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    September 25, 1852.] THE LEADE R. 921

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    INFANTICI DE.—ITS ItUMKDIKS. WnUN wo sai...

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    Wellington And Napoleon. To Constitute A...

    in the bygone ? age . Napoleon , did not execute the ideas of other people , did not even employ the resources of an original intellect in carrying on schemes marked out for him in outline ; he w for many years the indefatigable servant of his own will , and his brain propounded the schemes which his labour embodied . At the height of his career he was in the position of a man consciously engaged in the work of social invention—consciously shaping the course of history by the rule of his own conceptions and

    the bloody agency of battles . How far he did this work well ; how far his conceptions were sound , how far whimsical , how far retrogressive ; how far history has accepted what he did , how far cast it out—we do not stop to inquire . It is sufficient that we note here what was the form of his greatness . The world , in its grosser moments , hardly knows a higher . To be an inventive social agent , to group men and nations according to new factitious arrangements that shall take root and cease to be factitious , to cut and carve after new patterns the civilized humanity

    of our planet—people call this Conquest ; but there may be grand as well as devilish statesmanship in it . What a man that would be who could devise a new factitious arrangement that would benefit Ireland ; and what a man that would be that could practise this kind of invention over the area of Europe for twelve or twenty years ! But it is rarely in modern times that a man is so placed as to be able to practise this species of activity on a large scale . Napoleon could do it because he had the French Revolution for his

    inheritance—the accident of a thousand years But for this , his burning , glowing , inventive soul would have fumed itself to death for ennui , done feats of pamphleteering or engineering , or founded , perhaps , some vague Corsican sultanship in the social detritus of the East . But the man and the opportunity met . The greatness of Wellington consisted , no one can deny , in his relation to Napoleon . What Wellington might have been out of this relation , it is useless to surmise . What he did in early life in India , and what he has been since

    Waterloo in the political councils of England , might hel p us to form a guess ; but the guess would be at best a vain one , and the very element we should be trying to omit would mingle in the formation of it . To England and to the world the greatness of Wellington is summed up everlastingly in this one fact , that he was the man whom England employed to break the power of

    Napoleon , " and who succeeded in doing so . Who does not know the facts P Napoleon , the heir of the French Revolution , had reared upon that patrimony such a pile of terrors to all the vested interests , and to many of the dearest rights of Europe , that the nations made war against him , and England joined in this war . Looking about for lior instruments , she chose for ono of them

    an officer of Irish aristocratic birth , who had shown the highest military capacity , and great administrative talent , during years of service in India . . Determining on the Spanish peninsula aa the scene of most efficient operations against her enemy , she sent this " Sepoy General" thither in a position of responsibility and command . Jiising from step to step , gaining victory after victory , beating , ono after anothor , the ablest generals sent against him , ho stood forth at last the

    us greatest master in the art of war that tho 'lined nations could produce—the saviour and censor of Spain , ana tho pride and hope of England . Meanwhile , partly by these successful assaults of his on one of" Napoleon ' s favourite political constructions , partly by tho operation of other causes nearer the centre , the Napoleonian hmpiro fell suddenly to pieces . As was fitting , the groat military commander who had contributed so signally to this result , was nominated l > . y his country as its representative in those councils of potentates on whom it devolved to

    rearrange the system of Europe . But the chained < lemon again broke loose ; the appeal was again Ar * ' ° ' y ° ° k and cannon ; Wellington and Napoleon met for the first time on tho plains of Belgium , and the hero of Salamanca and Vittoria •> eeam « the conqueror of Waterloo . Napoleon jvas crushed , and Wellington had struck tho mow . . Prom that time ho lived among us , like a luan whoso main work was over , taking part , however , in our civil alliiirs as tho first servant

    "I the KngliHh crown , faithfully discharging all ) w ( ' fies in that capacity , and filling up every ( l ) l v with tho most punctual attention to routine .

    Here , too , the measure of the man was the measure of the situation . Loyalty , rectitude , strong , miraculous , unconquerable sense in accomplishing any end presented to him , were the characteristics of Wellington . Probably no man on the earth ever went through such a quantity of work , and at the same time performed it so uniformly well . The qualities which he wanted in comparison with Napoleon were precisely the qualities which would nave been de trop in his circumstances . Not the military chief of a nation which had cut off its sovereign ' s head , and thrown government to the winds , but the highest military servant of a nation in which the whole

    machinery of government was firmly fixed according to the plan preferred by his hereditary instincts , that which in Napoleon was a towering p ersonal ambition , was happily reduced in Wellington to the mere honest desire of a military man to gain professional " credit , " by the discharge of his duty . Nor was he troubled with that ideality , that fondness for social invention , that abounding fertility in original conceptions , which might have had the same effect as ambition , and made his individuality uncomfortably large for the limits of his position . Inventive enough , whether as a military man or as an administrator , he could always devise a plan for the occasion , and in hardly any known instance was his plan wrong in relation to its end . But his invention was not of that kind which embraces

    ends as well as means ; it was content to act along the line of his professional career . Napoleon ' s greatness consisted in great positive achievements and great positive attempts on the social state of Europe ; Wellington ' s in the splendid performance of the professional duty committed to him of undoing these achievements , and preventing ths success of these attempts . The greatness of the one , therefore ( and here is the ground of its inferiority ) , consists precisely in its negative relation to that of the other . Napoleon said , " Such and such things shall be ; " Europe and England said , " They shall not ; " and England sent Wellington to make the veto good . The value of what Wellington did is therefore the inverse value of what

    he prevented Napoleon from doing . His inheritance from the past was a war against Napoleon , and he brought that war to- an end . It is conceivable , indeed , that another man , with the same inheritance , might not have stopped at the same negative result . A man with similar ambition to that of Napoleon , and with certain conceivable peculiarities of position , might have aspired to raise a new fabric on the ruins of the Empire he had crushed . But equally his character and his position restrained Wellington from any such aim . England was no crownless kingdom to be seized by a successful general ; and at the Congress of Vienna tho British Duke stood while tho crowned heads sat .

