Irish. He was tried by a court-martial in Dublin, where he neither denied nor excused his crime, but rested his defence on being a citizen of France, and an officer in the service of that country. Being condemned, he requested the indulgence of being shot as a soldier, instead of being hanged as a felon, and on its refusal he cut his throat in prison, and died of his wound on the 19th of November.

This circumstance drew from Lord Castlereagh, in a letter to Mr. Wickham, by date November 16, 1798, some very judicious observations upon the expediency of military authorities trying by court-martial persons engaged in rebellion. The secretary points out, that whilst the rebels were in field in force, the necessity of punishment by military tribunals was so obvious as not to admit of a question; and that even afterwards, when the rebellion had degenerated into petty warfare, not less afflicting to the loyal inhabitants, the number of persons taken in the commission of the most shocking crimes was such as to render it impossible to trust to the usual administration of justice for the punishment of offenders. Such would indeed appear to been the feeling always entertained, and it is difficult to understand the sentimentality of the present day, which allows men to set all laws at open defiance, to appear in arms against the constituted authorities, to attempt to overthrow the Queen's government, and then shields them by all the technicalities of the law, and uselessly exposes the lives of twelve loyal men, by obliging them on their allegiance, to legislate in a case which ought to have been decided upon at the drumhead. It is always a gladdening sight to see the supremacy of the law established. It is still more gratifying, under such trying circumstances as have been brought about by the example of the continental revolutions, to see that the vigour of the constitution, as by law established and as by law explained, is unshaken throughout the three kingdoms. But still unsophisticated people will smile to hear of day after day being gravely spent in inquiring whether a man found in arms and surrounded with men-a man that headed a fight which lasted three quarters of an hour, against the constituted authorities, was guilty of treason! It is not only that by exchanging the jurisdiction, that from all times and in all countries has belonged to open rebellion, for that of courts of law; the state, as Lord Castlereagh justly remarked, is exposed to have its summary interference for its own prosecutions, deferred or thwarted in a manner most injurious to the public safety; but it is also, that beyond the identification of the prisoner and connecting him with his deeds, trial in such a case is a caricature of justice. We are by no means advocates of a vengeful justice, and still less so of (capital punishment, except in extreme cases. Open rebellion is one of these, and even where we pity and would spare the individual, we would make an example of the man, for the sake of the many dear lives that he would have brought into hazard-the widows and the orphans that he would have made the hearths that he would have left cold and cheerless-and the blood-stains that would have marked the track of his disloyal and treasonable footsteps.

The mischief sustained by the country from this unnatural contest is incalculable. The number of lives lost in it was computed at 30,000. Soon after the commencement of the insurrection, the sum of 100,000%. was voted by the Irish House of Commons, for the immediate relief of such refugees as should appear destitute of the means of subsistence.

The government afterwards extended its views to the compensation of loyalists, the total of whose claims amounted to 1,023,000l., of which 515,000l. belonged to the county of Wicklow.

Towards the conclusion of this disastrous campaign, the governments of both countries, enlightened by the experience of the past events, seized the idea of an incorporation of the two islands into one empire, by a legislative union, with the greatest warmth. Such a measure had been proposed in 1703 and 1707, by the Irish peers, in addresses to Queen Anne; but their wishes were coldly received, and no further notice was taken of them. When, in process of time, the nation acquired importance through the interference of the volunteers, and its parliament was declared independent in 1782, the British cabinet earnestly wished for incorporation; but the idea had long ceased to be palatable to the Peers, and had always been unpopular, indeed odious to the Commons and to the mass of the people.

After two such escapes as the nation had just had from the horrors of rebellion in the first place, and from those of invasion in the next, the British administration conceived that the time was at length come for proposing the measure of Union with some chance of success, confident, at least, that it would not run the risk of rejection by the sterling good sense of the English Parliament; and preparations were immediately made for introducing it to public discussion in Ireland, previously to its being submitted to the legislature.

