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Leader (1850-1860), 8th November 1851, Edition Town of 2, Page 1063, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      A nd then the Leading Journal proceeds to explain the state of the money market in London . " The system of foreign loans has received a deathblow . Sardinia and Denmark are , perhaps , the only tvvo borrowing States in Europe that could now raise even small amounts in our markets , and these have already been supplied to the extent their resources warrant . Austria and France indicate respectively an annual want of about £ 8 , 000 , 000 sterling ; but it has been demonstrated that , although if the present state of things in those countries is to continue , the money must be raised in some manner , it will be impossible for the smallest fraction of it to be obtained here . "

      The app lication of these facts to the actual state of politics is remarkable . The Times is showing that English capitalists will suffer great embarrassment from the failure of markets in Europe , through the failure of credit ; that in the colonies they suffer various impediments—the results , let us observe in passing , of bad official arrangements—and that the main outlet for English capital must be the United States . This confirms Kossuth ' s argument at Copenhagen-fields , when he told the people that their trade with despotical Europe averaged only seven pe nce a head , with the free United States seven shillings a head . The Times shows how desirable it is to maintain a good understanding with the

      United States , and also how completely the alliance with despotical Europe is failing the English capitalist and producer . There can be no doubt , however , that the emancipation of the countries now held in bondage by the oppression of Austria and Russia would open enormous fields for English capital , with the very best of all guarantees—landed security and trading reciprocity . Agricultural Hungary to bring into the market , and to help in establishing herself ; Italy to set up in business , and fertile Sicily ; Poland to set up again—but it is useless to continue the catalogue : England would be engaged in setting emancipated Europe up in business : can capitalists desire a more magnificent field of enterprise ?

      Now , the people of this country , traders and workers , are beginning to understand that the choice lies between a broad alliance of the free nations , with that magnificent opening for British enterprise , or a separation of England from America and free Europe , a submission to the encroachment of Austria and Russia , with Cossacks watering their horses in the Thames . . Nay , English statesmen ,

      even of the " upper classes , " are not so far behind the day as not to perceive the bearing of that great question , which is no longer a matter of speculation , but is becoming ripe for practical solution . England has her choice—to continue investing on the side of Russia and Austria , both of which will require immense subsidies to save them from annihilation , even if that be possible , or to begin investing on the side of Europe and America .

      Untitled Article

      T 1 I 15 HOUSE OF CORRUPTION , OTHERWISE THE " HOUSE OF COMMONS . " Mil . Coi » POCK has done yeoman ' s service by his straightforward evidence before the Bribery Commission sitting at that head quarters of corruption , St . Alban ' s . Edwards , the Newgate prisoner during the session , went through the Register of Voters , and named every man whom he had bribed with " Bell metal . " Mr . ( Joppock says : —¦ " If , instead of going through the Register of Voters : m Mr . Kdwards has done , and marking the name of every man who koM his seat , 1 were to go through the h ' nt of Hritish boroughs returning members to Parliament , beginning with the first on the list—K « 'iy Ahhi gdon down to Stafford—and if I were to

      put opposite the name of the respective members — * bought his scat , ' I should make more extraordinary dinclosures than those of Mr . Edwards hi mself . " Can any evidence be more decisive of the taint—the infectious canker—the rottenness which pervades the British system of Ho-called " '' 'presentation " i Mr . Coppock in the highest authority . lie has been the instrument , since i 8 ;* - r > , in the buying of Heats , lie knows " the ny . sl . em" by heart ; and , according to his own ac-< ' <> unt , " no out ; has a greater horror of it" than Jl - Thoroughly up in all the dramatic action of 1 » e proco . NN of Member-making , a master in the Hlaiifjr () f « , j le Hystl . > » no OI 10 cou l (| give more trustworth y evidence that the whole thing ,

      ludi-< -rousl y Htylod representation , ia a " mockery , a Elusion , and u Hnare . " When a gentleman is anxious to get into Parlament and the Parliamentary agent is applied to , H « _ In-Ht tiling to he ascertained is , whether thu UHpn ant ho " » pioduceublo man , " it being us Htt eeaaury to know the " depth of the pocket" of the

