THE THREE KINGDOMS.

PROTECTION and Chartism, Free Trade and Reform, Puseyism and Popery, Bribery and Corruption,
the Rotation of the Earth and the Renewal of the Income-Tax, the Bishop of Exeter and the Great Exhibition,
the Colonies and the County Courts, and the two monster nuisances of Chancery and Smithfield, have
largely occupied attention during the past month.

Chartism re-appears with the renewed hopes of Protection. It is but a phantom, to be sure; an eidolon
of its former self, which even alliance with its fellow-phantom Socialism cannot swell to respectable size;
but it represents a danger notwithstanding, which will be last understood by those whom it first affects, as
in such cases commonly happens. Every day makes it more and more plain that Lord Stanley cannot
manage his followers. The month opened with a travestie of that celebrated scene at Merchant-Tailors' Hall
now thirteen years ago, when Sir Robert Peel re-organised the party shattered six years before by the
Reform Bill. But what did Lord Stanley propose at Merchant-Tailors' Hall the other day, to re-organise
the party shattered six years before by Sir Robert Peel? Why, plainly, he shirked altogether the real point
at issue. He heartily abused Free Trade, but carefully evaded any promise to re-impose Protection. He said
that Free Trade was doing enormous evil to one great class, and no sort of good to any other, great or small;
yet he never once said he would do his best to bring back the better system it had displaced. He was full of
copious fears about emigrants flying by tens of thousands over-sea, about British bottoms narrowing and
Foreign bottoms expanding, about incomes dwindling and trade over-trading, about naught being everything
and everything naught, but with one single confident hope that they should have Protection back again he
had not the heart to comfort his audience. The sum of his advice to his followers was that they should
wait for the chance of moving upward; the sum of his warning to his opponents, that they should halt in
pushing others downward. As if good can ever be achieved, or evil arrested, without determination at all
risks actively to help the one and beat back the other! The consequence has been that in every Protectionist
meeting since that day there has been clamour for Protection, and for nothing else. Any further waiting or
delay is scouted at. The little bill for the relief of burdens which Mr. Disraeli has now for two successive
years presented to the Commons, is voted into the waste-paper basket. Alison and Aytoun, twin prophets of
history and poetry, leave their airy spheres to complain of too much plenty, to denounce the importation
of corn, and wring their hands over the enormity of John Bull's constant craving for bread. Everything
betokens a crisis, if the farmers' friends can only help it on. Smock-frock is to be inflamed against fustian,
and an election to be challenged while the top-booted fifty-pounders are still strong in the counties, and the
hard-handed ten-pounders weak in the towns. In which state of things, as we have observed, Chartism
re-appears with its little programme; and with the hope, by drawing off to itself both fustian and smock-frock, to
leave the quarrel to those immediately above them, and afterwards get up a quarrel of its own with whichever
may happen to get the victory, in the streets or in the fields. With this view it announces land to be the
"inalienable" inheritance of all mankind, and promises the "labourer" that hereafter he shall cease to be
"the slave of capital." The inference is that both capital and land are mal-appropriated at present, and
deserving more just distribution. It is a phantom, every one will say; but of these there may be a sufficient
number disposed to reassure their own fright at its appearance, and at the same time do infinite mischief to
others, by needless resort to their revolvers and blunderbusses.

Let us note it as a characteristic circumstance that the name first affixed to this Chartist programme is
that of a person notorious for his attempts to degrade the working men of England by circulating among
them books of a debasing tendency; and that the next name most prominent among those subscribed to it, is
that of the great originator of Snig's End, to whom the operatives of this country owe more of misery and
loss than to any other of the long line of selfish and sordid braggarts who have traded on their wants and
hopes, and successively betrayed them. A pretty pair truly, to take the lead in a proposed general abolition
of apprenticeship and wages, and opening of a credit fund with the state! Worthy minds to entrust with
an absolute control over education and religion! Noble hearts to invite the confidence of all who think
themselves wronged or suffering, and (as they phrase it themselves) to "stand forth as the uniters of all
those insulated but homogeneous interests, to weld the millions into one compact mass, to evoke the
dormant mind of the country, and to launch the gathered power in the right direction!"

Yet even such teachers as these, with even such programmes and announcements, have obtained a hearing
among limited sections of the well-intentioned working people of this country, long in search of better
teachers, and at last in despair of finding them. The circumstance, however, there is now reason to believe,
will not be altogether overlooked in the new reform bill which is understood to be preparing. Lord John
Russell has explicitly declared his purpose of introducing, in February next, a measure for the extension
of the suffrage commensurate with the improvement that has taken place in the intelligence and conduct of
the people; and if this be fully carried out, it will be a doleful day for Mr. G. W. M. Reynolds, and Mr.
Feargus O'Connor. Excellently, as well as earnestly, was it said by Mr. Fox Maule, in deprecating persistence
with Mr. Locke King's bill for a ten-pound county franchise, that, if the franchise were to be extended, one
general measure, affecting all the different franchises at one and the same time, would be the preferable