THE THREE KINGDOMS.

THAT ingenious and estimable French publicist, M. Ledru Rollin, who has been Iiving in London for some
months at the particular request of a great many of his countrymen, has favoured the world with a not
very flattering account of us, as the result of his personal observation. He says we are declining in every
way. We are crumbling to pieces like Carthage, Venice, Holland, and Spain. Capital is destroying our
working classes; with the repeal of the navigation laws we have lost our hold upon the sea; everybody in
the cities and the rural districts is starving (he is credibly informed of this by correspondents of the
Morning Chronicle); nothing good is doing in parliament; the whole body politic is corrupted by the
aristocracy; a young unaristocratic man of talent cannot get to the bar, queen's counsel dare not plead
against the sovereign, and the common people are not allowed to be jurymen: in short, we are going to the
deuce as fast as we can. Such is M. Ledru Rollin's opinion of us; yet for a people in this condition, we
have a tolerably hopeful summary to present at the close of this merry month of May. The reader shall
judge.

It has been the month of meetings. Orators have been holding forth, at Exeter Hall and elsewhere, on
every conceivable subject; and probably more money has been afloat for the behoof of eager applicants than
since the year of railroad scrip. The protection of the Aborigines, the conversion of the Hindoos, and the
education of the Negro; the relief of the governess, the artist, and the distressed man of letters; have given
very various scope to charitable effort. Ragged School Unions, Protestant Associations, Roman Catholic
meetings, Exhibitions of Industry, Sons of the Clergy, Colleges of University and King's, Benevolent
Newsvenders, Savings Banks Promoters, Foreigners in Distress, Distressed Undertakers, Sanitary and Parliamentary
Reformers, Advocates of universal Peace, and Celebrators of the triumphs of War, have held crowded
assemblages of sympathy and charity. Hospitals and Societies without end, Ophthalmic, Orthopædic, Philanthropic,
Bible, Christian, Caledonian, Unitarian, Humane, Mendicity, National, British and Foreign, and Agricultural;
Homes for sailors, for shipwrecked fishermen, for penitent women, for trampers and beggars, for every class of
Her Majesty's subjects; Model lodging houses, and Model proposals for the utmost extent of possible
improvements; all have been active, earnest, and in their several ways successful. As for Parliament, of which
our French critic speaks so contemptuously, a mere glance at the measures now completed or in progress,
apart from the more leading topics to which we shall presently refer, will show that in really useful legislation
we are making no inconsiderable advances. Convict prisons, and Crown Woods and Forests, Merchant
Seamen and Irish Fishermen, National Schools and Official Salaries, Distressed Unions in Ireland and
Improvement bills for Scotland, Charitable Trusts, Highways, Marriages, Libraries and Museums, Factories,
Savings Banks, Benefices in Plurality, Chancery Reform, County and Prerogative Courts, and Borough
Gaols, are all of them subjects under various stages of discussion, most of them likely to add some leaves to
the statute book, and not a few of them certain to contribute something to the advantage and well-being of the
community. And for that important barometer of national health, the great manufacturing and trading
interest, though there has been a cry of alarm about deficiencies of growth which has raised the price of
cotton, in other respects prices have remained steady, and the markets active and prosperous. After all,
perhaps, we are not so near our decline as M. Ledru supposes.

It must be confessed that he receives sanction, however, from influential people among ourselves. The
Protectionists, for example, have been very doleful as well as active during the month, in parliarment and elsewhere.
The Duke of Richmond opened the campaign by informing the House of Lords that the farmers were fast
becoming ripe for revolution; and, after a few days, the landlords and farmers had a meeting at the Crown
and Anchor, at which his Grace presided, to exhibit and report revolutionary progress. Here a Mr. Booker
showed the destitution to which loss of protection had reduced him, by declaring his readiness to subscribe
a thousand pounds to protect his friends at the hustings; a Mr. Chowler proclaimed that the farmers had
not only nine-tenths of the horses of the kingdom, but men to ride upon them, and men that were not going
to ride against the labourers whatever might come to pass after next harvest; a Mr. Allnutt warned the
fundholder, as a drone, that the farmer, as a working bee, was quite losing his distaste to the notion of public
robbery; a Mr. Caldecott recommended a league to refuse tithes and taxes; a Mr. Ball kept it up by
declaring himself prepared to risk all, leave all, dare all, and take the most terrible steps that injury could
suggest; a Mr. Higgins put this mystery into English by protesting himself ready to fight; and Sir Robert
Peel was denounced, on the platform, as the arch-enemy of the human species. Nevertheless, nothing more
immediately terrible ensued than a deputation to Lord John Russell, which, after getting somewhat cold
comfort in Downing Street (for Lord John reminded them that they had brought their own discomforts on
themselves by refusing his fixed duty in 1840), proceeded for a little encouragement to St. James's Square,
and were advised by Lord Stanley not by any means to expect immediate relief from either house of
legislature, but to be patient, to agitate for themselves, and to live in hope of the good time coming, when,
like Wellington at Waterloo, Up Guards and at Them might be the signal for victory. Already had this very
war-cry issued, however, from a gallant yeomanry captain in the Lower House, and it was now too late to
intercept Mr. Grantley Berkeley's motion for the re-imposition of duties on corn. It came on as advertised,
and with a result not at all flattering to the Higgins and Chowler farmers. The division exhibited a great