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    ^BBBiTAKir 24,1855.] y THE LEIDE'IL _ " ...

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    Oub readers need not to be reminded of t...

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    THE " GLOBE" AT WAR. We are not usually ...

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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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    Our Prestige In Europe. Human Nature Is ...

    teur TTniversel , unsigned , but recognised as from the pen of the Emperor himself , from its authoritative style . The writer is delighted with our discomfiture , and attributes it to our imperfect form of government . Nothing like leather , says he . See what the " Elect of eight millions * ' invested with absolute authority , can do . No gabblers thwart him . And then he tells us that if we did have a brilliant time of it towards the beginning of this century , it was because then we had King Pitt to reign over' us . The universal panacea is silence , repression ;

    the great political watchword is mum ; the fiuest people is a people of puppets . This philosophy is accepted by the venal and indifferent classes in France . We shall talk one of these days of its results .

    ^Bbbitakir 24,1855.] Y The Leide'il _ " ...

    ^ BBBiTAKir 24 , 1855 . ] y THE LEIDE'IL _ " ^ 186

    Oub Readers Need Not To Be Reminded Of T...

    Oub readers need not to be reminded of the steady support which this journal has rendered from the first to the just and useful agitation for repealing the imposts which impede the diffusion of knowledge . The abolition of the compulsory stamp on newspapers , and of that disgraceful Casti / ereaghdsvised security system , which assumed journalism to be a felonious profession , we are happy to say is now inevitable . We agree with Lord Stanley that the newspaper is not intrinsically a tax on knowledge , but rather a postal payment , and the

    adjust-MR GLADSTONE ' S NEW POSTAL LAW AND THE EXETER-HALL MEETING .

    ment proposed by the late Chancellob or the Exchequer of making the stamp optional to those who need it , is as necessary as it is beneficial . There is , however , no denying that it was intended to act , and has acted—as the most offensive of taxes on the diffusion of information , by making the stamp indispensable to the publication of news . The monopoly of political facts is now irrevocably doomed , and once abolished by Parliament , no power in the State will ever be able to reenact it . To iFree Bread will be added Free News , and the body and soul of the nation will stand sentinels over the concessions .

    It has been narrowly and ungenerously suggested that Mr . Gladstone ' s Bill was thrown out by an expiring Cabinet as a bidding "for " thle' ^ upp ^ or ^ of ^ the'Manchester party . We protest against this malignant judgment of public acts . If the worst motives are for ever to be ascribed to the best measures of a Minister , what reason is left to any Minister to study the independent service of the people ? The great meeting at Exeter-hall on Wednesday evening was not

    only creditable to the people who thronged in thousands more than that vast hall could hold , as indicating a popular desire for knowledge , but creditable to the higher political sentiment which they manifested . We have the means of knowing that thousands of working men , both inside and out of the Hall , went to give applause to the Minister who had set the example of conceding to reason what could not be carried by clamour . Distrusting the Government , as well they mayjealous as they are of our national renown endangered by octagenarian routine

    —indignant as they are at a Government which , enforcing responsibility among the ? opulace , yet avoids all responsibility for labinet disasters—yet they went to thank Mr . Gladstone for his Bill . The JSxaminer calls upon the Minister to resist an agitation not seconded by clamour . What are we to expect then ? it the pride of the statesman will not yield to clamour , and his judgment is not to yield to reason and . right , on what principles are concessions to bo made ? The people went to honour the man , well described by Mr . Cobden as " a

    statesman with a conscience , ' and we count the moral effect of that meeting of as much value as its political influence . Absurd apprehensions prevail ( absurd as those which needlessly agitated the farmers on the eve of corn-law repeal ) that the multiplication of cheap journals will damage the circulation of existing ones . We have long ago exposed this fallacy . When printing was invented writing was expected to go out of fashion . Mr . Gladstone is

    regarded now as Caxton was then . But as there is still need for the labours of the penman , so there will be a demand for metropolitan journals when , as Mr . Dawson rightly prays , every hamlet in England shall have its journal , criticising Squire Bumpus and Lady Botjntijftjl , of the Grange , as we criticise the red-tapist of Downing-street . Macatjlat relates how , in the reign of Chables II ., " the literature which could be carried

    in a post-bag then formed the greater part of the intellectual nutriment ruminated by the country divines and country justices . The difficulty and expense of conveying large packets from place to place was so great , that an extensive work was longer in making its way from Paternoster-row to Devonshire or Lancashire than it now is in reaching Kentucky . " Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Chables II . proposed the present rates of transit for news a

    revolution would have been foretold . Newsvendors and news-buyers would alike have arisen in rebellion—but the innovation would have done both good , and so will the new postal law . The news-maker and the newscoBsumer are now on the eve of new advantages , and the wonder will be twelve months hence that the press was the last to . see its own interests . Unless our contemporaries look to their duties , the public will be in advanee of its teachers . ~

    The " Globe" At War. We Are Not Usually ...

