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felicitous turn of specula- suggest " so...
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THE DARK MIRROR. If anything has been pr...
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TO THE DUKE OP NEWCASTLE. My Lorjd Dukb,...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The War Henceforward. "E Ngland," Writes...
£ h & se , iauat be considered defunct as , states-D this burst ; bf indignation be only the outcome of noble sympathy for suffering , bej caiise we h & ve not been more successful against the enemy , 'because we have not an -army , » not also * denunciation of the war administration 7 if the people are not prepared to make their weight felt in the management of the-army , so far as regards its efficiency as aninstrument , then the vote of Monday will have onlv answered the party purpose _ of
ousting-a Ministry , and will not have carried rus a jot nearer what we want—not merely ^ urmy reform , but military perfection . Henceforward England ' s statesmen—if they would win the foremost place in Europe- ^ must be prepared : to make the boldest propositions in ithe allied Councils ; Parliament must be ^ prepared to sustain them with vigour ; the people must support and goad the Parliaimerit . We rejoiee in the vote of Monday if it
anean these things ; we think meanly of it if it mean anything else . Let us grow corn ; let us spin cbtboii ; let us comb wool ; let us dig , and mould , and fashion iron ; let us be a great entrepot of commerce ,, ; let us be , in fact , the most enterprising and successful House of Business in the TJniverse ; but for the sake of commerce itself , if not for the sake of
right , and the honour of England among the nations , do not let us forget the duties of our freedom and the obligations of our strength .
Felicitous Turn Of Specula- Suggest " So...
felicitous turn of specula- suggest " some methods by which you might escape , __ __ ,.. _ -. ¦ ,,.. .- ' « Tfil a nrnrro ' TVA ^ r .--_^ ¦ Tmmx jhmAvmm ^ ; . ^ ,:: . i , m * nwm *** . J ?~ r i ' : " ' it " ' "• " ¦* y ^^ Y ~ - ' ~^* - "" P
The Dark Mirror. If Anything Has Been Pr...
THE DARK MIRROR . If anything has been proved by experience , it is , that society is incompetent to measure its own tendencies , to know its own impulses , to provide for its own necessities . ^ The records of the criminal courts are continually Reporting to us some outburst of passion , neither new nor unparalelled , and yet each time the report occasions a wonderment . " We find some flagrant act of fraud > some brutality , some ferocity , some violation of
statute or moral law , of feeling or instinctand , we are amazed ; although if we look nround we shall find that we have , had exactly the same cases before ^ and - the parallel misdeeds in places where they occasion little remark , or pass almost without censure . Punish men for wrong doing wherever it is done , and who shall cast the first stone ? There is not a meanness , a fraud , or a violence that has not been perpetrated in the highest places . At the present moment take
the picture of statesmen as painted by themselves , and they are engaged in petty shuffling intrigues to tjjrn each other out of place on false pretences . "We do not say that at is so of this statesman or of j ; hat ; but we remark that they are accusing each other of such conduct , and by the accusation confessing that their class is pettifogging , invidious , insincere , and prone to sacrifice its members and its country to the paltriest gratifications of personal vanity or profit . We
boast in this country of our commercial integrity ; we boast of the honesty of our chief commercial companies ; but what are the great facts continually bursting forth ? Unless the press be calumnious , a gigantic fraud has recently been detected- in the vaults of the St . Catherine's Dock Company . It would appear that forty empty pipes—from
which a worthless kind of wine , valued at Borne five shillings the pipe , had been surreptitiously emptied—had been as surreptitiously filled with wine worth 85 / . or 38 / . the pipe . . J But palpable as that enormous act of stealing is , it is email compared to frauds that are habitually carried on by traders . A man BhaU purchase a hundred ships with the understanding that he is to pay for them ; bis proper of paying Ibr them being dependent
upon a rapid and a tive trade . He is made a ban Wpt , but his case is singular only in the scale , not in the kind . His brother merchants try to patch up the bankruptcy to save themselves rand , his -defence ii / that he broke down through the failure of others , abroad as well at home . When the bankruptcy occurs -the merchant world is all wonderment ; although the causes of bankruptcy are daily generated in the trade of every city in the United Kingdom , and . if they attract notice , are passed by with a smile and a wink as " the usual thing . "
So it is in society ; but what we specially denounce is-the morbid hypocrisy which treats flagrant cases as isolated cases , instead of confessing that they are only exaggerations of classes so extensive that we know not how far their base may spread into society . Such cases are but the summits of an Alpine range where the descending sides of the mountain blend into a common base , and there is little
plain unbroken . Buranelli , thwarted in his rude affections , resorted to weapons of murder for purposes of revenge rather than justice . His obvious motive is one that puts him beyond the pale of merey : he has placed the world at defiance , and . made his appeal to death by preference . There is no defence for him . Is it certain , however , that amongst those implicated , he is to be regarded as
irremediably bad , or entirely the worst t Who shall judge ? The question of moralculpability , however , is not the one to which we are looking at the moment ; it is the -curious fact that such casesioccur , and that numberless other cases of a cognate kind are existing , as it were , in the germ all round ; and yet upon each occasion society is lost in wonderment when the f act bursts forth in flagrant crime . The passions of men are excited by temptations , are goaded ; by thwarting , or concentrated by suppression ; in the social conflict the raw material of
crime is constantly accumulated ; and when there is a conflagration , society , like an idle woman , " wonders how it can have happened ! " We have remarked of French fiction two singular characteristics . The first is , that a , great proportion of the incidents of th ^~ trag " eay ~~ co " n ' sist in the impossibility which the dramatis persona ; have to hold their tongue . It is amongst the rarest incidents of French fiction , that , without _ an amazing effort , a man can refrain from saying that which is fatal to himself or to those he
loves , if he be provoked to the utterance . Again , it is a frequent incident of French novels , that men fall into traps set for them , from an apparent watit of the faculty of suspicion . We have , however , the same weakness in our own country , though it takes a different form . We cannot believe in the reality of passion , we hold it to be impossible that men will resort to extremes . The wife of
the brawling husband thinks that " he cannot strike her ; " the man who goads the passions of his companion , ' believes it impossible that he can resort to a pistol or a life-preserver ; " just as the statesman thinks that whatever the price of bread , or the arbitrary run of legislation for a session , it is " impossible that the working classes can rise . " xet women are beaten , day after day ; pistols and life preservers p . are used often enough to remind us that they really are made for deadly purposes ; aud the working classes rise occasionally—impossible as it is always pronounced to hp , just before the next time .
