objects to which true coal is applied; iron ore, widely distributed, of great purity, and in considerable abundance; salt, in quantity sufficient for a dense population,-all these crude elements of wealth lie within the limits or on the borders of a region of great fertility, and drained by a river of the first class, navigable by steamer during several months of the year for five hundred miles of its course, and by bateaux for nearly double that distance.

The position which the colony occupying the basin of Lake Winnipeg may assume at the close of the next decade, few will be prepared to define. Bounded on the west by British Columbia, whose gold wealth will ensure her a marvellously rapid progress, and on the east by the powerful, energetic, and loyal colony of Canada, which now, in conjunction with the sister provinces, contains a population exceeding by ONE MILLION that of the thirteen United States during the revolutionary war, is it likely that British enterprise and patriotism will permit the intervening country to remain a wilderness, or to pass into the hands of a foreign government ?

It is to be earnestly hoped that the attention of far-seeing, thoughtful, and loyal men will be directed to the present relations of Central British America, its possible future, and the opportunity it presents to plant British institutions and civilisation across the North American Continent; thus linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans together with a chain of British dependencies, distinguished alike by their spirit of loyalty, of order, and of obedience to the law.

The occupation and the government of the basin of Lake Winnipeg have already become a serious question, and even before the rising generation succeed to the responsibilities of those who now rule the destinies of this great empire, they may have occasion to lament a lost opportunity of inestimable worth, or to rejoice in the extension of British dominion over loyal populations, extending in an unbroken series from the Eastern to the Western hemisphere.

THE PRESS-GANG.

BY CAPTAIN FREND, R.N.

The King's Press.-SHAKSPEARE.

HAPPILY we cannot say the QUEEN's press! Under the gentle reign of Queen Victoria-when even the guilty do not find it easy to obtain for themselves an adequate punishment-impressment slumbers in the dead letter of the law. Requiescat sempiterne!

I saw something of it when I was serving as midshipman in a receiving ship. Boys are thoughtless, and mostly cruel, and perhaps I did not feel as I ought to have done at the time; but, remembering what I then witnessed, I do not know anything in the experience of my life that produced so much of misery. I say it deliberately. I have seen, amongst

the horrors of warfare in India, a mine sprung under the feet of an advancing column: I was on board the Victory at Trafalgar: and on the field of Waterloo the night of the battle. The agony, in these cases, though intense, was generally of short duration; the worst was soon known; but the home misery, the nights of weeping and days of suffering, produced by impressment, were prolonged in alternations of hope and despair-in want and wretchedness-for years and lives.

Under some of its aspects, to a youngster like myself, it was not bad fun. When I was stationed at Liverpool-to say nothing of a chance fight with the townspeople, who hated us-it was amusing when our fellows used to lay hold of a young merchant's clerk who had been rambling about at unseasonable hours. The fright they gave him might have had a good effect, and have rectified his habits. But as the victims were about my own age, I could not help having something of a fellowfeeling for a poor lad like this, when I saw him waiting in a very uncomfortable state of mind to be liberated on the morning-visit of our lieutenant, and trying to prepare himself for the lecture, if nothing worse, which he was pretty sure to receive from his governor on his return home.

In such cases the press-gang might possibly have been a great moral power.

Now and then they made capture of what proved on examination to be a crippled tailor or shoemaker; and these, after being kept at the Rendezvous all night, were merely insulted and discharged; sometimes looking back with vows of horrible revenge, which, coming from such impotent voices, were answered by a peal of brutal laughter.

Occasionally, the press was used, like the lettres de cachet in France, as an instrument of private vindictiveness or revenge. I recollect a man, originally a hairdresser, who was waiter at a celebrated hotel in Yorkshire. It was his misfortune to have offended the dignity of one of the guests, and the officers at Hull were in consequence informed where some hands, if sought for, might be picked up-the waiter to be included; but he received a friendly intimation. Remembering his first profession, he 'cut it short," and was over the hills and far away before the gentlemen from Hull had arrived.

