a me-
dium for political information, and yet more at-
tractive in every way as a means of popular enter-
tainment. These three most readable volumes,
entitled " Modern Society in Rome"—a novel ori-
ginally entitled by its author " Coming Out ; or,
the Siege of Rome," but ultimately issued from
the press, as we have seen, under a somewhat more
vague and generic designation. Upon the thread
of a purely imaginary narrative, Mr. Beste has
strung together a series of Pacts—the Pearls of His-
tory—picked up by him, so to speak (during a so-
journ in the Eternal City), from among the blood
and dust of a most memorable, and, as it proved,
a most calamitous Revolution. " Few foreigners,"
he tells us plainly in so many words (ii., 303),
"can have known Romans of all classes so inti-

roately as it has been our lot to know them for the
last two-end-thirty years." Aided by this intimate
41lowledge of the people, extending over a period
of more than three decades, and familiarised as an
eye-witness with the incident of the event in which
that people became invorvedduring the two momen-
tous years of 1818 and 1810, the world-famous
and extraordinary event of the Roman Revolution
..—the writer of these enthralling pages speaks to
ne with an authoritative voice which but few
among us will be inclined to gainsay after recog-
ilising throughout the forty-four chapters into
'which the three volumes are subdivided, the indo-
mitable truthfulness and inflexible impartiality
With which every sentence appears to have been
dictated. The author is a man evidently of corn-
haon sense as well as of ardent enthusiasm. He
loves Liberty, but he abhors Licence. He hates
nepotism, but still more, it seems to us, does he
loathe Anarchy with a profound and ineradicable
loathing. And in this mood it is that he recounts
to us the rise, progress, and development of the re-
volutionary outbreak at Rome. It is no wonder,
!lien, that the candid annals of that outbreak as
they have been penned by bar. Beste in very bold
and very legible characters, should already have
received an unanimous and cordial welcome from
the Liberals of the United Kingdom. A welcome
the most cordial, be it added, from those among
11,8 who sympathise the most earnestly with the
hopes of those who still cherish a belief in the beau-
tiful day-dreams of Italian Regeneration. Day
dreams, please God, yet destined to attain in
heaven's good time the epoch of their ulterior and
Permanent realisation.
Although considerable ingenuity has been dis-
Played by Mr. Beste in weaving together the actual
and romantic in this really enthralling narrative
illustrating many of the more remarkable phases
observable in the " Modern Society" of Rome, it
roust be at once confessed by ourselves that the
Principal charm of the work is discovered, to our
thinking, almost exclusively in those portions of
It which partake of the nature of strictly historic
description. The loves of Horace Enderby and Mary
Aglethorpe ; the rivalries of the former with the
li
tarquis Casaveccbia; the heartless ambition of Caro-
'ele which raises her from au English Heiress into
I Roman Highness, investing her in the end with
the
sesquipedalian dignities of Duchess Angus-
uniani, Princess of Campagna, Marchioness of Ma-
reinme, Countess of Pontine, Baroness and Lady
of Malaria, and wife of a grandee of Spain (titles
Which in their humorous satire would be
dear, we fancy, to the heart of Mr. Thacke-
ray), and winning all this by the eccentric
device of running off with the said grandee of
Spain and Prince of Rome, to Gretna Green !
