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    Feb. 4, I860.] The Leader andSaturday An...

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    PAPAL HOME* O F the Roman Catholic Churc...

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    * La Jlouw (lea I'ripda. Premier Volume ...

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  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

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    Field-Marswal The Duke^F Wellington.* A ...

    by the late Lord Colchester . Nor must we omit to mention , among the many useful maps and plans which accompany the work , a facsimile of a sketch of the entire plain of Waterloo taken by the Dukes orders and used by Mm in the battle . We may here just hint that some of these materials have perhaps been obtained at a price which the reader may think too high . It is not possible to write a life of Wellington under the patronage of Apsley House without assuming something of the diplomatic formality of the Court Historiographer-There are difficultand delicate points in all biographies ; but jfc js not well that the biographer should be haunted at nil times with a dread of committing himself . Mr . Yonge , however , is a genuine admirer of the Duke | lie accepts all his positions , and justifies all his sentiments and declared principles . He is just such a biographer as the family of a great man disposed to be communicative raio-ht consider safe ; and we should be much surprised if the present or any future beaver of the title of Wellington should take exception to Mr . Yonge ' s version of any one of the scenes in which the Dulce

    bore a part . / .,, - »« - ¦» ,- ' We do not , of course , in this notice intend to follow Mr . i onges narrative of the progress of the great soldier from boyhood to his h onoured grave . Tlie battles with Tippoo and the Peishwa , the chequered struggle in the Peninsula , and the final triumph over foreign foe and party detractor , the great page of Waterloo , and the less successful struggle with Whiggery and the Political Economists , are too well known in their outlines to require a brief sketch . What Wellington . did—the nature of the man , and the value of the influence which hebrought to bear upon his times , are things of which most Englishmen have a distinct idea . No higher proof of the inlierent greatness of this man could be found than the fact that his name has lost none of its original brightness , though the world , with the-exception of Mr . Yonge , has long left : behind , the . principles with facts in his life which

    which it was identified . There are political moralists of a later and a better school cannot easily overlook ; It is impossible to forget that the Duke -was , from first to last , the ^ consistent opponent of progress and improvement ; the apologist of established power , however corrupt . It was he who , at an age when the love of freedom , and of justice is as natural as health and strength , recommended " main force " as the only system suited to the Irish . It was lie who supported the Duke of York in the scandalous business of Mrs . Clarice ¦; who % ig ht long and obstinately for nomination and rotten boroughs ; who opposed the claims of Catholics , dissenters , and Jews to civil equality ; who approved of the opium ; wjir" with the Chinese ; and who , even while famine was abroad , and a Tory so . confirmed , as Peel was shaking , stood . fast for an iniquitous bread-tax , declared the corn laws particularly essential in Irelandand " a benefit ti > the whole - community . " .

    , The Duke ' s ideal of a political system was perfect rest . Tlie constitution was to him a thing to be preserved like the text of the great Hebrew writers , in ' which he who should take away or add one word . should stand accursed . He was no worshipper of the abstract divinity of kings . The Grown was to him just that power to which what the great families called the " constitution " has reduced it ; no more , no less . He would have been no party to an encroachment on the kind ' s prerogative , but all encroachments already secured he was ready to maintain . Ho accepted the very last edition of our political system ; but now the work was done , no one should do more than copy to the letter . Curious instances of this might be adduced y—us his ins & ti-ng that George the Fourth should not allow his ministers to choose their own leaders , refusing himself " even to

    offer any advice ¦ on such a subject , " on the ground—we hope it sounded agreeably in royal ears- —that the choice of a minister wns , " under the British Constitution , the only personal act of Government which the King of Great Uiitain had to . perform . " Couple with this his famous ndvico to the Queen on the Bedchamber Question . Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell were gallant enough to allow their youthful sovereign the privilege of selecting her own ladies of . the Bedchamber—reasonable enough , it might be thought , to mere common sense unenlightened by the study of tlie British Constitution . The Duke , however , had no hesitation in taking the Contrary side . He looked upon the choice as the established right of " the ministers , and ' frankly stated to the Queen that it was ' their positive ' duty to require it , " The demand was one which scarcely who ruledin

    disguised the truth , that the great families * England have monopolised sill but the shadow of power and patronage ; tluit the Civil List itself , though nominally gramted to the sovereign , who has the credit of spending- it , is , in fact , divided among iho friends and dependants of the reigning faction , on the protojico of filling- posts in the household j and that . this is so much regarded as their right , that any attempt on the part of the Crown to divert patronage from thorn beyond the comparatively trifling limits of the privy purse , is trended as a fraud . Tiro fact 5 s humiliathiH- enough —msupportublc , one would think , to any but a mayor of the pnhieo , a llama of Thibet , or a well-trained constitutional sovereign ; but to the great Dulce , it was a part of the established order of thing-B , and as such—whether gallant or ung-ullnnt , whether it raised or degraded royalty into the dust—it must bo maintained .

