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Dec. 7, 1850.] SCf>£ &£&&*?? £75
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THE EXAMPLE FOR ENGLAND. To wish what is...
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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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Can England Aid Foreign Patriots ? The L...
the streets and see a burly blackguard prevent a weak youth from walking on the pavement , and then fall upon him with a shower of blows because the youth persists ; do you interfere to save the youth and see justice done , or do you allow the two to " settle their own affairs " ? The latter is the p hilosophy of " non-intervention . " If men believe in principles they should be ready to fight for them . The Royalists are . the Liberals are not .
" We observe the same spirit animating minor causes . Wherever the Church or Tory party aktempt to achieve anything they seldom fail from want of union ; they act in concert j they support with purse , with person , and with influence the acts of their party . The Liberals are scattered into cliques , and do nothing , except in the way of opposition . But because the nation is supine are not individuals to act ? Because '' non-intervention" is the policy of our Government are Englishmen forced to remain impotent spectators of wrong ? The question is serious . As practical men let us see how it can be answered .
When on a recent occasion we showed a means of crushing the Papal movement by carrying the war into the seat of Papal power we did not mean that England was to declare war with Rome . There was no casus belli . But the reasons which ought to determine intervention are simple enough . The philosophy of the matter seems to be this . There is a certain solidarity between all European nations , but in some countries it is more direct and extensive than in others . Belgium , for example , has a constitution so like our own as to make an identity of interests between the two countries . Should any movement on the part of
the Belgian Government attempt to overthrow that constitution , or to subvert by violence any of its principles of freedom , England is bound to interfere—bound by the vulgarest notions of self-interest , for in truth her own freedom is assailed , and she must battle for her own cause . The advantage of fighting this battle on other ground is almost too obvious to need remark . The horrors of civil war are avoided . The battle is fought at the expense of others . In such a case the intervention should be national , as the cause is national . Hungary was a case in point . To our shame we let the occasion pass by , and declaimed loudly but moved no step .
When the constitution is not identical with our own—as in the case of Italy—national intervention is less easily justified . Nevertheless , seeing that thousands of Englishmen do really feel deep sympathy with the Italian party , and would glarly assist them in their struggle against despotism , some mode of rendering such assistance ought to be legalized . A simple mode exists . Let Government instead of calling upon the nation to
interfereinstead of applying to Parliament for resourcessanction the assistance of any number of individuals who might sympathize with the Italians , and who might be willing by purse or person to lend their individual aid . The Government here holds aloof—declares no war as a Governmenttakes no national part ; it merel y gives to Englishmen the freedom of their own individual actions ; suffers them to enlist : suffers them to act for
themselves . The Italian Loan proposed through our columns by Mazzini and his party might readily be raised if any countenance were given to it by Englishmen of position ; and if the Government sanctioned English aid , we cannot doubt but that it would be liberally furnished , and so all the enthusiasm which now escapes in the mere vapour of " meetings , " or in rounded periods of leading articles , might then take some definite and powerful shape . And this without in any way compromising the nation : for as a nation , there can be no doubt that the majority would be adverse—many furiously opposed—to any intervention in favour of the Republicans .
Among the many good effects of such a change would be the abatement of cant . If sympathy were to be shown in acts as well as in rhetoric , many a fluent orator would fall silent . The loss to public meetings and public journals we could console ourselves with , in the encreased reliance to be placed upon such expressions of sympathy as did force themselves into notice . But , above all , it would be gladdening to the hearts of all sincere men to know that there really were means open to them for the assistance of foreign patriots , fighting their own cause , and struggling for human progress .
Can England Aid Foreign Patriots ? The L...
MR . COBDEN AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT . Mb . Cobden has made a new kind of public appearance . At the Peace Meeting held in Birmingham last week , he directed a fierce onslaught against certain publications containing matter which he regarded as hostile to the cause he had come there to advocate . One of these publications was Ckambers * s Edinburgh Journal . The Daily News thus reports the passage in which he referred to that periodical : —
" There is a class of reasoners who tell us that war has its favourable sides , that it is not quite so bad as some think it . Why , the same might be said of slavery . I have heard people say that some good springs out of that ; and very good sophistry has been used to show that slavery has its collateral benefits . But I did not expect to find that doctrine where I found it lately , published under the sanction of a name from which we are accustomed to expect the promulgation of better principles—J . mean Chambers ' s Journal ; but there must be some impostor taking the name of my friend Chambers : he would not , I am sure , ever allow such doctrine to be published under his name . "
With the justice of this attack we have , of course , nothing to do . We are not acquainted with the paper in the Edinburgh Journal to which Mr . Cobden especially refers ; but from his own description of it , and from the allusions subsequently made to it in the Times , we infer that it is , not an exhortation one way or other , but a short essay or dissertation , an appreciation , according to the writer ' s particular sentiments , of the historical and philosophical worth of such agitations as the Peace Movement . And if so , then , without the slightest wish to interfere between Mr . Cobden and the
object of his attack , we must sajr that this new mode of furthering his cause to which Mr . Cobden has had recourse—that of publicly denouncing from the platform such literary expositions as offend against his ideas of what ought to be taught to the people—is a thing not to be passed over without some comment . For , doubtless , Mr . Cobden has generalized the notion thus for the first time laid hold of , and has set it down formally among those hints for the practical guidance of popular leaders that will occup } r so conspicuous a
place in the valuable treatise on the Art of Political Agitation , which the public may one day expect from him . " Denounce at public meetings by name any popular 'book , or any literary periodical in which you may discover opinions contrary to those on which your movement is founded "—such is the rule of efficient agitation which Mr . Cobden may be considered to have recommended by his example . And having virtually propounded the rule , he will , doubtless , continue to illustrate it .
