always require the attention—and I may say, the vigilant attention—of any person holding in his hands the foreign affairs of this country. This, however, can only be secured by a constant union between England and France—by a thorough concert and constant communication between those two great Powers."

In our next Volume we shall have to treat of the results of these difficulties.

One effect of these "rumours of wars" was the introduction of the Naval Coast Volunteers' Bill, a very necessary and important measure for the establishment of a Naval Militia, and by which 18,000 to 20,000 well-trained seamen are placed at the disposal of the country.

Other bills of considerable importance in themselves, though not of political interest, became Law, and have been productive of great good to the community. The Act for the Suppression of Betting Houses has saved many a thoughtless fool from ruin, and dispersed, though not destroyed, the bands of brigands who then preyed upon the unwary. The prisons of London gave abundant and conclusive testimony of the vast number of persons, especially the young, who had been led into crime by the temptation held out by Betting Houses.

Mr. Fitzroy's Act for the Better Prevention and Punishment of Aggravated Assaults upon Women and Children has done much, though not all that is required, to lessen the brutality of the lower orders, and the Smoke Prevention Act has removed in part one of the disgraces of our metropolis.

The Vaccination Extension Act was a sanitary measure of great importance, as the mortality from small-pox had long been greater in England than in any other country in Europe.

On the 16th of December Lord Palmerston resigned his office of Secretary of State for the Home Department, but he was subsequently induced to resume his position in the Government.

On the 20th of August the Parliament was prorogued by commission, and a Parliamentary Session of an unusually protracted and laborious character brought to an end. The year had been generally very prosperous, but the scanty harvest, and the unsettled condition of the labouring classes, who resorted to the desperate and suicidal agency of "strikes" for bettering their condition, added to the probability of a war with Russia, brought it to a gloomy close, and it was as much as Punch could do to sustain the nation in moderate cheerfulness.

NOTES.