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    when they had risen against it , I am your leader , and thus to break up the people ' s camp , and destroy first the people ' s leaders , and then the credulous people ! The Cornlaws are no sooner repealed than they are forgotten ; and the men who imposed and maintained them are able to hold themselves out as the natural protectors of those whom , for their own selfish purposes , they deprived of bread . This is only the ninth year of untaxed food , and we are again threatened with an oligarchy of landlords supported by the lower classes ! Justice can never rest secure , and injustice need never despair .

    We cordially wish that the day for all class combinations were gone by , and that politics had become not a struggle of interests , but a science and function of humanity . But this day is distant . Throughout Europe there is a rally of despotism , feudalism , and Jesuitism , which , if it were successful , would bring back the middle ages . The powers of social evil hope to succeed by dividing the lower from the middle classes , a result which they have partly achieved in other countries , and which we earnestly pray they may not achieve here . We cannot deny that it is a natural error in the lower classes to refer their wrongs to those who are immediately above them , and with whom , as being immediately above them , they must sometimes come into collision . It is a natural error , but it is a fatal one , and if it prevailed it would be the ruin of all .

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    m TORY DEMOCRACY . When the Tories were last in power their object was to stem democracy . Now that they are aspiring to power they are democrats themselves ; they rail at Whig oligarchy , and try to fill their sails with the wind of Administrative Reform . And we believe there are some Liberals simple enough to be caught by .. this Jesuitism , and thoughtless enough to be willing to deliver the nation into Tory hands .

    What is the history of Toryism ? Common Bense bids us judge the party by the actions of a century and a half—not by the lip professions of an hour . What great act of toleration , political reform , or social justice have not the Tories opposed ? What measure of Administrative Reform ever emanated from that party p What princip les are associated with the names of Bolingbeoke , Pitt ,

    EldDON , LlVEBPOOX , CASTIiEBEAGII , SlDMOTJTU ? Who were the oppressors of the Nonconformists , of the Roman Catholics , of Ireland ? Who are the supporters even at this day , whenever opportunity offers , of the last remnants of religious disability ? Who imposed the Corn Laws , and were only driven by main force to relinquish them ? Or , to turn to the more urgent subject of diplomacy , what associations are connected with the

    memory of the Holy Alliance r The historic Tories would have us believe that there has been a grand mistake about Toryism this century and a half , and they tender us as the genuine article a political philosophy borrowed from the old rag-shop ot BoiiiNGBitOKK ' s pamphlets . Bolinubroke was an infidel who used religious bigotry and persecution as an instrument of his infamous political ambition ; and we believe he may

    not be without a counterpart among the Tories of the present day . However , when the Tory party have changed their principles , whether in the historical or democratic sense , we shall bo glad to bo informed of it . At present we see no great change either in Mr . Spooned , or the country gentlemen . They appear to us to act , though under adverse circumstances , on the traditional principles of bigotry and injustice . And until there is a

    general and open conversion , in spite of radical programmes and rag-shop philosophies , we may be permitted to decline selling ourselves into their hands . As for Whig oligarchy , the Whig families are few , because very few aristocrats can be found to cast in their lot with the people . Their social exclusiveness arises not a little from their having been almost tabooed by the rest of their order at the time of the Revolutionary War , for refusing to take part in that infamous crusade of the Tory lords and parsons against libertv and truth . The worst oligarchy is not

    that of family connexion , but of class interest . The Whigs ' are detested by their class for having been on some great occasions glorious traitors to class interests . It is for this , and because they still profess popular principles , and appeal to popular support , that the Tories hate them , not for their aristocratic exclusiveness . When they became less exclusive and took in Sir W . ' Moleswojrth and Mr . Gladstone , the Tories did their very best , by all kinds of sneaking artifices , to awaken their jealousy against their new associates , and drive them back into their

    exclusiveness again . As to the idea that the Tories are the right party to carry on a war , which we are told is gaining ground , it is utterly baseless . Mablboeough was a Whig , Chatham was a Whig . And the traitors who sold the fruits of their victories were Tories — Bolingbeoke and Bute . The Revolutionary War was carried on not for national but for class purposes ,

    and therefore the Tories entered very heartily into it , and lavished on it the blood and treasure of the nation ; but they mismanaged it in every possible manner , and nothing but the genius of Wellington , who was raised in the first instance not by his genius but by his family , saved them from utter discomfiture . There is nothing in the history of the party to justify the notion that the war ought to be committed to them ; and there is

    nothing in the character of their present leaders . Dexterity in low intrigue , malignant libelling , and flashy rhetoric , are not generally associated with noble constancy and public virtue . As to their Heaven-sent Minister-of-War , he has miserably foundered . It is not our business to write up AVhigs or to write down Tories . But it is our business , as far as we can , to prevent Liberals from falling into a trap , and rewarding at the expense of their cause political Jesuitism of the lowest kind .

