"It was but too evident that the door, though iron-ried with the struggle against his country's apparent doom. bound and clenched, must yield at last! It creaked and groaned beneath the ponderous blows, while the house itself reverberated from top to bottom. On the critical position of the inmates it was frightful to think. The proprietor's resources, however, were not exhausted. Barrels, filled with sand and clay, were piled across the hall, while between this barrier and the door, casks of powder lay in grim repose. An infliction, hardly less fearful than that which they contemplated, awaited the assailants. The misguided men, in fancied security, urged each other on, and but redoubled their rage and violence as bolt and bar gave way.

than three months; but he passed a considerable time in Peru, and has collected such an amount of materials as give a tolerably fair idea of the country and its prospects. The country itself seems destined for greatness, but its prospects are dark and miserable. The population of its leading towns is receding; and with the name of liberty there appears little of its substance. Doctor Tschudi throws a large portion of the responsibility for the condition of Peru on the priests.

In the Sierra, as well as on the coast, the priests are usually the tyrants, rather than the guardians of their flocks; and they would frequently be the objects of hatred and vengeance, but for the deep-rooted, and almost idolatrous reverence, which the Indians cherish for priesteraft. It is disgusting to see the Peruvian priests, who usually treat the Indians like brutes, behaving with the most degrading servility when they want to get money from them. The love of the Indians for strong drinks, is a vice which the priests turn to their own advantage. For the sake of the fees, they frequently order religious festivals, which are joyfully hailed by the Indians, because they never fail to end in drinking bouts.

This

to a struggle, in which angry words and blows are interchanged; in short, there ensues a disgraceful scene of of the priests. Order being restored, the sacred image uproar, which is only checked by the interposition of one is fixed on the cross by three very large silver nails, and the head is encircled by a rich silver crown. On each side are the crosses of the two thieves. Having gaped at this spectacle to their heart's content, the cholos retire from the church. At eight in the evening they reassemble to witness the solemn ceremony of taking down the Saviour from the cross. The church is then brilliantly lighted up. At the foot of the cross stand four white-robed priests, called los Santos Varones (the holy men), whose office it is to take down the image. At a little distance from them, on a sort of stage or platform, stands a figure representing the Virgin Mary. figure is dressed in black, with a white cap on its head. A priest, in a long discourse, explains the scene to the assembled people, and at the close of the address, turning to the Santos Varones, he says, 'Ye holy men ascend the ladders of the Cross, and bring down the body of the Redeemer.' Two of the Santos Varones mount, with hammers in their hands, and the priest then says, Ye holy man on the right of the Saviour, strike the first blow on the nail of the hand and take it out!' The command is obeyed, and no sooner is the stroke of the hammer heard, than deep groans and sounds of anguish resound through the church; whilst the cry of Misericordia! misericordia! repeated by a thousand imploring voices, produces an indescribable sensation of awe and melancholy. The nail is handed to transfers it to another, and this one in his turn presents one of the priests standing at the foot of the altar, who it to the figure of the Virgin. To that figure the priest then turns, and addresses himself, saying, Thou afflicted mother, approach and receive the nail which pierced the right hand of thy holy son !" The priest steps forward a few paces, and the figure, by some concealed mechanism, advances to meet him, receives the nail with both hands, lays it on a silver plate, dries its eyes, and then returns to its place in the middle of the platform. The same ceremony is repeated when the two other nails are taken out. Throughout the whole performance of these solem"In order to facilitate the conversion of the idolatrous nities, an uninterrupted groaning and howling is kept up Indians, the Spanish monks who accompanied Pizzaro's by the Indians, who, at every stroke of the hammer, raise army sought to render the Christian religion as attractive their cries of Misericordia! These sounds of anguish as possible in the eyes of the heathen aborigines of Peru. reach their climax when the priest consigns the body of With this view they conceived the idea of dramatising the Saviour to the charge of the Virgin. The image is certain scenes in the life of Christ, and having them re- laid in a coffin tastefully adorned with flowers, which, topresented in the Churches. In the larger towns these per-gether with the figure of the Virgin Mary, is paraded formances have long since been discontinued; but they through the streets. Whilst this nocturnal procession, are still kept up in most of the villages of the Sierra. lighted by thousands of wax tapers, is making the circuit Indeed, the efforts made by enlightened ecclesiastics for of the town, a party of Indians busy themselves in erecttheir suppression have been met with violent oppositioning on the part of the Indians.

