rest occasioned by the endangered constitution of
Jamaica, a petty and exhausted colony, and the claims for the same
constitutional rights by the working millions of England. In the first
instance, not a member was absent from his place; men were brought
indeed from distant capitals to participate in the struggle and to
decide it; the debate lasted for days, almost for weeks; not a public
man of light and leading in the country withheld the expression of
his opinion; the fate of governments was involved in it; cabinets were
overthrown and reconstructed in the throes and tumult of the strife, and
for the first time for a long period the Sovereign personally interposed
in public transactions with a significance of character, which made the
working classes almost believe that the privileged had at last found
a master, and the unfranchished regained their natural chief. The mean
position which the Saxon multitude occupied as distinguished from the
Jamaica planters sunk deep into their hearts. From that moment all
hope of relief from the demonstration of a high moral conduct in the
millions, and the exhibition of that well-regulated order of public life
which would intimate their fitness for the possession and fulfilment of
public rights, vanished. The party of violence, a small minority as
is usually the case, but consisting of men of determined character,
triumphed; and the outbreak at Birmingham was the first consequence of
those reckless councils that were destined in the course of the
ensuing years to inflict on the working classes of this country so much
suffering and disaster.

It was about this time, a balmy morning of July, that Sybil, tempted by
the soft sunshine, and a longing for the sight of flowers and turf and
the spread of winding waters, went forth from her gloomy domicile to
those beautiful gardens that bloom in that once melancholy region of
marsh, celebrated in old days only for its Dutch canal and its Chinese
bridge, and now not unworthy of the royal park that incloses them..
Except here and there a pretty nursery-maid with her interesting charge;
some beautiful child with nodding plume, immense bow, and gorgeous sash;
the gardens were vacant. Indeed it was only at this early hour, that
Sybil found from experience, that it was agreeable in London for a woman
unaccompanied to venture abroad. There is no European city where our
fair sisters are so little independent as in our metropolis; to our
shame.

S