-Incidents like these are ail very amusing in their
Way, particularly when described as they are de-
-I;eribed by Mr. Beste, with a very captivating live-
!loess. But so much more important and interest-
2ng to our mind are the political facts recounted in
;his romantic fiction, that we are fain to look at
last upon even the most amiable of the imaginary
characters introduced to our notice as bores,
hardly less intolerable than that terrible
and , stupendous bore immortalised by the
ncil pf Richard Doyle—the Bore of Bores who
flaunted and harried our unfortunate friends
llessrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson. After a
little while, and when we have fairly got floated
?flint° the current of the historic events, carry-
' Leg Us onward from Reforms to Republicanism—
We don't care a jot (comparatively speaking) for
the gaieties enjoyed by Mr. and Mrs. Middleton
Aglethorpe—we don't care a straw for old Mr. Oilier
and his queer semi-religious, semi-erotic intrigues
"--We don't care a fig for my Lord Rangerleigh,
With his lugubrious masquerading—we don't care
°ea snap of the fingers for the Mrs. Harris of the
Story, one Miss Webb, an ox-governess, who is
rendered from time to time the nominal recipient
°t Mary Agelthorpe's gay and gossiping correspond-
ence. It becomes troublesome, indeed, towards the
.lelle of the work under notice, to bava our
attention called away from a consideration of the
enthralling occurrences winding up the Tragic
'Drama of the Political History of Modern Rome—
,',o contemplate the vagaries and eccentricities of
two or three (as they appear to us) thoroughly
eartless creatures of the imagination. Thoroughly
„..eoartless we repeat-for do not Mary and
41orace ogle each other into a mutual declaration
°1 love immediately after the latter has brought
to the former tidings of the disappearance from
between them of poor Casavecchia by means of a
' lielent death in an adjacent hospital ? Do not these
:tely tender-hearted lovers continue their "billing
liaacooinc," uninterruptedly in the very room where
-etary'S unfortunate maid-servant lies dead, bleeding
44 frightfully disfigured, with her head just blown
riu their presence by the crash of a cannon ball ?
crowning amatory scene of the picture indeed
being &sort of a ghastly sandwich of—love between
‘Wo murders ! And thoroughly heartless the
Author himself must assuredly admit his other hero
and heroine to be—Caroline Aglethorpe only mar-
rying the Duke Augustiniani in order that she
leay be a Roman Princess, the Duke marrying
earoljne, in his turn, it would seem, in the first
Place to the end that he may enjoy the pos-
aession of her large fortune, and, in the second, that
after reaching Gretna Green he may tarry there
With his bride to gluttonise upon grouse, exclaim-
ing with an audible smack of the lips over his
banquet, "Cosa stupenda, quel grouse Yet even
With these kind of personages thronging about us
14 We wander on through the fictitious portion of
the narrative, the purely imaginary part of Mr.
Beste's story is not by any means without its at-
tractions. The author contrives by a clever de-
-I:ice to conduct us in company with Middleton
g4thorpo and his associates through most of the
interesting scenes visited by every traveller to the
sternal City. In this way we do not close the
hook without becoming familiarised in a great
, tpeasure with both ancient and modern Rome-
-4.1,11e Rome of- Cicero and Virgil, and the Rome of
Aaffielle and Michael Angelo. That duplex and
''Wondrous capital, the glory of which, according to
recent dictum of Napoleon 111. " does not
.eonsist in the beauty of the modern city,"
4211 more than in the ruined grandeur of the
t•kneient, but rather " in beholding the remains
ef the old colossal empire lying prostrate in homage
before the Cross 1" Traversing Rome in imagina-
tion with our author, we are conducted by him into
the Pantheon with its vast and open dome ; into
.4ke Colisium with its tier upon tier of crumbling
aiehes covered with ivy, and lichen, and blooming
Weeds ; into. St. Peter's, where—
" Power, strength, and beauty all are aisle('
In an eternal Ark of worship undefiled :"
a,lrt upon the green and ruin-covered campagna ;
down into the awful galleries of the Catacombs,
Where six millions of human skeletons are com-
Med to lie buried, galleries stretched forth on
!very side in the entrails of the earth to the appal-
ling length, it is calculated of not less than one
thousand mileS ! The most tragical and enthralling
41cident described in this tale by our novelist is
Without doubt the incident of Caroline Aglethorpe
being lost in the silence and darkness of these dread-
tol and labyrinthine catacombs. Asbeyond all ques-
tion the humorous description i u the same work is the
deliciously comic and Gilpin-like account of the
universal panic created in the town of Veroli by
4 arrival there one fine day of a handful of Gari-
