of the sovereign pontiff. The day has come to go and chastise these degenerate Normans, and to imitate the example of their own ancestors. The English government, in violating the rights of other nations, has placed itself beyond the pale of all rights. Let the standard of European crusade be unfurled against the pirates! Let every nation, every city, every voice, repeat the sacred cry, God wills it! God wills it! Never was excommunication better merited; and when the colossus of clay shall crumble beneath the blows of the indignant nations, never, in the history of empires, will a greater ruin have taught a greater lesson." Whether M. Regnault will meet with the same success, in his invocation of a general European crusade against England, which attended the same cry from the inspired lips from which he quotes it, may well be a subject of some slight degree of doubt, however free he himself seems from entertaining any.

It is not indeed the English people, but rather their government, against which he would direct this exterminating vengeance of the world. Nations are only responsible to the extent that they are free. "What we wish to combat," says he, "is that guilty oligarchy which Napoleon cursed on his bed of death; what we wish to devote to the execration of the nations, is that detestable community of feudal traffickers which has consecrated falsehood, and erected pillage into a principle. We would cheerfully extend the hand of friendship to the British people; but to reach them we must overthrow the aristocracy which holds them enchained in a splendid slavery."

The following is the concluding paragraph of Mr. Regnault's philippic: "Let it not be supposed that in a vain spirit of ambition, we would invoke useless wars, and aspire to any triumphs of personal feeling. The nations of to-day-we recognize the fact-desire order and peace; they have come to understand other glories than the glory of arms; they dream of other conquests than the conquest of territory. But it is because we do acknowledge this tendency that we demand aloud the annihilation of that oligarchy of England which in every region of the globe is a cause of disorder and wretchedness. It alone at the present day sanctions violence, and perpetuates spo

liation; it alone disturbs the security of the nations, and compromises the peace of the world. Let the world, then, reach the consummation of peace by one last war; let it go and seize in their den these pirates who have assumed to themselves the monopoly of crime. Let us summon to the standard of civilisation and justice all the nations who have accounts to settle with this arrogant aristocracy; let us rally the formidable cohort of its victims, and then, from North America to the East Indies, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mediterranean, from the North Sea to the Cape of Good Hope, we should behold gathering together men of every race, to come and take their part in the execution of sentence on the common enemy; and every nation of the globe would appear before the eye of the expiring oligarchy, to repeat to it in turn the funereal words which sounded in the ears of Richard the Third-' Despair and die!""

With all this rhapsody we have of course no further sympathy than a full and earnest participation in the wish for the speedy downfall of that thricecursed image of Baal, the Aristocracy of England. We would not see it accomplished, good as is the end, by the had means here indicated, even if these means appeared within any measurable distance of feasibility. We would aim toward its achievement in a far different manner, a far different spirit. It must be by the People of England themselves that their own emancipation must be effected; and by them it can best be done by bloodless methods. It is a remarkable fact, that the man who at this moment stands at the head of the English democratic movement, is a member of that only Christian denomination which has adopted the true spirit of the gospel of their profession, with respect to the moral lawfulness of the use of violence and the shedding of blood-we refer to Joseph Sturge, the Quaker, of Birmingham. The great political organization_of which he is president, "The Complete Suffrage Union," is rapidly extending over the whole United Kingdom, and attaching to itself, and to the movement to which they have heretofore been strongly averse, the great body of the substantial middle classes. Discountenancing all violence, upholding the peaceful sanctions of order and law, but

denouncing the oppressions of aristocratic misgovernment, and preaching strongly the great ideas of human rights, and demanding universal suffrage as the only peaceful and adequate remedy to the evils whose exasperation must soon otherwise seek other modes of redress and revenge, this organization is working with great steadiness and power toward the end which is far sooner and better to be attained in this mode than by any of the furious follies of Chartism. Though totally distinct from the Chartists, as an organized party, the great principles of reform to which they pledge and devote themselves are identical with the six points of the Charter-namely, universal suffrage, the ballot, annual parliaments, compensation to members of parliament, no property qualification for the office, and correspondence of representation to population. Pervaded and regulated by the spirit of which its pious and peaceful President may be regarded as an expression, the "Complete Suffrage Union" harmonizes in its direction with every other effort of reform, while it commands the confidence of thousands deterred from participation in these movements by the violent spirit so often evinced by their supporters. We regard it as one of the most auspicious and hopeful indications apparent in the troubled confusion of the present politics of England, that this great and growing organization is thus under the presidency of a "Friend," a man, moreover, of character so pure, so philanthropic, so devoted to the principles of liberty in the spirit of love, as JOSEPH STURGE. *

