On this page

• Text (2)

  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.

  • 

    _ K4 THE LEADER. [No, 305, Saturday,

  • 

    A RESPECTABLE NEIGHBOURHOOD. It is disco...

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Count Montaxembeut On English Destinies....

    tasmagoria of blood and terror , associates the efforts of the middle and working-classes in ¦ England , with the first encroachments of the Tiers Etdt in France—encroachments which led , inevitably , as he thinks , to regicide and to the desolation of the capital . Still , he is not one of those infatuated devotees of the past , who would reverse the order of events , and take shelter in obsolete forms . What he dreads is , democracy leading to military despotism , and , at this point , he utters his protest against the new Imperialism of France . His countrymen , he hints , have sought in their own abasement a refuge from their own folly . England , he continues , will never prefer submission to responsibility ; but , to escape the danger , he warns her , impressively , of the chasm that is opened by the process of democratic reform . Liberal bv cultivation , M . de

    Mootalembert is despotic by instinct . He belongs to that impossible party which pretends to reconcile liberty of conscience with infallible authority ; exactly as he affects to reconcile an admiration of our Protestant independence , with a regret , that we , as a nation , have 9 trayed from the pastures of the Holy Roman Church . But we cannot forget that M . de Montalembert , while he pleads for freedom of thought , and grieves to see his countrymen Truled by an Incubus , has not been without a share in promoting that result . Did he not , by a' course of perverse reaction * accelerate and do all that was possible to justify the coup WJStat f ¦ Did lie not , after an evanescent show of quasi-liberalism , early in the reign of Louis P mtippE , facilitate the policy of oppression ? Did he utter one protest against the suceessiveist 0 ps by which that intriguing philosopher neiitroiised . the Constitution , and filled the Chambers with the representatives of an official bpiistituency- ? " M . i > e Montalembert has a horror of Bonakartism , but his horror ofi the Revolution aided in placing a Bonaparte on the . throne . And , to him , reform means revolution , in the French sense of the word . ^ IfBadicalism and liberty , " he observes , " were identical , England would have a dismal future ; " but , inwoven with these phrases , we cici / i

    " ty c ; ,-u . ua . cnuyre iuea—liiat progress is danger , and freedom anarchy . To him , as to most Frenchmen , radicalism is rebellion in embryo ; and every English , chartist mounts the red flag of the Faubourgs . Thus , as we liave said , he is the converse of a French . Republican . Most French Republicans , judging of England , < xb extra , fall into errors exactly the opposite , of M . de Montalembert . They speak of English " tyranny" and " slavery , " and cannot imagine the development of free institutions among us , without barricades and provisional governments . It is natural , in M . © e Montalembert , to regret the establishment of absolutism in France . To an ambitious and powerful orator , proud of his eloquence , what affliction more severe than the blow that strikes him dumb ! But he , when the tribune cracked under his feet , might have remembered that with the liberty of the tribune the liberty of the press must be united , and that while he " defended Franco against the enemies of order , " he obstructed her free progress , and by attacking P ^* P . tiam with tho weapons of legitimacy , helped to make liberty impossible . He accuses Lord pALMERSTONas " the great despiser of tho rights of the weak , " and " tho great auxiliary ot revolution against liberty . " Was he not lumself tho enemy of the French Republic , at atjmewheu to attack , tho Republic was to mv ^ te the Empire ? , He ad mires the aelf-* eStWlning , apmt of tho English nation , which & $ & ££ ?? " « enormo ™ *** in times of ^»|* mm * Tttwhmery whioh ¦ HBrt &^ W ?

    moves midway between innovation and routine . He sees a bright as well as a black side to our growing democracy ; but his hope , obviously , is in Conservatism . " England will open the door to democracy , but she will then oppose barriers to its advance . " At present the tendency is to take power out of the hands of the " permanent" classes , and to share it with the floating masses of the third estate . But M . de Montalembert measures England from a French point of view . He looks upon Administrative Reform as an attempt to multiply paid offices , and to create a vast bureaucracy upon the continental system . To aim at modifying the law of primogeniture , he considers eqxiivalent to an attack on property ; to enlarge the suffrage , he believes would be to introduce uncontrollable and alien elements into the Legislature . Generally , he arsrues that Ensrland must consolidate her

    institutions , check her . " progressive" tendencies ,, and stand upon her ancient ways , or she naay follow France into the Napoleonic abyss . It is easy to trace the source of these ideas . Conversant as he is with English politics , M . de MontaleThbert writes with French traditions in his memory . Charles the First is to him the prototype of Louis the Sixteenth ; he . applauds the * English ^ conquest" of Cromwell , as it is probable he would applaud the " conquest" of Louis Napoleon . These essays , then ? though lucid , suggestive , and often philosophical , are penetrated by a radical error . Perhaps no foreigner can thoroughly comprehend the process by which England has come to be what she is , or the reforms by which she may advance farther , and harmonise her institutions with the spirit of every successive age . But M . de : Montalembert considers our liberty ripe , and warns us to protect and not to improve it . We do not dread with him the approach of new reforms ; but , with him , we | believe that a religious love of legality is the first condition of freedom ; for , in a selfgoverned State , to despise the law is to destroy the machinery of reform . There are many other points to be considered in these essays , which abound in valuable texts ; but these we reserve .

