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Leader (1850-1860), 6th January 1855, Edition 2 of 2, Page 13, There is nothing so revolutionary, becau...

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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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      January 6,1855.] The Lead Er. . 13 ¦ —^^...

      January 6 , 1855 . ] THE LEAD ER . . 13 ¦ —^^^^^^^¦ ^^ . ¦ ^¦ ^^^^^^^^—^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ _ _ , —^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ M ^ M ^^^^ j ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ jgg ^^^^^^^^^^^ l ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ M ^ M ^ aa ^ , ^ j ^^^^^ g ^^ j ^^^ jU ^^^ ^^^ M ^^ pr ^ Jfc _ _^__ , — —^ ¦ - -

      To Correspondents. All Letters For The E...

      TO CORRESPONDENTS . All letters for the Editor should be addressed to 7 , Wellington-street . Strand , London . . No notice can be taken of anonymous communications . Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily for publication , but as a guarantee of his good faith . Communications should always be legibly written . ^ and on onesideTof the paper only . If long , it increases the difficulty of finding space for them . We cannot undertake to returnrejected communications . 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 thecommunica tion .

      Terms O F Subscription To "®&E &Eat>Er."...

      TERMS O F SUBSCRIPTION TO "®& e & eat > er . " For a Half-Year .. . £ 0 13 0 To be remitted in advance . esr Money Orders should be drawn upon the Stbaitd Branch Office , and be made payable to Mr . Alfbed E . GAliOWAT , at No . 7 , Wellington Street , Strand .

      - , Y ^ F 5ft ≫ ) Vimijo^ Sr»L Hj V Nwy Fffr *^F Fif I^ '% 4/ ≫ -L \!*^' Jy C\V Jv -V ? (^/^ \Jj » ^""' ^

      Saturday, January 6, 1855.

      SATURDAY , JANUARY 6 , 1855 .

      - Ywv L ( ? (T\ Ft * J0ttultr ¦J& Ttflxxff* - • ¦

      ^ ttblir Malts .

      There Is Nothing So Revolutionary, Becau...

      There is nothing so revolutionary , because there i nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the stram to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress . —De . Abnoxd

      1855. 1854 Began With A Cry For Vengeanc...

      1855 . 1854 began with a cry for vengeance from Sinope , and closed with , disasters before Sebastopol . THe past year has been one of boastful promises and of promises broken ; on 3 of vainglorious threats , but of threats unfulfilled ; it leaves us with hopes deferred , and fears not absolutely stultified . The Crystal Palace , emulating its protoype of 1851 , which was consecrated to immortal peace , has still to deserve success , and languishes equallv familiar and forgotten .

      Xord John Russell rescued in the last session his scheme of Oxford Reform , and abandoned , with all the emphasis of childish tears , his scheme of Parliamentary Reform ; the purification of the civil service is still a project of the future , although the horrible blunders of a resultless campaign prove that the spuriously aristocratic organisation of our public service brings upon us loss , disgrace , and , calamity . Last summer the army of Omar Pacha was exulting in the unstained

      laurels of the winter and the spring ; this winter we are pitying the poor helpless Turks , for whom a service humble enough can scarcely be found in Balaklava . Last summer we had the bravado of the bottle in the banquet of " disguised" Reformers , who were to " crumple up" all the Russian fortresses from Bomarsund to St . Petersburg ; this winter we have Sir Charles Napier coming back , after his nibble at Bomarsund , his squint at Sweaborg , and his slanting allusions at Cronstadt . In 1854 we had a visitation of

      cholera , the experience of which has proved that even feeole and imperfect remedial measures may check the pestilence ; and wo were blessed with a harvest which has taught us the solidarity of nations in abundance as in dearth ; in other words , that abundance after dearth will not restore low prices , though free trade has effectually , through high and low , preserved us from famine after local dearth , while the landed interests are not rendered bankrupt by the beneficence of Heaven . The last session gave 16 , 000 , 000 / . to the war . and bequeathed to the recess that

      Beer Act which has occasioned almost the only domestic agitation that the dead season has experienced . To 1854 belong Alma and Inkerman—belong the Austrian alliance , the Prussian neutrality , the" flank march , " the besiegers besieged . The year closes with the completion of the alliance , defensive and offensive , between the three Powers , with Prussia still trimming ; with an immense

      Russian transit trade through that " neutral Power ; with Russia still temporising ; and with the question whether the submission of the Czar will close up everything , and leave us nothing but the costs to haggle about , or whether his perseverance will extend the conflagration of war to the whole of Europe ? Will it stop in the Crimea , or where will it stop ? It is with these two questions that we bid farewell to 1854 .