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It was something very different-and a sight that it is painful to remember when we went to meet the ships coming into dock: often perhaps from a long voyage to the coast of Africa and the West Indies, or from the icy dangers of the whale fishery. I have then-and more than once-seen a wife waiting with her children, after months of sad separation, doubtful of her husband's fate, yet hoping to welcome him as he landed; for his ship had been signalled from the lighthouse. With beaming and joyful face she would point him out on the deck as the vessel neared the pier, and as she anxiously watched him she might be seen waving her handkerchief, with beating heart, till she had at last caught his eye. And then-in another minute he was seized as if he had been a felon, and before a look or word could be exchanged, was savagely dragged away to fight the battles of his country. Fair young girls and aged mothers were alike dashed from hope to bitter agony, as they saw a brother or a son torn from them, never perhaps to glad their sight again. And how true must such men have been to a country so

unjust to them, when even under these circumstances they could fight for it as they did! For slavery itself was scarcely a more "bitter draught" than impressment.

But I was doomed to see another of its consequences still more painful than these. We had boarded a vessel at the mouth of the river. One of her crew was leaning over the opposite bulwark looking at a boat that contained the handsome lass to whom he was to be married on landing, when he was laid hold of by the press. The second mate-an uncommonly fine young fellow-rushed forward, and struck his messmate's captor to the ground; and the sailor, leaping overboard, got into the shore-boat and escaped. The mate was laid hold of by two of our men, and his arms being pinioned by a third, we carried him off.

An Act of Parliament had recently been passed, making it a capital offence to resist the press-gang, under such circumstances, by force, in the execution of their duty. We were near the Cheshire shore when this occurred. The man, who gave his name as Jones, was taken before a neighbouring magistrate, and committed to Chester Castle to take his trial at the approaching assizes. I was summoned as one of the principal witnesses, much to my annoyance; for I was on leave to visit some relations about five miles from Chester, and my time at the trial was to be counted as part of my absence.

It soon came on. Who that saw that fine, manly, benevolent face could have believed him capable of a crime? But the evidence as to the facts was conclusive; the jury brought in a verdict of guilty; and though the man he had attacked was scarcely hurt, and appeared as a witness, the prisoner was sentenced to death. The judge said that it was the first case that had been brought before him since the act had been passed, and an example must be made. Ay, in those days man's life was little thought of. Even later, at a time when, being engaged in some law proceedings, I had frequent occasion to pass eastward on my way to the City, I have seen two or three men hanging at once in front of the Old Bailey, without exciting more attention from the passers-by than if they had been so many bales of cotton-perhaps not so much. According to my own poor judgment, the fact of its having been the first case that had been brought before him, and that there had been scarcely time for the change of the law to have been known, ought to have influenced the judge to have pronounced a more lenient sentence, or to have prevented the severe one from being carried into effect. But there were then no applications to the Home Secretary got up by pitying philanthropists, and poor Jones was left for execution.

To myself, as an actor in the affair, it was a very painful result; and having obtained permission to see him in his cell, I told him that I hoped he would forgive me for any effect which my evidence might have had upon

the verdict.

"Forgive! your honour? There's nothing to forgive. You merely told the truth. Just what I should have said myself if I had been asked. Your honour would do nothing to harm me, I know. But it's a hard sentence for what I did."

"It is indeed! Is there anything I could do for you? How came you to be tried by the name of Jones? I saw no such name on the ship's papers."

At this simple remark he was more affected than I had ever seen him ; and his utterance was choked as he said, "Don't mention that, sir! The greatest favour you can do me will be not to tell any one that you think I have another name. I have a mother-O God! she would die if she knew that her son-the son she was so proud of-was hung as a murderer! My poor, poor mother!" and he fell senseless upon his bed.

We parted, when he had somewhat recovered. A parting that I shall never forget.

