Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 13th November 1852, Edition Town of 2, Page 1092, Untitled Article

Page 1092
Page 16
16 of 24

On this page

  • Text (3)

      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.

    • Untitled Article

      Untitled Article

    • Untitled Article

      Untitled Article

    • Untitled Article

      Untitled Article

  • 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.

      Untitled Article

      and tedious rituals they might say or hear on bended knees , if attending any orthodox establishment for Divine worship . What little faith can these men have in the effi cacy of their most cherished religion , when they conceive it necessary to appeal to the State to aid their efforts ? Surely , if the influences of Christianity are so powerful , if its truths are so simple , so evident , and so unmistakable , what occasion is there for Hying to Government for help in carrying them out ; what necessity is there for having the law to back thorn up ? If Christianity cannot be spread or enforced by preaching and expounding it , if it is so unreasonable and so

      weak that its defenders and promulgators are obliged to invoke the powers of the State , in order to prevent its downfall , then I am inclined to think Christianity is not long 1 for this world , when its truths and regulations cannot be maintained , without having recourse to the paltry aid of Government or State . I apprehend it is almost time we had some more powerful incentive for the practice of morality , some more efficacious system , whose truths would be accepted by all , without force , and whose regulations would support themselves . Those ministers who advocate the closing of the " People ' Palace" on the Sabbath , appear to imagine ,

      that if they can only succeed in persuading Her most gracious Majesty the Queen not to affix her signature to the legalization of the Crystal Palace Company , unless they bind themselves to sb « t up on Sunday , the holiness of the Sabbath will then be satisfactorily established , and England will still remain a favoured country in the eyes of Jehovah ; they apparently forget how extremely improbable it is that those who would have visited the Crystal Palace , had it been open , will attend Divine Worship , now the other is denied them it is far more likely that many will spend their time in tap-rooms and low places of resort , who might

      otherwise have been employed in a mentally elevating and ennobling- manner . But it appears to me that Government has no right whatever to interfere in a matter which is so strictly one of opinion only . If it interferes in this case , it might do so with equal propriety when granting licences to the vendors of alcoholic stimulants ; in a like manner no company should be permitted to exist , unless an agreement were entered into , that business should not be transacted on the Sabbath of the Christian ; and I imagine that all the gin-palaces and dram-shops open on the Sunday , produce infinitely more immorality than the Crystal Palace , or all the philosophical , literary , and scientific institutions in the world would do , if no restriction were placed

      upon the people attending them on this most holy day . 3 jet Government do its duty , but let it not , by showing partiality to one sect , infringe upon the religious liberties of the people at large . If it be necessary that the Sabbath bo devoted entirely to the worship of the Mosl High , let the Christian prove it , by pointing out tin advantages , real or supposed , that would accrue , by an observance of this day according fo his notions , and allow men to judge for themselves . If the world cannot bo persuaded of the necessity lor so much lip-service , it would 1 ) 0 advisable for flu ; Christian to keep his religious rites and ceremonies to himself , and not endeavour to force men into a performance of them , whether they can do so conscientiously or not , by applying to Government for assistance . Yours obedient lv , ^ V .

      Untitled Article

      F U A IV C 10 — - 'I' JI 10 K j \ l V I R K . { To the Kdilor of Hie . Leader . ) SlTt , —The next ; act of the gloomy drama enacting in France is about , to commence in the proclamation oi the IOmpire , though by what further convulsion the country is to obtain a free and settled government . it indeed sucli a consummation be written in the book of her fate—is still shrouded in impenetrable darkness . On the day that , the Umpire is proclaimed , I ' ranee becomes isolated from the Kuropcan licpnhlir . We sire told that , the country cannot , remain stationary in the path it has chosen , and that , the I'Yeneh people will consent , to the permanent , re-establishment , of the 1

