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Leader (1850-1860), 14th August 1852, Edition Country of 2, Page 12

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      The Impossible War With America. A Wae W...

      America would plunge us into a new Holy Alliance , would place the two natural champions of constitutional freedom and national independence on opposite sides ; and would neutralize the sole remaining terror of the despots— -the sole thing that can make them pause in their career—the sole antagonist of theBLoly Alliancethe Anglo-American _Alliance . Are the English people , are the men of Manchester and Glasgow , Leeds , Liverpool , and London , content to be the tools in that gigantic

      and criminal " dodge" ? We cannot believe it . Yet how __ are we to get out of the false position , from which neither party can retract P In one way alone — by superseding the Ministry that dared to put us there , and by placing the conduct of public affairs in the hands of a statesman able to maintain our dignity with spirit , and at the same time , by hearty frankness and chivalrous courtesy , able to convince the Americans that we have their dignity also , their friendship , and their interests at heart .

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      British Reaction On The Continent The Ac...

      BRITISH _REACTION ON THE CONTINENT The actual state of Europe imposes upon us the duty of regarding with the ugliest suspicion the conduct of Ministers towards the United States ; for the reaction—which has made such decided progress since the year 1849—has assumed a new relation to this country . It is true , that the transition from the administration of Palmerston to that of Malmesbury was softened by the intervention of Earl Granville . It is true , indeed

      that even before that time , Lord Palmerston ' s own method of conducting the foreign relations of this country had been cramped and warped by the active intervention of his colleagues ; and the public has long since been informed how , in Vienna , at that time the most important capital of Europe , a special messenger and a tea service were waiting to supersede the diplomatic influence of the Foreign office .

      The Whig Government , with its anti-democratic leanings , had already consented to employ the Earl of Westmoreland , and to dabble in lad ylike presents of conciliation . The Granville capitulation was a step further . The attempt at the Mather surrender went too far for the moment , but a show of concession to public influence in this country has covered that mistake for the time . It would appear that Her Majesty ' s Ministers have succeeded in convincing Austria and Russia that St . James ' s has become an effective member of tho Holy Alliance . This is the new term in the advance of reaction . The Emperor of Austria is making a royal

      progress in Hungary , marked by courts martial and gross severities to satisfy old grudges against individuals ; by insulting ceremonies to the Hungarians , reminding them that their _independences destroyed ; and b y a more than Napoleonic abundance of lying official narratives , sent back to the West of Europe , for the purpose of making us believe that the Emperor parades through his faithful Hungarians , amidst fervent expressions of delight . At the same time , it is proclaimed that a note from the Cabinet of St . James ' s to the Austrian Government , gives assurance that measures of precaution will be taken to prevent the retirement of Kossuth , at Notting-hiH , from troubling the good relation established between England and Austria .

      Ihe Earl of Westmoreland is announced to make a tour in Italy , as we have said , on an anti-Minto principle . Some person in the Whig Government sent Lord John Russell ' s father-inlaw to represent English feeling in the Italian peninsula ; and ho did it fairly enough , by addressing the Italian people , and telling them that England desired their success in achieving national independence and personal liberty . Some person in the Whig Government encouraged the Sicilians to believe that England would support them in acquiring an independent

      sovereignty ; but some other persons in that Cabinet withdrew that support , gave tho lie to tho assurance of Lord John Russell ' s father-in-law , and sufferod Italy to fall again , unhelped , almost uncomfortod , beneath the heel of Austria . After that good work of Whig transition , "back again , " Lord _Westmoreland is to make a tour in the South for tho purpose of oncouraging the Absolutist party with the assurance of official English sympathy . In anticipation of his appoaraneo , the constitutional Government of Piedmont iH obliged to fall away from tho sturdy , unflinching

      British Reaction On The Continent The Ac...

      attitude which it had maintained between its two antagonists , Rome and Austria . It partially yields its Civil Marriage Bill , by rendering the religious ceremony a constitutional part of the legal form . It conciliates Austria by proscribing a numerous list of journals , including Mazzini ' s Italia e Popolo . Piedmont , one of the outposts of constitutional government , is manifestly receding before the advance of Austria and Rome ;

      and we understand better why she should recede now , when we learn that the weight of England is unaccountably thrown into the scale against constitutional government . The reaction is " making its way in every form , but simultaneously in different countries , We saw last week the progress which the ultramontane party in France is making in the exclusion of classical authors from the public schools . It is now announced that the Austrian Government

      likewise intends to exclude classical authors from the University of Vienna . The clergy , which our ministers affect to combat in Ireland , though without the slightest success , are carrying the reaction back far beyond the standards of 1815 , not only under the confessedly despotic rSgimes , but also in France and Piedmont ; and England is labouring to maintain the good relations established with Austria .

      The Herald publishes in its leading columnswith a very mild caveat of its own against official breach of the law—a strange letter , alleged to be from a Paris correspondent , but whether of English or foreign extraction we are left to doubt . The writer naively desires to be informed , why the French refugees in Jersey and Guernsey are not expelled by the British Government . " It may become a question demanding the immediate and serious attention of our Government whether

      the French Red Republicans and political refugees of all colours shall be allowed to collect and congregate in such numbers in places so near—so very near — to the French coast as Guernsey and Jersey . " This is noticeable language in the leading columns of the Government i ' ournal . The writer adds , tbat a "friendly " _frenchman might " understand how , under my Lord Palmerston , these gatherings in the Channel Islands should be allowed , or even encouraged ; but what I cannot comprehend is the continuance of such things under Lord

      Malmesbury and the Earl of Derby . " Our readers will not be so slow of comprehension . The writer , however , indulges the belief that the " causes of annoyance and irritation will be speedily removed . " The "feeler" is evident and complete . These phenomena in the direction of the continent , we say , impart the ugliest suspicions . It is impossible not to connect these signs of an intrigue on the continent of Europe , in which Downing-street would seem to bo involved , with the otherwise inexplicable policy of Downingstreet west of the Atlantic .

