must have the goodness to remember that I voted for the second reading of that bill distinctly on the grounds that it did not propose to identify the franchise in counties and boroughs, and because it simply proposed to amend the law relating to the county franchise, leaving the limit to be settled in committee."

We consider it our bounden duty to be candid in dealing with such a subject. Our sympathies are entirely with Ministers, who, we think, have discharged the very onerous duty imposed upon them in a manner which demands our admiration, both on account of their impartiality and the liberal spirit which they have displayed. But we must regard this as a question of the utmost importance to the future wellbeing of the nation, and we cannot waive the statement of objections which occur to us as peculiarly strong. It is not desirable, indeed, that we should do so. The consideration and settlement of a Reform Bill is in truth a national work to which all who have the power should contribute, without allowing party feelings or predilections to influence them in the slightest degree. The initiative has been forced upon the Ministry. They have done their duty by framing a bill, which expresses, we regret to say, the opinion of the majority only of the Cabinet. Parliament is now engaged in the discussion of that bill. We are not sufficiently conversant with parliamentary rules to pass any opinion on the conduct of Lord John Russell in moving his resolutions as an amendment to the motion for the second reading of the bill. Apart from that motion, we have no reason to regret the discussion which

has taken place, but which possibly may not terminate until this article is in the hands of the public.

We certainly do not wish, nor do we deem it expedient, that this measure should be tided over for another session-it is of the utmost importance that it should form part of this year's legislation; but we deprecate hasty resolutions, and we think that, after the expiry of this debate, whatever be its issue, there should be a breathing-time allowed for candid consideration of all that has been said in behalf of or against the ministerial measure. That is obviously the wisest course in the present European crisis. The demand for reform is not so urgent as to require us to make ministerial difficulties at the moment when an adverse vote of the House of Commons, and the displacement of a Ministry, may be the immediate signal for a general war. Every one must remember what was the result of the resignation of Lord Derby's Ministry, and the accession of Lord Aberdeen to power in 1852. The Czar Nicholas then thought that he had found his coveted opportunity, could count upon the British Premier as an ally, or at all events a non-interfering remonstrant; and so we were precipitated into a war which cost us so many valuable lives. We would entreat the Ministry, rather than the Opposition, to think of this; for what we fear is, that their high sense of honour may cause them, in the event of a defeat before the second reading of the bill, to tender their resignation, which we should regard as a great, nay, a fearful national calamity at the present important crisis.

THE reader no doubt imagines from the above title, that we are going to thrust into his hands a dissertation on certain monotonous fly-leaves which elderly females buy in large quantities, and which they drop into pockets, throw into cabs, stick into novels, place upon paths, push under doors, and by every possible contrivance lay before our averted noses. Who in this country is not acquainted with these Sibylline leaves? Who has not read of Penitent Poll, and of Sorrowful Sam? Who has not been edified with the piety of the Good Gardener who goes mystically to work, dungs the cucumbers in an allegorical fervour, sows peas in a parable, turns the cab bages into theology, and never plucks an apple without a kind of shudder that connects the event with the Garden of Eden? Who has not been touched with the history of the sweet scullery-maid who thrived like an angel among the pots, who searched the Scriptures and scraped the plates with equal assiduity, who sighed each night that there were no more pans to clean, and who died in a rapture of joy that her heart was "kind o' washed, like ?" Is that benign old gentleman ever to be forgotten, who entered the omnibus at the Camberwell Gate evidently for no other purpose than that he might unbutton, take out of his breastpocket a bunch of little papers, and

VOL. LXXXV.-NO. DXXIII.

distribute among the bewildered passengers a description of the broad road and the narrow way, the Christian 'bus and the 'busses of the other party that are so strangely addicted to nursing the orthodox vehicle? Good old suburban fellow - how happy and how awkward he seemed after he had done his work, looking restlessly at each of the passengers to see the effect, and then gazing hard out of the window as if he were quite at his ease and had nothing on his mind. The moment the omnibus stopped, he bolted out of it and into another. Perhaps at night he will be found with a batch of recruits that have an astonishing likeness to the cat-footed, crane-necked, whispering, undertoned race of pew-openers all round the doors of some theatre, and engaged might and main in informing the gods by means of handbills, that they are demons-those who are bound for the pit, that they are going to the bottomless one. Tracts such as these are indeed worth studying, both in point of matter and in point of style. We should not like to treat sacred things with levity, and we confess to a genuine sympathy with the ruling principle of those who are interested in the manufacture and distribution of religious tracts. But sympathise as we may with their good intentions, we are not sure that we can admire their taste or com2 M