"Added to the ill-treatment of the priests, the Indians are most unjustly oppressed by the civil authorities. In the frequent movements of troops from one place to another, they are exposed to great losses and vexations. They are compelled to perform the hardest duties without payment, and often the produce of their fields is laid under contribution, or their horses and mules are pressed into the service of the military. When intelligence is received of the march of a battalion, the natives convey their cattle to some remote place of concealment in the mountains, for they seldom recover possession of them if once they fall into the hands of the soldiery."

And yet, from the tenor of the following extract, we should judge that these same priests are actually endeavouring to recover her people from the erroneous practices of their predecessors. The details of Palm Sundays' and Good Fridays' observances say little, certainly, for the religion, or even the taste, of the Peruvians.

"On Palm Sunday, an image of the Saviour seated on an ass is paraded about the principal streets of the town or village. The Indians strew twigs of palm over the animal, and contend one with another for the honour of throwing their pouchos down on the ground, in order that the ass may walk over them. The animal employed in this ceremony is, when very young, singled out for the purpose, and is never suffered to carry any burden save the holy image. He is fed by the people, and at every door at which he stops, the inmates of the house pamper him up with the best fodder they can procure.

The ass is looked upon as something almost sacred, and is never named by any other appellation than the Burro de Nuestro Senor (our Lord's ass). In some villages I have seen these animals so fat that they were scarcely able to walk.

"Good Friday is solemnised in a manner the effect of which, to the unprejudiced foreigner, is partly burlesque and partly seriously impressive. From the early dawn of morning the church is thronged with Indians, who spend the day in fasting and prayer. At two in the afternoon, a large image of the Saviour is brought from the sacristy, and laid down in front of the altar. Immediately all the persons in the church rush forward with pieces of cotton to touch the wounds. This gives rise

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before the church door twelve arches decorated with flowers. Between every two of the arches they lay flowers on the ground, arranging them in various figures and designs. These flower-carpets are singularly ingenious and pretty. Each one is the work of two cholos, neither of whom seems to bestow any attention to what his comrade is doing; and yet, with a wonderful harmony of operation, they create the most tasteful designs, arabesques, animals, and landscapes, which grow, as it were, by magic, under their hands. Whilst I was in Tarma, I was at once interested and astonished to observe, on one of these flower-carpets, the figure of the Austrian double eagle. On inquiry, I learned from an Indian that it had been copied from the quicksilver jars, exported from Idria to Peru. On the return of the procession to the church, a hymn, with harp accompaniment, is sung to the Virgin, as the figure is carried under the arches of flowers. The bier of the Saviour is then deposited in the church, where it is watched throughout the night.

"On the following morning, at four o'clock, the ceremony of hanging Judas takes place in front of the church. A figure of Judas, the size of life, is filled with squibs and crackers, and is frequently made to bear a resemblance to some obnoxious inhabitant of the place. After the match is applied to the combustible figure, the cholos dance around it, and exult in the blowing up of their enemy."

The work extends to nearly five hundred pages; the statements made are very interesting, and. we believe, their accuracy may be relied upon. They are thus wound up: "The facts adduced in the course of this volume, relative to the barbarous Colonization system of the Spaniard, must sufficiently prove how adverse was Spanish dominion to the improvement of the natives, and to the prosperity of

POLITICAL REGISTER.

It is quite possible to make more goods than may be sold, only because bad laws intervene between the maker and his customer. It would be impossible to "over- Railways, however, share this tendency in common trade" in that way with the present disposition of our with house and ship-building, or with those beneficent operative classes in favour of short time, even with re-operations in draining land, undertaken through direct duced wages, if artificial obstacles were not thrown up to prevent the intercourse of nations, and preserve their present state of alienation.

The object of Sir Robert Feel's late bills is, however, to prevent over-speculation. They were passed in 1844 and 1845, and were followed by the most extensive speculation ever manifested in this country. Their friends, however, allege that they prevented that speculation from going much farther than it did. There is unques-lation and railway bills.

