had been reached the crowd would disperse, not to be col lected again for that time.

These two agitations, the Chartist and the Young Ireland, constituted what may be called our tribute to the power of the insurrectionary spirit that was abroad over Europe in 1848. In almost every other European State revolution raised its head fiercely, and fought out its claims in the very capital, under the eyes of bewildered royalty. The whole of Italy, from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, and from Venice to Genoa, was thrown into convulsion; “Our Italy" once again "shone o'er with civil swords." There was insurrection in Berlin and in Vienna. The Emperor had to

fly from the latter city as the Pope had fled from Rome. In Paris there came a Red Republican rising against a Republic that strove not to be Red, and the rising was crushed by Cavaignac with a terrible strenuousness that made some of the streets of Paris literally to run with blood. It was a grim foreshadowing of the Commune of 1871. Another remarkable foreshadowing of what was to come was seen in the fact that the Prince Louis Napoleon, long an exile from France, had been allowed to return to it, and at the close of the year, in the passion for law and order at any price born of the Red Republican excesses, had been elected President of the French Republic. Hungary was in arms; Spain was in convulsion; even Switzerland was not safe. Our contribution to this general commotion was to be found in the demonstration on Kennington Common, and the abortive attempt at a rising near Ballingarry. There could not possibly be a truer tribute to the solid strength of our system. Not for one moment was the political constitution of England seriously endangered. Not for one hour did the safety of our great communities require a call upon the soldiers instead of upon the police. Not one charge of cavalry was needed to put down the fiercest outburst of the rebellious spirit in England. Not one single execution took place. The meaning of this is clear. It is not that there were no grievances in our system calling for redress. It is not that the existing institutions did not bear heavily down on many classes. It is not that our political or social system was so conspicuously better than that of some European countries which were torn and ploughed up by revolution. To imag

ine that we owed our freedom from revolution to our freedom from serious grievance, would be to misread altogether the lessons offered to our statesmen by that eventful year. We have done the work of whole generations of Reformers in the interval between this time and that. We have made peaceful reforms, political, industrial, legal, since then, which, if not to be had otherwise, would have justified any appeal to revolution. There, however, we touch upon the lesson of the time. Our political and constitutional system rendered an appeal to force unnecessary and superfluous. No call to arms was needed to bring about any reform that the common judgment of the country might demand. Other peoples flew to arms because they were driven by despair; because there was no way in their political constitution for the influence of public opinion to make itself justly felt; because those who were in power held it by the force of bayonets, and not of public agreement. The results of the year were, on the whole, unfavorable to popular liberty. The results of the year that followed were decidedly reactionary. The time had not come, in 1848 or 1849, for Liberal principles to assert themselves. Their "great deed," to quote some of the words of our English poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning," was too great." We in this country were saved alike from the revolution and the reaction by the universal recognition of the fact, among all who gave themselves time to think, that public opinion, being the ultimate ruling power, was the only authority to which an appeal was needed, and that in the end justice would be done. All but the very wildest spirits could afford to wait; and no revolutionary movement is really dangerous which is only the work of the wildest spirits.

CHAPTER XIX.

DON PACIFICO.

THE name of Don Pacifico was as familiar to the world some quarter of a century ago as that of M. Jecker was about the time of the French invasion of Mexico. Don Pacifico became famous for a season as the man whose quar

rel had nearly brought on a European war, caused a temporary disturbance of good relations between England and France, split up political parties in England in a manner hardly ever known before, and established the reputation of Lord Palmerston as one of the greatest Parliamentary debaters of his time. Among the memorable speeches delivered in the English House of Commons, that of Lord Palmerston on the Don Pacifico debate must always take a place. It was not because the subject of the debate was a great one, or because there were any grand principles involved. The question originally in dispute was unutterably trivial and paltry; there was no particular principle involved; it was altogether what is called in commercial litigation a question of account; a controversy about the amount and time of payment of a doubtful claim. Nor was the speech delivered by Lord Palmerston one of the grand historical displays of oratory that, even when the sound of them is lost, send their echoes to "roll from soul to soul." It was not like one of Burke's great speeches, or one of Chatham's. It was not one calculated to provoke keen literary controversy, like Sheridan's celebrated "Begum speech," which all contemporaries held to be unrivalled, but which a later generation assumes to have been rather flashy rhetoric. There are no passages of splendid eloquence in Palmerston's Pacifico speech. Its great merit was its wonderful power as a contribution to Parliamentary argument; as a masterly appeal to the feelings, the prejudices, and the passions of the House of Commons; as a complete Parliamentary victory over a combination of the most influential, eloquent, and heterogeneous opponents.