To return to Mr. Lester's work, of which it was our design to present a general idea to our readers. This will perhaps best be done by a brief recapitulation of the subjects of the several parts, or books, into which it is divided. The first embraces a view of the Power and Magnificence of the British Empire, with illustrations of the spirit of

the feudal and of the modern age. The second exhibits a grievous picture of the general condition of the mass of the British people in past ages—their burdens and sufferings during centuries of unrelieved oppression. The third and fourth treat of the injustice, the wrongs, the oppressive laws and cruel enactments under which the majority of the British people are now struggling, and contain a vigorous and victorious reply to the contradictions of Mr. Lester's former work in a recent publication entitled "The Shame and Glory of England Vindicated." The fifth and sixth present a harrowing description of the sufferings and crime, the ignorance and degradation, which have been caused by these oppressive and unparalleled burdens laid upon the people. The seventh treats of the woes and wrongs of Ireland under the tyranny of the British yoke, pointing to the repeal of the legislative union as the only relief for the evils that yet oppress her. The eighth relates to the feelings of the people of England in view of the deep injustice they have so long suffered, and their determination to endure their slavery no longer; while the ninth exhibits the opposition of the aristocracy to the liberties of the people, and their determination still to keep them in subjection. The tenth discusses the progress of the Democratic Principle throughout the world, and especially in Great Britain; and the eleventh and last illustrates the author's prediction of an inevitable and speedy termination to the state of things depicted throughout the course of the preceding books, in either a deep and wide-reaching reform, or a tremendous revolution. A short Appendix adds a caustic and indignant review of a pamphlet recently published by Bishop Doane, of New Jersey, of his "Impressions of the Church of England," in which is administered a rebuke to an "un-Americanized American," as just as it is severe. From the

last named portion of the work we are tempted to make the following quotation,—which follows some comments on a speech in which Bishop Doane had expressed an approbation of the English union of the Church and State, which certainly sounds exceedingly strange from the lips of an American minister of the Gospel :

"Yet all this, anti-republican as it is, we could have passed without notice, and only pitied the bigotry and servility displayed in it. But there is one thing not to be pardoned, and which will awaken the indignation of every man who has a drop of the blood of the Puritans running in his veins. In a speech made by the Bishop in Saint Mary's Hall, Coventry, is found the following remarkable passage, which I have taken the liberty to underscore;-'I have lived in a land peopled by those who emigrated from this country. It is the fashion to call some of them the Pilgrim Fathers-men who fancied

themselves somehow straitened in the

enjoyment of religious liberty-who, in the claim of greater freedom in God's worship and service, set out for distant shores, and planted themselves in a region now called New England: I enter not into the inquiry as to the character of these men, the justice of their complaints, or the motives for their proceedings-I will accord to them all that charity can ask. They went from here as they thought, and truly believed, the true followers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; preaching, as they thought, the very principles of the

Reformation-but without a churchwithout a Liturgy-with no transmitted authority from God to minister in holy things.

"The result of this sacrilegious invasion of the prerogatives of the church he makes to be the prevalence of Unitarianism, Atheism, and Pantheism,' in New England.

"Now, I venture to say, that no nativeborn American for the last half century, has dared to utter so contemptible a sneer

at the Pilgrim Fathers; and yet he is willing to accord them all that charity can ask.' And what charity,' Sir Bishop, do the Pilgrim Fathers ask of you? Charity! No other American has been found so false to his country, and those who left him the rich heritage he enjoys, as not to render them a proud and cheer ful reverence. Charity from a Bishop of the Church of England to the Pilgrim

Fathers!

You say it is a fashion to call some of them Pilgrim Fathers, intimating, in no obscure language, that it is the sobriquet of the ignorant and superstitious. You

add, Men who fancied themselves somehow straitened in the enjoyment of their religious liberty.'—A fancy indeed, that cost them dear. The war-whoop of the Indian--the roar of the wintry storm-a desolate, unpeopled continent-methinks were a sad relief from fancied wrongs. leave the bosom of the mother church, "Poor credulous, superstitious men, to whose slightest fault was that she was a quiry as to the character of these men.' dry nurse! You will enter into no inIndeed! You will in charity forbearwith that species of insinuation which is the worst calumny's best weapon-lest painful truths should be divulged! Meek overlook even when you cannot forgive! minister of Christ, how much you can But seriously, Sir Bishop, do you venture at this day to wag your mitred head at the middle Atlantic, surrounded by all the 'MAYFLOWER,' as she struggles along the terrors of the midnight storm? Can it be that insulting fling was meant for that frail, yet God-protected vessel, as she rocks in Massachusetts Bay-her icy lemn covenant with God, who alas! had deck crowded with men kneeling in sogiven them no authority to minister in fancied wrongs they had fled to our inholy things.' Poor deluded men! under hospitable wilderness, and having no authority to minister in holy things,' they must live without Christianity. No cathedrals--no rich livings-no widow's tithes --no poor man's church rates-no fines on the renewal of leases--no fox-hunting clergy-no starved curates-and above