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    MODERN IMPERIALISM . It may be said of Imperialism as it was said of Proudhonism , that it unites two qualities seldom found in the same theory , being at once visionary and gross . Gross it is in the hig hest degree . It aims merely at mechanical order and material prosperity , and to these it sacrifices the noblest achievements and the highest duties of humanity . It is the creed of ' men without endurance and without faith .

    It is the creed of an ago woaried with political struggles , and ready on any pretence to spare itself the last effort and sink back into the state from which it has painfully emerged . It emanates , naturally enough , from that country which lias suffered most from the excesses of liberty . It is embodied in a nephew and imitator of that political miscreant , who with cold and atheistical cunning , turned to his own selfish purposes the agony of the Revolution .

    Yet those who seok material advantage at the price of any moral sacrifice , and who , therefore , ought at least to bo practical , are unable to explain the simplest mechanism of their plan . How is thoir' Emperor to bo elected and their Empire established ? Cmbaii rose out of universal ruin . Napoleon I . out

    of a national agony . Napoleon III . out of a coup d ' etat for which he had prepared the way by intrigue . Is society to throw itself into convulsions in order that a Dictator may arise ? And when the Dictator has arisen , how are we to meet the difficulty of the succession ? Are we to sink again into the fatalism of hereditary dynasties , and trust the fortunes of humanity to the accident of birth in a family which will be constantly undergoing the corrupting and maddening influence of a despotic throne ? Or is a nation deprived of all political action , and therefore of all political intelligence and virtue , to be

    called upon at each vacancy to repeat an election for which the highest political intelligence and virtue would be required ? It is not difficult to predict the practical result . Dynasties would be founded , as in the ca ^ e of CJesab , Napoleon I ., and Napoleon III . Perhaps the succession would sometimes be varied as in Russia , by intrigue and assassination . Perhaps there might be added , as at Rome , an occasional civil war , to reward those who sacrifice duty and morality to peace . Over all would hang the power of the army , praetorians devoid of patriotism , and masters alike of the throne and of the nation .

    You fancy that these Empires would not be like common monarchies ; that they would be friends to freedom of thought and social progress , and that in them Democracy would ascend the throne . What ground have you , either from reason or from experience , for supposing that this democratic character will last , even if it be assumed in the first moments of vacillating power ? The

    Emperors will have a court , an aristocracy , however upstart , all the appanages and environments of dynastic state ; they will have their matrimonial alliances and cordial understandings with foreign dynasties . Louis Quatoeze himself had no more . Amidst the splendours of Versailles , worshipped by Mobn y and Montebello , with the Garter on his knee , and caressed by English aristocracy and monarchy , will Napoleon III . remember his democratic mission ? Will

    Napoleon IV . ? Will Napoleon XIV . ? Feudal monarchy itself was in its origin elective and democratic . You , philosophers as you are , trust that human nature will be reversed by the official title " Emperor by the Will of the People" on the coins of a monarch who calls himself the Third in virtue of dynastic succession through a puppet . As to freedom of thought , it is the proved

    enemy of despotism . A state creed protected by the sword is one of the first needs of a despot . The CiESAUs had a State Polytheism , in the interest of which they persecuted philosophy and Christianity . Napoleon I . restored Popery , discouraged philosophy , banished Madame de Stael , and did his best to destroy all that was noble and free in education . Napoleon III . in this ,

    as in other respects , is a faithful , though puny , imitator of the colossal meanness of his uncle . What , indeed , independently of the political necessities of despotism , requires more generosity of soul than thorough toleration ? And who can expect generosity of soul in a man lapped in regal luxury , surrounded by Court eunuchs , taught every hour to regard his will as law , and his opinion as infallibility ? . . .

    Look nffiiiH , avc say , at what has already happened in France . Look at that empire , iust Bpruiu ? from a revolution , and basing itself cm universal suffrage . Is it not already in every rcupoct like the vilo and immoral tyrannic * which humanity has struggled and blod to overthrow ? Are not falsehood , sycophancy , corruption , espionage , rankly flourishing round it P Has it not gagged all expression of opinion , oven tho opinion or

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    Mat 19 , 1855 . ] T HJE L E A P E R . ?» .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 19, 1855, page 469, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2091/page/13/