All the literary periodicals of the Empire may henceforth make up their minds to live under the terror of a platform-attack from Mr . Cobden , if they dare to put forword one thought , one paragraph , that might lead to the consumption of gunpowder . There is no mistaking the fact ; the literary men of this country are under a novel kind of censorship , and must write very cautiously . Dickens ' Household Words may suffer a castigation some day : even the Penny Cyclopedia is not quite safe .
The fact , whatever we may think of it , ought at least to be noted . Theoretically , it amounts to nothing less than this — that the Press ot this country shall henceforth manufacture only such thoughts as are approved by the Platform ; that a man sitting down in his study to express himself philosophically on a subject as a whole , shall be obliged , under penalties , to issue the same conclusions and the same forms of language that serve the practical man * when , in his zeal for some definite
cause , he hits the subject by one or its . other words , there is to be no difference any longer in England between the mood in which a man is to write a dissertation and the mood in which he is to address a crowd j the poetical way of looking at a thing , and the scientific way of looking at a thing , are to be no longer allowed ; Mr . Cobden is to be judge of what speculations are fit articles for the morl / ot . onr \ +. Vi « w > Vir » lr » +. V > r » ii « Vht nf t . VlR nOlintrV IS .
in future , to be transacted either by or to the order of the oratorio faculty , and the expression of that thought is to be set to the oratoric cadence . Because it is agreed among all sensible men that war is an evil—a thing to be avoided to the last agony of suppressed indignation , and indignity silently borne— -it is to follow , it seems , that no generalities are now to be tolerated in our literature respecting the influence of the agency of war in past civilization ; and that , whenever a writer shall have occasion to refer to the actions of such military personages as Alexander , Caesar , and Napoleon , he
We do not deny the right of the platform to comment on the press , any more than we deny the right of the press to comment on the platform . But we do say that a speaker on the platform , availing himself of the peculiar circumstances of the platform , has no right to denounce offhand a piece of purely literary judgment , any more than a writer for the press has a right to insist that the laws of exact literature shall regulate the
perorashall be required to copy the style of certain profoundly-cultured individuals whom we could name , and call them not great men , but " wholesale butchers , " * ' monsters in human shape / ' or something equally true and elegant ! Such , we affirm , is the consequence of the maxim of agitation virtually propounded by Mr . Cobden , if that maxim is fairly carried out . Let us not be misunderstood .
tions of the platform . Might we , with all respect , tender Mr . Cobden a hint ? If he is resolved upon attacking the mode of thinking that seems so distasteful to him , would it not be best once for all to attack its highest speculative representatives ? Is it absolutely necessary to the success of his new method ot agitation that the attack should only be made where the noxious opinions are connected with something socially tangible and commercially vulnerable ? If not , did Mr . Cobden ever hear of that much talked-of
philosopher—M . Auguste Comte ? Does he know that that philosopher of progress , whom some account as among the best and most scientific minds in Europe , treats the necessary and beneficial influence of war and slavery in the past as an axiom indubitable to an intellect trained to scientific thought , and scouts the
Nonintervention nostrum as an old critical crotchet that has nearly served its day ? Here is a fountain-head of vicious speculation : why not attack it ? Or , not to go out of our own country , are there not similar delinquents here—Mr . Carlyle , Mr . Savage Landor , with many others that we could name ? Why not attack them ? Mr . Cobden is not the man , surely , to be afraid of catching a Tartar !
Moreover , does not this mode of serving peace look very iike war ? Some people might call it intimidation , and might ask whether this fighting with the tongue is not itself a deviation from the strict " Yea and Nay" principle on which alone an absolute Peace-Movement could found itselfwhether , for example , to name a man with indignant rhetoric at a public meeting is not as distinct
an infliction of pain as to treat him to a sabre-cut ; or whether to assail a man ' s reputation may not sometimes be as great a commercial damage as to send a cannon-shot through his warehouses . We know the reply—the difference between physical force and the moral force of public opinion ! But that is a reply of which a severe logic would make very short work . mode
It is a recent peculiarity in Mr . Cobden ' s of advocating the Peace-Movement that we have been noticing ; we have sain nothing on the Peace-Movement itself . That movement deserves a profound and searching criticism , with a view real'y to bring out what is useful and wise in it . As one of its leaders , Mr . Cobden will , doubtless , accomplish much good . We hope much more , howeverhisservices in
all the country hopesmuch more—from the cause of National Education . It was a matter for thanksgiving in all the churches when Mr . Cobden attached himself to that movement . There is not a man in the country from whom , in various capacities , and especially in this , more noble work is to be expected than from Mr . Cobden ; and one regrets to have occasion to find fault with such a man at all .
Dec. 7, 1850.] Scf>£ &£&&*?? £75
Dec . 7 , 1850 . ] SCf > £ & £ &&*?? £ 75
The Example For England. To Wish What Is...
THE EXAMPLE FOR ENGLAND . To wish what is right , and not to obtain it , is tho condition of weakness . Judging by this rule , wo must pronounce this great country of England to be weaker than some of her " dependencies . " England , with all her great powers and aspirations , allows a weak Whig Ministry to be the measure ot her satisfaction , consenting to take no more than will pass through the puny hands of a Russell or a not
Grey . Canada and the Capo of Good Hope are content with that short measure , butmakestrelr own terms . The history is instructive . Canada desires a constitution of the English model : Ministers hesitate : Canada rebels : Canada obtains a constitution of the English model . In breach of old compacts , repeatedly assailed , but always maintained by the pertinacious energy of the colonist ..-. Lord Grey proposes to send to the Cape of Good Hope a shipful of convicts : the Cape protests Lord Grey Bends the convicts : with great quiet and
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 7, 1850, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_07121850/page/11/
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