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    Untitled Article

    EASTER RECESS—THE DISSOLUTION . " Him whom the gods have doomed they first distract " : Lord Robert Grosvenor is a petitioner to the Prime Minister on behalf of Members for extended holidays at Easter—with no work done With the Anti-Papal Bill still in the early stages of discussion , with the Budget still unstated , without a single measure passed , Lord Robert asks for an extension of the Easter holidays . To be surprised by Easter without having done anything is an old joke—so old that it has quite lost its point , and that which was an opprobrium has become a matter of routine . But when the session thus far has been used up as a bulky appendix to Lord John ' s Durham letter , with the episode of Sir Charles Wood ' s revoke , and the farcical " Crisis , " to talk of extended holidays does impart a sort of freshness to the joke . i ;

    If Members were supposed to retain any sensitive point , if even the intellectual side of their conscience were open to a twinge—which it is not—a moral might be drawn with some profit to them from Lord Robert's rebuff . Extended holidays at Easter are in themselves a thing unobjectionable : the sole reason why Members cannot have it is , the total want of progress in public affairs : the sole reason why public affairs are in a state of standstill is , that " her Majesty ' s Ministers" create obstructions to progress : it follows that the reason why Members cannot have their extended holidays is , that very Ministry whose existence they tolerate ; Members cannot have a fortnight at Easter because the men "in power , " as the saying is , are Lord John and his family party .

    That personal annoyance , however , is but a very small sample of the bad debt which Members owe to Ministers : to the Ministers that themselves have made , then , Members owe this triple debt—that , after this last session of the present Parliament , they are " to go to the country" with a damaged reputation for the institution to which they belong , the House of Commons , which has worked not only ill but ridiculously ; with a damaged reputation , each Member for himself individually , since there is not a man in the House who has not suffered himself to be placed in a ridiculous position ; and with a damaged form of every question at present agitating the public mind .

    By the singular combination of official influence and personal inability to appreciate his position , Lord John Russell was enabled to get up a huge sham agitation , in its nature impossible of settlement ; ho has thus embroiled the Members of all parties in a contest which excites the odium thcologicum on every side , without the possibility of victory on any ; he has thrown out an apple of discord which no one can snatch . At former

    elections , " religious liberty" has been a cry pointing to some measure that might be added to the Ktatutebook : it has now been so twisted by the recreant champion , that unless it points at nothing , it signifies a spoilim / of the statute-book , a brcaking-up of the last outworks for the defence of " religious liberty . " We arc to defend ourselves against the shadow of the powerless Pope , by reviving the practice and spirit of persecution , and that is the form in which Members are sent by Lord John to

    carry the question of religious liberty to the country . The case being presented in tlmt perverse form , the verdict must be proportionately perverse : tho real defenders of religious liberty must undergo the retribution for their nuUeiance of the recreant champion—they must be content to aeo their old war-cry usurped by the agents ot sectarianism and intolerance , and themnelve . H excluded ; to sen the befooled country elect to the next Parliament an overwhelming majority of bigotry qualified by cant . So with Financial deform . The Wood Budget haa noon the light only to cant ridicule upon mere

    " reform" of finance . "Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit , " the Ministerial scheme touches no branch of the subject without defiling it . Sir Charles Wood has marked taxes for repeal which still disfigure the tariff ; he has stimulated a paroxysm of taxation-repeal only to leave it unsatisfied ; he has set his mark upon the debt as ripe for the axe , and left it standing for popular hatred ; in short , he has contrived to raise such a feeling against the existing system of finance , that every moderate proposition on the Downing-street scale will fall short of the public expectancy . As often happens with feeble rashness , Sir Charles has not only " raised the fires he cannot quench , " but such as will task the powers of stronger men than himself . Lord John has a little Reform Bill in his pocket , and , with the inverted adroitness in which his party has grown so skilled , he has contrived to render that Reform Bill impossible . He has spoiled his own Reform Bill by permitting Mr . Locke King to establish a larger expectation in the public mind ; at the same time he has thrown over Mr . Locke King's project , the ridicule of the Ministerial crisis ; even still larger extensions of the suffrage derive a reflected ridicule from any air of competing with those damaged projects ; so that in order to escape from the regions of farce into that of serious measures , it will be necessary , as the Times says , " to go to the circumference . "

    ne , permitted oy tne Lommons , nas placed Members in this predicament—that if they ' go to the country" with professions and propositions on a scale which they suppose suited to the present middle class constituency , they will be laughed at ; and if they desire to rise above the reach of ridicule , they must propose measures of a scale which they are accustomed to regard as too alarming for the shopocracy . The public would be surprised to learn , for instance , the extent to which it has itself become reconciled to the idea of Universal Suffrage ; but Members are afraid to say so , lest they should startle constituencies . The whole Member class and its adherents , therefore , is driven to the expedient usual with those whose secret thoughts go beyond their professions ; they will propose sham measures which they expect to be failures , hoping that disaster will suggest the conviction which they are afraid to hint . The next Parliament will reflect the next general electionit will be a bigoted , violent , canting , disingenuous Parliament , elected on sham pretences for the express purpose of defeating- the professions both of candidates and constituents ; created to defeat itself , it will be a brawling frustration , a loud lie , intended to expose its own falsehood as the crooked means of suggesting an ulterior truth . The extent to which Parliamentary corruption of every kind has now gone—excepting , perhaps , a mitigation of direct buying- and selling , would surprise all as much as it might disgust and alarm , if we could put in print the well-known secrets which are the jokes of the initiated . But , who cares ? Total corruption has engendered it « usual progeny , total indifferentism and scepticism . To be " practical " in politics means that a man is to be without Faith or Hope ; public spirit is a jeer , zeal an opprobrium . From Prime Minister to "independent Member , " all yield to the despicable destiny of the day—each one hopen that "it will last my time . " Things havo got so bad , however , that men are consciously putting their trust in deliberate false- hood ; political parties are buying up tickets in the lottery of lies ; principles are staked with political existence ; and even Conservatives are making their calculations an to the prizes which may turn up in a revolution . It wah the consciousness of that feeling which made the Globe and Post hint ex- hortations " to Liberals and others , " that they nhould abstain from disturbing Lord John as they would from cutting tho dykes . Alas ! the Poland Globe are the twin Cassandra and Part ing ton of the future : the tide in coining . , . , _ __ ., _ . __

