certain party, that prerogative has been scandalously overstretched. We now hear men--even members of the Legislature--threatening the country, and you, with hints of insurrection, in case you exercise your undoubted right of pronouncing a free and unbiassed judgment upon any point of commercial policy. Let the caitiffs bluster! They know, from the bottom of their ignoble souls--for none save an ignoble soul would have dared to conceive that such threats would intimidate any man of British birth or blood--that their menace is as meaningless and vain as their miserable motives are apparent. Let them bluster! They, the advocates of lowered wages--they, the combatants for lengthened labour--they, the crushers of the infants, have no large margin of operative sympathy upon which they can afford to trade. Had John Fielden been alive, he could have told you what these men were, and what sympathy they were likely to command. Well do the workmen know with whom they have to deal! Let us not be misunderstood. We never have underrated the difficulty of a change such as we contemplate; but no difficulty attending that, is for a moment to be put into the balance against the general welfare of the country, if, on reflection, and on considering your own position, you shall be of opinion that the interests of the country demand that change. But, at any hazard, we cannot afford to go down-hill. To bring us, as the Manchester men contemplate, to the Continental level in point of wages as well as expenditure, is to seal the ruin of the British empire, burdened as it is; or, in the least dangerous view, to necessitate repudiation. That matter is, as we have said before, for you to decide; and the period for your decision is rapidly drawing near. On the next general election depends the fate of the country, and--without saying one syllable more upon the merits of the systems at issue--the decision or inclination of your body will form the most important, because it must be considered, as between conflicting interests, the most impartial element, of the expression of British opinion. THE JEW'S LEGACY. A TALE OF THE SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR. CHAPTER I.