mend their judgment, and we doubt whether religious tracts do an amount of good that bears any reasonable proportion to the money and labour which is invested in them. Look at the fly-leaves issued by the Religious Tract Society, which has such a name that whatever it issues is sure of a large circulation. The advantage of the Society is this, that any old lady in the country wanting a bundle of Tracts, has only to send to the Society, and by return of post she receives a goodly assortment which she may distribute at once with perfect assurance of their orthodoxy with regard to the great doctrines of the Gospel. She never asks whether they are clear, or well-written, or attractive; she only considers whether they take the right view or not. She altogether overlooks the fact that religious tract-writing has not kept pace with the growing intelligence of this reading age. The tracts of the great Society we have named are indeed so poor, so utterly stale and unprofitable, that not a few very able clergymen throughout the country, rather than incur the responsibility and expense of circulating such rubbish, have started tract serials of their own, and in consequence, we have such really valuable collections as the Kelso Tracts of Mr Bonar, the Chelsea Tracts of Mr Alexander, the Wotton Tracts of Bickersteth, and the well-known tracts of Mr Ryle. The Religious Tract Society has apparently got into the position of an irresponsible corporation, well-established in public favour, and independent of individual criticism. Does anybody know who or what this the largest tract-producing association in the country is? who are the writers of these deplorably stupid tracts who gives the order? who are the committee of management? who takes the money and keeps the ledger who audits the accounts? All the writing and all the management seem to be conducted on the principle of the anonymous-a principle that, however good in itself, is by no means of universal application. It is a principle that is all very well in newspapers, and other periodicals which record facts that have a value of their own, or propound opinions that

must stand upon their own merits. But anonymous sympathy is a very different affair. The object of these tracts is to speak from the heart to the heart-to express precisely that great feeling which brings out most fully our whole personality-which is also intended to reach the inmost feeling of the reader, and sound the lowest deeps of his nature; yet the Society, in dealing with these mighty interests, insist upon foolishly aping the practice of the newspaper press, and compelling the writers of the tracts to approach their audience under a mask. Imagine that-writers dealing with the most personal of all concerns denying their own personality, weeping with their vizors down, smiling in the dark, sympathising like Pyramus and Thisbe, through a hole in the wall. It is a false system, intended solely for the benefit of the Tract Society, and productive only of harm to the cause of true religion. The Tract (or as it has been profanely called, the Trash) Society has settled into a system, worked itself into shape, grown into a venerable corporation— and the consequence is routine, mechanical processes, dull orthodoxy, abundance of the letter and absence of the spirit.

The

But it is not upon religious tracts that we mean to descant on the present occasion. These are the best known and most widely distributed class of tracts, and as such demanded the tribute of a few remarks. species of literature to which we refer, however, is of infinite variety. A tract is a general name given to publications which are not important enough to be called books, and which do not merge their individuality in the miscellaneous contents of a periodical. The name is very elastic, and might include a bluebook of a thousand pages as well as a handbill intended for the decoration of wooden hoardings and favoured lamp-posts. As a general rule, tract literature is an ephemeral literature, and comes before the public without much assistance from the binder's art. The loose leaves are scattered over the country like the autumnal foliage by the winter winds; they dash against our faces every now and then-they eddy about

in odd corners; they wither.and die away, and the soil is enriched with their decay. For the most part they have a practical object in view; but that, after all, is saying very little. Which of us, in his own estimation, has not a practical aim in view? Why, the Pickwickians were practical fellows; and if we had the real papers of the club, instead of the history of the travels of a few of its members with which Mr Dickens has amused and deluded an indulgent public, we have no doubt that we should have a series of tracts of an eminently useful character. Mr Pickwick's observations on the sources of the Hampstead ponds and the theory of tittlebats might have formed a scientific tract of no small importance to the health of London and the peace of the world. His inquiries into the condition of that cab-horse which was out for two or three veeks at a time, and was borne up so werry tight and taken in so werry short that he could not werry well fall down, and ven he did move, was forced on with a pair of werry large wheels that compelled him to run, seemed to open up a new path of discovery which we can only regret that succeeding philosophers have not followed up. Had Mr Pickwick's speculations in this field been thrown into the form of a tract, posterity might have been able to pursue the theme, and the practical result might have been a revision of the cab-act, and the superseding of Rarey. Every man fancies that his own hobby is the most practical of all hobbies. Mr Wheatstone told us the other day of light that had been bottled up for months, and at the end of that time used for certain photographic purposes. After such a fact, we may begin to believe in what has hitherto been regarded as the most impracticable of all schemes-the possibility of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers; and it seems presumptuous to deny the merit of being practical to any paper ever published. Everything which a man can write about, indeed, is supposed to have a practical object; and, therefore, we must still further define the character of tracts, by saying that the vast majority of them are intended to have an

immediate effect. They are written with a purpose sometimes very absurd, often very mischievous, but almost always calculated for instant effect. Just as among the religious tracts, the "Swearer's Prayer" and the "Sinner's Friend," are intended to give the reader a good shake and a rough alarm; so the political, the social, the moral, and other tracts are intended to give a sudden shock, to catch us unawares, to hit us at random, like the arrow which, drawn at a venture, pierces through an exposed joint of the armour. Interest is thus excited in a neglected subject, and we are invited to assist in carrying some reform through the Legislature or in imposing some tyrannous observance on our neighbours.