      The Clouded Sky. Tiie Sky Is Overcast, A...

      THE CLOUDED SKY . Tiie sky is overcast , and gloom invades not onl y the atmosphere , but the outlook both of the politician and theooconomist . Rain , just now , means a damaged harvest , and a damaged harvest means hunger—means a darkening of our prosperitymeans , perchance , discontent . And rain so heavy has not oppressed tho harvest for years . It comes the more painfully after the bright warm hopes of tho early Hummer : " laughing Cores " hangs her head and mourns . It may pass indeed : tho glass is rising ; tho sun bursts forth again ; but the five days' rain-cloud is a dark memento .

      Such visitations , as wo continue to insist , aro true " judgments . " We have , in many ways , broken " thc laws of Nature and of tho God of Nature , " physicall y , morally , and politically . It often happens , indeed , that wo fall short of a full obedience to those laws ; but not often that the disobedience is seen in so many shapes of conscious misdoing as it is in the neglect of setting our towns in order , in tho alienation of classes , and in the violations of public virtue . And now , verily , the shadow of this clouded sk y discloses many a lurid fire of self-retribution kindling for us .

      Our political factions havo been playing a rival game of bare-faced hypocrisy , and they are punished . Displacing a party which had forfeited its political vitality by tho outrageous abuse of a chartered "Iiy pocrisy ; tho " Conservative " faction entered ofiice with a greater hypocrisy of its own—displacing Free-traders on tno pro-

      The Clouded Sky. Tiie Sky Is Overcast, A...

      text of restoring Protection , and keeping _offio by a capitulation with Free-trade . And . now may come a bad harvest , which will raise _priced so as doubly to lock the door against Protection and yet snatching the expected gains from farmer and landowner . The " landed interest" which helped to send in the anti liberal , anti-national Ministry , sees its triumph menaced by the clouds of a sullen August . The most incompetent Ministry that ever intrigued itself into office , it would seem , may have to undergo the hardest of trials —the conduct of affairs when men ' s confidence is undermined , and their censure shar pened hv trouble , if not hunger . *

      - " Oh ! cries Free-trade , if corn fail at home it will be supplied from abroad . " Whence ? From the Black Sea , which adverse powers can close against us ; or the Baltic , Russian lake ; or the United States , with whom we are letting incompetent Ministers drag us into a quarrel ? We do not , indeed , believe in a war with the

      United States ; but the Free-trade party , which has slighted mere political questions , has neglected to take security for the fulfilment of its promise that England need not fear dependence for her bread upon foreign countries . Now we are threatened with a diminished harvest , and the Freetraders have connived at those intrigues which have resulted in appointing a Malmesbury to forward our interests in the Baltic , the Mack

      Sea , and the Mississippi I Misfortunes never come single ; but the op . pressive weight of an infliction depends upon our means of bearing it ; and a great nation should be prepared to confront great adversities . We must make proportionate changes if we would be so prepared . As it is , there is not a cloud in the sky that does not find us exposed rather than prepared . Practical government has fallen into abeyance or has been trusted to journeyman routine , and we are about to feel the effects . Ireland has been roused to Ultra-Catholic

      fierceness by the No-Popery cry , and a return of the potato famine comes ; as if Heaven were to throw the terrible sound of despair into the cry for good Government , and were to ask , through the shrill voice of suffering , what right political triflers have to tamper with the grave duties of the statesman P Factions contending for power have set town against country ; ceconomical dogmas have taught capitalists in towns , and landowners in the country , that the humbler classes are no charge of theirs , but that the poor

      must take care for themselves : and now a scanty harvest threatens want of work in our towns , want of food and of employment for the untaught , and already half-starved labourers of the fields . Factions have been wasting their time in the true faction fights of Parliament , and talking about " Sanitary Reform ; " and now the Asiatic cholera , marching from Erzeroum to Warsaw and Dantzig , comes to join its English ally , " summer cholera , " already visiting our crowded , undrained , unwashed streets , thick set with

      uupurified grave-yards ; to be expatiated again by a fast , and an humiliation for breaking , with pedantic consciousness , " the laws of Nature , and of the God of Nature . " The soaking sky pours down rains poisoned by what thoy fall upon , and in tho body of disease the heart will sink . While wo stand thus , comes tho news of theso unpleasing misunderstandings with our natural allies in America , or worse understanding with our natural enemies , tho upholders of tyranny in Europe ; and we hear tho news with all the more dismay , because Ave havo no confidence in thoso who have undertaken to govern us , and for us .

      But there is daylight beyond the cloud . There is nothing that England needs , just now , so much as a trial of adversity . Wo havo had too little , nationally , within the last forty years . Tho banking crash of 182 . 5 only affected classes ; the railway crat . h of 184 ( 5 ' 7 was also a class irritation ; even the potato famine of 1847 inflicted its heaviest scourge on Ireland alone . _^ Eng land , almost scatheless , long prospering , is found

      " apathetic , content with things as they arcwith injustice abroad , with unseemliness at homo —content to be governod by men who cannot embody national honour . But out of the very disturbances come relief . Tho formor famine , followed by the gold discovery , drained Ireland , anil has thinned even England ; and alread y do we feel the social effects , North and South . In poor illpaid hungry Wiltshire , hiring fairs are ill _tdtended—by tho labouring class ; in Norfolk and Suffolk , formers are concerting against _omigra-

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 14, 1852, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_14081852/page/12/