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    Kiutamvt.

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    41 Summer has set in with its usual severity , " said Wai « poi . e , with lugubrious wit ; and this primy month of June , associated in all minds with balmy winds , sunny skies , hawthorn blossoms , and birds Singing of summer in full-throated ease , opens ominously . The rain falls steadily , soakingly . The ground smokes . Long wreaths of mist wind amid the trees ; wild and wintry gusts shake from the branches those lovely chesnut blossoms ; the British bourgeois hurries along under a weight of gingham and muttered growls ; Betty clanks in her pattens as she goes on the imperious errand . It is the wettest of wet days — one of Leigh Hunt ' s wet days ! . Nature oozes from every pore . We have just finished a morning ' s work , and the wettest of wet messengers arrives , bearing a damp parcel . We open it—the Magazines of the Month sprawl upon the table , amusement and occupation for the longest , wettest day . Drawing the easy-chair near the fire , and giving that fire a preliminary poke , we take up our favourite of favourites , Fraser . A glance at the contents assures 11 s of variety ; let us taste the quality . The opening article on " Administrative Reform" is a propos , and will be found full of excellent suggestion . It surveys the whole question in an impartial and philosophic spirit .

    A sketch of the career of " Sir Robert Strange" follows , abridged from Mr . Denkistocn ' s recent work ; a poor meagre paper on " Wine , its Use and Taxation , " in spite of its subject , lures us not through . " Six Sonnets" by Mr . Westwood we carefully skip , and alight on the " Possibilities of an Anglo-American Alliance , " written , as the initials point out , by Mr . BnisTED , who is always worth reading , and who has peculiar right to be heard on America . He discusses gravely and cogently the pros and cons of this alarming possibility . ' He shows how the Americans hate England , and especially how they hate Louis Napoleox , who left a bad reputation behind him in America ; a hate , he says , which Louis Napoleon seems to recognise and resent , showing a manifest disposition to slight the Americans in Paris , both visitors and residents , both those in private and those in public capacities . The Emperor or Russia , on the other hand , is popular in America . The Americans have always been treated with marked courtesy by Russia ; and never once has there been any political ill-feeling between

    the nations . No American citizen has ever had a complaint to make against the ^ Russians . No diplomatist in off in , or oi , ever gave an American statesman the opportunity of furnishing a pendant to the Hulsemann letter on the Kosta correspondence . And while the Allies have often either threatened to come , or actually come , into col ision with the United States on their own side of the Atlantic , Russia has removed all suspicion of such danger on her part at the only possible point of contact , by voluntarily offering to sell her American territory at no extravagant price . Nor has the Sclavonic Empire ever interfered with the annexatory tendencies of the Western Republic . On the contrary , she has rather encouraged them . Division of the spoils is exactly her favourite principle . " You take Egypt , and let me take Turkey , " was her language to England . " You take Cuba , or whatever else you like in this hemisphere , and let me take what I like in the other , " is her language to America .

    Russian agents are active in America , and largely subsidise her press . The strongest motive of all is the identity of sympathy existing between the slaveholders and the Russians . The position of this interest is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the political world . ' The number of American slaveholders , all told , is less than three hundred and fifty thousand . ' This oligarchy , placed amid a democracy of more than twenty millions , has directed and moulded the whole policy of the country , internal ar id external , for the last half century . It holds three millions of its countrymen in abject bondage : It has gathered around it twice that number as its accessories and abettors . It has almost invariably either bullied or outmanoeuvred the rest of the population ( fourteen millions and more !) on all disputed questions . In everything excepting the one point of admitting slavery into California—an absurdity too gross

    even for . them to insist on—the slaveholders have had thoir own way . They have made the Northerners their slave-catchers by act of Congress . They have altered and realtered the compromises of their own devising to suit their increasing acquisitiveness . Their policy has constantly become more and more aggressive . Feeling tha . t public attention has been recently drawn to the anomaly of so small a body exercising so great an influence in a democracy , their present aim ia to increase their numbers . One of the desired means to this end is the acquisition of Cuba , itself only a atop towards the reopening of the African slave-trade—a measure unblushingly advocated within the past year by more than one southern newspaper . The Allies , who have abolished slavery throughout their dominions , arc the natural antagonists of , * he American slaveholder ; and in Russia , with her corresponding " institution" of serfage , he finds his natural support .

    Mr . Bmstbd ' s exposition of the reasons against the probability of an alliance with Russia is by no means so cheering ; but wo must send the reader to the Magazine for those reasons . A review of " Recent French Memoirs" is interesting , but less so than a little more skill in selection might hqtVj ? made it . We can only allude to the biographical sketch of " Sir Henry do \ la Beche , " to the loving description of the little Thuringian capital given in * < Three Months at Weimar , " and to the " Political Crisis . " The pleasant criticism on ** Some Pictures in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1855 , " is juHt ' tho sort of papiir which will delight those who have scon the pictures , aria ex cite expectation in those 'who have not . The wmUor C ( f Jbhose , Iwos , who , in obedience to a detestable established affectation , deolgnatQa his sraaU , single ablf by , the imposing pronoun " -wo , " is no artist , and haa not sufficient "knowledge of the technicalities of art to aet up oven for a connoisseur . He is profoundly ignorant of what critics mean by ' broadth of effect j" ho is very

    dense on the subject of impasto , and by no means clear on that of chiaroscuro so that his knowledge of art is about on a par with that of nine-tenths of the public , if they had the candour to confess it . He very much understates his knowledge ; and says nothing of the finelyflavoured taste which belongs to so highly-cultivated a mind , and which makes his remarks better worth listening to than columns of technical criticism . BlacJcwood opens with an article on Kingslev , giving hearty praise and hearty abuse on some of his obvious merits and obvious defects , but presenting no very profound appreciation of this strange man of genius . The next paper , " Aland—the Baltic in 1854 , " is very interesting , and by an eyewitness of the fall of Bomarsund . " Once upon a Time" is somewhat ponderous gossip from the pen which in this Magazine so frequentl y addresses his " dear Eusebius . " The rest of the Magazine is taken up with " continuations , " and a paper on the " Palmerston Administration . "