ealdiana. The incident of the lost lady in the
Catacombs we cannot but imagine to have been
suggested by a casual remark as to the dangers of
that subterranean maze thrown out incidentally
the other day by the learned and gifted author of
that most exquisite tale " Fabiola." The ludi-
e....rous description of the panic of the poor
verolians, on the other hand, while it would
be "nuts" to such a humorist as Irving,
reminds us, by its almost interminable sequence of
One laughter-moving " effect " out of another, of
that group in Hogarth's " March to Finchley,"
Where the young officer kisses the milkmaid, who
-iallereupon robbed of her milk by a wag, who is
litaighingly watched by a pieman, who is robbed in
tt of his tarts by another spectator ! Re-
Witing, to mind in another way also, by the mere
force of its ridiculous incongruities, Sir Benja-
tttio 33ackbite's circumstantial account of the
tistol-s hot " which struck against the little bronze
of Shakspere over the fireplace, grazed out of
the window at a right angle, and wounded the
postman who was coming to the door with a double
etter from No-rthampton." Reading Mr. Beste's
he of the g7-aaicl and übiquitous " funk" of
e People of Veroli, it is impossible not to roeog-
ni •
fte In him a humorist of very delightful facetious-

.ness; • As impossible as not to perceive perpetually
through the prevailing sentiments of the work, po-
litically considered, that its author is in the largest
sense of the term a Liberal—neither a Whig nor a
Radical, neither a party man nor a day-dreaming
experimentalist, but a practical Liberal, born, and
bred, and educated under the benign influences
of our tripartite Constitution.
As a matter of course the literary production
under notice affords us indirectly an idea of the
social condition of the Modern Romans, particularly
in the fashionable circles, amonc, the Princes and th e
Cardinals. A condition we should not surmise to

be very far advanced beyond the ruder usages of
an earlier time when we find a lady " pointing "
at a grand reunion in the salons of a palace (i. 48)
' " pointine." (as ladies and gentlemen used
to point in the days of Miss Fanny Burney)—
and yet tolerated ! The political condition of the
Roman people, however, is the chief subject
brought under our consideration while hurry-
ing eagerly through these three volumes of
actual and fictitious adventures. The political
condition of the Roman people being all the more
interesting at any moment (even at a moment ap-
pacently the most inauspicious) from a remembrance
of the incontrovertible fact alluded to in the Pon-
tifical Proclamation of Pius the Ninth, dated
the 10th of February, 1848—namely, that
scarcely 3,000,000 of Roman subjects, should have
positively scattered over the surface of the globe,
interested in their career and sympathising in their
aspirations, 200,000,000 of brothers of every nation
and language !
It were idle, of course, to follow Mr. Beste step
by step in his record of the gradual advance of
the revolutionary movement in the Eternal City,
from the earlier and spontaneous reforms adven-
tured upon by his Holiness Pope Pius the Ninth
to the momentous juncture when the Sove-
reign Pontiff refused (as Priest rather than
Prince) to draw the sword against the Aus-
trians, as the arch-enemies of Italian Indepen-
dence. It is an old, sad story, now familiar
to us all—a tale of lofty and holy hopes dashed
suddenly down to the very dust, the incidents of
which cannot very soon be lost to European re-
membrance ! The narrative, as here given, of ens
with a brilliant record of the popular
ovation given to the Reforming Pontiff on
the first day of 1848, by the enthusiastic
Roman multitude. A. description all the more
interesting, as affording a graphic picture
of the extraordinary personage of whose ad-
Tent upon the political stage it was finely remarked
soon afterwards—if we recollect rightly, by
"Father Prout," in his character as Daily Hews
Correspondent—Fait homo misses a Deo cui
nonten erat Joannes. A little further on we meet
with a vivid sketch of the Gonsalvi of the Ninth
Pius, the President of the Council of State—Car-
dinal Antonelli. Subsequently we come in the
stirring times that then succeed the first halcyon
days of Reform, upon much stranger and wilder
figures than that of Cardinal Antonelli. We find
Brunetti otherwise Ciceruachio, transformed into
a political leader, from being, as Mr. Beste oddly
enough describes him (i. 122), " a good, ignorant,
religious blackguard !" We come upon a po-
litical exile—Mr. Beste calls him (ii. 113) " a
scoundrel"—named Zanibianchi, the police officer
of the mob, who marders the priests in cold blood
in the days of terrorism, and attaches infamy to
the new-born Republic as at once its Samson and
its Tinville ! We come—in the days of that short
lived but memorable Republic—upon a personage
described by our author as (i. 301) " half-madman
and half-buffoon "—the Prince of Canino.

