tion, it has rapidly fallen off in price. What sold for 78 scudi in 1843 sold in 1845 for 60 scudi; and this year was offered for 52. I must mention, however, that 1843 seems to have been the palmy year for trade in Malta, the value of the exports having fallen off by 10,0001. since that period. This may account for the increased number of beggars in the streets of Malta.

Before quitting our kind and hospitable friend, we accompanied him to the church, a very fine building, supported by voluntary contributions ; and also to the Campo Experimentale, or experimental field of the Agricultural Society of Malta, where we saw the

progress of numerous experiments which were being made for the purpose of ascertaining what will best grow without being watered: Where there is so much sun, there is little doubt that if sufficient rain fall most plants will come to perfection ; but in Malta, where drought is so frequent, the essential point is to discover those portions of the vegetable kingdom that thrive best in the absence of moisture. Sweet potatoes, common potatoes, maize, and several kinds of cotton seemed to succeed admirably.

During this little trip I learned a great deal, and was reminded moreover that we commonly give too little thought to what is going on among our own subjects, in our own possessions. Would not a wise government foster the spirit of industry which has sprung up in Malta ? How easily might the superabundant population of the island, which now overflows the narrow limits assigned by nature, and spreads over all the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean, be employed usefully in developing the infant manufacture which has been created ! Competition with Great Britain there would be none of course to fear, and

any

effect that could be produced on the vast trade of our country would be beneficial; in all fine works it is the practice to mix English with Maltese yarn. And, on the other hand, how worthily should we be fulfilling the responsible duties which we undertook when we assumed the protectorate over the Maltese people, by directing their energies into such a path. When we cease to allow our attention to be diverted by a net-work of impregnable fortifications, and a magnificent harbour, from the interests, the wants and wishes of a hundred thousand souls, we shall be better consulting our dignity as a nation than we do at present.

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HUNGER A HISTORY FOR YOUNG ENGLAND.*

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“ The judgments of God are for ever unchangeable : neither is He wearied by the long process of Time, and won to give His blessing in one age to that which He hath cursed in another."-WALTER RALEIGH,

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH.

HENRY THE THIRD.

1216--1258. SURROUNDED by evil omens, the son of John succeeded to the English throne. The sister of Arthur lived, the phantom of a disturbed succession. The actual power if not the name of King, was held by a foreign prince ; to whom a great part of the English baronage adhered, and who claimed the country in right of his wife, a niece of the dead king. Henry was himself a child, little more than nine years old. And when, on the tenth day after his father's death, he was led to the abbey church of Gloucester to take the oath administered to English kings, his head was encircled, not by the round and top of sovereignty, but by a plain gold fillet hastily prepared to supply its place. The crown lay embedded in the Lincoln marshes, with the other treasures of his father.

But the oath was taken ; the new reign was proclaimed ; the guardianship of the king's minority was entrusted to Earl Marshal the Earl of Pembroke, with the title of Rector Regis et Regni ; full amnesty for the past and lawful liberties for the future were announced throughout the kingdom ; and clouds which threatened at the outset began to melt away. “We have persecuted the • father for evil demeanour,” said the moderate and wary Pembroke, and worthily. Yet this young

child whom he is in years tender, so he is innocent of his father's doings. Wherefore let us appoint him our king and governor, and the yoke

of foreign servitude let us cast from us. In the spirit of this address, and with the hope of uniting against Louis the chiefs of both parties of opposing barons, he summoned a great council to

you see before

you, as

meet at Bristol in a fortnight after the accession, on the 12th of November, 1216.

It was attended by many leading members of the confederacy against John, and the Great Charter appears to have been discussed at this council, probably for the first time, with nothing of party virulence or personal hostility. Every clause of a temporary nature was struck from it. The Regent, who acted as mediator, suggested a suspension of those clauses in relation to aids and scutages, and forest abuses, which bore the hardest on the ancient claims of the crown ; but he expressly limited the suspension to such time as a more ample consideration could be given to them, by a yet fuller assembly. On the other hand, several manifest improvements in regard to heirships and wardships were introduced ; and the council closed with a solemn ratification of the provisions of the Great Charter.

The proceedings of this council determined the fate of the French invasion, and settled the succession. The Earl of Salisbury headed a band of popular nobles who left the side of Louis Capet ; even William d’Albiney, who had narrowly escaped a halter at the hands of John, joined the standard of his son; and in a battle which was fought within little less than a year in Lincoln streets, and which was in those days quaintly called The Fair of Lincoln, the French, and the barons who still adhered to them, were decisively routed. In September, 1218, Louis bade farewell to England, and the standard of Robert Fitzwalter himself was unfurled for Henry the Third.

A second confirmation of the Great Charter signalised the departure of the French. The word of Pembroke had not been given vainly. Could it even have been safely so given, the Regent was wiser than to hesitate, seeing the temper of the time. The suspended clauses, as he had promised, reopened popular counsels, and formed the basis of important additions to the Charter. The subject of dower and alienations occupied many of these ; and to them were added enactments that all men should enjoy equal liberties, that escuage, or scutage, should be levied as in Henry the Second's reign, and that every castle built or rebuilt since the commencement of the civil war should be at once demolished. The clauses relating to forests and warrens were at the same time withdrawn, and formed into a separate instrument, with the name of the Charter of Forests,' by which all forests inclosed since the death of Richard the First were ordered to be thrown open ; all outlawries for forest offences in the same interval taken away; fine and imprisonment for killing the royal venison substituted in place of torture and death ; the violent and unjust foresta : courts made subject to regulation and control ; illegal tolls abolished ; and the right to cultivate and improve their own lands confirmed to the holders of estates within the royal warrens. These statutes passed through many later vicissitudes; but in the state wherein they received confirmation on that memorable 6th of November, 1217, they remain upon our English Statute Book to this day, They were now also extended to Ireland by the prudent suggestion: of Pembroke ; and every English sheriff received copies, with command to read them publicly at the county courts, and strictly to enforce their observance.

The remaining two years of the regency of Pembroke passed in comparative quiet ; with such occasional interruption as tended but to show the not unhealthy spirit of inquiry and insubordination now abroad throughout England. Pope Honorius the Third, in right of feudal claim declaring himself Henry's guardian, had commanded legate Gualo to watch over Henry's safety and protect his rights ; and in the name of the regent and legate, the young king's mother having somewhat indecently left her son, to fly back to the embraces of her first husband, the government was administered. On the great Earl Marshal's death, Hubert de Burgh the Justiciary succeeded him by a kind of general agreement as regent; but Pandulph had now taken the place of Gualo, and appears to have intrigued to procure for a Poitevin churchman, Peter des Roches, one of John's bishops and favourites, the custody of the person of the king. Hubert (who was a well-intentioned though not a very sagacious man, an unshaken servant of the throne, and of sufficient family pretension to have saved him from the dunghill' epithets of Shakespeare) represented and protected what were called the English interests at the court ;-) Peter des Roches (chiefly famous for his extravagant tastes and supple talents), championed foreign favourites, and surrounded the throne with those secret jealousies, and that open profligacy and profusion, which gave its first impression to the waxen heart? of Henry, and had such influence on his reign.

The earliest great council to which the name of Parliament. appears to have been given, was called together six years after Pem-. broke's death, under an urgent pressure of necessity, The court was impoverished and wanted money. The barons refused it. The.

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