Nothing can be more evident than that if the labourers at railways, at iron works, and other establishments, whose wages have been enhanced, in consequence of the new lines, were to live soberly, and put the balance of their earnings into the savings bank instead of the whisky shops no harm could come to the country by the operation. Instead of funds being low in price they would be high. Whenever a capitalist wanted to sell consols to pay his calls the Government broker would be ready to buy on account of the savings banks, or the building societies, the benefit societies, and the various clubs would cheerfully pay for his stock. The consideration shows how intimately the prosperity of this country is dependent upon the morality of the labouring classes.

Some parties allege that railways were very commendable up to a certain extent, and so long as the shareholders could pay the calls from the savings of their comes; but whenever they began to borrow money for the purpose of meeting calls, they raised the rate of interest, interfered with the ordinary pursuits of commerce, and have done thus all the mischief that has been accomplished. This argument may or may not be incorrect in its result, but it is inaccurate in its statements and suppositions. If railways be made at all, they must be formed by the savings of some persons. If the shareholders borrow money to pay the calls, they must borrow from the savings of some individuals. So far as the country is concerned, it matters nothing whether they are working on their own savings or those of others, for there is no other source of accumulation except economy.

not be foolish to have done once and for ever with their intermeddling.

ed with seeking Government intervention. Nothing can be Those who require a change in the currency laws are tauntmore false. The Voluntaries in religion might be with equal propriety accused of seeking Government interference with creeds and doctrines; because they invite Parliament to repeal some of its own acts. The opponents of the existing currency laws do precisely the same thing. They invoke not more, but less, government interference. They allege that the government are to a large extent trespassers on ground not their own; but the invitation to walk off is certainly not to be construed as a message with compliments, and the request of the parties concerned, that they would re-create themselves there, whenever their convenience served.

Sir Robert Peel, by his act of 1844, limited the circuin-lation of the Bank of England to £14,000,000, on a basis of government securities, which is its fixed issue. The Bank may issue notes to any extent above that sum, but the currency must be based on gold. For every million of notes that it issues, it must have a million of sovereigns, or an equivalent to them in gold and silver on hand. Sir Robert Peel himself acknowledges that bullion currency is most expensive. There is-first, all its amount of capital sunk, and rendered into not fixed, but retrograding capital. Then, second, there are two processes of retrogression, for gold wears, and gold is lostlost or destroyed to the country, which never is or can be the case with a paper currency. The result of necessity that money is made dear, and labour or profit is proportionately reduced; while capitalists, whose trade is exclusively to lend money on tangible and mortgaged, or pawned securities, prosper.

Then the effect of their proceedings on the rate of interest must have been the same, whether the shareholders used their own property or borrowed money. If a man saves money and does not put it out on railways he will expend or invest it in something else. If he saves without investing he will be able to lend. And if many persons who have been thus saving and lending continue to save but begin to invest, their accumulations are withdrawn from the lending market, and the result is the same on the value of money, as if they had borrowed a sum similar to that which they expend.

It is useless, therefore, to complicate the question by saying that while calls were paid from the accumulations of the shareholders, the railways were not injurious, but are rendered prejudicial whenever these calls are paid by borrowed money. The result on the money market, by either mode of transacting the business, would be the same.

If the expenditure on railways were to be taken as one course of the prevalent scarcity of money, still it could not account for the vast depreciation in almost every description of property that is now experienced. Adding the expenditure on railways of the last two years to the extra outlay for grain from foreign countries since harvest, a sum considerably under forty-five millions sterling will be produced. This vast sum does not account for depreciation of property equivalent to from one hundred and fifty to five hundred millions. There is no comparison between the presumed cause and the ascertained result; but we have already shown, so far as the country and its financial arrangements are concerned, that the only part of railway expenditure that could have materially effected them is that small portion which the labourers may expend on foreign products, over and above the sums which, in more straitened circumstances, would be devoted by them to that purpose.

To save this small sum-for that is all the saving the Legislature has been invited to suspend all railway works, although, in that case, the labourers and their families must come on the poor rates, and be supported for doing nothing. This plan of economising would be ruinously extravagant.