We see by the letter of Lord Bayham to Lord Castlereagh (then Hon. Robert Stewart), dated February 4th, 1793, that the mind of the future secretary, was, at the very onset of his career, occupied with the idea of a legislative union between the two countries; and he never lost sight of a measure, in the carrying out of which he afterwards toiled as much, and contributed as much, as almost any other two individuals. The second volume of the "Memoirs and Correspondence" now before us may be considered as entirely devoted to papers relating to arrangements for a Union. Out of forty letters of Lord Castlereagh's, consigned to the volume in question, almost every one contains reference to the same all-important subject. The Duke of Portland's letters, those of Mr. Elliot, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Wickham, and of Mr. Pitt, have generally reference to the same great object. The gratitude due to the illustrious statesman who, by his unremitting toil to benefit the two countries, ultimately sacrificed his health and spirits, and last of all his life, is best manifested in the fact, that since the passing of that measure, Ireland has had her population doubled, and her shipping and commerce, internal and external, quadrupled. By this Union she has obtained Parliamentary Reform, Roman Catholic Emancipation, a National System of Education, a Legislative Provision for the Poor, a Commutation of Tithes, a Reform in her Corporations, a perfect Freedom of Trade with Great Britain, and many other important advantages, more especially in a pecuniary point of view, such as she never before possessed, and such as she never could have gained by her local and dependent legislature; and yet there are those among her people whose moral and intellectual obliquity of vision is so intense, that they not only cannot see from whence the prosperity and happiness of Ireland flows, but they would cut off all the sources of such, and by severing the Union, bring back those days of misery and anarchy which belonged to the country of old.

A GLIMPSE AT REPUBLICAN PARIS LAST MONTH.

I HAD a fancy for seeing Republican France; and was enabled to indulge myself in it during the past month. I had seen the country under its latter monarchy, and I confess, to a kind of childish incredulity at times, that all that could have been changed.

I desired at any rate to realise to my own senses the great revolution which the newspapers had been telling us about ever since February last. The old revolution of 1792 was historical-living in the personal recollection only of our oldest old gentlemen. The revolution of '30 drove out one king, and brought in another. But here was an actual revolution in the year 1848, which upset the kingly office, and proclaimed not a Republic merely but-Democracy!

A man might possibly have reasoned himself, last year, into the opinion that all this might, could, would, or should happen before twelve months were over. But when it did come it was not the less astonishing to an Englishman, living in the midst of his monarchical and aristocratic institutions, and accustomed to regard the whole European system as monarchical and aristocratic.

"But I will go and have a look at this republic," I said to myself, and a few hours took me from my own door to the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer. I had, somehow or other, the absurd idea, though not formally recognised in my mind, that in Republican France I should find every body, as well as every thing, changed. I never look at a Yankee, without a a sort of inquisitiveness, as though I should detect something personally remarkable in him as a republican; and perhaps the habit may not always be without justification in his case; but very unreasonably, no doubt, I had somewhat of the same notion as respects our neighbours on the other side of the channel, in virtue of their republicanism of February last.

The first view of the landing-place at Boulogne looked pretty much as usual: the same respectable English idlers, male and female, contemplating the packet-boat letting out its passengers and letting off its steam; and so finding an event for that day-the same mammas and their wellbathed daughters looking for the same papas from England, and waving their handkerchiefs at the worthy old gentlemen with their carpet bagsthe same bevy of touters and luggage porters ready to pounce on passengers-and the same identical corps de douane in the green coats served out to them under the régime of Louis Philippe.

One is subjected to just the same trouble as ever on landing at Boulogne, which is to say somewhat less than one is subjected to at Folkstone or other true British ports.

But there, before our eyes, was indeed an evidence of the change that had taken place-behold in the searching warehouse the words "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité !" Who could help thinking forthwith of Robespierre, and Madame Roland, and Louis XVI., and the patriotic fishwomen of the Halles ?

Boulogne on this, as on other occasions, may be dismissed in half-adozen lines. There are the same number of English as ever; and the same number of hotels, good, bad, and indifferent. The fishermen and their wives are unaffected by the republic, to any outward appearance,

and dry their nets quite as usual. But the public buildings are all jealously placarded with Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, lest they should be forgotten.

As far as one might judge from looking out of the window of a railway carriage, matters seemed pretty much as usual in the country. Men and women were working in their ordinary leisurely manner in the fields. There was the same morcellement cultivation going on, and the villages are not yet, any of them, replaced by Phalanstères. But one saw every here and there a "tree of liberty"-a young poplar lopped of its branches, but reserving a bunch of foliage at the top, decorated with tri-colors, and sometimes with garlands. That was the only sign of revolution in the rural part of my ride. But one could fancy the village politicians at work in the auberges, discussing the new era, and striving to make Jacques think more of his "rights" than the price of his corn.

But now we rush into Paris, the railway station being all right, and not in possession of any insurgents; as we fancy to ourselves it might have been. And there at the station are omnibuses, as usual, and that infinite variety of hackney vehicles for which Paris is famous-the cochers retaining their distinctive dress, and looking as sluggish, and as well assured of their pour-boires, as in the most monarchical times. By the way, I suppose the physiologists have noted ere now the specific differences between the cocher and the English cab-man ?

