charge, from whatever quarter it may have come; and we remain, sir, your obedient servants, (Signed) E. PARKINSON, Major General, late 33rd regiment. J. M. HARTY, Lieut.-Col. late 33rd regiment. A. H. TREVOR, Lieut.-Col. late 33rd regiment. With reference to the Memoir of Colonel Cameron, K.T.S., in the May Number of THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE, in which a passage occurred which proved unpleasing to the 33rd regiment, by stating that its soldiers at Quatre Bras had stripped some of the killed and wounded; in justice to the Editor of the Magazine, and to the few survivors of that gallant corps, the Author of the Memoir feels it his duty to state, that after an interview with his informant - an officer who was severely wounded at Quatre Bras he deeply regrets to find, that he has fallen into an error and misconception, as the stripping in question was perpetrated by the fatigue parties who buried the dead after the action. The Author feels it but just, and due to the soldiers of the 33rd regiment, to make this retractation, and begs to assure them, that he has no wish to take one leaf from the laurels they so gallantly won on the memorable 16th and 18th of June, 1815. THE AUTHOR OF THE MEMOIR. 1 JAMES MCGLASHAN, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE-STREET. TO CORRESPONDENTS. THE Editor of THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE begs to notify that he will not undertake to return, or be accountable for, any manuscripts forwarded to him for perusal. THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. No. CCLX. AUGUST, 1854. VOL. XLIV. WHO IS TO CARRY ON THE QUEEN'S GOVERNMENT? Ir is now exactly nineteen months since Lord Derby surrendered the seals of office and the responsibilities of Prime Minister to the noble Earl who still reigns in Downing-street, although he has long ceased to govern in the new Palace of Westminster, or to lead public opinion anywhere in the country. The period has been an eventful one for England and for the world; yet who can doubt that it will, in all likelihood, prove to be but the premonitory stage of a revolution in human affairs, such as has not been witnessed for generations? At home, the convulsive energy of the Government has sufficed to complete an organic change in our financial system, and has fixed among us, to all appearance permanently, a mode of taxation opposed in its nature to the spirit of British institutions, and which never previously was resorted to but as an exceptional resource in cases of emergency so urgent as to justify a temporary subjection of the principles of the Constitution to the necessities of the commonwealth. The income-tax, in former times resorted to only to meet the exigencies of war, was employed by Sir Robert Peel professedly as a temporary expedient to evade the difficulties involved in the derangement of the fiscal system caused by his free-trade measures. Extended to Ireland, and supplemented by the succession tax, it has been endowed with a character as permanent as any Chancellor of the Exchequer could confer upon it. The principle of direct taxation it includes has been thus so far established; and that principle is impossible of application apart from details, impolitic, unjust, and in direct contravention of the most distinctive theories and the most timehonoured practices of the Constitution. VOL. XLIV.-NO. CCLX. All that Mr. Gladstone could do has been done towards fixing upon a small portion of the people the burthen of the support of the State, towards the creation of a privileged class exempt from taxation, and towards the fencing about of the newly-created privileges of that class the lowest and most ignorant of the nation - by the imposition of penalties upon industry, and the addition to our criminal code of the new offence of possession of property. Sir Robert Peel, in his anxiety to enlarge the Manchester loaf, and to give ten hoops to the Glasgow pot, did, indeed, take the initiatory step in this process of placing the peace-taxation of the country upon a war establishment; but to his pupil and successor is due the credit of having given to that transitional expedient a character of permanence which will scarcely be obliterated without a revolution. Henceforth, all praise to Mr. Gladstone, his malt-tax, his succession-tax, and his extended income-tax! the pot is again reduced to its six hoops; the acquisition of a permanent stake in the soil is prohibited under heavy pecuniary penalties; a fine of £4 3s. 4d. is imposed upon every artisan who shall presume to earn two pounds a-week; and the small tradesman who shall be found guilty of the more heinous crime of raising his gross profits to the figure of £150 yearly, is thereby rendered liable to the enhanced mulct of £8 15s. 66 Property is a theft," was a barren dogma in the mouth of M. Proudhon; Lord Aberdeen's