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Leader (1850-1860), 14th June 1851, Edition Town of 2, Page 566

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      attractive features is the Fourcault process for proving the rotation of the earth ; while the divingbell , the dissolving views , the gallery of contrivances for accomplishing all kinds of cooking , exhibited by the Gas Fitters' Association , attract large crowds to attest the variety of the exhibition , and its . service in illustrating all branches of useful science . Not far away is Dr . Kahn ' s Anatomical Museum , filled with wax preparations of parts of the human body , in the normal state , as well as numerous pathological specimens . The celebrated anatomical Venus is also here exhibited , and lectures illustrative of

      anatomy are delivered periodically . Taking a great leap we arrive at the Chinese Exhibition , where the Chinese lady with the " lotus" foot sings Chinese songs , and plays on Chinese instruments , to the great delight and edification of the public . North of Hyde-park , a living stream moved on towards Madame Tussaud ' s , which has lately presented a new attraction—a wax figure of Cardinal Wiseman . There is scarcely an exhibition in the metropolis which more deserves the attention it receives . Though popular as ever , no opportunity is lost of increasing its attractions , and new and interesting subjects are continually being added .

      VATJXHALL GARDENS . Amongst other entertainments an aerial ascent took place on Monday by W . H . Bell , in his patent locomotive balloon . Mr . Bell undertakes to rise from the gardens , direct his course across the Thames , and return in sight of the spectators , the only condition being a calm state of the atmosphere . The gardens were filled with a gay and hilarious crowd . The entertainments comprised a vocal and instrumental concert , equestrian feats in the circus , a brilliant display of fireworks , and a ball . The weather has hitherto been very unfavourable , but the numbers who venture to the gardens , notwithstanding , show how the royal property will be frequented as soon as the evenings become warmer . SURREY ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS . Jullien's Concert Monstre drew together a tremendous crowd of not less than 10 , 000 persons . To the ordinary corps were added the military bands of four regiments . Amongst the pieces which met with most favour were the cornet solos of Kcenig , the performances of Mr . Lazarus on the clarionet , and M . Lavigne on the hautboy , and Beethoven ' s Battle JSinfonia , accompanied by salvos of artillery . The entertainments concluded with a discharge of fireworks of unusual brilliancy .

      CREMORNE GARDENS . The entertainments here commence at an early hour , and no out-door amusement offers greater attractions to the holiday people . By three o ' clock the gardens begin to fill , and from this time till eleven there is a continual round of amusement , when a display of fireworks terminates the evening . Amongst the wonders are the Bosjesmen of South Africa , the feats of the brothers Elliot and the terrific globe ascent , a ballet entitled the " Star of Beauty , " the Panorama of Nineveh , the Ethiopian Serenaders , concerts , and many other attractions , which keep the visitors continually occupied , and leave not a moment without its amusement .

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      THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE . The idea marches . The active forces of the revolution multiply , arrange , and organize themselves . The European thought , which presided at the formation of the Central Democratic Committee , grows from day to day in the heart of the most widely-separated Peoples . From the lower basin of the Danube to the Iberian peninsula , everywhere , where movements—potent in the wants of the masses , and sacred in their object—would have

      succumbed one by one , in the weakness of isolation , before the concentration of hostile forces , a precious labour of internal unification and of international sympathy has been accomplished ; the same convictions are established , the aspiration towards the formation of the confederated states of Europe assumes a palpable form . From all these incomplete aspirations , from all these preparatory labours , will arise , whe . n the hour of awakening shall have sounded , the Holy Alliance of Nations , goal of our efforts , supreme synthesis of an epoch whose mot d ' ordre must be Liberty—Association—Labour .

      Here , here only , we must never weary of proclaiming to the Peoples , is the sole guarantee of success . You are stronger than your enemies ! Wherever you have engaged them one to one you have conquered . But , since 1815 ^ your enemies have been united ; and you have not been able to be so . They have marched together , they have sacrificed all their differences , they have centralized their action under a single banner—the banner of their individual interests , which they have almost elevated to the height of a principle ; and you , Peoples , to whom the cause of principle had been confided by faith and humanity , you have narrowed and confined it till it disappears beneath mere local interests !

      Germany , forgetting the mission in the world which the mighty voice of Luther proclaimed for her , when he said : Individuality is sacred , proclaimed her rights to liberty , contesting the individuality of other Peoples crushed within her empire . Italy , allowing her national thought to give way to the dynastic interests of a royal house , renounced all solidarity with the movement of European Democracy . Hungary forgot that a large conception of equality , offered to the Slave and Roumanian races , could alone invest her with the right of victory . Halting between a thought which is extinct and a new ideaio which each day she rallies her convictions more and more , but not feeling sufficiently the urgent necessitvof harmonizing idea and action , and of centralizing her forces in one universal and unitary organizatisn , Poland failed to answer to the call of the Peoples .