    But , if the greatness of Wellington , so far as ho is a figure in tho history of Europe , must irrevocably take its measure from its negative relation to the genius of tho man he overcame , he was , never - theless our foremost national hero in the present age . And that is enough . If ho did the will of England — if he was but the inflexible arm wherewith wo struck the giant—if ho remained within tho limit of his instructions , and added no

    factitious element of his own—is it for us to complain P Ho is no man whom tho fame of Napoleon does not affect , but he is uo Englishman who admires not Wellington . Tho old man who so recently tottered along our streets , gazed at by all , and whoso body tho leaden coffin now enshrouds , what a fifty years' work did ho not do P Who will ever forget that feeble , venerable mien—that bloodless , grand old face P Side by side , while history lasts , will that face be remembered beside- tho olive countenance of . the CoTsican—narrower , but as firm . Lot all tho nation do honour to the dead , and may his virtues survive among us under new forms !

    September 25, 1852.] The Leade R. 921

    September 25 , 1852 . ] THE LEADE R . 921

    Infantici De.—Its Itumkdiks. Wnun Wo Sai...

    INFANTICI DE . —ITS ItUMKDIKS . WnUN wo said that it is a cant of tho day to keep silence upon an evil until a remedy could be wuggosted , we by no moans intended to assort that a remedy ought not to bo sought with all practicable diligence ; but wo meant that to keep a veil over tho oyil is often tantamount to keeping the same veil over tho remedy ; since it is tho very ovil itself , which , in most cases , must furnish tho suggestion of the remedy . And it often happens that unless wo bring tho whole caso before us , wo Htumblo on supposed remedies which only tend

    to aggravate the evil . Such is eminently the truth with regard to infanticide ; and the failure of checks upon that crime heret ofore must be ascribed to the very partial views upon which legislators have acted . At the present day we see the Morning Chronicle , with undoubted sincerity , advocating a renewed sternness in verdicts and sentences as the check ; though , we believe , such severities would only tend to aggravate " the crime . For a period , increased rigour might strike terror ; but it is too common to confound

    the effect of new and of old laws , and to imagine that a first panic will continue its influence in resisting steadfast incentives to misdeed . The causes of infanticide are greater than the personal motives of the individuals who become the instruments in the social horror ; and the remedy must be larger in its application than an appeal to the fears of the individual . Another presumption must be got out of the way . Charles Lamb startled a common-place visitor , by observing that " a thief might De a

    good man ; " and instances less questionable than that of Rousseau might be cited . " Every swallow does not make a summer , " nor does a single fault , or even crime , prove the badness of the whole nature . Half of the crimes immediately in question are committed by women , rude rather than bad , who are placed under a conflict of circumstances too strong for them . There is little that can be called absolute " badness" in any well-grown healthy human being ; and assuredly idiots or creatures of stunted faculties are for the

    doctor or the lunatic asylum , rather than the hangman . The proximate causes of infanticide are poverty and shame ; the predisposing causes are , ignorance , natural instinct , and artificial obstacles to the accomplishment of that natural instinct . ] VIen and women are born with passions "which enforce their own dictate , incessantly and remorselessly ; but society , which requires abne-Sation of that instinct under pain of poverty and isgrace , does not train the human being to know either the necessities of abnegation or its helping guides . A girl is expected to behavo like a philosopher , but is left to think like an

    animal ; and the perverse discipline which suppresses tho natural affections , without supplying the feelings of education , inevitably creates by its permission a special depravity . " You shall not trust to your instincts , " says tho police of civilization , " although you are not supplied with the guiding insight of knowledge ; " and infanticide is but one result of the wretched condition between instinct stunted and knowledge withheld . To hang girls for accepting the suggestions of depravity when they are forbidden the suggestions of natural instinct , and are debarred from tho suggestions of knowledge , is to punish tho Eup il for the fault of tho teacher , death being oth the fault and the punishment .

    Tho rude impulses of humanity remain in their force , and obedience is rendered to the Jaw at the wrong end of" the process . Children shall not bo , says the law : children shall bo evoked , says instinct : and the wretched girl , bandied between impulses and prohibitions , neither of which she understands , obeys both—the instinct first , and the law afterwards . Tho child is born , but does not live . Here law lias only half done its work . If it is bent on denying infant existence , except cum privileglo et auctorltate , it should eitAier educate tho instinct out of tho rude girl , or place the uneducated woman in duresse .

    Or , if it waives absolute prohibition , and is content with counteractives , tending to repress , but not weighing intolerably upon frailty , then it must shape iLs counteractives by the nature of tho incentives . To the condition of parentage two persons arc necessary , but tho law has chosen , to placo the larger load of" responsibility on ono alone , and that the ono which is tho weaker . This was done under tho dogmatic presumption that tho woman has the matter in her own hands , and that to make her responsible would be tho most

    effectual mode of prevention . But it is a pre-Humptiou againHfc nature , which has evidently made woman "more yielding than man , and has also endowed her with a minor sense of responsibility . The infanticides are » reply to tho presumption ; and one of tho first steps should bo to fix tho roHpoiiHibility when ; it is duo , making the father equally liable for his child as tho mother is , for tho lifb of both and to tho wholo extent of his menus . Such a Jaw would go far to diminish that intolerable sonao of holploBsness

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 25, 1852, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_25091852/page/13/