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Leader (1850-1860), 30th April 1853, Edition 1 of 1, Page 423, Untitled Article

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      pressively , to drive away the poorer classes of traders from the open markets of the streets ; to convert cabmen into a species of badged slaves ; to keep a spy upon the political action of the working classes wherever they may meet j and now we learn , that it is employed to collect information respecting the actions of Hungarian , Italian , and other refugees , in order to report those actions to the tyrannical Governments of Europe , and so to defeat the efforts of the peoples to regain their liberties . Some extension of this

      kind we stated to have been begun at the time of the Great Exhibition , and our statements , although they were known to the police , and were transmitted from the police to the Austrian Embassy , and to our own officials , were not contradicted . Lord Palmerston has lately been subjected to questions on the subject , and he has delayed his reply . While the metropolitan police is used for such purposes , we may well dislike the idea of extendingit to the provinces . It is time that the English people should stand

      up once more in defence of its ancient traditionary rights . It is very proper that public order should be preserved . Honest folks are interested in that as well as legitimate Governments ; but free citizens maintain order for themselves—free citizens appoint their own constables from their own body . That is the ancient usage of England j and if it be abandoned ^ England will abandon one source of her political freedom , almost as important as that of trial by jury ; which is also threatened .

      A standing army of police would redouble the danger of a standing army of soldiers . A free people ought to be its own army as well as its own constabulary . The only thing which could in any degree reconcile us to this new attempt , would be an extension of strength for the great body of the people . The militia is some slight step in that direction ; but it is not enough . With a great standing army separated from the body of the citizens—an institution which even the high prerogative Blackstone denounces as

      dangerous to the liberties of the country—the people ought , at least , to have as a counterpoise practical recognition of its ancient right to the possession of arms . But the establishment of a centralized constabulary like that of the London police , which is subjected to a military drill , and can be furnished with arms at a moment ' s notice , increases the danger of keeping the people disarmed , and unaccustomed to its own defence at home as well as abroad .

      It is from Sheffield that we see the first sign of a very rational movement—the forwarding of a petition to the House of Commons to repeal the Drilling Act of 1821 . That act not only violates the Bill of Eights , which secures to every citizen the right of possessing arms for his own defence , but it ^ is rendered doubly unconstitutional and destructive of liberty by the concentration of strength in a standing army ; and now it is proposed to establish a still more centralized means of coercing the people .

      There is , however , one danger still moro terrible to contemplato—tho apathy of the people . It is not these attempts to centralize power which are the most alarming ; but it is tho contentment with which tho people gives up first one right and then tho other . Tho present would seem the point at which tho English people must make tip ita mind cither to regain

      its ancient privileges or to abandon them ; either once more to bo English , or to become thoroughly Austrian . If Englishmen want anavailablemanner of putting their action into a practicable shape , it might bo to follow this Sheffield example , and to use tho right of petition as a mode of loudly urging tho claim to repeal the Drilling Act , which disarms tho people in tho faco of a controlled force .

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      HOW TO KAISE PROFITS AND WAGES STIKL HIGHER . Tiik soundness of commerce is still unimpaired in any part , although tho past week has boon quieter than some which preceded it . Tho movement for an advance of wages continues , whero tho advance has not boon already attained , as wo see in Norfolk , Glasgow , Cornwall , Kidderminster , and olsowhoro . But thoro are signs that tho rise which has been observable , both in general commerce and in the returns of labour , has reached a point at which it must stand for a time In places whore tho movement has not yot takeu cUect , tho rise of wugoB wH no doubt

      be secured up to the present standard ; but will wages advance beyond that ? That they ought to do so we are convinced by many circumstances ; and that they might do so under a proper government of this country we are equally convinced . It has been said that no great country can re ^ - main stationary , and history justifies the maxim . We must either advance or recede . In the actual

      state of England , oeeonomically , it is particularly the case that we cannot be truly comfortable without an advance . With the steady increase of our population , following closely upon the heels of the emigration , we must provide for the subsistence of the people by an extensive trade . Prices and trade are advancing in other countries—in Australia , for instance , and in America . At this moment , the prices in some trades , at New York , notwithstanding the immense immigration from the United Kingdom , would astonish artisans in our own country ; and Melbourne prices are still a joke to the English , labourer . The disturbance of the cotton trade at

      Liverpool , coupled with a sudden impulse to American speculation in the supply of goods for Australia , in the shape of " loafers , " pistols , and republican ideas , suggests some douot whether the demands on the English market will be quite so vigorous as they have been . The artificially p reserved prosperity in France is already suffering from the protracted coldness of the season ; and the state of commerce in that country is so precarious , that a trifle would bring on the crasli ,

      which must tell in our own community very severely whenever it comes . We are not using these words to discourage our readers , or to make our fellow-countrymen of the working classes pause in their claims for a just share of the trade which is still going forward ; but at this soberer moment it is the time to consider the prominent causes why English commerce is not extended so far and so rapidly as it might be . Nor are we speaking of speculation ; we are speaking of sound

      commerce . Who are our best customers P They are the United States , which take and give to us a very large proportion of the foreign trade of either community . To no country do our exports equal those sent to America . In no country whatsoever does the population consume so muck per head of British manufactures as in Australia . The reasons for this intercourse are not only a common origin , a common language , and

      common habits of living ; for indeed diversities of climate very rapidly establish diversities of custom . In Australia , for example , beards and the use of native wine are growing common . And there is as marked a difference m the manners of Massaehusets and Florida as in the customs of Washington and Westminster . There is another reason for the extensive commercial intercourse with these countries ; and we can understand it better in some degree by its opposite .

