I believe Parliamentary Government to be the only system possible and practicable in England and France at the present day. I believe this without illusion and without enthusiasm. The parliamentary system is so imperfect that it works slowly and clumsily in England, whilst in France it can hardly be made to work at all. With two parties the prize of succession is offered to the most eloquent fault-finder, with three a Cabinet has not vitality enough for bare existence. At the present moment the English Parliament inspires but little respect and the French no respect whatever. Still we are parliamentarians, not for the love of long speeches in the House, but from a desire to preserve popular liberty outside of it. The distinction here between England and France is that in France every parliamentarian is of necessity a republican, a freely-elected parliament being incompatible with monarchy in that country, whereas in England Queen Victoria, unlike her predecessor Charles I., has made it possible for her subjects to be parliamentarians and royalists at the same time. In the variety of national and religious antipathies we sometimes meet with strange anomalies. Whenever there is any conflict between French Catholics and French Freethinkers the sympathy of all but a very few English people is assured to the Catholics beforehand, without any examination into the merits of the case, and the case itself is likely to be stated in England in such a manner as to command sympathy for the Catholics. This is remarkable in a country which is, on the whole, Protestant, as the very existence of the French Protestants (in themselves a defenceless minority) is due to the protection of the Freethinkers. Without that strictly neutral protection Protestant worship would no more be tolerated in France than it was in the city of Rome when the Popes had authority there. I may also remind the English reader that if genuine Catholics were to become masters of England all Protestant places of worship would be shut up, and the Anglican sovereign would have the alternative of Henri IV, whilst the heaviest political and municipal disabilities would weigh upon all who did not go to confession and hear mass. On the other hand, if Freethinkers, such as the present generation of French politicians, were masters of England, the worst evil to be apprehended would be the impartial treatment of all religions, either by co-establishment as in France, or by disestablishment as in Ireland. The bishops might be dismissed from the House of Lords, but the bishops and clergy of all faiths would be eligible for the House of Commons, as they are for the Chamber of Deputies.