he had come. He was sitting there opposite to me, asking me to give him leave to ask her to be his wife. "Is it all right?" he asked, in a voice that showed he could not bear my silence any longer. "If you say No, I will go away, and never see her again. I could not bear to win her without your consent-only speak. You are not hesitating because we were so poor, because there was a time when we were starving, because—” "No, no!" I interrupted, hating myself, and feeling my heart go out to him. I could not say more --there was something choking me. The tears were coming into my eyes. "Then speak just one word. Is it all right?" I gave a little nod, for words had failed me. He got up, and walked about the room, a great joy writen on his face, and flashing from his eyes. "You trust me, you will really trust me?" he said, stopping before me. "Yes, dear," I answered, "I will trust you." It seemed as if he could not hear the words calmly. He strode across the room, then came back and stood before me again. "I shall never be good enough for her never," he said, with a joyous laugh,—“never at my best; and perhaps she won't look at me. I am terribly afraid of that. Do you think there is any chance for me?" "I don't know," I answered, for I was not going to betray my child's secret. "Something deep down in my heart tells me that there is," he said, simply. "Try to frighten myself as I will, I feel that she is the meaning of life to me. Let me go!" he exclaimed, suddenly"I want to be alone, and walk the streets until the train starts. I cannot stay in a room any longer. I shall be in Rome the day after tomorrow, and will telegraph.' He took my hands in both his, and looked at me tenderly. "I remember the day you came to see us first," he said; "my father was sitting over the fire: and how glad we used to be when the roast-mutton came. You always sent enough for us all," he laughed. "God bless you, dear mother!" he added; and lifting my hands, kissed them both. "Wish me good luck, when I ask my darling if she loves me." "I do I will, with all my heart!" I answered. The telegram came two days later: "From your son Thomas and your daughter May.--Our best love to you all. We are very happy." And they are very happy still, and will be all their lives. He lives in England now, and his name is well known. May and I are very proud of him. The other girls are both married too. One married the son of a bishop; but I fear it is not a very happy mar riage. Nina, the youngest, is a soldier's wife, as I was, and quakes whenever France is arrogant, or Germany buys a new big gun, and thinks there will be war to-morrow morning. He is a good fellow, but he is not like Thomas. My motherin-law is still alive; and she is the one person in the family who does not know our romance. She is a stern old lady, proud of her descent from the Crauford - Greys; and she keeps me in order still, though I have married daughters of my own. The amusing part of it is, that she is very proud of Thomas, and says it is odd that the colonies should have produced so perfect a gentleman. It was only the other day that she sent him most of her late husband's books; for she said he was the only man in the family who would really appreciate them. THE PROGRESS OF THE SESSION. set at defiance in Ireland; the law had been wantonly broken again and again; and an unlawful authority had established itself in place of that of her Majesty. To put an end to such a state of things was and is the first duty of her Majesty's Government, and to effect this purpose they have introduced the Bill which has for so long a time been discussed, to Cer THE beginning of the month of May witnessed the helplessness of a popular assembly which has lost the power of self-restraint, and abandoned respect for its own dignity. As soon as the House of Commons had reassembled after its brief recess at Easter, the same dreary work of obstruction recommenced, and it was obvious that the intentions and tactics of the Gladstone-Par- the exclusion of all other business. nell faction were unchanged. The Ministers have gallantly persebest hope which the country has vered with their measure, which from the intolerable condition into had reached the stage of Commitwhich the Opposition leaders have tee after the Easter recess, and dragged the representative body, upon which they desired to conis in the thorough exposure of centrate the attention and energy their tactics, and the evidence of Parliament. Unhappily, howdaily brought before the public ever, further delay was interposed eye of their deliberate intention from an unexpected quarter. to discredit Parliamentary govern- tain charges had been made by ment, so long as the reins of power the Times' against members of are in the hands of their political the Irish "Nationalist" party, opponents. It is necessary, therefore, to bear patiently the evils inflicted upon us by the enemies of our constitution, until the country comes to the conclusion that they are unbearable, and the constituencies awake to a sense of the disgrace of the situation. No one can deny that patience, and that to a remarkable degree, has been displayed by the Conservative leaders in the House of Commons, and that conciliation and courtesy have been stretched to their utmost limits in their dealing with their unscrupulous adversaries. The Government, indeed, had a plain course before them, difficult though that course had been rendered by the conduct of those to whom they might, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, have justly looked for support. The Queen's authority had been and one of these persons having, in his place in Parliament, declared those charges to be false as far as they regarded himself, the Times' returned to the assault with renewed vigour, accused the "hon. member" of having, knowingly or unknowingly, stated that which was untrue, and brought forward facts and dates in support of its assertion. Thereupon Sir Charles Lewis, without consulting the leaders of his party, and in defiance of the expostulations of the "whips," stepped down jauntily into the arena, and proceeded to move that the publication of the article in the Times' which charged a member of Parliament with falsehood, was a breach of the privileges of the House of Commons. There is nothing more mysterious in the existence of a Parlia ment than its "privilege": no one exactly knows where it begins or where it ends, and the very words "breach of privilege" carry with them to outsiders a terror which is all the more dreadful from the mystery in which it is enshrouded. It is far from our intention to endeavour to fathom the secret, or to weary our readers with a dissertation upon a question in which it is possible that they may not be greatly interested. Suffice it to say that one thing is above all others abundantly clear, namely, that in all the accusations which have ever been brought against newspapers or individuals for infringement of the privileges of Parliament, such indictments have invariably proceeded either from the aggrieved party himself, or from his immediate friends and political associates. It was, therefore, an entire novelty in Parliamentary practice that a Tory member should rise to complain that a breach of privilege had been committed against a Parnellite. The interference of Sir Charles Lewis had the natural result of enabling those who prefer the authority of the National League to that of the Queen to waste the greater part of the week in discussing the question which Sir Charles had forced upon the attention of the House. It did something more. Goverment having come to the conclusion that the article in the Times' should not be treated as a breach of the privileges of the House, the Parnellites were enabled to pose as a party anxious to vindicate those privileges, and to meet the charges which were supposed to constitute such a breach. Moreover, when the Government offered that a prosecution should be directed against the Times,' to be conducted nominally by the Attorney-General, but actually and really by counsel to be chosen by those who had been charged, the Gladstone-Parnell allies were able to move an amendment for a select committee of inquiry which they knew could not be carried against the Government, and, having done this, to shout aloud in joyful chorus the new cry with which Sir Charles Lewis had furnished them—namely, that they had courted and supported inquiry into the allegations against them, and that this inquiry had been refused by the supporters of the Government. Of course those who have closely followed the sequence of events know that for several weeks the charges made in the Times' have been before the public, and that an innocent man who is accused of crime in a newspaper need not sit down for one day without entering an action against his defamer. They know, moreover, that a committee of the House of Commons is a most unfit tribunal to examine charges advanced against its own members, and especially so when party divisions have been taken upon questions immediately connected with those charges, and evident bias has already been shown, on one side and on the other, in the somewhat acrimonious debates which have preceded those divisions. They know also that a British jury could award costs and penalties which would be entirely beyond the power and outside the province of a committee of the House of Commons. the general public cannot be supposed to have scrutinised with a critical eye the events which have recently occurred, and it is the general public whom the Gladstonian-Parnellites hope to confuse and mislead by the new cry which they have been enabled to raise. But The British people, however, are not so blind or so easily cajoled as the occupants of the Opposition front bench could wish they will not believe in the sudden anxiety for inquiry on the part of men who have never evinced that anxiety during the weeks in which full and ample inquiry depended entirely upon themselves. Neither will the British people readily admit that it may or can be necessary to debate, word by word, the clauses of a Bill introduced by her Majesty's Ministers, upon their responsibility, for the repression of crime, and, according to the evidence of Lord Selborne (the Lord Chancellor of Mr Gladstone's late Government), decidedly less stringent and severe than the similar Bill which was introduced and passed into an Act by the very men who are now protesting, debating, and thwarting, by every means in their power, the measure for the restoration of the Queen's authority in Ireland. Lord Selborne's speech at Winchester upon the 9th May was perhaps the most emphatic condemnation of the unpatriotic conduct of his late colleagues which has been administered by any of those Liberal Unionists who have so nobly shown their preference of country to party in the recent crisis. He scattered to the winds the miserable sophistry of Lord Rosebery, who had declared at Glasgow that the contest about