I do not remember whether I intended it, but I chanced to be in Chester on the day of his execution. Such ceremonies were then conducted very differently from what they are now. The culprit was placed in a cart and dragged from the castle through the two main streets of the city to the Gallows Hill, at a village about a mile outside the walls, called Boughton. The locality is at present covered with villas, but the view was then clear to the meadows on the other side the Dee, and to the rich, wide country beyond. It is said that a criminal once sprang from the cart, and by a succession of leaps down the side of the steep hill, gained the river, and was never more heard of. Tradition holds that he reached the opposite bank and escaped. It is more probable that he sank and rose no more. Nor was the city itself what it is now. Those galleries, called the Rows, that run between the basements and upper stories of the principal lines of houses were then with their quaint picturesqueness little changed; and the bulkheads that joined the balustrades in front were convenient places from which to witness a procession, or anything else that might be passing. The crowds that filled them on that day darkened the Rows themselves; and I happened to be in one of the darkest spots, with no wish to look beyond, at the moment that the cart was passing. I was in a miserable state of mind. I did not see him. But, rising above the swell and uproar of the crowd that filled the streets and rushed to the fronts of the galleries, there was a loud, shrill shriek, followed by "O God! it is my son!" and a venerable-looking old woman, in the dress of the Cheshire peasantry, was carried past me, insensible. She never spoke again.

Was it possible that he could have heard that cry? he was spared such bitter agony.

Let us trust that

Living as long as I have done, it may be supposed that my feelings have been sometimes tried; but I never felt as I did then. I thought that I should myself have dropped.

Yet even than this sad scene a worse remained behind." A worse, because a more protracted misery.

One of the last days that I stayed with my relation, he asked me to accompany him on a visit to a neighbouring lunatic asylum. I had never entered such a place before. I probably never shall again. It was a painful sight. How many forms do the mysterious diseases of the mind assume! Amongst those I looked at there was wild excitement, a wear and tear of the body that seemed enough to destroy it in a day: and yet it had gone on for months. There was near it the composure of settled depression. In one case the faculty of thought seemed lost. There was in another a glimmering of intellect that could reason adroitly upon the most absurd assumptions. I found in one a tranquil resignation to his confinement; in another a painfully restless inquiry as to why he was kept

there, and when he would be liberated.

There was a fixed attitude of devotion, the hands clasped and the lips moving as if in prayer. And in the same room there was howling blasphemy. There was here morbid energy, and there the most frivolous and contented imbecility. But in one respect they were the same:

The intellect, all shatter'd and destroyed;
Or, like a broken mirror, showing still
Distorted semblances and antic shapes.

Our conductor, Dr. Griffiths, was an intelligent man, and had been one of the first to adopt a better treatment of the insane, and I called his attention to the appearance of a young woman who had never spoken. Her features were very beautiful; her full dark eye was fixed; her complexion was like marble; and she sat as motionless as marble itself. No sign of life: no look at anything that passed.

"We consider," said Dr. Griffiths, "as far as we are yet able to judge, that that is one of the most hopeless cases which has ever been brought before us. It is the poor girl who was to have been married to the sailor executed at Chester.

I could now look at nothing else. The mother's death had revealed to her his fate. The shock had arrested sense and reason, and everything but life.

There was something strange in the circumstances by which their destinies had been united. Her father had come from the north of England, with a wife and daughter-now, alas! the object of my commiseration-who was then about ten years old; and he had taken an extensive farm. He was unknown, but he had brought a letter of credit from a London banker to the bank at Chester for a sum amply sufficient to stock and work the farm he occupied; and he worked it prosperously. No relation or former acquaintance ever came to see him. The poor sailor's mother, a widow, had a cottage on the border of his land. She kept a cow-sometimes two-and had a garden, and a small croft, and poultry without end, and with these, working hard, she made a decent sufficiency. She found the farmer a kind and obliging neighbour. His men often saved her a labourer's wages, and he gave her much that, from a farm like his, he could well spare.

His third year's crops had been well got in. His last was an abundant one: the rick-yard was crowded. There had been a harvest-home; and the sailor-boy, who was known at the farm-house as little Tom, had been dancing and romping with Miss Alice.

About midnight he was still awake, blending with his innocent and boyish fancies the image of his partner, when he saw an unusual glare of light. The ricks were in a blaze. He ran breathless to the spot, and found the house was also rapidly burning. His courage and activity saved the child; but her parents perished in the flames, and were buried in the ruins of their dwelling. Young Alice was taken to the house of his mother.

The following day it was ascertained that the property, with the exception of a very small sum for furniture, was uninsured. Its owner was a prudent man, and had meant to insure it on the morrow, when he attended Chester market; but for him the morrow never came.