    Even the Duke's changes of opinion nro not , as might at first « ight appear , contradictions , but , in fact , confirmations of this -view . lie did not , like Cunning or Peel , see the change coming , and by a well-timed withdrawal help to break up hi » party and Uke tlie load in the now rfyime when the change came , or w « a so clearly a . fait accompli that resistance was no longer possible ; ho received the novelty as ux \ addition to the constitution ;—unwelcomo , yet henceforth to be defended , ns pertinaciously as all the rest . He would have stood up for General Warrants in tlie days of John Wilkes j but the victory once gained , not even the recantation of

    John Wilkes himscif could have induced him to return to General Warrants again . Once gone from the book of the constitution , no less a battle than had sufficed to remove them would , to him , be sufficient to bring them back . It is curious , however , to remarks the force of public opinion in all these things . The outward strength of Wellington's Toryism lay not so much in himself as in the public , who so long supported him and his party . It ... . a common error of Liberals to regard the men who monopolised power in tin ' s country from the rising to the setting of the star of Napoleon as a kind of insolent usurpers , who . maintained themselves in tyrannical defiance of the people ' s better sense . We would it were so . Unfortunately , ; the- truth is that our Wellingtons , our

    Addingtons , our Liverpools , Eldons , and Bexleys , were strong m their Toryism , because Toryism ' - was ¦ a madness which had then seized upon the nation . When this madness subsided—with the dread of the Revolution , and its representative—Toryism declined and fell . This is indeed the invariable history . Even the Reign of Terror , to those who read its annals attentively , will appear rather as the creation of a public opinion which maintained it throughout , than as the unsupported tyranny of Robespierres and-Dantons according to the popular belief . The popular horror of French to the ism of those

    excesses was a mine of patronage and power Tory days . When France fell , and those who laid her low dreamed ot nothing but greater security and long-un « hallenged possession , their stronghold Was shaken in its foundations , and did not long delay to show its weakness . London mobs would no longer hoot a Foxite for liberalism , nor Birmingham rioters burn down the meeting-houses of such reformers as Priestley . Radicals , whom whilom the very tag-rag of the town despised as low , began to get hearers ; the old claptraps lost their virtue , and peace and reflection

    brought in the better time . The world ' s judgment of the great Duke has long taken a set shape , and will ' probably be little modified as time rolls on . The events with which his name is mingled have already receded into the domain of history : the Waterloo Banquet has dwindled to a shadow , and the great order of change and progress which the Duke so dreaded , moves on with even swifter turns . Even those who least love the system of which he was a part , do hot refuse him a place among our greatest names ; but the number is not small of those who believe that , his influence was too long extended for his country ' s good ; for its shadow goes beyond the grave . His exaggerated fears of enemies , domestic and foreign- —so conspicuous the most powerful ea » ses oi

    in 1847 , 1848 , and 1851- ^ were among that invasion-panic which still , shakes the nation periodically from its seat of dignity ; but the Duke was honest , and men recognised in the opinions he put forth the natural characteristics of the innu-No better proof , indeed * could be given of his . disintere . tedness ,. than his unprofessional approval of a militia force , and acknowledgement that its inferiority to a , standing arrny had been exaggerated . The Duke had fought battles with militia forces and the ' . rawest troops ; and knew , in fact , that when the struggle comes the combatants are almost invariably new levies , or men the bulk of whom know nothing of war . This opinion alone , rightly appreciated , was a strong antidote to ' the . mischief , which we believe his invasion terrors to have caused , and was no small service to the cause of liberty at home .

    Feb. 4, I860.] The Leader Andsaturday An...

    Feb . 4 , I 860 . ] The Leader andSaturday Analyst , 1 L 5

    Papal Home* O F The Roman Catholic Churc...

    PAPAL HOME * O F the Roman Catholic Church , that mighty institution which for a season nobly ¦ corresponded to some of Humanity ' s noblest needs and aspirings , but which has long been hastening to its downfall , we would speak with becoming reverence ; but toward the popedom as distinguished from the Roman Catholic Church we cherish no other feeling than that of unutterable loathing . Whatever the llltrarnontanists may say , the popedom and the Roman Catholic Church ; - so far from being identical , are , arid have been for the most . part antagonisms . The first then inny periab , and yet the work is of the

    second survive . The present a crushing exposure huge papal imposture , and will , when-finished , have as much historical att polemical value . The book is a French translation from the unpublished Italian manuscript of a Roman patrician , —u former member of the Roman Constituent Assembly , It does not deal in declamation , in denunciation ; it heaps fact on fact , detail on detail , draws vivid pictures whioh convince more than the longest , most powerful arguments . The author , thoroughly in earnest and with the profouridest knowledge of \ m subject , writes often with indjgrnntion , but never with bitterness ; it is obvious that he has not wished to make out a ease by special pleading , by misrepresentation , by a . concealment of the cireuinstunces indispensable to honest and

    impartial judgment . Recent converts , chiefly Hilly JWngliHU persons , attracted by the gorgeous ritual of the Roman Catholic Church , are very zealous in defending popery in all its aspect * and relations . But what is the worth either of their testimony or opinion ? Spending a few days or a few weeks in the Eternal City , they are satisned if the shows are numerous and splendid enough . They runlt to bo enchanted by theatricalities , and 't fieatrienlitjes abound , b roin the misery and corruption of the Roman Staten , from the woes and wrongs of Italy , from the shivery , anguish , and degradation of the human race they turn away their earn and their eyes . A hey think : themselves pious worshipper * , but they ore simply hunters Jw amusement , indolent victims of the worst kind of dilettantism , poor drivelling creatures , who insult Religion by their mil or preiended , suporatitiou . How pope , and enrdinula , and prolntw » nunc

    * La Jlouw (Lea I'Ripda. Premier Volume ...

    * La Jlouw ( lea I ' ripda . Premier Volume Pule ; Sohweiffhnu 8 or , hondon ; John flhapman .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 4, 1860, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_04021860/page/15/