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Leader (1850-1860), 16th June 1855, Edition 2 of 2, Page 16

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      British Bankruptcy. The Stoppage Of A Ba...

      ruptcy compromised ; and besides the compromised , there is a vast amount of what we may call suspended bankruptcy . —of , floating accounts which are not pressed , because it is known that if one house is brought down others will come too . A few houses overtrading in Liverpool or JSTew York will drag down others in [ Lancashire and the Empire State . How many people would have conspired to avoid that last pressure upon either house which

      brought it down ? The forbearance of the business world is beyond computation . Nevertheless all this amount of bankrupt account will never really balance . It x-epresents the gross of the mistakes or delusions in trade which cannot be realised . It is at once a shadow and an incubus upon the true commerce of the country—upon that which consists in advantageous exchanges to increase the gross amount of substantial property . It

      would be an interesting inquiry—far more worth a Committee of the House of Commons than many subjects—to ascertain the probable amount of bankruptcy , overt or concealed , in the British metropolis alone during a given number of years . People perhaps would be shocked to confront the truth which they can conspire to hush up . But the spendthrift negligence of the commercial world is not less mischievous than

      that of the foolish heir or the sporting class , whom moralists treat so severely . There is no real difference between an Honourable Fbakcis ViLiiiEBS , who tries to snatch a profit out of the anticipated feats of a horse , and the speculative attempts of a Liverpool merchant on a shipping business that will never come into existence ; or the illegitimate tampering with Italian railways by a firm whose sole business was to take care of other people ' s money in London .

      G68 The Leadeb. [Saturday ,

      g 68 THE LEADEB . [ Saturday ,

      Court Visitors. Thebe Is Something Evide...

      COURT VISITORS . Thebe is something evidently of inspiration in royalty . Tou may test the fact by the commonest application of the rule of subtraction . Take any royal person ; subtract from him the royalty , and see what remains . The families have in some cases , but not in all , arrived at their station by the peculiar ability of an individual ; but since able men seldom recur in families above once in four or five generations , in ordinary cases of succession there must be about four fools to

      one man of sense . Since , however , the practice of breeding in and in is known to deteriorate the kind , we must adopt a lower estimate for the established royal families ; and if we allow a tithe as being possibly men of sense , the allowance would be too liberal for the truth . Nevertheless , the possession of royal power and etation , with something that is conferred by divine sanction or popular superstition , imparts to the average fool qualities that render the

      possessor distinguished . Let any royal person be exhibited , and he is surrounded by a host to worship and admire . The consequences are sometimes amusing . It is waid that when her late Catholic Majesty of Portugal visited this country in her youth , and when the Duke of Wellington went to pay those respects which lie never omitted in such cases , her Majesty , with an unaffected

      playfulness that distinguished her , fastened upon that characteristic of the Duke which was the most obvious to the cyo of youth , and seized manually upon his nose . The accomplished young man who owns the sumo crown recently visited this country , and Sir Edwin La . nbsekh was presented as a person ¦ whose works the King had been industriously collecting . "Ah ! Sir Edwin , " exclaimed his Majesty , most affably , "I am delighted to

      make your acquaintance ; for lam very fond of beasts . ' And thus our men of genius and influence will constitute themselves the menagerie for the amusement of infants , so that the infants be royal . As a simple " F . R . S ., " Louis Napoleon excited no particular remark ; as a pretender to power , people thought something of him , though actual

      they pitied his triviality ; as an Emperor , he is admirable . Strip him of the purple , and the " F . B . S . " would be considerably the inferior of any of the royal gentlemen residing at Claremont ; and yet even the " F . R . S . " might deserve to be ranked higher in the scale of creation thau princes who own a congenial affection for beasts , or sport with the ' conk of victory .

      You may test the sense of dignity m the vulgar by another process . Let the chosen leaders of a great republic visit this country , and they will be comparatively free from any obtrusion on their valuable time . We have two distinguished Americans who have passed the Presidential chair now in London—Mr .

      Maetin van Buren , and Mr . Millabd Fillmobe . Mr . Fillmobe was tlie last President before the one now in office ; but what then ? Mr . Fillmore is only " the Honourable , " and Honourable only in a republic . It would be quite safe to visit either one . Sir Edwin Landseeb would not be received with the affection bestowed upon

      beasts , and even if the Duke of Wellington were as famous as his father , his nose would be safe . Nay , if any English statesman desires to be enlightened upon the subject of the most important Commonwealth of modern times , he could learn much from the mouth either of Fillmobe or of Van Buren ; but it is a matter of taste . There is hardly an independent Englishman who would not rather have his nose pulled by an anointed Prince , than shake hands with a gentleman who has been chosen to govern the Great Republic , who has been the guide of its state business and the depositary of its councils .

      Yet Mr . Fillmobe has been invited to Court , —had an audience on Tuesday , and dined with the Queen on Wednesday ; but then Queen Victoria is something more than a pageant monarch : her Majesty is compelled to be a man of business ; and in courting Mr . Fillmobe , the Sovereign of England ia really paying her compliment to the great and powerful republic .

