personal motives of a kind that compelled respect. That the reform debate of 1859 was memorable for the speeches of Bulwer and Cairns is well said, by virtue of the prerogative, to mark the force of arguments that are none the worse because they did not persuade, and the rights of a cause that has failed ; but it is out of proportion. Bulwer far surpassed himself on 26th April in the following year, when he so impressed opponents that Ayrton turned in astonishment to Bernal Osborne, saying that it was the finest speech on the representation of the people he had ever heard. Sir Hugh Cairns never acquired in the Commons anything like the reputation and authority which his splendid gift of intellectual speech brought him in the other House, where some say that the great tradition which comes down from Mansfield and Chatham ended at his death and, by the law of demand and supply, is likely not to revive.
One of the disputed passages which Dr. Bright settles by implication concerns the marriage of the queen. He praises Lord Melbourne for bringing about an event which involved his own abdication, and evidently does not assign to him any part in the arrangement by which the marriage was to have been put off for three years. He says that Prussia, by the treaty of Prague, obtained all that it desired ; thereby rejecting the story that the king desired more, by several millions of souls, and was restrained by the moderation of his son. It was supposed that Lord Russell, to screen the convention of Plombières, obtained false assurances from Turin, and conveyed them to Parliament. Clearly, Dr. Bright does not believe it. Nor does he admit that Lord Russell, when asserting our neutrality and resisting the confederate proclivity of Napoleon III., spoke without conviction, as the mouthpiece of an over-ruling Cabinet led, while he lived, by Lewis. He does not even hold England guilty of avoidable delay in the affair of the Alabama. Thus, he drops more than one figure in the American calculations. For those Englishmen whose sympathies were southern he has scant respect. He says of the wealthier classes : "With their usual mis-