It is rather from the practical than from the literary point of view that these tracts are interesting, and we are here going to consider them less as compositions than as political instruments - the armoury of party guerillas, the ship papers of political privateers. Certainly, from the critical point of view, tracts do not impress the reader with a sense of the ability or the good taste of the writers. Taken singly, they are very dreary specimens of what the human mind can do. If a man wishes to see rubbish in its most concentrated form, let him read a tract. What any man who will honestly go through a barrowful of this trash must feel at the end of his labours, if he survive to the end, it is painful even to imagine. But the strange thing is that, laugh as we may at the weakness of each individual tract, the bundle of tracts issued by one society or brotherhood, when read as a whole, gives us a higher idea of power, and even instils into us something of respect for the writers. Any one of the tracts exhibits bad writing, ridiculous arguiments, and sometimes chimerical views; but in the tracts, as a whole, we find persistence, conviction, assurance, and it is astonishing how effective these qualities are, quite independent of intellectual power and cultivated tastes. It is said that faith can remove mountains; and there is nothing like fearless assertion, and constant iteration, as a

means of moving the masses. It is the principle on which the modern system of advertising is built. If a statement is repeated without contradiction a certain number of times, its effects may be calculated to a dead certainty. Nothing can be more detestable, nothing more villanous than some of the advertisements which are incessantly coming before us; and simple people wonder how such arrant quackery should ever succeed-how it can possibly pay. On the contrary, nothing pays half so well as capital invested in good round puffing-in keeping a name prominently before the public-in persecuting every sense that we have with unfailing assertions on the subject of bruised oats, African sherry, and shilling razors. It is by a dreadful iteration of the same kind that the tract literature grows into importance. Dr Guthrie, when collecting money for the Free Church manses, used to expatiate with great unction on the grand principle of political economy, which he enunciated in the phrase "the mighty power of mites;" and nowhere is the truth of this to be seen more clearly than in those tracts - so powerful in the mass, but in detail so weak and contemptible, that many persons, we suspect, forget, or do not understand, their having any influence whatever.

After all, the weakness of the tracts is the natural result of their origin. In the first place, they are the product of societies formed for the propagation of certain tenets, and it is not in the nature of societies to produce anything great of this kind. Political or social bodies or clubs exhibit often great force of will, but seldom great force of intellect. Intellect is something which belongs to individuals, and as it has been truly said, that in the bank of wit twenty silver pieces do not make one gold piece, so in associations twenty mediocre members are not equal to one great man. They may combine to act, and so exhibit greater tenacity of purpose than any single man possesses; but they may pile their skulls one upon another like Pelion upon Ossa, and they will gain nothing by it, but rather lose in the

exhibition of wisdom. A society of any magnitude cannot conduct in a brilliant manner a series of publications. Every member is constantly interfering, one proposing a new line of argument, and another objecting to that last issue, so that no man of independent feeling or of acute thought would accept the position of being controlled by such a body in writing for them. The publications of the league or association must, of necessity, be weak in point of thought, and poor in point of style, while rejoicing in the one excellence of undeviating purpose. But, in the second place, not only is a society, by its very nature, a poor hand at this sort of work, it will be found in nine cases out of ten that the societies themselves are the product of some queer character of the forcible-feeble type-a fellow without brains, but with overpowering convictions and desperately tough will. How often do we see in life two friends moving on in the most harmonious way, enjoying each other's society immensely, but all the time a miracle to lookers-on. One of them is a lion of a man-fine-looking, intellectual, with a sound heart and a good purse; the other is a little jackal who walks him out—an insinuating sort of fellow, with a harsh voice and an ugly dogmatic turn, but without half the intelligence of his friend, and without a tithe of his good nature.

How do these two get on -and above all, how is it that the wiry little whipper-snapper carries everything before him, compelling his big companion on all occasions to yield? Nobody really knows, but we fancy that we know, in giving all the honour of the victory to the superior will. The will does it, we say. How the will does it nobody knows, but there is the fact that a contemptible jackass, with a power of kick in him, or a rascally rat with no sense, but only good teeth and reckless courage to assist him, will accomplish things apparently far beyond his means. Oxenstiern told his son that as he grew older he would be astonished to discover how little wisdom it requires to govern the world. In fact it is not wisdom that generally governs the world,