      In Europe there are not fewer opportunities of exchange than with America and Australia . The Hungarian people , for instance , are not only for tho most part an agricultural people , but while they are greatly in want of manufactures , they arc in want also of markets for their produce . The Italian people arc , to a very limited extent , manufacturing ; but their agricultural produce is kept down in value by the limitation

      of the markets ; thero is a certain forced trade with Austria , but trade with England is depreciated by " protective" restrictions , which provent thorn from taking tho goods that we could give in return for theirs . Tho same princi p applies to Germany , and if Austria ia exclusive in extravagant protective duties on our goods , Prussia is prohibitory , as wo have already

      mentioned . It is true that in Franco tho people entertain protectionist ideas to a great extent ; but tho mode in which those ideas are corrected by political freedom , is shown in tho United States , where protection of native industry was the popular opinion . In oach specific case , however , tho producer of a commodity so strongly feels

      tho bone fit of exchange , that by that natural growth of op inion , tho abstract desire for protection has died away in the United States , insoniuch that tho most popular President of our own time , General Pierce , was elected as a freetrado candidate . Thoro con bo no doubt that if the Froncli people wero thoroughly free , tho wino-growera of Bordeaux would bo as anxious for frco intercourse with England aa tho

      agriculturists of Italy or Hungary ; and the example of Bordeaux would soon extend to every trade which could produce a given article better in France than it can be produced in England . Indeed , political freedom is the true key to commercial freedom ; a truth which is inverted in the general idea , that commerce necessarily brings liberty with it . Instead , however , of a prospect that the markets of Europe will be further opened to us , the reverse is the case . Our exports to Turkey are probably understated in a recent Parliamentary paper at 2 , 581 , 230 Z . ; vast Russia takes l 289704 Z . ; and Austria but 812 , 942 ^ . ; the two

      ,, great empires being worth less to our trade by 478 , 000 Z . than Turkey . Turkey , which takes our manufactures on Free-trade principles , is threatened with being absorbed into Russia , which is prohibitory of our goods ; and then trade with Turkey will be so denied to us , like Italy or Hungary . Belgium , which is also a commercial country , threatens to be absorbed by the anticommercial Government of France . The " Party of Order , " which by its intolerable tyranny renders revolution chronic throughout Europe , which maintains its authority only by a state of siege , is extending the anti-commercial rule .

      And the Govermnent of our own commercial country connives at that extension by its sufferance . Because , as we have shown over and over again , England could break up that Absolutist conspiracy by the simplest appeal to the constitutionalism and . instinct of popular feeling in the peoples of Europe . Yes , by standing up for the principles of our own Constitution , the British Government would break tip the conspiracy of Absolutism , as the light of day drives spiracy or ja _ Dsoiutism , as me ngno 01 uoy unvea

      the robber , the smuggler , and the wild beast , to their hiding places . And what is it that makes our Government desist ? Fear , and sympathy with that " party of order , " with that anti-commercial party ; for the birth-appointed rulers of our country do much more sympathize with the birth-appointed rulers of Absolutist countries than they do either with the traders of our own country , or with the great body of the people . Our Government — Liberal , Free-trader , and

      Protestant , is at this moment actually supporting the Pope , actually helping tyrant Austria , and cultivating alliance with prohibitory Russia . Thus it happens , that even , on the soil of England the conspiracy against freedom is making its encroachments , and that on the field of Europe a market , otherwise readily available , is denied to the traders and working classes of England .

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      « CIVIS BRITANNJCUS SUM . " Last night ' s debate on the Kossuth revelations formed a fitting sequel to what yestorday's papers termed the " war-rocket" inquiry . It proved that the Government is , as it professes to be , " strong "—in the support of sympathizing Tories , and of magistrates eligible for promotion ; and it showed the tendoncy of power to irresponsibility . That it will irreparably damage tho character of the Ministry wo have no doubt ; to entertain any would bo to distrust the instincts , the sympathies , and tho virtue of tho English people . Let us take first , the polico court , whither Mr . Halo is carried , that his trial may bo made a vehiclo for slanders upon M . Kossuth , and that tho scandal sent from tho Homo Odice to its organ , may , by tho kind permission , of the magistrate , receive some much needed confirmation . . iVLr . Bodkin , counsel for our aggrieved ( government , eloquently states tho subject of complaint , dilating , with duo severity , upon the recently discovered enormity of which ho accuses the prisoner—making war-rockots in tho vain ,

      and , as it seems , unlawful expectation , that tho Ordnance would possibly purchase thorn . It would appear , however , that thero have been Government inspections of theso inventions , and that tho existence of Mr . Halo ' s manufactory , so far from being up to tho present time a secret to tho authorities , lias in fact , owing to tho unwelcome importunity of that gentleman , boon pressed for years most unremittingly on their attontion . He has boon desirous oi affording her Majesty ' s Government an opportunity of applying his invention to tho destruction of her rummies ; but her ollicors have pronounced his

      experiments a failure ; aiwl the rockets with which , as wo arc now told , KoHSuth was about to effect a revolution , Sir Thomas Hastings

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      April 30 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER , 423

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 30, 1853, page 423, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1984/page/15/