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    whoiwere at first enticed Mo credulity by the rabid reiterations of Mr . TTbqxjhart , have withdrawn since they have seen him convicted of uttering a false and libellous assertion . Still , a section of men , with a vulgar appetite for violence and mystery , meets at the Town Hall , which is now the Sheffield Theatre , and whither great throngs are attracted , not by faith , but by curiosity . Of course the " Chief , " set up by these enthusiasts of suspicion , is a monomaniac , utterly unworthy of attention . His notoriety arose , in the first instance , accidentally , and has continued , because it has been the business of his life to sustain it . Philosophers have observed , that individuals in his condition often betray two qualities—pertinacity and insensibility . Being , therefore , dogged and dull , and being supplier with a plea of martyrdom , by his dismissal from the diplomatic service , Mr . Urquhart is haunted by the one incident in his career which makes him " a public man , " and for ever sings his own elegy , with variations of " charges " against Lord Palmebston . Now , Lord Palmerston is not a sincere or generous statesman . Tluxt was not discovered at Sheffield , or by any of the Sheffield Investigators . But the people of that town , so far as they have listened to these loose-tongued idlers , have thrown away their energy and their vigilance . It is time that a re-action should be organised to represent " political Sheffield " more jiseftiHy , and in a better spirit . Indeed , sujjjBTa re-action has already produced effects . JKlt . Michael Beal spoke to the feelings and to the minds of the working-men who heard him , when he deprecated the violence of Councillor Ironside ' s harangue . The worst of ( he ragged-tongued spouters that foamed on the platform when the coarsest oratory of Chartism was in vogue , did not surpass the brutality of Mr . Ironside ' s invective . The display was worse than indecent—it was weak , and would bring contempt on a better cause . These personalities we notice , because , as Mr . J . A . Langfobd said , the Sheffield Foreign Affair Committee , which assumed to lead the working classes to a comprehension of politics and diplomacy lias degenerated into a cabal of defamation and scurrility . Is this to be the erid of all self-led movements on the part of the people ? Is it to be in Sheffield now as it was in every town in England formerly ? The process , in the unripe time of Chartism , was almost regular . First , the industrious community in a given neighbourhood acquired ideas , aspirations , hopes . It fixed upon one or more leaders . It formed a Society , a Committee , a League , a Convention . The prominent men worked forward to a certain point : then dissensions sprang up in the council . One man was marked as a traitor , another as a spy . The body of the party , instead of suppressing , by impatience and intolerance , the bickerings of its leaders , broke into sections , and died of the disease of jealousy . Will it bo so again , and whenever the working classes combine ? May we hope not—that the froth has been blown from the surface of that vast political society constituted by " the . people 1 " The example of Sheffield is not entirely discouraging . If Mr . Urquhart were acuity a " leader , " and if his " followers" had any * 1 (> rce or union , the prospect wp , u ] d be indeed deplorable . But wo cannot conceive that a jf reafc town should ever bo given up to the Jba * m cmaXions of a half-witted lnysteryluon . gej' and the actors of his company . Mr . Sajhui ^ Ja . okson may assure himself that Iluesi' * chooses her agents with more discretion i 4 hapV to pay a fantastic egotist to asperse , , KLos-BOixa and Mazjuni . He may remember that # * ojtt » years ago asimilar confusion was excited

    in the midland towns by the same unintelligible monomaniac . The importance of the Sheffield agitation consists in this : —that it is a sign of political life , that it proves in the workingclasses a tendency to organise , and to form independent judgments upon political affairs . But what is to be thought of men who applaud while a penny lecturer tells that Shire-motes must be restored—who do not laugh at the muddy mind of a ranter who says that to study principles is a sign of idiotcy— -who do not scout a shameless adventurer who relates conversations with persons he has never seen , who regrets the shorn branches of Prerogative , who propose the abolition of parliamentary government , and who mistakes the ridicule of the public for a conspiracy to suppress him . We shall be glad to hear that the last of these follies has been enacted , and that the working men of Sheffield will not , because they extract some common-place information from an individual who knows nothing but what is familiar to every politician , accept him as an oracle . The Oracle of political Sheffield ought not to make Sheffield ridiculous . The courage that is wanted is not recklessness ; the enthusiasm that is wanted is not insanity . All that the people in the north and midland towns , or elsewhere , have learned from this egregious egotist is reducible to a statement of the circumstances of one incident . That " disclosure" contained some truth , and , as the " divulging" trade promised to succeed , the discarded understrapper of diplomacy imagined a complication of bribes , crimes , mysteries , until the black burlesque " loomed" so hugely and hideously , that none but a purchased paper would be its " organ . " These matters have been so thoroughly explained in London that it would be impossible in that metropolis to revive the imposture . To all appearance , Sheffield , Birmingham , and Newcastle are disinclined to be deceived . Mr . George Dawson has taken a very creditable part in disposing of the calumnies against M . Mazztni . The Birmingiiain Journal also has discredited the vapid ravings of the Free Press . The working classes , destined to be the depositories of a vast power , will do well to take more political exercise . It will give them health and vigour . The present period is an opportunity . A misconducted and aimless war is carried on against Russia . A minister stands at the head of affairs professing sympathy with the liberalism of Europe , which he has systematically betrayed and persecuted . A lawless and irresponsible Government in France has seduced England into the habits of desjiotism . We are losing position and character . Long hated throughout Christendom for our abused power , we arc in danger of being despised . These are points for all classes seriously to consider . But the aristocracy will not consider them . They connive at the humiliationof England , because among them exists the ineradicable feudal feeling which makes them look upon the expectant classes of their own country as worse enemies than the military oppressors of Europe . If the middle and the industrious orders of people do not provide against the dangors of the future , the aristocracy will not . Now , political knowledge is not gained from wretched quibblers , who prate about the curao of parliamentary government , by a senseless repetition of tales about scaled boxes at the Foreign Office , tho Princess Lieven ' s bribe , or tho terrible secrets that lie under tho House of Commons , one day to destroy it by a moral explosion , These are tho puerilities of political life—tho garbage of tho demagogue—the blight of wcU-ftimed agitation . In Sheffield there exist the inatqxiale of , a liberal organization . Lot its

