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Leader (1850-1860), 22nd October 1859, Edition 1 of 2, Page 1177, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      SUBSCRIPTION TO " THE LBADEB . " ONE GUINEA PER YEAR , UNSTAMPED , PREPAID . ( Delivered Gratis . )

      Untitled Article

      PEACE OF ZURICH . The Zurich Treaty has revived the sharp and well-merited criticism which greeted the Villafranea preliminaries . When the latter were arranged , it was felt that they were not worthy of the occasion ; that they sacrificed the glory of victories , and disappointed the expectations tbat Italy founded upon the positive promises of France . Then came a period of hope that they were to be understood * in a diplomatic sense , and assurances were not wanting that the Emperor of the French would abstain from enforcing , or

      permitting to be enforced , their most objectionable conditions . ' Every day Italian affairs have progressed in a manner that does not appear , to have been anticipated by the Imperial negotiators , and their final document is so unsuited to the present aspect of the question ,, that it comes upon us like an old almanack , or a last year ' s Bradshaw . No one seems to expect that the Emperor of the French will attempt , or permit , a forcible restoration of the banished potentates , and the clause relating to them may have been put in merely to mollify the pride of the Emperor of Austria , who would not like it to appear that he had been so vulgar as to learn anything since his memorable intei-view with his brother potentate .

      The ten millions which the treaty proposes to rob Sardinia , or Lombard y of , for the benefit of Austria , is the worst looking part of the affair . The sum would have been monstrous if Mantua and Peschiera had been thrown into the bargain , and as it stands is out of all proportion to any just claims that could be made . Whether this part of the contract will really be carried out remains to be seen . Sardinia and Lombardy cannot pay s 6 large a sum in a hurry , and afresh war may break out before the Court of Vienna can rejoice in the profession of so much as in presenti . It will be wise , however , not to place implicit confidence , in the details at present given . Paying the interest upon t > en millions of debt , for example , would be very different from coming down with the entire

      sum . Both Emperors have discovered by thia time that there is an Italian people , and it is much to the credit of Lord John Russell that he has been prompt and bold in recognising their claims . Austria is doing her best to provoke a rebellion in , Venetia and other pacts of her dominions , nnd though by the Zurich treaty she joins in recommending reforms in the administration of the States of the Holy Father , she is well known to bo intriguing for and aiding the unconditional restoration of priestly misrule . The French Emperor cannot expeot the support of England unless he is true to Italy ; and a wise calculation of his chances will show him that there

      is far less danger in doing right than in acting wrong . The Pope is his great difficulty , and it remains to be seen whether he will dare to keep up the tone of snubbing the bishops , or whether they will frighten him into actipn against the free spirit which is rising all through Italy , and nowhere stronger than in the Papal States . Austria he need not dread , for , according to the , Ost Deutahe Pot ( t t an official journal , she has an . army of debts quite sufficient to ensure her ruin if she should

      again plunge into war . It appears that since 1848 there has been a constant deficit in the accounts of each year , amounting in the aggregate to nearly 460 millions of florins . Fortysix millions sterling , which this represents , is not an alarming sum to England , but to Austria , developed rather in tyranny and superstition than in industry , it is a serious matter ; and no Government ever stood in a more degraded position thantliat of the House of Hapsburgobliged to

      , confess that for eleven years—mostly years of peace , for the Hungarian war finished in ' 49—it has been annually adding to its debt , by adhering to a system of ignorant brutal repression of every aspiration arid quality which could give cither prosperity or dignity to a state . In 1848 , the Austrian income was 122 , 127 , 354 florins , the expenditure 167 , 238 , 000 florins , and the deficit 45 , 110 , 646 florins . In 1858 the income , through increased and burdensome taxation , had reached 282 , 540 , 723 florins , but the reckless criminality of the Government had brought the expenditure up to 315 , 037 , 101 florins , leaving a deficit of 32 , 496 , 378 florins . Such are the charms of " Paternal

      Government , " and stich the condition of the enemy from which Italy desires to be free . Would the young Emperor * agree to sell Verona , Mantua , and Venetia to their rightful owners for a sum they could afford to pay ? or will he wait till the misery of his misgoverned subjects bursts out once more in revolution , which might not be so lucky as the last for his evil House . If Louis Napoleon is tired of playing the warrior , let him try to negotiate a money bargain ; but he must remember that if Austria is to be compensated for further cessions to the tune of his Zurich arrangements , she ought to be satisfied with Bank of Elegance paper , which is nearly as good as her own .

      Untitled Article

      LORD BROUGHAM AND SOCIAL SCIENCE . Thi 3 necessity of attending last week to Lord Shaflesbury , whose priority of speech gave him a prior claim upon our space , obliged us to defer an examination of the peculiar utterances of Lord Brougham . It is pleasant to find a man who has reached his venerable age still actively engaged in promoting those questions of social reform that occupied his earlier years . It is true he addresses us somewhat like a man of the past ; and in remembering the past , to which he belongs , we think of Bentham , Clarkson , and and others who

      furnished him with the ideas and sentiments which it was its greatest glory to expound . We regret that he was an opponent of the life peerage which the Court tried , and abandoned for want of moral courage , in the person of Lord \ Vensleydale ; and we cannot forget the rashness and want of generosity with which he misrepresented the Provisional Government in France , and drew forth an able vindication from the far sounder and more reliable pen of J . S . Mill . We should also contemplate his closing career with more satisfaction if we could look upon him as the zealous parliamentary him

      reformer he appeared to be before fortune made a partial Tory and a peer . But with all faults and shortcomings the nation is proud of him , and his public speeches command attention from present merit as well as from memory of the past . At the Social Science Congress , on Tuesday week , he treated the assembly to a homily on electoral corruption and strikes , recommending with reference to the former ovil some of the remedies previously suggested in the Lioadeb , but carefully leaving out the liallot , as not pleasant to the dwellers in the aristocratic sphere to which he belongs .