to be waged in the country was between "conciliation" and "coercion." "There was no such question now," said Lord Selborne, "more than there was in any former time, if by coercion was meant arming the Government with powers to enforce the law. Not only was that necessary for the good of all those for whose benefit the law existed; without it no measures of conciliation whatever had ever borne or ever would bear good fruit. And the "coercion," so called, which was thus put in opposition to "conciliation," was not coercion of the loyal subjects, was no infringement of their rights, but the coercion of those who, establish tyranny, to supersede the by illegal methods, endeavoured to law, and coerce private liberties in Ireland." It cannot be too strongly urged or too deeply impressed upon the public mind, that it is Mr Gladstone and his mongrel following who are the real coercionists in the true sense in which Lord Selborne uses the word. It is they who, against every principle of liberty and every axiom of freedom, are striving to secure the triumph of that hateful system which, calling itself the "National" League, imposes upon the Irish "nation" coercion in its most hideous form, and binds its yoke with blood-stained cords round the necks of the unhappy peasants to whom meanwhile, in false and treacherous accents, it whispers the empty platitudes of a spurious patriotism. Lord Selborne, Lord Hartington, Mr Chamberlain, and Mr Bright are no coercionists, but they are alive to the necessity of vindicating the supremacy of the law in every part of her Majesty's dominions, and they recognise the fact that the enforcement of those just laws, which exist for the coercion of bad men and disloyal subjects, is absolutely necessary for the safety and wellbeing of the State. It is well to note the contrast between the calm, statesmanlike, and well-reasoned speech of Lord Selborne to which we have just alluded, and the light and flippant tone in which Lord Rosebery has recently treated the same subject. It is easy for Lord Rosebery to make a clever speech, and we are all proud of the ability which has brought him to the front rank of British statesmen. sole crime of the victims having We had, however, hoped better been that they had been seen things from him (especially after speaking to policemen? Is there the experience acquired in his nothing "unjust" or "wanton " recent foreign and colonial tour) in these doings? and if Lord Rosethan the servile submission to Mr bery were Prime Minister toGladstone under which he seems morrow, would he deem it his duty to have fallen; and his last either to sit still and do nothing, utterances upon Irish politics will or to counteract such evils by not have raised his reputation placing power in the hands of the either on the north or south of the organisation on whose behalf, if Tweed. In his speech at Glasgow, not in obedience to whose very Lord Rosebery informed us that orders, these lawless and disgracehe had an almost unlimited belief ful acts are perpetrated? We in Mr Gladstone's capacity," and think too well of our fellow-. proceeded to accuse the Govern- countryman to believe it possible ment of having "brought forward" that such would be the case; and the Irish question "in a most dis- we are confident that, freed from tressing and offensive manner, in the spell which the fatal influence an unjust, causeless, and wanton of Mr Gladstone seems to have cast Coercion Bill." Of course, if the upon him, Lord Rosebery, if the Bill to which Lord Rosebery ap- responsibility rested upon him, plies the claptrap term of "coer- would take bold and prompt meascion" is really unjust, causeless, ures to grapple with the demon of and wanton," the manner of its lawlessness which holds Ireland in introduction may be fittingly de- its clutches. scribed in the terms which he thinks right to employ. But upon what possible grounds which could be accepted by reasonable men can the epithets thus employed be defended and justified as really applicable to the measure in question? Does Lord Rosebery deny the existence of an authority in Ireland which is obeyed rather than that of the Queen in certain parts of that country, to which alone it is proposed to apply the provisions of the Crimes Bill? Does he refuse to believe that men have been murdered, beaten, shot in the legs, and molested in a cruel and utterly unlawful manner, for no other reason than that they have refused to obey, or have been suspected of refusing to obey, the orders of that unlawful authority? Does he approve of such outrages, of the cutting off women's hair, pouring tar upon their heads, and similar infamous proceedings, the But if we believe this, we grieve all the more to witness the manner in which Lord Rosebery throws himself, heart and soul, into the Gladstonian ranks, adopts their catchword "coercion," ridicules the Liberal Unionists, and proclaims his continued adherence to "Home Rule." He insists, indeed, that it was upon "the principle of Home Rule" that Mr Gladstone's Government was defeated, and is so open to any arrangement or concession which may reunite the scattered fragments of the Liberal party, that he declares in the most emphatic language that he and his colleagues "have no rooted love or plan." But if this be the case, and Lord Rosebery candidly admits the defeat which he and his friends have sustained upon the principle for which they contended, should not common fair-play-not to say common honesty-induce them to |