in the field of battle, they will indeed prove stalwart heroes. The spectacle of our Colonies shoulder-to-shoulder with England in the Soudan, will act as a powerful sedative on the nations now snarling at her heels, and will prove a far more effective step towards the federation of the empire than the somewhat cumbrous machinery advocated in some quarters of Colonial Boards of Advice. It is not impossible that it might even go farther, – that it might prove the first step towards realising the idea of "English-speaking peoples" against the world, the first indications of which were given by the American captain when he carried his ship into action at the Peiho, with the cheery words, "Blood is thicker than water"; and by the valuable aid afforded us by American sailors, and by those of no other nation, at Alexandria.
The advocates of an "insular policy," those who would abandon empire "to save expense and avoid obligations," do not perceive that even from their own low standpoint, such a course would prove a ruinous economy. Fortunately England has not yet sunk to that depth where "the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honour feels," but she likes money's worth for her money; and under the management of the Liberal party, while her honour has been tarnished, the guineas do not jingle, at least not in her own pockets. The very essence of finance is policy; and our Ministers have perhaps learnt at last, from the condition to which they have reduced Ireland, Egypt, and South Africa, that common-sense and firmness in the management of affairs at home and abroad are of more importance to the finances of a nation than the details of the most ingeniously constructed budget. And as for the Soudan, how many heaven-inspired budgets will be required to recoup the country for the enormous outlay occasioned by mistaken policy?
We remember Mr Bright saying – in the pleasant, conciliatory manner in which it is his custom to speak of political opponents – that Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry was the very worst ever known in England. If that were true then, time has proved that there may be "in the lowest depth a lower still," for Lord Beaconsfield's successors have not only beat his record hollow, but have hopelessly distanced all competition in the same line of business for ever. Mr Gladstone has had two opportunities of governing England. What has he made of them? At the close of his first administration, we, in common with thousands of others, went to bed at night and got up in the morning feeling sore at the slighting and contemptuous manner in which England was generally spoken of on the Continent; and Lord Beaconsfield's great popularity was due to the fact that he reversed this state of affairs, and replaced our country in the position from which his predecessor had degraded her.
Mr Gladstone and his apologists (all his supporters are apologists) are prone to excuse his many failures by the plea that all his difficulties were inherited from Lord Beaconsfield. Supposing its truth to be granted for argument's sake, it was his business to make the best of those difficulties, instead of proceeding, as he has done, on a downwardly graduated scale from bad to worse. But let us examine a little into the justice of the plea, and ask what Mr Gladstone did really inherit from Lord Beaconsfield.
First, he inherited an England