      would-be member as to know his politics . This being satisfactorily made out , negotiations are entered into with the agents of corruption , " packets" of cash are seat" by somebody , " whence , no one inquires , the only thing known being their destination . The golden contents of said packets are not seen . They are sent to the appointed borough , and not counted even there ; the prime agent sits in state with the golden store before him , voters are admitted " in the dusk of the evening , " they take their " head money , " and the member is declared duly elected . The " seat , " it is notorious

      to everybody except an election committee , is bought and sold ; the borough is said to be " the market , " and the man who bida highest becomes a legislator . Is not this a sickening spectacle ? Not only St . Alban ' s , but scores of boroughs are in the same predicament And this is called representation of the people ! and the men who know that this iniquitous system is , and has been , carried out from one end of the island to the other , profess to fear universal suffrage and

      annual parliaments , because property and intelligence would not be represented ! The plain truth is now out ; the House of Commons is not a representation of the People ; but a representation of the Edwardses , and the Coppocks , and their coadjutors . Mr . Coppock stated a conclusive fact . When Sir Henry Ward stood for St . Alban ' s , a small constituency , it cost him £ 2400 ; when he was elected for Sheffield , a large constituency , the whole of his electioneering expenses amounted to only £ 150 .

      Nothing but the ballot will prevent bribery , remarks Mr . Coppock ; the ballot would increase bribery , rejoins the sapient Commissioner Slade . The audience at St . Alban ' s cheered the former sentiment , uttered , be it remembered , by the primary agent in the general bribing business of the United Kingdom ; they scornfully laughed in the face of Commissioner Slade when he gravely uttered the latter .

      The Tories may say—Oh , Mr . Coppock is wellknown to be a Liberal agent , his strictures do not touch us . But they are not allowed to go scot free . Mr . Edwards had been previously employed for Mr . Benjamin Bond Cabbell—a name outwardly symbolizing purity itself—a man once member for St . Alban ' s . " The Conservatives of the town " as far as Mr . Low , local agent for the defeated candidate , Sir It . Garden , knew " were as open to bribery as the Liberals . " '

      With Sir Robert Carden , said Mr . Coppock-, " £ 1500 was the limit , he did not like the £ 2500 . " Mr . Low again said that he had paid voters for " services " sums varying from £ 10 to £ 30 . " The voters were paid by the Carden party according to their station in life , bufc Mr . Low " could not say that the vote formed an element in the payment . " All parties come out as the paragons of purity ! And this national disgrace , pursued from end to end of the island , is defended and maintained b y the champions of intelligent representation ! Verily , in the words of W . J . Fox , "The banner of the constitution is a bank note , its basis a beer-barrel ;" and , we may add , the constituency of the Commons is the tribe of Coppock !

      Untitled Article

      THE LAST MESSAGE OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT . M . Louis Napoleon has made up his mind to die , Presidentially we mean , as he has lived . Having , like a thankless child , cajoled , insulted , and betrayed the Revolution , he ia now the used-up and discarded outcast of the Reaction , to whose fatal blandishments he has sold a name , a country , and a People . His latest and last Message is not worse than the first . It i . s a fitting sequel , a most just and proper climax , to his past achievements .

      The length of the Message is on the American model ; but the spirit and the language , —what a pitiable contrast to the straightforward and fearless documents of the successors of Washington ! It is nothing that the word " Republic " should be studiously excluded from the text of a Republican ? State Paper ; but we look in vain for one single thought , or one nolitary expression , to Htrike a chord of nyinpathy in the great heart of the People of ' , ' . «) , and ' H < h

