THE THREE KINGDOMS.

HE is a prudent man who reads the newspapers just
at present for anything but their politics.
Immediately after our last Narrative closed, the public
business of the country resolved itself into a game of
question and answer, not remarkably well played on
any side. Enough of it (perhaps a little too much)
will be found in a subsequent page. The result has
not inaptly been compared to what fell out when the
South Sea bubble was started. Everybody with
shares, or, as one may now say, in buckskins and top-
boots, is waiting for what is expected to return everybody
so attired a splendid profit on an unknown
capital by a concealed investment. Such is the effect and
amount of expectation that nobody is heard any longer
to declare himself ready to shed the last drop of his
blood for protection to native industry. Even the
Chowlers have become conscionable and patient.
Awful doubts may be lurking in some quarters, but
there is perfect quiet in all. Even the Anti-Corn Law
League, after reviving itself with much vigour, yields
to the languor that prevails. Sir John Trollope
described his friend and colleague, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, the other day, as a gentleman of ancient
blood although of Eastern origin; and it is with
something of that silent suspense of expectation which
"Asian mysteries" are said to inspire, that all the
world is waiting for the Protectionist budget.

Such are among the penalties of government by
means of houses of lords and commons. It has its
inconveniencies; and if any one would measure them by
comparison with another mode, he may do it without
travelling far a-field. The ready and easy way to
govern a commonwealth with the least possible
inconvenience to those who govern, is in daily course
of exemplification by M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
He does everything by decree. By decree he not
only makes a constitution, but by decree he works
it. He has remodelled the army by decree. By decree
he has made the judges removable. He has decreed
a budget. One of his decrees has filched not a few
of their earnings out of the pockets of the bourgeoisie
of Paris, who looked on more quietly than at present,
while blood was flowing in December. The University
of Paris finds itself remodelled by decree. A
decree suspends salutary terror over even the type-
founder and the copper-plate printer. A direct
government inspection, by decree, is in future to take
charge of science, philosophy, law, religion, letters,
taste, and the fine arts. From Arago to Jules Janin
not a man now holds the pen in France but finds
himself within a cordon sanitaire. The lowest
investigation on the earth, and the last discovery in the
heavens, must hereafter pass beneath the censorship
of M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Not a professor in
that once great university of Paris now holds office
for a day, nor a number of the once witty Charivari
can now laugh for an hour, beyond the pleasure of
a St. Arnaud or a Persigny.

Hardly had the University decree been placarded
on the walls of the French capital, when there
followed the decree for settling the rights and forms
of proceeding of the senate and legislature which
are convoked to meet upon the day when this
Narrative will be in the reader's hands. And what a
laugh would have gone ringing over Europe at this
last public document, if France had still enjoyed the
power to laugh without permission of its government!
Its first instruction is that both senate and
legislature are to go and wait upon the President, and
take an oath to be faithful to him; for the administering
of which oath surely Rabelais should be called
out of his grave. Then all the rules for the conduct
of the respective assemblies are laid down. They
have no power to initiate anything. They have no
power substantively to amend anything. They cannot
put the simplest preamble to a bill, lest the reason
for passing it should be a reproach for not having
passed something better. No member is to be allowed
to speak without having asked and obtained leave of
the President; and the President is not to be
appointed by themselves, but to be named by M.
Bonaparte. A member who has been called to order for
having interrupted a speaker cannot himself be allowed
to speak. All signs of approbation or disapprobation
are interdicted. If a member twice called to the
question elicits a third call, he may be expelled from
the sittings for five days. When the previous question
has been moved, it is to be put to the vote before the
general question, thus disposing of the possibility of
a shadow of effective opposition; while at the same
time, on propositions made by M. Bonaparte, the
previous question can never be demanded, thus
removing the possibility of a check to anything started
by government. The President regulates by special
order the mode of reporting in the newspapers
what is done; and a member who would even print
and distribute at his own cost the speech he has
delivered, must first obtain the authorisation of the
assembly. How long such a state of things is likely
to last in such a city as Paris, the reader may exert
his ingenuity in guessing.

Certain is it that on even the remote shores of
South America violent despotisms come to violent
ends. What was said in our last Narrative of the
impending turn of fortune against Rosas has since
come true. The dictator of Buenos Ayres fled last
month before the forces arrayed against him, and,
in the dress of a common seaman, with his daughter
disguised as a cabin boy, found refuge in a British
man-of-war, under the flag he has so often defied.
He had foreseen his downfall sufficiently early to
provide for his support in exile, and it is announced
that he is already on his way to London. It may be
worth while to mark the reception he meets with.
Let it be remembered that his system of government,
for full twenty years, has been a system of
oppression, terrorism, and bloodshed; that he has
insulted our navy, obstructed our commerce, shut