But we get fairly into Paris, and then we find a change: then we find that one of those great events has happened, and is happening, which will hereafter be booked as "history" and be regarded with the same interest and wonder wherewith we of the present now contemplate the great events of the past-always looking the grander that their larger features are then alone seen; whereas, to contemporaries, how the mightiest passing occurrences are made to seem less significant than they really are, by the familiarising vulgarity of the petty circumstances attending them.

All around looks as though mischief were brewing. Paris, as we all know, was in a state of siege. In other words, it was kept in order by military law, and an overwhelming army incessantly under arms. Here was war-duly proclaimed ; but by Frenchmen against Frenchmen, and on French soil. On the one side were the army, the national guard, the mobiles, the military police; on the other, the ouvriers, and those whose capital is in the bad passions and ignorant credulity of the ouvriers. Each side was watching the other, ready at the least opportunity for another death grapple.

I tramped off to the Tuileries. There was the old palace, looking so like its pictures-identified in our recollection as the scene of so many a revolutionary drama-of military pomp and popular insurgence-guards reviewed and massacred, escaping royalty, smashed thrones, and a bedlamite mob. Never, in the most peaceable times of the French capital, when I have contemplated that long but to my eyes not unpicturesque range, its lofty pavilions running up into the sunny sky, and all wearing an air of lazy repose, but I have unconsciously run on dreaming of Louis XVI. and the tumults of his day, and (though in a minor degree) of Charles X. and his dethronement. Revolution seems the genius of the

place.

Now it looks gloomy enough. The garden front has the windows

mostly closed. The building looked for the greater part uninhabited. When I last saw it, it was on the last of the July fêtes; the last commemoration of that July revolution which gave Louis Philippe the bother and glory of governing 33,000,000 of Frenchmen. Paris then threw out its hundreds of thousands, less to think of the great days of July, than to see the sights provided for the occasion. Among these poor old Louis Philippe and family had to furnish one tableau. Out he came,

on the balcony of the clock pavilion, leading his stately old queen, and followed by all the princes and princesses-the Prince de Joinville excepted, who was then with the fleet. And truly they were a fine-looking family-party. The old gentleman himself looked hard and tough, ten years at least younger than he really is; his queen a very model of an old lady; the princesses all either pretty or ladylike, if not both. D'Aumale looked like a good African soldier, as he is-Nemours just gentlemanlike, but with no countenance of any kind-Montpensier, a handsome youth. Their majesties seated themselves, the rest standing. The old gentleman placed before him the young Compte de Paris, a boy with a good head and countenance, and nice manner. There was the royal family of France, under the settlement of 1830. There was the aged man who for seventeen years had governed the French people, such as we know them, without running into foreign war, and affording security to person and property not, on the whole, to be surpassed in any other country, England alone perhaps excepted-under whose rule every material interest had prospered, and who in his own person had with unprecedented liberality patronised the arts and manufactures of France. There he was, with his numerous progeny, leaving no room to expect the dissolution of the Orleans monarchy through failure of direct heirs. There were three generations of his house, come forth to exchange congratulations with the people he had been called upon to govern.

If ever there was occasion to call forth feelings of loyal affection from the people to the Orleans family, it would have been the present one. But amongst the many hundreds of well-dressed persons who occupied the reserved seats under the balcony, and the many thousands of all classes spreading beyond over the garden of the Tuileries, I do not believe that twenty voices joined in cries of Vive le Roi. Even this trifling manifestation was acknowledged with many gracious bows, and the dynastic journals reported next day that his majesty had been very favourably received. But royalty may be strong and enduring, though not always popular; and there at any rate was King Louis Philippe, in the immediate possession of immense power, a large army yielding him obedience, and all the vast machinery of the civil administration of France worked and directed by attached partisans. In seven months thereafter we have him in England, a fugitive old gentleman; and the royal Palace of the Tuileries is a hospital for wounded insurgents. At this moment, as I have said, it appears untenanted. The galleries, however, facing the Rue Rivoli, and north of the Carrousel, seemed all occupied as barracks; and one could see the gilded apartments in what in England we call the first story, occupied by the soldiery.

I proceeded to the Carrousel. It was the parade, at guard-mounting. There were, as usual, only in far greater numbers, both national guards and troops of the line; but behold in addition the garde mobile!

I had been very curious to see this new body. There were now about