Ir there is one thing more than an that the ordinary Wnglisbman di Doing told, it is that ho has been the victim of a panic. Acting on this curious trait in his character, there are never wanting those who, when a cell is made for exertion of some sort, are ready to pat John Ball on the back and ery—" Panic, old boy!" Now, that John Ball does sometimes wake up and find that those whom he trusted to look after his interests have, instead, awoke to a senso of his situation. Notably has the history of the last thirty years been one of so-called panics; and looking back, we may notice that every step forward towards putting his House in a state of defence has been, more or less, the result of awakening to a sense of the unprepared condition in which those whom he trusted to see to his property, had left him. One of John, Bull's panics arose, not unnaturally, when he found that a coalition Ministry had boggled affairs at the commencement of the Crimean war, that his troops were well nigh driven out of the peninsula, and bad practically, while nominally besiegers, to act themselves as besieged for more thin six months, The reorganisation of the store and ordnance departments may be said to owe its origin to this absurd panic. We most of us remember the time when Louis Napoleon's colo: talked of an invasion of Great Britain. Whether they were in earnest or not does not much matter, for to their bluster we owe the formation of our Volunteer force. La Gloire and the other ironclads of Napoleon IIT created what these deprecators of action would. denominate our third panic, which certainly cost Great Britain a vast expenditure of money, but which has happily resulted in her possessing the finest fleet of ironclads afloat, and has restored her for the present at least to what, under an economical (?) Ministry, she had well-nigh lost, the role of the high seas. We are, therefore, as we have said before, not sorry to see Great Britain in the throes of a fourth panic. It is high time that the system of organisation which has wrought such changes on the vontinent of Europe, should Jead us to look
has taught Mr. Bull that there is no to our own shortcomings, Experience use looking to his Government to take the first steps. When the present advisers of Her Majesty were thinking only of economy and democratic changes, affairs on the Continent were taking a turn of which they little dreamt. To expect Mr, Gladstone and his colleagues to throw overboard their fancies and become common men, would be like caging the lion and lamb together, and expecting the latter to take the law into his own hands. The present panic marks John Bull's appreciation of this fact; he feels rather than reasons that he has not been done fairly by he sees the effects of the shortcomings of his natural protector, though possibly not yet quite awake as to the cause of these shortcomings. We are ourselves far from being desirous of nursing a panic, yet even in this remote quarter of the world we can see the same causes and effects in operation. We were not prepared to back up all the fears of those who last year predicted an open breach between the Chinese and the foreign residents, yet looking back to the events of the year, we believe that there was ample ground for all the precautions that were taken. We know that, since|that date, the warlike preparations of the Chinese have gone on in a constantly increasing ratio we hear tales as unfounded, yet as well calculated to do harm and engender ill-feeling, assiduously spread on all sides. It is only right to ask ourselves, have these no object; and if the object be one of hostility to ourselves, are we ready to meet the first blow? Cest lo preniier pas qui caite, is never more true than when Spoken of popular uprisings.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.