      And France ! France thought to solve , alone , the social question , in maintaining a peace ¦ which delivered Europe over to the despots . For this you had inevitably to fall again beneath , the yoke , and to expiate , by new sufferings , your fault . Arise again , in the unity of faith and action ! From wheresoever the initiative may spring , let it be for the good of all ; let it throw down the glove to conspiring royalty in the name of all who Buffer ; let all who suffer arise and follow it . Combat for all , and you will conquer for all . Every soldier of liberty should be the armed apostle of a principle . Eich people should be prepared to furnish the point d ' appui for the lever which is to move entire Europe . You cannot henceforward conquer your own rights save in accomplishing the duties you own to others .

      This is what we have now to say . T his alone is urgent ; alone it disquiets the camp of our enemies . The persecution and calumnies of each day teach it us ; from the collective notes of the diplomatic corps to England concerning certain exiles , to the falsification of documents which they sign with our name I Our oppressors feel that the thought which we seek to represent must ultimately be fatal to them ; they feel that it is destined to organise the victory , and they hope to retard its onward March bv travestying it .

      Contempt , and redoubled activity , are the sole answer which we owe to our calumniators . Hut there are men , who , deceived by the persistent calumnies of the writers of reaction , believe , in good faith , that we desire to attain our end by a system of terror and of disorder , to the profit of we know not what species of savage anarchy , in which all social guarantees would be overwhelmed . It is to them that we address ourselves . Let them abandon such idle fears ; with us there is no arrierc peiisee ; whatever we desire we : Hay aloud , and in the face of day .

      We do not desire anarchy . We combat it , and we shall ever combat it by every possible means , and under whatever form it prescntH itself . We seek order and peace ; but we know that there is no order possible without liberty , no peace without equality nnd justice . Strife is in permanence now : behold its living proofs in the martini law which governs two-thirds of Europe ; in the unities which furrow its soil , and whichniaintaintho . se laws ; in the thousands of the proscribed whom they drive to England and America , in their prisons , on the scafthe

      folds which they erect ; and it cannot , cease , save by victory of right , by that collective sovereignty which is its expression ; by the free association ol all the elements which compose the state , by the fraternul allianceof uatioiiH , by the abolition of extreme of poverty and misery , by the ovei throw of every authority which rests solely on force , on ignorance , or on falnehood . Behold what we seek , nnd what we shall obtain ; nothing more , and notliing less . We do not desire a reign of terror . We repulse it as

      cowardly and immoral . Wherever we have triumphed we have abolished the scaffold ! But energy ia the sole possible guarantee of the Peoples against the fatal necessity of terror ; weakness entails martyrdom ; martyrdom holy in the individual who makes ready for the good that is to come , absurd with nations , who have the power as well as the mission to realize it . It is necessary that what the People desire should be accomplished without excesses , as without compromise , nobly and legally . We shall be calm and strong ; we shall be neither executioners nor victims .

      We desire to abolish nothing which . appertains to the essential principles of social order '; but we know that in proportion as Association itself becomes stronger , more intimate , more extended , everything becomes transformed and ameliorated . Every serious and permanent manifestation of human life is sacred to us ; but it is because by purifying itself more and more , it marches ceaselessly in the path of progress towards the ideal whose realization constitutes our end . Family , country , faith , liberty , labour , property , are each elements of Association ; we could not destroy one without mutilating human nature ; but they are all modified according to the education of the Peoples , and of the epoch , in their relations and their organization .

      "We desire neither immobility nor arbitrary system . It is not a negation which we would enthrone ; it is the opportunity for every potent and rational affirmation to produce itself in the open light of day , before the eyes of the People , which has to judge and select . Ours is no exclusive system ; it is a method of action . And yet we are not uncertain or incomplete in our views ; nor behind the problems which agitate the heart of existing society . Those who have cast this reproach upon us confound labours of different and distinct orders , and misunderstand entirely our mission .

      The mission of the Central Committee is European ; its work is international . To rally the efforts of the Peoples around one source , one common inspiration ; to represent by facts that solidity which exists between the emancipation of each of them , and that of all ; to unite the ranks of all combatants for the holy cause of right , wherever they may be ; to prepare the way for an alliance of Peoples , which shall conquer that of Kings ; for a congress of nations which shall replace that of Vienna , still powerful , and ever in action ; and to reconstruct , according to the wishes of its populations , the map of Europe ; to smooth the obstacles which the prejudices of race , the recollections of monarchical wars , and the artifices of governments oppose to this future : such is , we have said , the aim of our collective work . This aim can evidently not be attained except by taking , as a starting point , a common ground .