We have already seen that Sir Robert Peel's bills did not, in point of fact, stop speculation. We may also deny that the Government acts wisely in endeavouring to intermeddle with business. It is not likely that the Members of the Cabinet will generally have much practical acquaintance with commercial affairs; and the country has been often so well nigh ruined by theorists, that it would

The classes who lose by this arrangement are very numerous, because whenever bankers foresee a run for gold to export, they contract discounts, and raise the price of money. In the struggle to stand upright, the middle classes waste their strength. They cast away their property below its value; and those who watch and wait for the wrecks of society pick it up. The tendency of the present currency law is therefore to repress the middle classes for the profit of wealthy men, who are no engaged in industrial pursuits.

Here, however, as in all similar cases, the evil sinks downwards to the lowest depths. Most undoubtedly, mills have been stopped in Lancashire aud Lanarkshire, or wrought on short time, not merely for want of orders, but because orders that were not to be paid in cash, or in very short bills, could not be executed, for the bills were not negotiable, or could have only been cashed at a price which would have swept away much more than profits.

To

In the humblest places that can be called homes, where wasted strength was planning how a high expenditure could be made to square with a low income, Sir Robert Peel's acts came in and carried the earnings altogether away. The mill was stopped. The spindles stood still. A long holiday of starvation was secured. maintain it, the home was emptied into the pawnshop; and such deep losses incurred, as a good harvest and twelvemonths busy work will scarcely retrieve. But if the poor sunk, wealthier capitalits prospered, and trade to them, amidst ruins, is a money-making process.

The apology for Sir Robert Peel's adoption of what he calls the most expensive currency, is to secure the convertibility of paper currency. Does it make that secure? Most certainly not. The Bank of England has fourteen millions of a fixed currency that is unbacked by gold. The other banks in England, Scotland, and Ireland have a considerable currency in the same position. It is quite possible that all bullion might be drawn down to these points, and where is the convertibility?

Bankers must risk that matter. They promise to pay in bullion when required; but people do not take their notes on account of that promise. They pass current because they represent solid property; because they are parts of houses, of lands, of ships; and because they are fragments of the national debt.

The proper cure for these matters is to revert to the Scotch system of banking before 1845, and extend its

provisions to England. It is notorious that this scheme wrought well. The currency commanded the utmost confidence. All classes were satisfied with its soundness. The excellence of the system was strikingly manifested by the fact, that a small circulation was made to do a large business. There were no failures to pay-there was no repudiation-no broken faith with the public-no inconvenience experienced-and there should have been no legislative intermeddling.

There could be no difficulty in requiring bankers to found so much of their circulation on Government securities; although, where the Companies are numerous, such provisions are superfluous. Still they can effect evil; and the result is, that the country has, so far as that portion of the currency extends a circulation managed without any expenre.

The adoption of this system in England would be equivalent to an addition of £20,000,000 to the fleeting capit-"the small charge," as it has not been inaptly termed, of the country.

We know there is a feeling in its favour in Lancashire and the manufacturing districts. It would not unduly depreciate the value of money. It would carry the country away from the verge of bankruptcy. It would form, in a present and temporary relief, a large and important and permanent benefit.

One-half or one-fourth of the energy which repealed the Corn-law would revoke the Currency-law, and accomplish, at least, an equal triumph.

DANIEL O'CONNELL died at Genoa on Saturday the 15th instant. He had reached the allotted threescore and ten years, and passed them by three to four years. When the Irish people shall be recounting to their children in future generations the dire calamities of the year of famine, they will not omit the crown (in their estimate) of

them all the death of the Liberator.

Catholic emancipation. In conversation, Mr O'Connell himself gave a satisfactory explanation of the matter. "A man has energy," he said, and his circumstances determine the use he is to make of it." There is a dumb war," he used to say, "always going on in Ireland." He had energy and he gave it to the cause of his race and his religion. The war did not make the energy, which unquestionably made itself powerfully felt in the battle and in the victory. There is always work to be done demanding the greatest energy, and it waits until the strong man rises to do it.