Demagogues then follow one another into the
arena very rapidly—Pietro Sterbini with his black
beard and spectacles—Reduci with his gang of
cut-throats—Gcivazzi with the scarlet cross sewed
upon his cassock—Cernuschi with his inflammatory
half-burlesque, half-grandiloquent bulletins from
the Barricades ! Several conspicuous personages,
however, who took a leading part in the Italian
struggle, we regret to find awanting in this curious
gallery of portraits. For example, we should have
liked vastly to have read Mr. Beste's account of
Gioberti and Ventura, or, again, of such patriot
chiefs as Pepe and Manin. In default of these
we might amuse the reader with some incidental
reference to the Roman Triumvirs—to Saji--to
" the old turncoat Armellini" (ii. 328)—0r, at any
rate, to the mention here made of the most impor-
tant of the three—Giuseppi Mazzini. Due com-
memoration in regard to whom is, of course, made
by our author, of what he aptly terms (ii. 323) the
" pride, obstinacy, patriotism, and enthusiasm of
that overgrown schoolboy for the classic times he
had read of;" one whose followers are afterwards
spoken of as (iii.-72) " mere classical mounte-
banks." Mr. Beste's favourite, however, in all
that stormy struggle is a far more picturesque per-
sonage in every particular—being no other than
the famous condottiere Garibaldi.

By a most extraordinary anachronism, Mr.
Beste, in another portion of his entertaining
account of the events of 1848-49, introduces
at one of the Roman balls (ii. 102-3) " Prince
Frederick William of Prussia said to the fiance of
our Princess Royal "—and his Royal Highness
(who must then have been a mere boy, and quite
uumarriageble) is then described as extending his
hand in a quadrille to a young English lady (Mary
Aglethorpe to wit) " with an offensive air of proud
condescension, as if ho thought her honoured in
the extreme by the touch of his glove I" Return-
ing to the more important subject of the political
state of Rome, as depicted iu this view of its
" Modern Society," it deserves to be briefly re-
marked that our historical novelist has duly re-
corded upon his pages the successive ministerial
changes which prepared the way for the bombard•
ment of the Quirinal, for the flight of the Pope to
Gaeta, and for the seizure of supreme power by the
Republican Triumvirate. At the outset, even
down to the time when Count Terenzio Mamiani
was Prime Minister, with the Duke of Rignano
pres Ming• over Public Works, and Prince Doria
Parnphilj at the head of the War Department,—it
might have been said of that Government, as was
said of the Government of the Last of the Roman
Tribunes (Vita di Cola di Rienzi, lib. i. cap. 21),
that the fame of that so good Government passed
into every land—" Allora fama di si buono reggi-
mento passi in ogni terra ! " But as time went on,
other changes became necessary ; and when at
length " poor old Count Fabbri and his friends"
were driven by stress of weather from the helm of
the State vessel, and when Pelegrino Rossi
was announced as the new Prime Minister on the
16th day of September, the position of affairs was
in truth at last becoming by that time very
desperate. So desperate—that we all know
how soon afterwards poor Rossi was murdered !
Murdered upon the steps of the hall in which sat
at the moment, unmoved, the men whom our
author mentions (ii. 144) with a noble scorn, as
" the assassin-representatives of an assassin-mob !"
Then, says our author, " Pio Nono soon learned
the deed his Romans had done, and terror and
despair quite overwhelmed him. He had wrought
for their liberty and well-being as Pope had never
wrought before ; and this was his reward—the as-
sassination of the Minister in whom ho trusted."
It was not long after that that the Pope was as-
sailed in his palace by the multitude, when there
wore assembled together about the person of the
prince, to whom they were accredited, ambassadors
from almost all the great powers of Christendom.