    The Dublin University has an historical essay , of singular ability and interest , on the " Birth of the American Constitution , " which those who read Mr . Bristed ' s paper in Fraser will do well to study . It exemplifies in a striking manner the minuteness with which the American Constitution imitated that of the Mother Country , only here and there substituting improvements : an imitation which was the wisest procedure that could be adopted , for it not only produced the smallest disturbance in the political organism , it was also the best adapted to the genius and habits of the people . Constitutions are things of slow growth . They can be created—on paper ; but as Carl . yx . e in his French Revolution sarcastically and constantly shows , these paper constitutions will not march . America separated from England , and formed into a Republic , had to choose her King , thinking with Ui / tsses that " a multitude of rulers was not good , there must be one ruler ,

    one King : " ovk ayadov 7 ro \ v < oipauirj' et < f noipavos eorreo ecs j 3 ao-iXevs . A king , however , in name , America would not have ; a President was chosen : — v The name of president was given to the administrator of this extensive trust of executive power ; but the slightest consideration will show that the office differed little in its real nature from that of a constitutional king . Government by a single person is , in truth , more realised in the presidential than in the royal office as thia

    exists in Great Britain , the authority of " the Crown" being shared between the monarch and his confidential servants in such proportions as to leave to the former no personal power except that of choosing the latter , practically by and with the advice and consent of the Commons House of Parliament . Thus strictly limited in power , the king is properly relieved of responsibility ; but the president , held responsible for his acts , is permitted to exercise a real and direct influence over the patronage of the State . Under both forms the executive office is essentially elective ; the president being chosen by the direct vote of certain representatives of the people , and for a fixed term of four years ; while the king ' s ministers , in whom is vested the authority of " the Crown , " are practically elected and deposed by the House of Commons whenever it pleases the whim or seems good to the wisdom of that august assembly .

    Not only the King , but the House of Lords was adopted ; adopted , however , with a wise modification , for ; it is remarkable , as this writer notices , that no British colony , old or new , has a class from which an hereditary aristocracy could be drawn . Attempts to create a privileged order " were frequently made in North America , but they failed as the Baronetship of Novia Scotia failed . How then could a Supreme Court be formed holding a position analogous to that of the House of Lords ? It was formed by the creation of a Senate : the members weru elected not by the people , but by the state legislatures , and held office six years instead of two . No modification of the Senate could have fitted it to exercise the functions of appellate jurisdiction , the permanent possession of which by the House of Peers is probably the mainstay of our crudely-mixed constitution ; yet , without n tribunal of final resortit was manifest that the union could not be permanently maintained . To fill

    , up the deficiency , the Supremo Court was invented , and to this creation of the wisdom of the convention of 1787 , we venture to think , the world is indebted for tho proof that haa been afforded it of tho practicability of a Republican Government , by the prolongation of its existence over three-quarters of a century . In the British system , the constitution , unwritten , and practically but a mixed deduction from ancient usages and abstract principles of right , is declared and expounded , as occasion requires , in the judicial decisions of the House of Lords , by a body absolutely independent in theory , and , in practice , perhaps , as much guarded against undue influence as it is possible for human frailty to be . Individuals are thus protected against eacli other , and against tho crimes or errors of tho highest judicial functionaries ; and the enjoyment of reasonable liberty ia rendered possible to tho whole nation by the permanont oxistonco of an institution , venerable from its antiquity and elevation , endowed with power to prevent public or private injury from being inflicted , either by the infringement or tho overstraining of tho law . Tho confidence requisite to a proper diddiargo modifi

    of thia high function could not bo created in tho now commonwealth by any - cation of a non-permanent legislative chamber ; but it has been freely given and continued to tho judgea of tho Supremo Court , nominated by tho president , " with tlio advice and consent of the Senate , " and secured during good behaviour in tho tenure or thoir ofiico and tho enjoyment of salnrios not to bo diminished without a violation or tho articles of tho constitution . Tho jurisdiction given to this tribunal was both original and appellate , extending over all controversies , internal or oxtcrnal , m wmen tho general government might bo involved , or one State in any way at variance witn another ; but tho power that gives tho institution its trunscondout importance is , that of deciding between the law and tho constitution . An individual citizen , nggnoyou by tho operation of an act for legislation , correctly ( in reference to tho letter of tno statute ) interpreted to hia damage by an inferior tribunal , may look for redress to tn Supromo Court of the United States , and hope to obtain it , should it appear that tno injurious law waa enacted by a State legislature , or even by Congress , in contravontion of tho articles of tho constitution . - Very curious it is to trace tho resemblance of our constitution in that oi a nation having abjured its king , having no aristocracy , and having so groat a variety of sects that a national church was impossible . The writer of this

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    Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make Iaw 3—they interpret and try to enforce them .-Edznburgh JRevzew .

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    520 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 2, 1855, page 520, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2093/page/16/