      The People's Day At Sydenham. As The Sum...

      THE PEOPLE'S DAY AT SYDENHAM . As the summer advances , and the beauties and glories of the Crystal Palace are completed , we must enter ono more protest , however hopelessly , against the cruel and iniquitous superstition which closes the enjoyments of the Palace to the multitudes of the lower classes on the only day in the week which they have for recreation . The Palnco seems made to redress in some degree the inequalities of fortune , to place beauty and grandeur within tho reacji of the poor , to open their hearts to kindly feelings towards society , and to wean them from the brutal indulgences to which , aa an almoat inevitable alternative , they are reduced . But they are absolutely and hopelessly shut out to flatter tho religious self-approbation of people who can enjoy the Palace all tho week , and wlio rnako no scruple of keeping their Sunday in all the enjoyments of luxurious houaea and gardens , and with ca pital dinners cooked for them aa " a work of charity and necessity" by their unresting servants . Surely if the clergy wore really ministers of truth and justice they would protest against this hypocritical tyranny , and forbid an offering not unworthy of Moloch to be made to the Christian's God .

      " THE STRANGER" IN PARLIAMENT . QThe responsibility of the Editor ia regard to these contributions is limited to the act of giving them publicity . The opinions expressed are those of the writer : both the Leader and " The Stranger" benefit b y the freedom which is left to hia pen and discretion . ] Mb . Layard came into Parliament at the very moment when his specialty , the East , was the question of the day ; and that would seem to be an astonishing piece of good fortune to a public man ; but , in reality , it has been Mr . Layard ' s great misfortune . He was suddenly successful : what other able men gain after ten years' work , he gained by a spring ; and the result lias been that he has not attempted that

      labour which is necessary in those who want to keep a position . The circumstances of his success were adventitious , and he did not understand it : he thought he was being admired as an orator , when he was only being listened to as a witness . He lost his head and went wild , and was spoiled , and tlie consequence was—several scrapes . Had Mr . Layard , with his intellect and his energy , trained for public life and public speaking , he would have attained , legitimately , to a very respectable position ; but not having laboured , his attempt to insist on House of Commons position , his evidence being exhausted by force of the clamour of an " Association " out of doors , is preposterous .

      His speech last night was like his speech on Wednesday at Drury-lane—indicating an insolent want of preparation for the public occasion . The impression was that he had thrown some remarks together , which remarks he pitched out pell-mell . Mr . Layard ' s manner as a speaker is ludicrous . He does not condescend to study the art of speaking , the management of the voice , of the body . Ho at once screams and mumbles , roars and whispers ; and as to his gesticulation , remember Madame Celeste as a mime in a passion , and you have a perfect notion of Mr . Layard . But not to speak of this , his style is deplorable . There is no construction : no management of points : no art : no elaboration : no contrasts :

      no illustrations : —it is the style of an unpolished man , who having too many facts in his head , pulls and pitches tlieni out— " how , no how . " There was a fine occasion for him hist night : a splendid case : but they were greatly misused . There was no real research , no adroit application—in short , nothing new . His material was as old and as familiar as his argument . Well , he dii more- than displease by his unregulated manner—his jumble of a speech disappointed ; and you could judge of the effect by the circumstance that , though he commenced in a full House , he finished in a nearly empty House . This ought not to discourage Mr . Liiyard ; it ought to induce him to s tudy his

      oratorical business . The character of the speaking for the coup le of hours after Mr . Layard indicated inattention and a sense of unimportance ; not only was the Administrative Koform Association a failure at Drury-lane , but it had solemnised the failure in the House , and tho aristocratic mind was relieved . Mr . Gladstone guvc some weight to the debate by contributing a statesman ' s opinion as to the chances of carrying on affairs , without selling tlio administration of public affairs to M . P ' s . Sir Edward Lytton talks so absurdly like Sir C . Wood — particularly in tho w ' s , — that ono is not quite clear what he was driving nt ; no one would have known but for the fact

      that his name was connected with an amendment , that ho rose from thu side of his brother novelist and Tory leader , and that tho Conservative press is assiduously discovering that tho Tories are the administrative reformers . Sir Edward made himself understood in a heavy attack on Whig oligarchy , which ho went so far as to call an oligarchy , » caste , a governing class , but that sort of thing has been very often done before , and rather better than

      ponderous and pompous Sir Edward can well manage . I say pompous- for he speaks as you can fancy UQ writes , —ho puts hia notes of exclamation with great regularity at tlie end of each of his sentence * , <«»" ho commences every second word with a capiM letter . He takes to all tho resources of tho forcible feeble , but ho rather wearies . When ho rose a crowd of monriborB ( all tho dinners were over ) ruHlieu from tho side gallery behind him , whore they couiu

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1855, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_16061855/page/16/