" There were the Due D'Harcourt, ambassador from
France ; Martinez della Rosa, from Spain ; Count Spaur,
minister of Bavaria ; Venda da Cruz, from Portugal ; Do
Boutenef, from Russia ; Liedekerko, from Holland ; Do
Figueredo, Charg6 d'Affaires of Brazil ; De Maistre, secretary
of Legation for Belgium ; and De Canitz, for Prussia."
A little later, and the Pope escapes from his as-
sailants—assisted in his flight by the Bavarian
Minister, Count Spaur, " a man about seven feet
high, and large in proportion." His Holiness
quitting the Quirinal—" in the simple garb of a
Priest, such as he had donned it years before in
his quiet youth"—wearing "a dark great coat over
his cassock, a low-crowned round hat, and a broad
brown woollen neckcloth outside his straight Roman
collar." It is curious enough, after reading Mr.
Beste's,description of the Flight of the Pope to Gaeta,
and. of th'e bombardment of Rome by the French
army under Oudinot, to find the liberal English
gentleman who was an eye-witness of the events,
and who (as Ins book proves him to be) is exactly
the reverse of an infatuated admirer of the Pontifical
Government, declaring explicitly (ii., 283) :
" The federative union of all Italy,
imagined by Pius the
Ninth, and the constitutional represuntatiTe government of
the Roman states, which he first granted to his people, is
that which must be resorted to whenever foreign bayonets are
withdrawn from the support of the existing system."
Enough, however, has been already remarked to
• justify all we have said as to the enthralling interest
and invaluable information compacted together in
this singularly attractive work. "Modern Society
in Rome," by the author of " The Wabash "—a
production quite unexampled, we believe, of its
F kind, being, in fact, au historical romance f times
immediately contemporary.

M. de LArnartine has, it is said, set apart for the
sufferers by the flo,,ds the entire amount of the subscrip•
tions to his " Familiar Course of Literature," the sub-
scribers numbering 60,000, at 20g. per annum.
NEW INVENTION.— Mr. Dewdney, of Fenchurch-
Street, who has achieved a world-wide reputation, as a
hair jeweller'' has invented a royal silk patent respirator,
which applied to the chest creates a regular and even
circulation of the blood highly effective in all diseases
of the chest. At the last Bazaar held for the benefit of
the Bronapton Hospital, Mr. Dewdney's invention was
found upon the tables of the elite, and created great
interest in the medical world. If Mr. Dewdney can
prolong life as well as in his beautiful works of art he
has hitherto preserved many pleasing memories, he will
have achieved muoh, and perpetuate his name.

THI AMERICAN QUESTION.

The following address to the people of the United
States has been prepared by the Liverpool Financial

Association :

TO THE COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CLASSES OF THE
UNITED STATES oF AMERICA.

" Friends and Brethren,—ln the present critical posi-
tion of our international relations, we, the Council of
the Liverpool Financial Reform Association, deem it our
duty to address to you a few words of friendly remon-
strance, in the hope that our doing so may be the initia-
tion of such an expression of the national determination
on both sides of the Atlantic as will serve to convince
those to whom we have respectively deputed the manage.
ment of our affairs that, whatever they may wish or pro-
pose, they cannot, and they shall not, transform the
people of two nations so closely united as yours and ours
into deadly and unrelenting enemies. We take up this
question on higher grounds than are afforded by finan.
cial or mercantile considerations only, though their im-
portance can hardly be overrated ; and we believe that
the sentiments we are about to express are those enter-
tained by our fellow-countrymen of the commercial and
industrial classes, almost without exception. May they
be re-echoed in the same spirit.
" There is a rumour of war between us ! For a long
time past your diplomatists and ours have been corres-
ponding, with more or less of acrimony and supercilious.
ness on either side. We confess frankly that hitherto we
have paid no attention, or very little, to their disputes.
Do not attribute this apparent neglect to indifference.