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Never perhaps has any man lived and acted whose life has equalled that of Daniel O'Connell in consistency of agitation. If this be a virtue, he is the perfection of it. Though the horrors of the French Revolution almost made him a Tory when a boy, as soon as he made up his mind in early manhood his opinions and purposes at twenty-five were very nearly what they were at seventy. We have somewhere seen in one extract, the earliest expressions of his mind forty years ago, a list of the reforms he pledged himself to effect. There was no mincing modesty or timidity in this list. He said, " 'support me and I will do them." The Parliament in College Green" was a late promise which every now and then was modified by an 'or''- Repeal or justice for Ireland.” Writers who make much of the differences of race-a theme about which there is much nonsense in voguewill be pleased to explain why this chief of the Celtsthe Irish Celts-the mercurial, impracticable, versatile, talkative, unsteady Celts-has been for five-and-forty years a leading politician in the three kingdoms. The Saxon Peel has been a teetotum, the Anglo-Irish Wellesley a drifting iceberg, the half-Scotch half-English Brougham Will-o'-the-wisp" compared with this doggish, steady, obstinate Celt, O'Connell. His principles and purposes, his views and aims, and all his modes of carrying them out, have been the same for half a century. The greatest example of the Saxon qualities of steadiness and practicaThere will be many disputes, before the page of history lity in these days has been this great Celt. O'Connell had records the character which shall finally prevail respecting displays itself in the splendour of the eloquence of Burke, none of the imaginative genius of the Anglo-Irish, which this man-the greatest political personage of these times. Mr. O'Connell used to say he was Curran, Grattan, and Shiel. Compared with theirs, his the best abused man in Europe." Ilis rhetoric was all This was true; and a truth signifi-second-hand. He convulsed his audience at Covent Garden was the eloquence of business. cant of his importance in Europe. Since Napoleon, he has by describing the Corn-Law Dukes as fellows whose shahad no equal in the political power which he has wielded. dows were afraid to follow them. O'Connell, we said, People do not abuse a man without a purpose; and the amount of abuse may, therefore, be the measure of fear can produce a good and witty joke of his own, when a of the assailants for their interests. O'Connell effected a friend interrupted us, saying "It is taken from Hudirevolution in Ireland; and the signs of it were manifest bras, whose couplet isin his own history, within the last twenty years. member when the forms of the constitution would not permit him to take his seat as a simple member of parliament. We knew him when, as the chief of a compact band of from forty to sixty members of the House of Commons, exercising the dominancy of a superior will and intellect over his inferiors. In mind and purpose, he was the most powerful man in British affairs-the master successively of the Melbourne and the Russell cabinets. Merle D'Aubigne says, the only man of these times like Martin Luther, in the power he wielded, was Daniel O'Connell; he was constantly acting on public opinion, by his pen and tongue, by letters and speeches, as a journalist and an orator. But Luther was never master of cabinets, and never, therefore, the most powerful personality concerned in the government of an empire. Of course, there is a difference between the greatness of a man's qualities, and the goodness of his position. There may have been a concurrence of circumstances which gave his greatness to O'Connell, but the weakest theory we have seen of it, is the one which refers it to the obstinacy of George the III. on refusing

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Irish.

A man he was so ghastly and so grim, His very shadow feared to follow him."' There was no original Irish wit in this greatest of the O'Connell had Saxon steadiness, and was destitute of Irish fancy; and to this curious fact must be ascribed the consequence that, while the florid orators of Ireland were weak and beautiful as flags on a ship of war, he was powerful and terrible as the guns within her port-holes.

O'Connell was the most kingly man of these days. His crown was indeed a cap, but his power was not ceremonial but real. He was the hero of his countrymen. In the eyes of the Liberals of Europe he was the august voice of an oppressed nation. Roman Catholic Europe revered him as the sainted champion of religion.

We might have given a detailed narrative of the life of this extraordinary man; but so far as this can be accomplished in limited space, it has been done, and well done, in the daily press.

To enter more minutely on his history, which is Ireland's history, is unnecessary with the knowledge that his biography will be written by his son.

PRINTED BY GEORGE TROUP, 29, DUNLOP STREET, GLASGOW.