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    There is nothin g so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation , in eternal progress . —Dr . Abnold .

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    SATURDAY , MARCH 29 , 1851 .

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    March 29 , 1851 . ] Cfc * ILeaKew 295

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    ALAS , POOH ITALY ! Tiiickk are now , by the last accounts , 1 HM . AustriaiiH iu Italy . Naplcn Hwarins with I' 20 , 000 native and foreign troops . JKveu the Duke of Purina will not trust ; himself to his Croatian garrimohh , but must needs put himself on the war footing , and keeps ' 2000 of his own cut-throats under arms . There must be order in Italy , one would think , or there is no virtue in cannon and bayonets . Yd , the . returns of tho last thm : yeara K'vc 80-12 crimes against public security- -murders , arsons , and robberies , all deeda of open violence , for tho Papal

    provinces of the Legations alone . That famous band of Passafcore , which laid a town of 4000 inhabitants under contribution , which spread alarm and dismay throughout the highroads of Central Italy , and stood several days' fight against large Roman and Austrian detachments , turns out to have never exceeded the number of sixty brigands . All this according to official accounts in the

    newspapers . A young man—a student of very good familyis mercilessly flogged at Parma for having walked past the royal nurse and infant without taking the cigar from his mouth : an unwary gentleman , of the highest respectability , receives the bastinado , having ventured within the precincts of the new fortifications with which the little Bourbon is now encompassing the capital of his states ; the Duke himself having caught him in flagrante delicto , and insisting on the infliction of the brutal penalty on the spot , under his own eyes , and regardless of the ignorance of his edict , pleaded by the stranger in his exculpation .

    We hear of these anecdotes , we are startled by their frequent recurrence , and ask with a shudder : How long can a country in such conditions keep its place in the muster-roll of civilized nations ? Whence is salvation , or even temporary relief , to come for unfortunate Italy ? Will the Austrians take pity on her ? Shall not even the order that reigns at Vienna be extended

    to Parma and Bologna ? Why should she affect remonstrance or admonition ? Why lecture those wretched rulers on righteousness and moderation ? Her very Croatians give the best example of continence and discipline ; against the insolence of those petty despots , against the violence of their lawless hirelings , the country has no better guardian angels than what are called the " barbarians . "

    For , to this we are come at last : that the Duchies and Romagna can see no possible deliverance save in a direct and complete subjection to Austria , in their association to the fate of Lombardy and Venice . And would not Rome herself be Austrian ? Would not Naples ? or has Milan great reason to envy the mock independence of Tuscany ? Since Italy cannot belong to herself , why not wholly to Austria or wholly to France ? Why should none but Pope and Princes , Priests and Monks—none but , ' the powers of evil—enjoy liberty of action ; and even they , so far only as they are bent on evil , and no farther ?

    Ferdinand of Naples is depopulating both Sicilies Nothing but cowls and uniforms to be seen about the Strada Toledo ; and , anon , preceded by a squadron of cavalry , followed by a squadron of cavalry , the bullet-proof carriage of the bloated King rattles forth—the King , the People-Eater . Like his grandfather before him , be only closes one monster trial to issue orders for new arrests and proscriptions . And , like his grandfather , he summons his judges to him , feasts them and

    ' , , , i closets himself up for hours with them , to give them the benefit of his right-royal definition of justice ; and dismisses them with great show of ceremony , and whispers , with his parting bow , in their ears : " Impendeteiie assai . " . String up a good lot of them ! There are those living who remember heuring old Ferdinand utter those identical words to a deputation from the Supreme Court which waited upon him on board Nelson ' s flagship , in 1790 .

    - j | t ( t ( j Nor do we complain of executions banishments , imprisonmenta . The fate of the gallant patriots Poerio , Settembrini , and others , chained hand to hand with common malefactor * , touches us not ho deeply as the flagrant corruption of officers , judges , and wilnewKOH . of the whole body politic , which compliance with the mere forms of legality in those ; wham trials renders imperative on that unprincipled ( Government . There is no uueh thing as truth or honesty to b « found in Naples—what wonder ?

    r The head of the state glories in open perjury . Il « . swears to-day : the Pope absolves him from , all obligations to-morrow . Why uhould his mibjecls , down to the lowest LuK / . aronu , pique himself with greater loyalty or veracity tlmn his master ? Society is rotten to the very core . Talk of corruption or demoralization ! Why , the wonder in limit u single man can breathe in Ital y untainted with infidelity and denpair ; that one still meets with human countenances ; that tho trodden slaves do not walk on all fours like the beasts of the field .

    What people can withstand kuc . 1 i princes ? such HoldierH , such priests ? What ideas can spring uj » at Naples , at Homo , at Parma , at Bolognu , about .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 29, 1851, page 295, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1876/page/11/