gh Ashantee:

"We feel a comfortable sense of satisfaction in the thought that _The
Lantern_ will never fail to shed the light of its loyal approval upon any
unworthy act by which our country shall secure an adequate and permanent
advantage. When the great heart of England is stirred by quick cupidity to
profitable crime, far be it from us to lift our palms in deprecation. In
the wrangle for existence nations, equally with individuals, work by
diverse means to a common end--the spoiling of the weak; and when by
whatever of outrage we have pushed a feeble competitor to the wall, in
Heaven's name let us pin him fast and relieve his pockets of the material
good to which, in bestowing it upon him, the bountiful Lord has invited
our thieving hand. But these Ashantee women were not worth garroting.
Their fal-lals, precious to them, are worthless to us; the entire loot
fetched only L11,000--of which sum the man who brought home the trinkets
took a little more than four halves. We submit that with practiced agents
in every corner of the world and a watchful government at home this great
commercial nation might dispose of its honor to better advantage."

With the candor of repentance it may now be confessed that, however
unscrupulous it may be abroad, a government which tolerates this kind of
criticism cannot rightly be charged with tyranny at home.

By way (as I supposed) of gratitude to M. Rochefort for the use of the
title of his defunct journal it had been suggested by Mr. Mortimer that he
be given a little wholesome admonition here and there in the paper and I
had cheerfully complied. M. Rochefort had escaped from New Caledonia some
months before. A disagreeable cartoon was devised for his discomfort and
he received a number of such delicate attentions as that following, which
in the issue of July 15th greeted him on his arrival in England along with
his distinguished compatriot, M. Pascal Grousset:

"M. Rochefort is a gentleman who has lost his standing. There have been
greater falls than his. Kings before now have become servitors, honest men
bandits, thieves communists. Insignificant in his fortunes as in his
abilities, M. Rochefort, who was never very high, is not now very low--he
has avoided the falsehood of extremes: never quite a count, he is now but
half a convict. Having missed the eminence that would have given him
calumniation, he is also denied the obscurity that would bring
misconstruction. He is not even a _