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Leader (1850-1860), 28th March 1857, Edition 1 of 2, Page 300, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . Several communications for " Open . Council" are unavoidably omitted this week , on account of the crreat pressure of matter consequent on the General Election . It is impossible to acknowledge the mass of letters we receive . Their insertion is often delayed , owing to a press of matter ; and when omitted , it is frequently from reasons quite independent of the merits of the communication . "We cannot undertake to return rejected communications . Communications should always be legibly written , and on . one side of the paper only . If long , it increases the difficulty of finding space for them . During the Session of Parliament it is often impossible to find room for correspondence , even the briefest .

      Untitled Article

      THE OLD PARLIAMENT AND THE NEW . It is dead , and we may stamp on it ; but we owe it some gratitude , nevertheless . The defunct Parliament , elected under Lord Derby ' s influence , voted that influence an anachronism , ratified the Free Trade [ Laws , opened some breaches in the statute book of commercial restrictions , gave a police to the counties , showed no unwilling or unpatriotic spirit during the Russian war . But it was an essentially unpolitical House of Commons .

      interfere ; it may be that to interrupt the Executive would be a dangerous experiment ; but the Senate of America exercises this prerogative , and we do not liear of negotiations becoming indelicate or difficulties insuperable on that side of the Atlantic , any oftener than in the Old World . It is said that the elections have stopped

      litigation for a time , Englishmen being unable to fight more than one battle-at a time . A perpetual state of general election might be cheaply paid for by the cessation of law proceedings ; but we have remarked for many years past that whenever the question of Reform has been brought forward , England has invariably had some other battle in band . That was the case with the old Parliament .

      Now , before the new Parliament meets , we hope it will be clearly understood that the particular engagement to be drawn on is that which concerns the franchise , the ballot , the electoral districts , and the other essentials of a serious Liberal policy- "What else is there to settle ? -Mr . Lowe tells us , and the Tories tell us , that

      without labouring round any political Cape of Good Hope , we may take the direct route to social improvement by legislating on social questions . We heard of that fallacy long ago ; it has never influenced the Liberal party ; it may suit small feudalists and gentlemen who have grown so great as to be Ministers of State ; but it is rubbish , and must sink in limbo . " We are to have a Liberal

      Parliament ; the Tory minority will be effectually reduced ; the Liberals will he in supreme possession ; and although Lord Pai / mehston may count upon a personal following of considerable strength , that will not enable him , without a policy , to hold his ground against whatever sections may combine to defeat the Administration . . "With a policy he may lead

      the House of Commons , since we are assured that scarcely one-third of that House will be composed of Tories . Lord Palmerston has issued a remarkably vague address . Its vagueness may serve one of two ends : it may shelter him against the accusation of having given the Reformers a pledge ; or it may be interpreted by the Reformers as , " You lead , and I follow . " Mr . Disraeli ' s declaration that

      Lord PalmerSTON is the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet was false , as we said last week ; since he is not a Tory among Tories , nor are his colleagues Radicals among Radicals . But in the sense that Sir George Griby is a Radical Lord Palmerston is a Tory ; not an immovable one , however , but a man who has repeatedly assured his friends—we havo

      reasons for saying it—that , upon hearing an unequivocal demand for Reform , he would become a Reformer , and yield to no one in his assertion of Liberal principles . He is a great administrator in fact ; he can administrate an agitation as well as a department ; give him a policy , make him believe in it , and he is the minister to carry it out . His terms are—office , power .

      The cordial Reformers cannot hope to make their way into the Cabinet until a liberal change in the representation has created for them a broader parliamentary basis . They must , therefore , employ the agencies at their command , and it matters not whether , under tho force they exert , Lord Pa . l : merston is driven out of Downing-strect , or into a now

      Bill for improving tho Representation of tho People . If it be too earty to photograph tho new Parliament in contrast with the old , it is not too early to indicate this leading truth , that a powerful Liberal majority being cortain , tho natural chief of such a majority ia a Liberal statesman , a Reformer fro m conviction or from necessity . " Wo are calculating only for a period of transition—for only such will be filled by tho Parliament of 1857 .