      It . is not enough to cower before every breath of faction , and to be tin : mannikin and the mask of impossible restorations ; it is not enough to give tho lie to every hope of a confiding and generous democracy ; to falsity every promise of tho captive of Ham , and every aspiration of the exile of Switzerland ; it is not enough that the dishonesty , tho luat of power and pelf , the incapacity for ull but ot * tunta ~ tioaand intrigue , should dissipate the laot illusioiiH

      of France , and make the experience of princes and pretenders complete in its falseness and disgrace ; in this his last Message to the National Representatives , the elect of five millions of the working classes ( for it was neither the bourgeoisie nor the aristocracy that carried him to power ) denounces to the coalition of crowned despotisms , the organization of the coming world-wide struggle of Freedom as " a danger " with which France ia threatened . He throws a sop of servility to his Cossack protectors , and to his Austrian advisers ; to his approving accomplices at Naples and Milan , and to

      his imperial allies in the Romagna . — " Religion ; Family ; Property : " the old tune set to new baseness 1 Of these sacred principles M . Louis Napoleon and Co ., of the Elysee , are to be the champions in the Holy War of ' 52 . To these disinterested partisans of great principles , to whom power is a burden , the comforts and splendours of a Palace a weariness , and dotations an infliction , France will sacrifice her past glories , her traditions , her freedom at home , her dignity abroad , her dearest national sympathies . After a three years' lease of power , what is the account of the administration of

      Home Affairs ? Whole Departments under martial law ; decimated municipalities ; dissolved legions of National Guards ; the second city in France held in terror by a police force , in itself au army ; freedom of speech , thought , movement , association , proscribed and punished ; exiles denied a refuge ; the Hungarian patriot refused a " passage" ; education handed over to spiritual slavery ; religion made an instrument of violence and repression ; and all that M . Louis Napoleon may bed and board at the Elysee—by the grace of Nicholas and the Royalist Factions !

      How long , indeed , will France tolerate this humiliation ? Six months before the expiration of his office , thePresident bethinks him of the 3 , 200 , 000 electors disfranchised by a measure of " public safety" : say rather , of reactionist revenge . He sees the danger of narrowing the basis of the national will ; he desires to abrogate the law which his recent Cabinet Lad made the banner of their policy , and

      the Majority , their strength and safety ; he appeals at the last hour to the universal suffrage he betrayed and confiscated when it suited his purpose , for a reconsecration of his wasted and degraded office ! But if neither of his Royalist accomplices will grant the abrogation , nor the Republican minority assent to the revision , as seems probable enough , into what an isolation will have fallen this mean ambition !

      In any case the reaction is used up ; for if the Royalists refuse to appeal to universal suffrage , what faith have they in the national consent ? If they grant it at the eleventh hour , tardily and with an ill-grace , how will the People regard an act of repentance extorted onl y by fear . To claim a right is not to take a gift . The 3 , 200 , 000 electors are for ever divorced from the reaction . The Republic alone has nothing to fear , come what may : abrogation first , then total revision , or none ; but no revision without abrogation . Whilst the royalist conspirators are agitating , disturbing commerce , paralyzing industry , propagating alarms ,

      spreading odious calumnies , tho Republic Bits with folded arms , in an attitude of serene expectation , calmly confident of the future , of the heart of France , of the confidence of free Europe : hoping a peaceful issue , ready even for a struggle . M . Louis Napoleon , " my uncle ' s nephew , " is ever ready to sacrifice himself to France—hut France waives the boon and offers it to his creditors instead : it may be that the Nemesis of his treachery is now almost ripe , and that in the hour when he shall have finally lost the support of a disdainful majority , he will find to his cost that he lias failed to win back the forfeited affections of a deceived hut awakened People .

      Untitled Article

      PROGRESS OI ' ' ASSURANCE THK PltoriUUTAKV l'KlNC'Il'I . K . In a recent article on tho Mutual System of Assurance wo expressed a fear that , while people , were debating upon which of the various synteuis of Life Assurance they should adopt , n ( state of things might arise that would prevent their taking advantage of any . We hasten to refer more particularly to tho Proprietary Princip le . We have eaid that both Hystcms arc equally safe , mid that the assured are aJways secure in any office which has the semblance of integrity , whether conducted on the Mutual <> r thu Proprietary System . In the Mutual there ia always a guarantee and a nucleus of interested assurers formed before the " outsiders " arc appealed to . In most Mutual oHiceB

      Untitled Article

      Nov . 8 , 1851 . ] Wftt H * a&et \ 1063

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 8, 1851, page 1063, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1908/page/11/