    people clear their Town Hall of crazy rhapodists and degraded dupes , and convert it into a centre of real political vitality .

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    XXQ 6 THE LEADER . |> o . 295 , Saturday

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    THE SARDINIAN STATES . THEIR HISTORY / , GOVERNMENT , AND LAWS . { From , a Correspondent . } The army which , in conjunction -with every other department of his realm , had been thoroughly organised by Charles Emmanuel , formed the chief , if not the sole , care of his successor . Botta says of Victor Amabeus III ., " Ch'ei faceva piu stirna di un tamburino che d ' un letterato , " ( that lie cared more for a drummer than for a savant ) . Certain it is that on the maintenance of this army , on his immense retinue , and on the pleasures of the hunt , he squandered all the treasures of the realm , and accumulated , in times of profound peace , a debt of nearly 5 , 000 , 000 ? . Victor never looked beyond the limits of his own kingdom , nor even into the necessities and claims of his own subjects , whom he left to the tender mercies of the priests , while he , with his court and nobles , busied themselves with the pleasures of the field , and with sham-fights on parade . A French army had assembled at the foot of the Alps before the Alpine king dreamed that any democratic influences could have crept in among his loyal and respectable people . The French nation , too long taxed to pay for the pastimes of their rulers , who revelled while they starved , had decreed that absolutism , coupled with profligacy and imbecility , should end for that day at least . Long and silently they had expounded their doctrines of the " people ' s rights " among their neighbours , and iust at this juncture in Savoy such doctrines fell on fruitful soil . Not that the Savoyards were disloyal at heart . They were weary and passive , and Montesquieu ' s troops had invaded their territory before Victor had levied sufficient taxes to set on foot his nmch-vaunted army , who had never yet seen a battle . By the time it was in readiness , Nice and Savoy had both been conquered by the French , whose unscrupulous agents met , however , at the hands of the brave Sardinians , such a repulse as taught them for a time to cease their marauding expeditions . Energy and decision might have remedied all . At the head of an army of 50 , 000 every man of whom was devoted to the royal cause , Victor might have recovered his lost territory and defied the invaders ; but he squandered his time in seeking to ally himself with the other Italian princes , all too indolent or too weak to aid him , and when , after witnessing the fate of the Frenci king , he joined the allied powers , and received from England such subsidies as were necessary to keep his army in the field , he yet trusted his owra and his country ' s interests in the hands of wily , grasping , treacherous Austria . With Austria for his friend , who only desired to see him reduced to such extremities as should compel him to buy her aid by a cession of territory , the King of Sardinia sent out his army under Austrian generals to meet the republican troops , headed by Bon , umbte , at Massena ! The Piedmontese soldiers fought bravely ; but against such odds ; with generals who betrayed them to , rather than led them against , the enemy ; with Italians against them—for the Genoese connived at Bonaparte ' s passage along the Ligunan territory—how could success attend them . J-M direst , most entire defeats followed one upon tlie other . The king lived to sign away at Cherasco nearly all his hereditary dominions on terra Jirm , then died for very shame , loading to his son tlic mockery of a crown , and a blot whero Ins own name should have stood beside his ancestors . That son was no Emmanuul Pihudkbt who should redeem his father ' s name from igno miny and wrest his paternal lands from the usurper . If their passive virtues were not altogether extinct , the heroism , the grand unflinching steadlostnesa which had distinguished so many oi w « Savoy princes for nearly eight centuneH , had uicu out altogether from the main line . In trutn , virtue and heroism seemed altogether cxtincii Italy , else Bonaparte could not stand out to-a « y » for a hero he was not , but seemed to ue , suirounded w he was by cravens and cowaruu vw » paltry vices made his very crimeB appear i" > heinous than they were . Far be it from us to » itempt to juatiiy French insolence and 'W ^ "' fraught at all t «» e 0 with si * cu baneful effects

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 17, 1855, page 1106, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2115/page/14/