schoolmaster who was a little too fond of exhibiting the rod. Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe during the Session even enhanced their reputation for irritating those who transacted business with them. But at every turn Mr. Gladstone was embarrassed by his Parliamentary majority. It had been elected to carry reforms which most of them individually dreaded. Their desire was therefore to discover, not pretexts for pushing the Ministry onward, but excuses which they could plausibly justify to their constituents for holding Ministers back. As for the working classes, they had imagined when Mr. Gladstone came to office “something would be done for them.” But nothing except the Trades Union Bill had been conceded to their demands, and even that measure was defaced by irritating provisions, inserted to please their masters. Mr. Disraeli’s strategy in these circumstances was artful, if not altogether admirable. He gently fomented every rising discontent. Without committing his Party to redress the wrongs of the discontented, he left on the country the impression that under his administration there would be less social friction than then existed, whilst there could not be much less social reform. Other circumstances tended to strengthen Conservative feeling in England. Just as the triumph of democracy in the United States at the end of the Civil War gave a great impetus to English Liberalism, so did the march of events in France after the conclusion of peace produce a reaction in England against democracy. The French elections resulted in the return of the Assembly which met at Bordeaux on the 12th of February. Its majority consisted of Legitimists and Orleanists, and, since the Convocation of the Estates General in 1789, no French Parliament had ever met which contained so many men of high rank and good estate. It had no special mandate, but it very sensibly took in hand the task of making peace with Germany, and, having superseded the Government of National Defence, it elected M. Thiers as Chief of the Executive. He formed a Ministry which represented the best men of all parties. The new Government were confronted at the outset with an unexpected difficulty. The National Guard of Paris had been allowed to retain their arms, and they not only broke into revolt, but seized the capital and established in Paris the revolutionary Government of the Commune, General Cluseret, a revolutionary “soldier of fortune,” being appointed Minister of War. The idea of the revolt seems to have been to convert the ten great cities of France into autonomous States in federal alliance with the rest of the country, and the insurgents began by giving Paris a separate Government, Executive, Army, and Legislature. The Red Republicans imagined that by this device they could emancipate the artisans from the control of the peasants, who, under universal suffrage, were masters of France. The Commune was founded by honest fanatics, but it let loose the suppressed