To The Duke Op Newcastle. My Lorjd Dukb,...
TO THE DUKE OP NEWCASTLE . My Lorjd Dukb , —Tho fnble of tho Mouse and the Lion was perhaps written before tho division of society into classes . But even now-a-days the Mouse may occasionally be useful to the Lion ; and I , just at present , beseech your Grace ' s attention "while I
victorious , from this " crisis " - *!* episode , artid not a very important one , in our PafcKatneritary bistory , but , if not well managed , the close oT your careerfor your explanations of Thursday night were less a defence , of yorirself thaii an exposure of Xord John Russell . You obtained and deserved sympathy as a devoted and honest man , but you have still to seek acquittal as the minister of a system and of a caste . I believe you are a wronged man . But you are down—for the present . Your Government required a scapegoat . The system needed a victim . You were m the way of a Whig conspiracy . What matters the pretext ? An enlightened country nud
an independent press have sentenced you . But you announce , still courageous as with a clear conscience , that you will face the roar of the multitude and will offer before Europe an undaunted vindication . That is bold . But E warn you that you will fail , that you will add the ridiculous to the ignominious , and be laughed at after being roared at , if your defence is to be a routine defence—the technical deprecation of an assailed Minister . In a word , your defence must not be on the defensive . You are fighting for your life , and you have but one chance ; you will win if you assail your assailants . Do not parry , but attack ; and you will convert a humiliation into a triumph , and become , from the most fallen , the mo st powerful
of our public men . What terms have been kept with you ? Has there been any reserve in the denunciations which , for the moment , have crushed you ? Are you the only man who does not detect some antical hypocrisy in the safe chivalry with which several of your colleagues insisted on sharing your bad fame—secure of escaping vour hard fate ? You ask justice : be first to be
justto yourself . As priests believed that the whisper of a holy name exorcised devils , be sure it is ? here , the truth , the mention of which will clear the vapours —the ¦ Downing-street fog—under cover of which class-conspirators have aimed their daggers at you . Dare to take the country which you are nobly worthy to serve into your confidence ! You can do this without betraying a Cabinet secret . And , if you do , I foresee that you will be the Master , and not the
Victim , of the position . Why should a Radical seek salvation for a Duke ? Because you have friends among us . We believe that both by circumstances and by the personal tendencies of your nature , frank , hearty , and largely sympathetic as we have judged it , you are the least aristocratic of your class . Sir Robert Peel created those " circumstances which have ^ tempted you to tempt us . He made the Tories your enemies and he made you the rival of the Whigs . Balanced between the two sections of great families , you had to seek friends , as political support , among the
middleclass ambitions . It was Mr . Bright , who on If riday and Monday cheered every defence that was made for you : —between Mr . Bright ' s class and you there has been instinctive sympathy . The Peelites , too , were somewhat compelled to become courtiers , and they were not the less national—in the sense of being leas exolusively aristoratic—on that account . And we have judged of your character by your courageous indifference , as Minister , to the lordly prejudices you so often excited in tho House of Lords by your defiance of some g ' reat lords . The " Keogh easo " was not a happy one : but you did honour to yourself
in it . Wo fancy that , in tho clamour agamst you , there may be detected many signs that you are being attacked by pe rsonal enmities , formed because you were seen to bo bent upon popularising public affairs . You owe to yourself , to tho party you have , and to the party you may have , to vindicate tho Peelites . Remind your countrymen that you fought the Tory nobles when you carried tho repeal of the Corn Laws , and that you fought tho Whig nobles when you resisted the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill . Do not
let it bo forgotten that ( he measure of tho Coalition was tho Succession Duty Extension Bill , and that that anti-aristocratic measure was in symmetrical sequence to tho Corn Law Repeal . Tho policy of Peel , which tho Poolites sustained in Opposition and in Coalition , was to annihilate class government : identify yourself with that policy—it will bo better comprehended by the people than the poliey of Russetl-llke " Reformers , " from whom there come but algebraical reforms . As Peelite * , you and
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 3, 1855, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03021855/page/14/
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