      If it treated Toryism as an impossibility , it treated Liberalism as a joke ; it was a foreignpolicy Parliament , and what good has come of its meddling ? Essentially , then , the House of Commons returned in 1852 , claims for its epitaph only one line of conspicuous eulogy ;—it would not suffer the principle of government to be degraded by the officious incapacity of a Protectionist Earl , and of the forty raw recruits whom he marched to Windsor to be

      sworn into the royal service . Even from that panegyric we are entitled to make some diminution . Any British Parliament , in this epoch , would have done the same . The constituencies would never dream of returning a Derbyite majority . So that the Parliament of 1852 did speedily , and did well , what any other Parliament would have done ; and did little else , except in a hesitating , incomplete , insincere , and slovenly manner . The few practical reforms of the past five sessions are

      as nothing in contrast with the time wasted , the periodical cataclysms of talk , the hairsplitting , the official bell-ringing , and the perpetual Opposition rataplan . The Russian war , the Russian peace , the French alliance , the Sai'dinian alliance , the Swedish alliance , the demonstration against Naples , tho qvarrel with America , were among the great interests of the country during the period referred to ; but what was the action of Parliament in connexion with those

      topics , as Lord PAtMEnsroN would call them ? The war . went fotward with some pressure on the administrative departments though with none upon the Cabinet , tho Treaty of Peace was signed , tho 3 < Yench alliance was contracted and worked in several directions -with several objects , tho Swedish alliance was established and left fallow , Sardinia was lured into the Western League

      and emphatjcall y ^ nubbed , Great Britain travelled with Trance half way to Naples and quarrelled on tho road ; aho was alienated irom America and reconciled with her and had there been no House of Commons , arbitrary diplomacy could scarcely havo boon more irresponsible . Possibly the House ot Commons lias no constitutional right to

      Untitled Article

      300 THE LEADER . [ No . 366 , Saturday ,

      Untitled Article

      "WHO KEEPS UP THE POKE ? The kind of contradiction that the French journals ha ve given to the « Report from tS French Envoy at Rome to the French Mi nister . for Foreign Affairs , " published by the Daily News last week , is a practical con firmation of that document . The paper was translated from the French into the English it was retranslated from the English into thp

      Belgian journals , and then the French papers are instructed to say that" the text is "in correct" and " altered . " Of course it was changed in the process of double translationbut the Daily News reproduces the original text , and gives us the correct report made by IS . i > e Ratneval to Count "Walewski . The newest objection is that the paper is old"but what then ? Has Count Walewski rejected the report of M . de Raynevat , ?

      His principal assertions are these . The abuses in the Papal Governme nt are such that he has never yet been able to discover them , only expressing facts which are elsewhere traceable to the imperfections jy human nature , such , for instance , as the fact that the Custom-house officers will take something to drink from travellers . That there are brigands in the Roman territory is true , just as a diligence maybe stopped in France , or a lady of the Queen ' s household

      may be robbed of her jewels between London and Windsor . The Government of Rome is not clerical , since there are only 98 ecclesiastics in office to 5059 laymen . The Pope has done much in the way of improvementsdraining marshes , buying np the depreciated paper currency , and endeavouring even ¦ to correct the administration : every one is acquainted with the catastrophe that ensued

      and what happened then would be reproduced exactly in our day . Fundamentally the very principle of government is the point in dispute , and not the mode of putting it in operation . The existence of the Roman Government would have been of less importance , but " Catholicity itself is at stake . " " Catholic unity would be impaired by the removal of the Pope . " The Italians are

      very anxious for a constitution a V Anglaisc ; " the example of Piedmont is turning their heads ; " but they want the faculties for . a constitutional ^ government . They arc not , like the Piedmontese , capable of military or monarchical principles . Per contra , the Piedmontese are not Italians , " they are an intermediary population , containing much more of the Swiss and French element than

      the Italian . " The Italians cannot succeed in their projects without foreign support ; to prevent that support , "the organs of the press in England and Sardinia should cease to excite the passions . " This statement of facts appears to deprive the Roman question of a deiinitivo solution , but M . de IUynkval does not think " that all the questions of this

      world must necessarily have a deiinitivo solution . " He is for procrastination . To remove the French troops from the Roman States would give the coup de grace to the temporal power of the Popes ; ' M . de Raybeval , therefore , would leave the troops in possession , or would only withdraw them by successive diminutions , and " after being well assured that it is possible . "

      Nearly all tho statements , except those which admit that the Pope is sustained by the French troops , and that to withdraw them would give the couj ) do grace to his temporal power , aro statements which may be exactly reversed to arrive at the truth . Tho Papal rule is essentially subordinated to tho clergy , its chief officers clerical . Tho abuses aro obvious—corruptions -wholesale , anarchy existing everywhere , save in some degree within tho range of the French and A ustrian

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      Untitled Article

      SATURDAY , MARCH 28 , 1857 .

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      Untitled Article

      ~ There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so ¦ unnatural and convulsive , as the strain , to keep things fixed -when all the v / oxldis by the very lav of its creation in . eternal progress . —Pe . Aknoxk . . .. ? ¦ ¦

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), March 28, 1857, page 300, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2186/page/12/