    _ K4 The Leader. [No, 305, Saturday,

    _ K 4 THE LEADER . [ No , 305 , Saturday ,

    A Respectable Neighbourhood. It Is Disco...

    A RESPECTABLE NEIGHBOURHOOD . It is discovered that the instruments of civilisation are used for the purpose of barbarity . The extension of chymical science enables us to detect the workings of crime with a minuteness and a certainty perfectly unknown to the times of the Borgia or the Brinvilliers ; but the same ingenuity teaches evasion of detection and fresh inventions of atrocity . While Professor Taylor is discovering how to detect murder by poison , 150 persons supply him with materials to work upon , and a Palmer cons the volume about poisons as sedulously as the Professor . The principle of guarding against risk by the insurance of lives suggests a means of trading upon murder , as the insurance of vessels by sea origiaated the crime of baratry , or the intentional loss of vessels to obtain the insurance . We have been charged with pressing this view of " our civilisation" too freely and too closely . It has been said that we drew our experience from the town , and applied it to the innocent country . Palmer has taught us how the village surgeon can excel the latest Manchester villain in the ingenuity of his operations . We deny the charge . Wo have not picked tho facts ; wo have not taken them from any one class of society . Those who aocuae appear to presume that the cases of crime are not more numerous than the cases of detection ; yet we have had only one Palmer , one MonaghaNj and some few other doubtful cases , out of tho nvo hundred that have oomo to the " *< ' p , . 'rfH / i-i . ! .... ' / ... -....

    hands of Professor Taylor alone . The onus probandi lies upon our accusers . Is Rugeley an entirely exceptional case ? Is there anything in the configuration of the countr y in that part that should make the people monsters , in comparison with their neighbours ? Is the water atrociously brackish ? Do the people feed entirely upon pig ' s flesh , or on sausages of more malignant material ? Have the virtues of the population been poisoned out of them by the adulterations of the grocer , the druggist , and the butcher ? There is , in truth , nothing to establish the peculiar blackness of Rugeley in the moral map of England . Yet , what are the facts ? We find that many of the inhabitants are accused , and by each other . Here is the respectable surgeon , and what is the story told of him by his neighbours ? That his father-in-law disappeared tnvsteriovisl v : tha . t'a . visi ( : r » r rHp . fi nnrlfvr AiiwiTm

    stances which rendered a Coroner ' s inquest necessary ; that his wife was poisoned ; that his brother followed the wife , his boon companion followed both , and his servant was to have been in the same z ^ etinue . Seven children liave disappeared—seven , although his wife had but four . Having thus involved himself in these difficulties , he became amenable to the criminal laws of the country , and had to confront a fate which is . usually extended only to the humblest people who have not the money to get oufe of the way , or influence to make justice get out of their path . But Palmer was a " pleasant gentleman , " and there was a sympathy with his embarrassment . There is the postmaster , a highly decent and amiable man , who commits something very like a felony , if it is not actiially a felony , to oblige his neighbour . Such are the courtesies of society , that politeness will go the length of felony ; and people say that we are too severe upon our civilisation . Then there is the Coroner who receives game and notes of more than one kind , the itinerant representative of jus tic e in the district . Amongst the ladies of the place was Anne Palmer , the wife of William ; and he , coming up as a witness to exonerate his mother from a claim of debt on his account , avows that Anne Palmer

    fraudulently put the name ot " Sarah Palmer " to the bill he had drawn . That amiable , respected , and unfortunate lady , therefore , was a forger . But how do we know that we have got to the end of the confessions that might be made if Rugeley were put upon its confession ? The Coroner , acting under the compulsion of the law , lias enforced a kind of partial day of judgment for Rugeley , —has made the graves give up their dead , and tell their secrets : what if we could have up the whole church-yard in . evidence against the living generation ; and then bring the living inhabitants into the witness box as witnesses against each other ? Yet again , we deny that the Rugeley is peculiarly criminal : it is only characteristic of English society , in the adulterations of its trade , the treacheries of its pr ivate relations , the subornation of its insurance , and the prostitution of its most sacred guarantees . We could , on tho moment , take other country towns , equally rustic , equally removed , it might be supposed , from the contaminating influence of a groat city , and equally marked by violation of' established law . We do not say that in all the cases to which we refar there would bo the name total breach of natural law , that tho same atrocious inhumanity would mark the mutiny of society against itself . But nothing is more characteristic of the present day , than tine confusion which exists in tho chastisement of infraction against conventional as well as natural law . Indeed tho punishment is more sevoro in the case of conventional than of natural law .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 26, 1856, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_26011856/page/12/