rivalry no just appreciation of excellence can be arrived at by the decision of any Committee of Taste that can be appointed. It is impossible. Some, by their position, will be incapable. Others, that possess knowledge, will be biassed. Besides, their examination will be imperfect, their view cursory, and their judgment fallible. In any case, an Exhibition of this kind is worse than useless. The true appreciation of excellence lies continually in the universal market.

We have said, "remove taxes from necessaries, and give us a real free-trade-i.e., such a one as will give us the full benefit of our industry—and then open your Great Exhibition when you like." We have said so; because then it would be a mere folly, not affecting our interests so deeply. We now withdraw our observation, and maintain, that any such exhibition is injurious.

We have played a part of weakness, hitherto unprecedented in the history of the world. We have given or taught foreigners everything. We take them with pride round our dockyards. The results are at Toulon and Brest. We have furnished them with engineers, railroads, steamimprovements-all that we know in the march of civilization we generously abandon. They have learnt everything from us but water-closets, and that neglect arises from their own prejudice in favour of dirt. It is half a century since Bramah died, an old man! They rival us in machinery, and manufacture many articles cheaper, ay, and better-not than we can, but better than we find it convenient to manufacture them. Whilst at our vitals gnaws the debt which encircles us, as the serpent Loke is fabled in the Scandinavian Mythology to encircle the world, till the hour of destruction come.

In the midst of all this-after abandoning all the privileges of our forefathers to foreigners, those privileges to

which, together with her industry and invention the prosperity of England has hitherto been owed, in spite of the dishonest and lavish extravagance of her rulers, mortgaging, not for actual need, but for present abominations, the future wages of posterity, devoted to a Juggernaut of labour-in the midst of this, you are insulted by the competition of foreigners introduced under your very noses in the shape of a frivolous fête ordained at the command of philanthropic absurdity, and carried out against the opinion, the wishes, and approval of the people. You are not only to be stripped of your freeholds and your leases, and your larger personal effects, but your watch and silver is to be carried off from your table or your pocket by an obsequious Jew; who talks and smiles to you all the time, and says that he is acting for your benefit.

Men of Manchester and Birmingham! we address these words to you, in the full belief that you are returning to your senses, or rather that you are beginning to employ them.

We have not space enough to dilate upon a host of lesser evils. We think that England already sufficiently swarms with the scum of continental life. We agree with Colonel Sibthorpe, that our morality will be by no means improved. It will be a great licentious Fair, a plethoric Saturnalia. Vices, hitherto unknown in England, have budded here, since the disturbances on the Continent, and the cheap and improved travelling have made a Quartier Latin of Leicestersquare, and turned Regent-street into a Boulevard des Italiens. During the Great Exhibition these vices will blossom and bear their fruit of ashes to perfection. Our English wives and daughters will be debauched, and the future breed of Britons be deteriorated by a style of proceeding that foreigners infinitely prefer to spending money upon harlots.

London, in a pecuniary sense, will be a temporary gainer. But, as Great Exhibitions must close and have their ending, this repletion will only finish in debility and repentance. At the swollen advent of George IV. to Brighton, when prosperity was glutted, and a fungus-like Pavilion reared its astonishing front in a respectable God-fearing city, a certain increase of population, wealth, and importance, took place for a time. So, during the existence of the glass and iron temple of universal industry, will the citizens of London flourish. But, when the influence is withdrawn, and the winter garden packed off, instead of Shakespeare's house, to America (where, by the way, an exhibition of the kind may benefit the country), the Aldermanic plethora will collapse, and the reaction will bring disgust and despair to many. A false excitement, a false outlay, and a false impetus, will produce corresponding ill effects. The stimulus will neither be healthy nor natural. Epsom does not live upon her races!

We have already touched upon the happy results which will become visible in France, with regard to the creation of harmony and goodwill between the two nations. Such, however, is the rancorous suspicion of la belle France towards la perfide Albion, that the French are absolutely incapable of gratitude for our generous absurdity. We transcribe part of an article given in one of their journals from the Church and State Gazette. After boasting of the prolific invention, and the ingenuity of the Parisians, the following paragraph is in circulation:

"The same interests that rendered abortive in 1849 the idea of a universal exhibition are now at work in London. According to their account, no one can say how far the artificers of perfidious Albion may go. The jury of the exhibition (they say) is capable of giving a number of medals to the French exhibitors, for the purpose of leading them to

believe that they are equal in industrial productions to England herself; the French public would then, in its credulity, be the dupe of this diabolical scheme, and would at once insist on the abolition of those prohibitive institutions which are so well placed in the code of a free people. Some day, in fact, this spirit would lead to the overthrow of the whole Protectionist scaffolding, and then we should be a ruined people. And is not the proof of this Machiavelian idea to be found in the fact that the committee lately placed amongst the very best plans sent in for the building of the exhibition that of a French architect, M. Horeau? And amongst the designs for the medals, out of a list of four or five prizes, were not two given to Frenchmen? This is evidently the very acmè of treason. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. The perfidious islanders are unveiled-they are embracing us, as Nero did Britannicus, to more easily stifle us. After such decisive proofs, every good Frenchman must consider the matter judged. A patriot cannot send his industrial articles to London. Such, however, are the observations in circulation through Paris. We are only the faithful echo of what is said."

Here is friendly feeling! Here is la reconnaissance ! Such is the spirit of France and Frenchmen. You cannot please either by giving or withholding prizes. The French will not grant that they were beaten at Waterloo. Are they likely to admit that they are fairly treated in any decision arrived at by Englishmen about the respective merits of the works of either country? These are the first fruits of the Great Exhibition of the products of all nations. Artisans and productive operatives of England, are you not beginning to form a true estimate of your champions-those who advocate your cause, who are apparently anxious that blessings, peace, and plenty, should descend upon you? You ask for bread and work, and they give you a stonenay, a heap of iron and glass. We can only say, you must have the stomachs and the stupidity of the ostrich to digest it. Come and stare at an edifice erected in England in 1851, to undersell you to the foreigner; or, in other words, to introduce and appreciate his goods to your taxed discomfiture?

Come! before the building raised at such an expense by the job committee of a job, be taken down, and

"like the baseless fabric of a vision,

Leave not a wreck behind"—

save of your hopes and prosperity.

No: rather let Europe know, by your protestations, your petitions, and your dissatisfaction, that the soul of England does not animate this plaything. If it be too late to put an end to this national abortion by a demonstration of your disgust that shall prove insuperable, at any rate let the failure and disappointment which must ensue, be traced to its right cause. But you can and will stop it, if you please! The late expression of feeling in France, which we have recorded here, gives you the opportunity. Seize it, and let the bubble burst innocuously.

Let not the following lines receive their illustration by your choice :

:

"Banish all notions of British ascendancy,

Let them be wiped from our memory quite ;
Modern views have quite an opposite tendency,
As hath been clearly expounded by Bright.

*

Wages must tumble like leaves in a hurricane,
Under this grand competition for work;
Britons shall toil for the Jew and American,
Chinaman, Spaniard, Mulatto, and Turk;
Each village Hannibal, fierce as a cannibal,

Eyeing his neighbour like Bishop or Burk."*

However, we do not think it probable that either Manchester or the West Riding of Yorkshire will again embody these ideas in their representatives.

With regard to the minor details of the Great "Mistake" of 1851, we will but remark that a great deal of opprobrium

* From Blackwood's Magazine.