    THE " GLOBE" AT WAR . We are not usually disposed to pay particular attention to the criticisms of official or semi-official journals . To make the worse appear the better reason is a sorry business at the best of times ; but to vindicate the imbecilities of-incapable administrators demands a lower deep of ingenuity . It is a pity that our daily Ministerial apologists Should desert the safe ground of

    universal optimism . The Globe , echoing with congenial sneers the jaunty Palmebstost , descends upon Mr . Layabd with an imposing array of historical perversions . We fear our respectable Whig contemporary has acquired this bad habit in bad company . 'Already this week we remarked in its columns a somewhat wiredrawn eulogy of our imperial ally ' s elaborate attack on the British Constitution . But the off-hand

    arrangement of history we are now about to notice is only surpassed by the Moniteur itself . Fastening upon a suggestion rather hinted than expressed by Mr . Jjayabd , that the conduct of the operations in the Crimea might be improved by the surveillance of Parliamentary Commissioners after the manner of the Commissaries of the French Convention , our

    Ministerial contemporary , in that style of flippant gravity which is presumed to be agreeable to evening readers , pronpunces that " it may not be un , instructive to ask whether —as a matter of fact—those' representatives in mission' to the revolutionary armies did enable them , as Mr . Ijayabd says they did , to perform , the prodigious deeds which all the world admired . " Hereupon , in answer to this instructive inquiryy which no one but the writer in the Globe would have thought

    of proposing , we are treated to the folio wing novelties : — " The military witnesses of the events of that epoch , testify that these representatives militant produce , for the most part , nothing but disorder in military operations . They in fact ' operated injur riously to the public sense . ' ... . There were indeed some few members of the French Convention , who employed their dictatorial authority with discernment , and became useful auxiliaries of the military commanders . Amongst these Merlin de Thionville and one or two others were distinguished , and Garnot himself was engaged in person at the battle of Watignies . But the majority of these emissaries , like St . Just , brought no other contingent * to the

    armies of their country than ignorant presumption , and reckless ferocity . Their presence produced nothing but disorders and violences j they decreed massacres , but prepared no victories It was Carnot ' s assumption ( in effect ) of the functions of Minister of War that put a period to the blind and blundering direction of the Committee of Public Safety collectively , and its emissaries . They had done their utmost in ' operating injuriously on the public service ? When Carnot took the War Department in hand , he decided the adoption of that plan of campaign of the Army of the North in 1794 , . which retrieved the disasters caused by the Terrorist * representative' missions of 1793 , and recalled victory to the arms of France in the battle of Fleurus . The General who

    won that victory ( Jourdan ) was one of the most emphatic in denying all obligation to the Terrorist committee men on the part of the army . Marshal St . Cyr has left the same testimony in his Memoirs —that these * representatives of the people'brought nothing into the camp but confusion , and knew no discipline but terror . "As Carnot became in fact Minister of War , Saint-Andre became in like manner Minister of Marine . " We cheerfully abandon to the laborious persiflage of the Whig journalist that undoubtedly incapable Minister of Marine , Saint-Andbe . Even the Convention was

    not always ably served j m this respect at least the revolutionary Republic was as respectable as regular monarchies . It is delightful to observe with what satisfaction the Whig writer chuckles over the reputation of an incapable . " I haiVOheel brother \" But to return . It was not until after the defection of DuMOxraiEZ , when all France was in consternation at the dangers of the army and of the State , from the incapacity or doubtful fidelity of the generals , that the Convention ,

    acting -through the Committee of Public Safety , appointed commissaries to the armies inthe ^ field , 3 vhpse ^_ dutyit ^ ally responsible in the face of the army for the conduct of its chiefs . The "ignorant presumption" of men who exposed their lives not only in the foremost front of battle abroad , but to the terrible consequences of direct responsibility at home , was better appreciated by the soldiers they led to victory than by the Whig writer whose office it is to excuse disasters .

    Certain it is that , whereas at the time oi the appointment of these commissaries the armies of the Republic were harassed by successive defeats , and the enemy in occupation of French territory , from the moment they assumed the direction of the resistance , France was able , not only to expel her invaders , but to feed , clothe , and house her troops at the expense of Europe , to extend the territory of France , and to preserve the freedom of her new institutions . JSTot a single reverse occurred in this career of

    victories—which , as Mr . JjATxnn says , " all the world ( even the most bigoted of Legitimists ) admired "—so long as the representatives of the Convention remained at the head of the armies . They inspired the soldiers with confidence , and the generals with a just sense of liability to the State . As for the " reckless ferocity" of which this complacent Whig trifler talks , in what way , we may aak , was " reckless ferocity" brought to the armiea by the Representatives of the People ? It will not be pretended that they treated their

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 24, 1855, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24021855/page/17/