Chancellor of the Exchequer has registered the maxim in the code of British statute law, and has confirmed and realised it by the sanction of specific penalties. This, in truth, is the opus operatum of the Coalition Ministry-the grand product of L the season of activity, during which, in their first Parliamentary session, they proved, to a circle of admiring sycophants, their irresistible claim to the exclusive possession within themselves of all the wisdom, all the liberality, all the moderation, and all the patriotism of Britain. But every paroxysm has its after stage of collapse; and, as this is often more dangerous to the natural body than the violent energy of fever, so did the exhaustion of all the talents," after their domestic exertions of last year, bring upon the body politic the worst of perils the grievous calamity of war. Warned in every shape and from every quarter in the despatches of their own ministers, in the weighty arguments of the independent press, in the caricatures of Punch, from both sides of the woolsack and of the Speaker's chair, by soldiers and Peace-Congress men-Lord Aberdeen and Lord Clarendon yet held on their course of intrigue, until a ridiculous squabble about the holy places of Palestine has been ripened into a fierce contest, involving the safety of every European state. It is no teaching of wisdom after the event to pronounce that, as surely as the war now begun has followed upon the feeble diplomacy of last year, so surely would peace have been the result of an impression upon the mind of the Czar-made while yet it seemed to his barbarous sense of honour possible to retreat-that England really believed in the practicability of maintaining the independence of the Porte, and that she honestly and truly intended to give her efficient aid to uphold it. Unless the common opinion of all Englishmen be erroneous-unless all experience of human nature teach falsely-unless history be really no more than an old almanac, it seems not to be doubtful that the surest mode to encourage a lawless bully in a course of violence and rapine, is to assure him of the weakness of his intended victim, and of the disinclination, and faintheartedness, and hopelessness of success with which the cause of the latter will be taken up by professing friends. Such, in word and deed, was the nature of the pacificatory intervention of our coalition ministry in the RussoTurkish dispute. Every despatch, memorandum, and note of Lord Clarendon breathed in each line a confession of belief in the overwhelming power of Russia, and in the irremediable exhaustion of Turkey: every stir and stay of the British fleet was a fact in proof of the childlike sincerity in which that creed was held. The faltering advance of our ships-their slow and hesitating progress from Besika to Beicos-their shameful pause upon the disaster of Sinope, were all so many "material guarantees" to the Czar that England deeply felt, and fully, though perhaps unwillingly, acknowledged the vastness of his own strength, and the depth of the prostration of the sick and dying Turk. The beginning of the end of that policy is a war more portentous of calamity in the signs of its outset than any the world has yet seen; the consummation of it will, in all human probability, be a dismemberment of Europe. Months and months ago, all that has occurred was foretold to our ministers in Parliament, in the public journals, in the common dis course of every class of society. The warning was of the eve; and now, on the morrow, we are justified in asking, what worse result could have occurred -what so bad-had that warning been hearkened to? The answer is to be found in the history of the years that followed upon the activity displayed under analogous, though, in many respects, dissimilar circumstances at Navarino and Syria, and in the proved pacificatory operation of those "untoward events. Had the fleet anchored at Constantinople, on the requisition of Colonel Rose, in March, 1853, its advance, if successful, would have been but an "untoward event" easily explained. If the effect had been to add excitement to the pugnacious disposition of the Czar, the actual result would have been, as it is, war; but the proverbially great advantage of a first move in the game would have been gained. Had the "untoward event" of capture or destruction of the Russian fleet followed hard upon the disas ter of Sinope, it would, indeed, have been an earlier act of war; but should it not have induced that disposition to peace which is the proper object of all such acts, it would, at least, have saved many an anxious thought when the assault upon Sebastopol, now declared to be a step necessary to the actual situation, should have been undertaken. " But why need we speculate upon what might have been the result had perils obvious to all eyes been avoided, and cautions uttered by all tongues |