      'linpire on the condition only that its glories be restored with its niiiiii . If so , win' will become a . necessity oi the very existence of the Imperial Government .. If if can detaeh Austria , from her coalition with ( he northern powers , the I'Yeiich eagles may yet he planted on the Rhine , and Louis Napoleon transmit , the imperial Neepfrc . securely to his posterity . If , however , the other continental powers remain unshaken in ( heir present dispositions , France must go to war at the iinniinent , risk of again having her frontier crossed , and her capital occupied by an overwhelming hostile army , and may possibly be compelled to accept , her old dynasty under circumstances of dishonour and submission unknown to her for centuries . Meantime , if- is impossible to keep our eyes from the chain of cuiiscm which , generated in remote ages , 11 . 1 id lending to the extraordinary events of the IiihL tiixly

      years , have as yet given us no clue to their final results , as regards either the internal government of France or its relations with foreign powers . More than half a century of freedom lias failed to give the French people a political creed . " Constitutions , " says the legislator , " cannot be made—they must grow . " Since the reign of Edward the Third , five centuries ago , when Magna Charta and the law of the " three estates " had " struck root , England would have spurned the usurpation to which France has just submitted . It is now sixty-three years since the French nation arose , like one man , against a tyranny scarcely less insupportable than that of the Gorman princes in England ;

      but in destroying the old political fabric , the Irench people left themselves without precedent or data to erect a new one . The ancient regime fell in welcome thunder to France , and at the first deep-drawn breath of French liberty , the system which had been for ages maintained by power , superstition , and priestcraft , crumbled into dust ; but the people , abandoning reflection and restraint in the first frenzy of their triumph over their oppressors , swept away every landmark and trace that miffht have served for their future guidance . Those wholesome checks to revolutionary excess—the reverence for antiquity and the power of habit and association—were lost to Prance . She had no political associations unbranded with slavery and disgrace . It

      has been otherwise m England . " Give us our ancient laws and the constitution of our Saxon forefathers /' said the barons at Runnymede . To the fervour and constancy with which this cry was maintained , we owe the Great Charta . The foundation thus laid , broad and deep , the political fabric arose slowly and securely through the lapse of ages ; nor , if we except the brief period of the Commonwealth , has the organic law of the three estates undergone any change during all the turbulence , civil war , and revolution through which the temple of English liberty has arisen . In reforming her Government , England has but imitated the careful husbandman— Inutilcs

      Untitled Article

      I ' alce ramos amputans , Feliciores insorit . These lines , which were quoted by the late Lord Greyin his speech on the Reform Bill , give us the key to all the changes in our political system since its foundation , which , whether they have been the slow growth of time , or the result of violence , have consisted of little else than the excision of decayed branches from the tree of constitutional liberty , and the substitution of fresh grafts , leaving the venerable and time-honoured trunk untouched by the revolutionary axe .

      If resistance to the abuse of power be the common right of humanity , restraint and forbearance are no less its duty in the exercise of its inalienable privilege . Ages of intolerable oppression taught France the first of these principles : of the second she yet remains in 1 he deepest ignorance . The history of the constitution of Mi in land—that singular page in the records of mankind is furnished with striking illustrations of both principles , in our steady adherence , through the period of five centuries , to that system of modified liberty , of which it is becoming more and more our enviable privilege to boast .

      If was thought that I ranee , at the revolution of 1 SIJ 0 , taught by the events of the previous forty years , and the example of lOngluud , had at , length learnt wisdom and prudence in the use of political power . Fver since IS . 'iO , England has furnished her neighbour with examples of that moderation and restraint with which her turbulent , spirit , of independence has always been tempered . While reform of Liu ; Chamber cost Louis IMn'lippe his crown , and France her constitution , and ultimately her liberty , the tumour of" borough-mongering was cut , from the constitution of lOngland with the skill and safety of a surgical experiment , which at , once cures the diseased limb and restores the general health of the pat ient ..

      Many lawyers hiive doubted the legality of the Anti-Corn Law League , which was so powerfully instrumental in obtaining Kree-lrado for us . The League , however , having effected the object for which it , was formed , was self-dissolved . In these violations of law ( if such they be ) we sen the triumph of ifs spirit , in ( hat self-restraint , in the people for which laws and Constitutions themselves are hut substitutes . There can he little doubt , thai , Hie incipient , insurrection of the . lOth April , IN 18 , was rendered abortive by the

      influence , in Icrrorciu , of the very same power ( that ol the middle classes , now arrayed on the side of constituted authority ) which had successfully put , an end to flu ; usurpations of flic boroiiglunongei'M and the landlords . Could France have profiled l > y ( he ninny examples of restraint , in resisting the abuses of power with which Kngland has furnished her , sho had not , now lain ul . Iho foot , of an autocrat , and an usurper , to whom nho manifests a servilit y of submission which rivals the timoH of the Ifcintillo and the letlrcs dc . cachet .