It has arisen partly from a sort of foregone conclu-
sion that, whatever they might say or do, a quarrel
between you and us, to be brought to the mortal ar-
bitrament of arms, was in the nature of things all but
impossible, and partly from the fact that our system
of diplomacy, aristocratic both in its instruments and
objects, is secret in its operations. The theory of our
rxlers is that the making of treaties, whether these re-
late to peace or war, is a branch of the Royal prero-
gative, with which we (the people) have no concern be-
yond finding the means for their observance—not even
a right to know what is doing until all is done, and
we are irrevocably bound by their stipulations. We
aim at the reversal or modification of this ♦ery slavish
theory, and hope to accomplish it by and by. In the
meanwhile, permit us to observe that you also have been
quiescent, without the same excuse for your supine-
ness ; for your diplomacy is open ; your Executive can
de nothing definitive without the sanction of the legis-
lative branch of your constitution, of which you have
the appointment far more effectively than we of ours.
Whence is it, then, if you do really disapprove of the
acts of your Ministers, as we are led to believe you do,
that there has bee❑ no public manifestation of your dis-
approval ?
"The causes of your inactivity up to the present
period have been indicated; for yours we can only account
on the supposition that you, with us, have believed it all
but impossible that diplomatic warfare should terminate
in actual hostilities. As to the merits of the questions
at issue we shall, of course, differ ; but you must agree
with us that, whatever be the pretexts, a war between
Great Britain and America would cast into the shade of
insignificance all the scenes of carnage that have dis-
graced and cursed the world since the son of the first
man slew his brother Abel. Standing apparently on the
verge of such a deadly check to human progress and civi-
lisation, it surely becomes the people of both countries,
as rational beings, to ask themselves seriously for what
it is they are about to fight, and whether there is any
necessity for fighting at all. Aggressive war may be the
ultimo ratio of kings ; but for the rest of mankind it is,
generally speaking, the perfectio❑ of human folly.
" Connected with you by affinities of race, language,
institutions, and religion, as well as by common interests,
we have no feelings towards you but those of friendship,
no wishes but for your prosperity, no desire but that the
immense capabilities of your country may be developed
to the fullest possible extent. In all this we claim no
credit for disinterestedness, since with your welfare our
own is closely involved ; you cannot prosper without
our deriving most substantial advantages from your pro-
gress ; nor can you suffer a check to your well-being,
which will not react most strongly upon our own. All
that is true of material British interests as regards Ame-
rica is equally true of American interests as regards
Great Britain. Are we wrong is assuming that the
feelings of the commercial and industrious classes of this
country towards America are those which animate Ame-
ricans of the same classes towards Great Britain ?

" If there be indeed this bond of friendship and mu-
tual interest between us, for what is it that our respec-
tive rulers, no matter which are right or wrong, would
have us quarrel ? Is it to vindicate any great principle,
to enforce any right, or to avenge any wrong ? Nothing
of the kind. The mother of mischief, says the proverb,
is no bigger than a midge's wing ; and, verily, the origin
of the misunderstanding which threatens such tremen-
dous consequences would seem to be of no larger dimen-
sions. It rests en two grounds—the enlistment question,
and the actual meaning of a treaty concluded between
our respective Governments. Of these it is difficult to
say which, comparing both with the mighty results that
may proceed from them, is most insignificant.
" As to the first, the people of this country disap-
proved from Vie first of the Governmental project for rais
Mg reinforcements for the Crimean war either in America
or in Europe, and it was only forced on Parliament by
the threat of Ministei ial resignation. It was and is the
universal conviction that, with the same inducements
that were offered to foreigners, at much less expense,
and without danger of embroilment with friendly nations,
any number of Britihh recruits that might be required
would have been forthcoming. We must say, however,
that for what our Government proposed to do in America
they scorn to have had the implied, if not the express,
sanction of yours. What else is to be inferred from your
Minister's observation that the American Government
would enforce the strictest observance of the neutrality
laws in •its own territory, but that there was nothing
to prevent any American citizen or resident from leav-
ing the States and enlisting elsewhere in any foreign
service, if it pleased him to do so ? On this hint
arrangements, supposed to he perfectly compatible
with your laws, seem to have been made ; but
these were abandoned before a single man had been en-
listed, on grounds which common sense ought to have
suggested to our Ministers, in the first instance, as con-
clusive against the making of any such experiment.