Don Pacifico was a Jew, a Portuguese by extraction, but a native of Gibraltar, and a British subject. His house in Athens was attacked and plundered in the open day, on April 4th, 1847, by an Athenian mob, who were headed, it was affirmed, by two sons of the Greek Minister of War. The attack came about in this way: It had been customary in Greek towns to celebrate Easter by burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot. In 1847 the police of Athens were ordered to prevent this performance, and the mob, disappointed of their favorite amusement, ascribed the new orders to the influence of the Jews. Don Pacifico's house happened to

stand near the spot where the Judas was annually burnt; Don Pacifico was known to be a Jew, and the anger of the mob was wreaked upon him accordingly. There could be no doubt that the attack was lawless, and that the Greek authorities took no trouble to protect Pacifico against it. Don Pacifico made a claim against the Greek Government for compensation. He estimated his losses, direct and indirect, at nearly thirty-two thousand pounds sterling. Another claim was made at the same time by another British subject, a man of a very different stamp from Don Pacifico. This was Mr. Finlay, the historian of Greece. Mr. Finlay had gone out to Greece in the enthusiastic days of Byron and Cochrane and Church and Hastings; and he settled in Athens when the independence of Greece had been established. Some of his land had been taken for the purpose of rounding off the new palace gardens of King Otho; and Mr. Finlay had declined to accept the terms offered by the Greek Government, to which other land-owners in the same position as himself had assented. Some stress was laid by Lord Palmerston's antagonists, in the course of the debate, on the fact that Mr. Finlay thus stood out apart from other land-owners in Athens. Mr. Finlay, however, had a perfect right to stand out for any price he thought fit. He was in the same position as a Greek resident of London or Manchester whose land is taken for the purposes of a railway or other public improvement, and who declines to accept the amount of compensation tendered for it in the first instance. The peculiarity of the case was that Mr. Finlay was not left, as the supposed Greek gentleman assuredly would be, to make good his claims for himself in the courts of law. Neither Don Pacifico nor Mr. Finlay had appealed to the law courts at all. But about this time our Foreign Office had had several little complaints against the Greek authorities. We had taken so considerable a part in setting up Greece that our ministers not unnaturally thought Greece ought to show her gratitude by attending a little more closely to our advice. On the other hand, Lord Palmerston had made up his mind that there was constant intrigue going on against our interests among the foreign diplomatists in Athens. He was convinced that France was perpetually plotting against us there, and that Russia was watching an

opportunity to supersede once for all our influence by com pletely establishing hers. Don Pacifico's sheets, counterpanes, and gold watch had the advantage of being made the subject of a trial of strength between England on the one side, and France and Russia on the other.

There had been other complaints as well. Ionian subjects of her Majesty had sent in remonstrances against lawless or high-handed proceedings; and a midshipman of her Majesty's ship Fantôme, landing from a boat at night on the shore of Patras, had been arrested by mistake. None of these questions would seem at first sight to wear a very grave international character. All they needed for settlement, it might be thought, was a little open discussion, and the exercise of some good sense and moderation on both sides. It cannot be doubted that the Greek authorities were lax and careless, and that acts had been done which they could not justify. It is only fair to say that they do not appear to have tried to justify some of them; but they were of opinion that certain of the claims were absurdly exaggerated, and in this belief they proved to be well sustained. The Greeks were very poor, and also very dilatory; and they gave Lord Palmerston a reasonable excuse for a little impatience. Unluckily Lord Palmerston became possessed with the idea that the French minister in Greece was secretly setting the Greek Government on to resist our claims; for the Foreign Office had made the claims ours. They had lumped up the outrages on Ionian seamen, the mistaken arrest of the midshipman (who had been released with apologies the moment his nationality and position were discovered), Mr. Finlay's land, and Don Pacifico's household furniture in one claim, converted it into a national demand, and insisted that Greece must pay up within a given time or take the consequences. Greece hesitated, and accordingly the British fleet was ordered to the Piræus. It made its appearance very promptly there, and seized all the Greek vessels belonging to the Government and to private merchants that were found within the waters.

The Greek Government appealed to France and Russia as Powers joined with us in the treaty to protect the independence of Greece. France and Russia were both disposed to make bitter complaint of not having been consulted, in the