      In his denunciation of bribery we fully concur ; but when he trys to make out that everygiver and receiver of a bribe has , by implication , committed perjury , wo are reminded of I 5 ogberry ' s ** flat burglary as ever was committed . " If the guilt of perjury were reaNy incurred in all these cases , as it undoubtedly is in some o them , no small share of the criminality ought to rest upon the members of the legislature , who maintain a bribery oath , and then ,

      for selfish purposes , surround the poor electors with circumstances likely to induce them to swear to an untruth . We should be very glad to see condign punishment inflicted upon bribers and their agents , but a Gamaliel in the Social . Science sanhedrim ought to have learnt that penal laws are at the best bungling expedients , and that arrangements of preventibn are more philosophical and more serviceable thaw any apparatus for

      " grave doubt , " whether workmen ought to have the suffrage who live in £ 6 houses instead of saving 20 d . a week in beer , and paying « £ 10 rent ; andhis lordship adds , " It is but too certain that of those who are loudest in their call foi the right of voting , a very great number would refuse to pay this very small price to obtain it . A man earning £ 1 a week , which is above the average wao-es of the unenfranchised , could not consider 1 s . 8 d . a week a « very trifling " payment , and were he to reduce himself to teetotahsm , for the sake of occupying a house larger than he needed , and so getting a vote , his conduct would not deserve to be commended , as Lord Brougham ' oddly imaoines . Continuing his curious lesson his

      in political philosophy , lordship lmpuiea a tendency to sell their votes to all those who have got none to sell , and went on to tell us— " To imagine , as some reasoners do , that clothing these men with the franchise will raise them in their own estimation , and in that of others , and impress them with a sense of their importance in executing that public trust , is altogether too romantic a view for any practical man to take . " Lord Brougham is here employing a logical trick , well known as a " fallacy of confusion , " which may have of ten served him in his forensic the crime ±

      days . He excites a horror against o bribery , and then in the mental hubbub , which he supposes he has raised in his hearers , he dexterously turns their indignation against those who are accused of it without a shadow of proof . The ex-Chancellor , as a member of the wealthy class , exclaims , surveying those below— : " Exclude those men from the suffrage , for fear individuals . of our order should buy them . " He does not see that this is simply a proposal to employ force without morals ; and that the excluded class might say in return— " Make a law to keep those rich men out of Parliament , for fear they should seek

      to corrupt us . " . His lordship treats the strike question with equal shallowness . Here is a specimen : — " The raising a fund to keep one class idle , by supporting them when they refuse to work , except on the terms prescribed by the body—terms , to which their employers cannot , or will not yield , and the waylaying another class coming from the country , offering to pay their journey back if they join in the refusal , approaches very near an unlawful conspiracy ; or if it be not absolutely illegal , is in the highest degree oppressive to the employers , because it deprives them of the ordinary advantages of competition .

      In the first line there is a niisstatement of facts the fund is not raised to keep a clnss idle ; wherever it js practicable , the men who strike work in one employ endeavour to get work in nnother ; and in the unfortunate builder ' s quarrel this has been the case to a large extent . The next nusstatement is , that having described nothing but what la legal , he says it approaches " very near an unlawful conspiracy . " He might as well say that earning victuals approaches very nearly to stealing

      them . There is certainly a resemblance m bom instances , inasmuch as the victuals are obtained . The case put by Lord Brougham is one oi combining to advise and contribute towards the performance lawful act , and oupht not to be for a moment confounded with combining to force or induce men to commit an unlavr&l act . lhese confusions of reasoning arc like Captain I < luellin s proof of the identity of Macodon and Monmouth , because " there is a river in Macedonand a nverm Monmouth . " We should like to know what Lord Brougham moans by the " ordinary advantages ot competition , " which he assumes to be . a right of the capitalists . If he means merely that oi buying labour at the raarkot price , there is no objection to it . * hut if he demands something further—that the

      market price shall bo lowered by preventing tno men giving each otlior any mutual supporter-then nothing oan be more wrong , In ahutlwr pas $ » gq , alt strikes , those which are , for juot reasons , wad succeed , as well as those which , aro foolish and

      this specimen of social science comes anotner inflicting the vengeance of the law . We look in I vain for any constructive plan for raising the character of electors and elections . His lordships ' notions all smell of law courts and jails , and Unless means of punishment are provided he expects a " grave doubt" to arise , " whether the country would not be injured by an extension of the franchise , if it did not beget a further doubt about the benefit of the franchise already enjoyed . " After + > , ;« smiinim ^ n of social science come s another

      Untitled Article

      OFFICE , NO . , CATHERINE-STREET , STRAND , W . C . ¦

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      Untitled Article

      SATURDAY , OCTOBER 22 , 1859 .

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      § ht&ti *[ Q § n \ Y 8 .

      Untitled Article

      There is nothing- so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things iixed when all the world is by the very law of ita creation in eternal progfress . —Dr . Arnold .

      Untitled Article

      No . 500 . Q Cf . 22 . 185 fr 1 THE LEADEB . 1177

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 22, 1859, page 1177, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2317/page/13/