That such an arrangement was in contemplation a few years ago, I knew from competent authority. Perhaps the unexpected interest which the English people have lately shown in the colonies has modified opinion in those high circles, and has taught politicians that they must advance more cautiously. But the wind still sits in the old quarter. Three years ago, the self-suppressed constitution in Jamaica was partially re-established. A franchise was conceded both there and in Barbadoes which gave every black householder a vote. Even in poor Dominica, an extended suffrage was hung out as a remedy for its wretchedness. If nothing further is intended, these concessions have been gratuitously mischievous. It has roused the hopes of political agitators, not in Jamaica only, but all over the Antilles. It has taught the people, who have no grievances at all, who in their present state are better protected than any peasantry in the world except the Irish, to look to political changes as a road to an impossible millennium. It has rekindled hopes which had been long extinguished, that, like their brothers in Hayti, they were on the way to have the islands to themselves. It has alienated the English colonists, filled them with the worst apprehensions, and taught them to look wistfully from their own country to a union with America. A few elected members in a council where they may be counterbalanced by an equal number of official members seems a small thing in itself. So long as the equality was maintained, my Yankee friend was still willing to risk his capital in Jamaican enterprises. But the principle has been allowed. The existing arrangement is a half-measure which satisfies none and irritates all, and collisions between the representatives of the people and the nominees of the Government are only avoided by leaving a sufficient number of official seats unfilled. To have re-entered upon a road where you cannot stand still, where retreat is impossible, and where to go forward can only be recommended on the hypothesis that to give a man a vote will itself qualify him for the use of it, has been one of the minor achievements of the last Government of Mr. Gladstone, and is likely to be as successful as his larger exploits nearer home have as yet proved to be. A supreme court, were we happy enough to possess such a thing, would forbid these venturous experiments of sanguine statesmen who may happen, for a moment, to command a trifling majority in the House of Commons.