They have since, however, formally and solemnly dis-
claimed all intention to infringe your laws; they have
expreseed.their regret if any such infringment has oc-
cured ; they have tendered what is here considered an
apology for all that may have been done amiss, either
by themselves or their agents; but they have refused to
submit to the degradation of branding with recall and
disgrace the principal of these agents, because they say
they believe him to be guiltless of any offenre. Your
Government has dismissed, or are about to dismiss Mr.
Crampton ; should ours lack the magnanimity of re-
fraining from reprisals and dismiss Mr. Dallas, you
will no longer have a Minister at London nor we at
Washington. But the temporary cessation of diploma-
tic relations between our respective Governments need
not bring with it any interruption of friendly intercourse
between you and us. We can manage our affairs quite
as well without as with them ; and, in any event, this
is no question to go to war about.
" Our second supposed ground of quarrel seems to us
equally irrational with the fret. There is a differ-
ence as to the interpretation of a treaty. Our nego-
tiator says that he meant one thing,—yours that he
meant another ; our two Governments are at issue as to
the meaning of both and the true construction of their
united handiwork, which, nevertheless, is there in black
and white, and to speak for itself. Our Government
has offered to submit the whole question to any arbitra-
tor whom yours shall select, and to abide by his decision,
whatever that may be. As between man and man
nothing can be fairer than such a proposition ; why not,
thee, as between nation and nation? Your Ministers
refuse to act upon it. They say that their own con-
struction is the only true one,—that there cannot be two
opinions on the matter, and consequently that there is
nothing whereon to arbitrate. But, being so confident,
why reject. a reference ? If they be right the task of
the arbitrator will be all the lighter, the delay in an
amicable settlement all the less ; but when there are no-
toriously two opinions on the subject which is Paid to
admit only of one, the party standing so obstinately on
its own as to refuse to submit them to an umpire of its
own selection would seem to be manifestly and con-
sciously in the wrong. Such, at least, would be the
conclusion in any dispute between individuals, and the
same reasoning holds as to a dispute between nations.
"Again, we ask you, in all solemnity, is there any-
thing in this second ground of difference, or in both of
them put together, which should set us to destroying
each other's cities, cutting each other's throats, and
doing all that in us lies for the utter destruction of
cash other's name and nation Z eason, justice, com-
mon sense, humanity, religion, all answer, loudly and
emphatically, `No.'
" We were told by our Prince Consort during the late
war that that war load put representative institutions
on their trial, and that it might be found necessary to
diminish our present freedom both of speech and pub-
lication. -This was the captious objection of an indi-
♦idual whose residence among us seems not yet to
have eradicated the despotic leanings contracted by his
continental birth and breeding ; but if war between
the only two great countries in the world which have re
presentative institutions founded on the sovereignty of the
people is to result from such causes as those which we
have examined, most truly may it be said, not that such
institutions are upon their trial, but that they have been
tried and are condemned. How utterly worthless must
they be if the squabbles of deputed Ministers, having
merely personal ends of their own to serve, can suf-
fice to set two friendly nations in deadly opposition to
each other I How gladly will the upholders of the des-
potic principle look on and laugh while the two great
champions of human freedom and human progress are
engaged in an internecine war, a fratricidal, at d a
suicidal struggle, which, in whatever way it termi-
nates, must be mutually exhaustive, and is sure to
end at last in some paltry compromise, after the squan-
derim► of millions of treasure and the shedding of oceans
of blood
" To protest against so dire a calamity to you, to our-
selves, and to the whole human race, is the object of this
address. We may say, also, to prevent its occurrence ;
for we feel assured that if you, the commercial and in-
dustrial classes of America, are actuated towards us by
the Same feelings as those which animate the people of
this country with regard to you, we shall not enter upon
this course of mutual destruction. Our rulers and yours
may bluster as they please, but with the veto of their
constituents on any proceedings to extremities war be-
tween us is impossible.
" By order of the Counc►l.
"ROBERTSON GLADSTONE, President.
"Liverpool, June 9."