      This common ground is national sovereignty for each People , and the alliance , on a basis of equality , of all emancipated nations . This sovereignty cannot be national if it does not embrace , in its object , and in its expression , all the elements which form the nation , all the citizens who compose the state . The Democratic conception is , therefore , for jib an inseparable condition of national existence . Democracy has but one logical form : the Republic And the republican principle cannot be said to be applied to the nation unless it embraces and unites all branches of human activity , all the aspects of life , in the individual and in association . Our labour is then essentially Republican , Democratic , Social ; but it is for all Peoples that we invoka the alliance of the devotion of each .

      All else appertains to the national committees . Of each of them it is the right and duty to study , to elabo rate , in preparatory labour for their own country , that special solution which the moral , economical , and social conditions of the nation may demand ; just as within each state it is the right and the duty of every citizen to elaborate and to propose that solution of the problems in discussion , which seems to him the best . The Peopl , judge in the last resort , must decide . To discover , to judge , to apply any formula , we mult exist ; we must live the life that ferments within us , free , full , and loving . Do the Peoples live this life ? Are they free to examine and to express their wishes , their ten dencies , their collective aspirations ? Can they love , can they multiply , by a fraternal activity , their faculties and forces , in the midst of this atmosphere of corruption , of distrust , of oppression , and of espionage , which surrounds them ?

      The Central European Committee has to watch that these solutions do not , by withdrawing from that common ground without which there can be neither justice nor right , infuse a leaven of inequality , of discord and of strife within the alliance of the Peoples . Ueyond this its functions do not extend . No king—neither man nor People I The People , who should pretend to impose its own solution of the * social problems , which present themselves under different aspects in each country , would be guilty of un act of usurpation ; junt as the individual who should seek to impose his own inspiration upon his brethren , by making it a condition sine quit non of cooperation , would be guilty of an act of tyranny , and would violate the vital thought of Democracy—the dogma of the collective sovereignty . The one and the other would prove that they understood nothing of the one and multiple life ol humanity .

      It ia necessary , above all nnd before all , to recall them to life , and to action . It is necessary to open to them the great highways of liberty . It is necessary that noble and great thoughts m » y urine in their hearts to efface from their brown the degrading mark of slavery . It is necessary that their intelligence should be exalted by the enthusiasm of a mighty affirmation of collective life , of solidarity , of sovereign liberty . This is the first step which they have to take in the ascent of progressive national and European education . The Oi ' . NTHAi , Committkk is occupied all the more with this aim , because it is forgotten by other * . Th «

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      Flunkey ism of Vultures . —I cannot let the opportunity pass without remarking the extraordinary respect , fear , or whatever it might be called , shown by the commoner species of vulture to the kinfj ; of the vultures . One day , having lost a mule by death , he was dragged up a Kinnll hill not far off , where I knew in an hour or two be would be safely buried in vulture sepulture . I was standing on a hillock about a hundred yards ofF , watching' the surprising distance that a vulture sees his prey from , and the gathering of so many from all parts up and down wind , and where none had been seen before , and that in a very short , space of time . Hearing ; a loud whirring noise over my head , I looked up and saw a fine large bird , with outstretched and seemingly motionless wings . K . ulintf towards the carcase that had been already

      partially demolished . I beckoned to an Indian to come uji the hill , and showing him the bird that had just alighted , he said , " The king of the vultures ; you will see how he is adored . " Directly the fine-looking bird approached the carcase , the others retired to a slioit . distance , forming a most , respectable , and well-kept rin ^ around him . H 1 h majesty , without any signs of acknowledgment for Biieh great civility , proceeded to make a most gluttonous meul ; but , during the whole time he wns employed , not a simile envious bird attempted to intrude upon him or his repast , till he had finished and taken his departure , with a heavier wing and slower flight than on his arrival . Hut , when he had taken his perch on a high tree not far off , his dirty ravenous subjects , increased in number luriii" his repust , vei . t'irell to discus * the somewhat ¦¦

      diminished <¦¦<¦ <• - ¦• , » - * ' -ny , \\ appetite was certainly very fine . — Hi / am ' a Wift ! l . ' J ' v in Africa .

      Cttrnptatt Innnrranj.

      Cttrnptatt Innnrranj .

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      This page is accorded to an authentic Exposition of the Opinions and Acts of the Democracy of Europe : as such we do not impose any restraint on the utterance of opinion , and . therefore , limit our own responsibility to the authenticity of the statement .

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      566 m , f ) t ILeairet * tSA-nmi > AY ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), June 14, 1851, page 566, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1887/page/18/