      The Revolution of 1830 was regarded in England emphatically , that of the middle classes . The C **' had now taken the character of a national trust ' ^' i it was believed that the property and in teUi ^ nce nf France would henceforth become the predomin ating fluence in the State . It would be fruitless now t inquire what was the moving spring of the Revolution of the three days ; but it is inconceivable that twent years after such a struggle for liberty and represent / tive Government , the country could have submitted to a yoke fifty times more galling than that meditated bv the discarded monarch . If ages—centuries , be necessary to bring constitutions to a full and health y maturity what could be hoped from a countr y but haif a century arisen from a tyranny as inhuman , lon g-continued , and degrading as ever disgraced the annals of mankind ?

      It has been said , that had Louis-Philippe reformed the Chambers by extending the elective franchise , he would only have retarded , without preventing his fall . If so a better proof could not have been given of the comp letely unsettled state—the nonage—of political princi ple in France . The Republic perished from a want of harmony between the executive and the legislative power but this was a defect for which there was no remedy for it is clear , that could the executive hav e appeale d to the nation by dissolving the Assembly , to do so

      would but again have let loose the revolutionary element , perhaps in a more violent form . In Eno-Jaiid where the struggles of party are confined within the limits of the Constitution , the provision for restoring unity to the Government by a temporary dissolution of the legislative body , has ever been consider ed on e of the bulwarks of law and liberty . Here the political waves burst harmlessly around the rock of the Constitution , which , like a well-built lighthouse , wliile it causes the uproar of the breakers , offers the most

      effectual resistance to their power . The liberties of no country could be safe with such a military establishment as that of France . Even in England , where the Constitution is clearly defined , and universally acknowledged , liberty could never be considered secure with such an army . Strange , that the doctrine of Divine right should find apologists in the middle of the nineteenth century ; but if the imputed divinity of kings kept the people in subjection , at least

      it kept the army in the same state . The ancient monarchs of France might , by virtue of their divine claim , have disbanded their armies without danger of their revolt ; but a decree to this effect from the National Assembly of 1848 would have been but issuing its own death-warrant . The world is strangely altered since the time when armed legions could be formed or dispersed at the nod of the sovereign , by virtue of his heavenward claim . Such was not the period when street , insurrections could first change a dynasty , and

      then destroy a throne , with half a million of men behind it . The Revolution of 1830 effaced the stain of foreign invasion , and , it was hoped , had united the Throne and nation in a compact , affording some security against the further usurpations of the army ; but the work of wisdom and moderation thus so ably begun , was utterly destroyed by the rash experiment of 1818 ; and if the future annals of France should exhibit any likeness tothe

      worst ages of the Roman empire , when hmpcrors un enthroned and fumbled headlong into the dust at th « ' w" ( 1 whim and frenzy of the soldiers , the French people will have to thank the Uepublic of 184 H , when tliey sniped the sanctuary of the laws to be invaded by a rout "' the populace , and France listened unmoved to the frantic shout , that , laid her dear-bought liberties at the foot of a prolligate and ambitious soldiery- bikn the horse in the fable , who was nimble to rid his Imck

      of the man who had aided him to conquer Ins . y l'Vanee has fallen info subjection to the power « lll ( hail helped her to pull dowii the Crown , which was licr best , safeguard against , the insidious friend whom nl " had invoked to destroy if . Had the country nhow » but , common linnness and consistency in mainta " ' ^ the settlement of 1 H . JO , the army might , have been lu'J in allegiance to its ancient , line of monarchs , <' lllUl f ' ^ as in Mngland , so far only as to establish the l"' ; "' ' ' ^ of free government , ; but ' the golden harvest of lnr ( l "" and prosperity ( o Fiance promised by the Kev <> liili <> of July has been totally blighted by that , of l ' '' '''? J l

      with its s . id mockery of liberty and equality . ' ^' . ' J allords few examples of an army of nearly » J million of men , master of its own will , and si ''^ j ' ^ byt . be remembrance of former g lories and < llh ' f | , ' remaining long at peace with ifs neig hbours . ^ French people are now on a . precipice , with ( he j" ^ , ! ,, of bloody , internal discord on the one luiiid , 1111 * *^ other , the chances of a war , wltich , it is no "'' " W ' ^ .,., . , to prophecy , may end in depriving I'Yance ol . ^" y ^ ( l ) at , least , of further disturbing Kurope with _ i ( . m ^ dominion , if not , of the privilege of choosing dynunty and form of Government ,. ^

      Untitled Article

      1092 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 13, 1852, page 1092, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1960/page/16/