all, no Bishops deriving their authority from St. Peter through all the Popesnone of these things to constitute them a

church of the living God!

"You have the honor, Sir, of being the Fathers, while enjoying the priceless first one who has sneered at the Pilgrim privileges of moral and political liberty won by their blood. Far from my humble pen the presumption of undertaking to

defend those noble men! There are

their graves, but the dead are not in them

they live in the hearts of their country

men. Around them cluster the noblest associations of freedom. The civil and religious liberty they left us we hold and will hold for ever, though there are found men in our midst so false to their birth, so servile to foreign despotism, as to talk depreciatingly of them, and fulsomely in a company of English hierarchs about the glorious privilege of a union of Church

and State!"

The following extract from another portion of the work will serve to show the extent and value of the electoral

reform embodied in that splendid disappointment, the Reform Bill of Earl Grey-of which the result is, that less than one hundred and sixty-five thousand voters, or about the one hundred and sixty-fourth part of the whole people, create the majority in the House of Commons, which rules the rest of the twenty-seven millions of population

"It was a radical defect in the Reform Bill, that it made no provision for securing any fixed and fair proportion between the number of representatives and the number of electors. A few rotten boroughs were disfranchized, it is true, and the elective franchise somewhat extended; but Manchester, with 8,000 electors, and a population as large as New York, sends no more members to Parliament than Thetford, with only 160 voters. No distinction is made between Liverpool, with 12,000 electors, and Chippenham, with only 217. Harwich, with only 181 electors, returns as many members as the West Riding of Yorkshire, with 30,000. It is still an unequal and unjust system upon which the House of Commons is constituted; the mass of the people are still disfranchised, for of the total male population of the three kingdoms over twenty-one years of age, only one man in six is allowed to vote.

"From Lewis's Four Reformed Parliaments,' and the Registration Returns for 1841,' I find that the total number of electors in Great Britain and Ireland is only 994,731.-A large deduction should, however, be made even from this number, for a plurality of votes, as the majority of freeholders have at least two votes-one for the borough and one for the county. This would very much reduce the number of electors. From the authorities I have quoted above, it appears that a sixth part of the constituency of the three kingdoms. returns a clear majority of the House of Commons. While the entire constituency is only 994,731,-THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-ONE MEMBERS OUT OF 658, ARE ELECTED BY 164,810 VOTERS!"

In treating of the actual suffering and degradation resulting from so many past centuries of misgovernment still continued with but slight mitigation, Mr. Lester divides the operative classes into the Agricultural and the Commercial Laborers. We shall give such extracts as our limits permit from his statements respecting both:

"AGRICULTURAL LABORERS.-Always choosing to substantiate my statements by English authorities, I shall open this sec VOL. XII.-NO. LV. 2

ery everywhere exists-vast and incalculable misery! but it is more obvious, condensed, palpitating, and fuller of interest to a mere casual observer, in the great towns and cities, than in the fields, moors, fens, and mountains of our land. Misery in the country is less obvious to the passer-by, to the, votary of pleasure and dissipation, and even to the man of leisure and reflection: but it is not the less real. The cottagers of England, once so cheerful and gay, are melancholy and mournful. The voice of singing is never heard within their walls. Their unhappy inmates vegetate on potatoes and hard dumplings, and keep themselves warm with hot water poured over one small teaspoonful of tea that barely colors the water, and which is administered to the fretful children by their anxious and impoverished parents.'

"Soon after the anti-corn-law league' was organized, a new spirit of inquiry into the condition of the people was awakened. This resulted in so thorough an investigation, and in the accumulation of facts so incontrovertible, that no person who has any reputation for accuracy or intelligence to preserve, will risk it upon a denial of the terrible truth-that misery vast and incalculable everywhere prevails in the three kingdoms; and that the agricultural laborers, so far from being exempt from the general distress, have been among the severest sufferers.

"In giving an account of an investigation into the condition of the peasantry of