      Never did human wisdom halt upon the threshold of a year and feel so signally rebuked by its own incompetency to forecalculate as it does now at the commencement of 1855 . Not only are we denied all knowledge of that immediate future , but we are forbidden even to conjecture what will happen . What alternatives lie before us , or what shall be our own part in the most probable alternatives , we dare not venture to surmise . We only know that a conflict of Titanic

      agencies is impending , and our worst fear is that the public men throughout Europe , whom the routine of our political system entrusts with the conduct of states , are too feeble , too insincere , too incapable of their high argument , to secure the victory for the right . Lord John Russell hints that Ministers will accept a mere quiescence on the part of Russia—that they will not cripple her for future harm—that they will , not take away her unjust acquisitions , render her boundaries

      safer for her neighbours , nor punish her for her crimes . ¥ e are compelled to bid for the accession of Austria to the alliance , although we know that Austria , entangled in past crimes , falters in her falseness and hesitates in her traditional ingratitude , lest the victims of her own oppression should demand the price of their blood . And we are compelled to hope that those subject . nations will by . theirLv . ery _ patience deny to temporising statesmen the pretext of a compromise with the common

      enemy . Spain , with her unconsolidated constitutional Government and her ill-defended possessions , —Germany , with her undetermined foreign relations , her dreamy Liberalism , and her muddled royalism , —Denmark , with her assertion of representative freedom and her national complicity in the iniquities of her own Crown against Schleswig-Holstein , — Sweden , with her popular sympathy for the West and her royal leaning to Russia , —

      America , with her inscrutable agitations , — our own colonies converted by free government from rebellious enemies to loyal coadjutors in the war , —all these are regions which present the scene of vast movements still going on , pregnant with events for 1855 and succeeding years ; but subordinate in interest all of them just now to the one great question of the present year—What shall bo the dominant rule in Europe , autocracy or self-government—conspiracies of thrones or alliances of nations ?

      We begin the year with solemnly-recognised obligations that we have of late forgotten , resources such as no country ever commanded , an enterprise such as no free state has ever yet confronted , possibilities that would exalt the grandest ambitions which the world , ever saw ; but—alas that wo must say it !—we begin with public men and a public virtue not yet trained or developed to the high occasion that awaits us .

      The Political , Situation. The Clubs—Tho...

      THE POLITICAL , SITUATION . The Clubs—those congregations of gentlemen who complain of the want of education among the masses , and who illustrate their intellectual superiority by passing their lives in the intercommunication of inanities—being institutions which may be described as patent incubators of canards—will have it that there has this week been a Ministerial insurrection , that there have been several resignations , and that , but for the Prince and Lord Aberdeen , our glorious Constitution would have been

      made manifest to Europe by our being lef t without a Government in the crisis of a great war . The Clubs are at no loss for an explanation ; they are not always certain of their facts , but they are always positive in an explanation . The Clubs say that there is one split about the Peace , and another split about the War , and generally that the Coalition is resolving , with the assistance of arithmeticalminded Sir Charles Wood , into its original integers of sixes and sevens—Lord Palmer-This is

      ston of course being the odd number . curious , but not conclusive ; and , without attaching credit to any of the conjectures of the coffee-room statesmen , and of those luminous politicians who read all the morning papers in a condition of continuous bewilderment , and get to the evening journals in a state of mental prostration , we may leave the Clubs to chat on chaotically in the singular innocence of belief that they are in some way concerned in the Government of a country which , according to them , is in a chronic Cabinet

      . We are , however , not unprepared to admit that the Government is , very probably , in some perplexity ; and we are all the more ready to think so from observing that the nation is in precisely the same position . Peace or war ? ia the question on which no one , high or low , has made up his mind , because no one has made up his mind as to what he means by peace or what he means by war—the conditions of the peace or the issues of the war . The fault of the Government , according to the most pronounced class of politicians ,

      taking Mr . Layard as an example , is that they have had , and have , no direct policy . This is p ^^ l y ^ trro : ^ is ~ a ' truSm BiBaS cel ^ needing the exposition of a two hours ' scram bling speech , scattered , subsequently , in all its disjected commonplace , in a tenpage pamphlet . It is quite true that the Government only went to war because the country demanded war , and that the

      Government is seeking to make peace because the stable-minded public is rather inclined to a peace , in the one case undertaking a merely make-believe campaign , and in the present case pretending to no more than a sham treaty , worth as much as the vellum on which it is , or is not , engrossed . But a Government in England , controlled by a Crown which is without political passions , is compelled to

      run with the public—certainly never to go in advance of the public—and a Coalition Government more especially , formed tor mere administration , on no principles , nnds it not only its interest but its duty toobey . The present Government has displayed no direct policy , itswantof direct policy has resulted in its becoming the victim o * its military chiefs , French and British ; but the defect of the Government seems to us to be the defect of the time . A Government in England ia , after all , a very repre-Sntivo affair : the Coalition Government represented national apathy , the disappearfin < M of the politics of principles . do witn

      Political philoaophy had nothing to the outburst of national feeling on the inva-Princi

      sion by Russia of the palities : our fleots and armies were despatched not to re-

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 6, 1855, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_06011855/page/13/