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Maeoh 10, 1855.] ^HOB 1/ Ii.DBt. 231
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THE BRUSSEL S PAMPHLET. We are condemned...
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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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State Of Popular Feeling.; Tffe Occurren...
< the men of Preston talked of suspending work to enforce their own rules , they were put down . hy a great union of mill-owners . What remedy is there when the mill-owners suspend work to let the glut that they have made drain off ? If it were mere calamity the working class would bear it tranquilly , as they have before ; but it is a calamity brought about by rapacity and recklessness on the part of men who have the means of saving themselves , and leave the real pangs of suffering to the working classes . These are sufficient causes for the dislike which
exists , and the increased taxation brought about by the war has rendered the burden heavier . Nevertheless , the working classes are not against the war . It has been waged against an oppressor , and they are not unwilling to undergo the sacrifices entailed by the outrageous incapacity of the governing classes ; but they resent the burden of a taxation which . seems likely to be rendered vain by a hollow and treacherous peace . .
They talk of a dissolution .: it cannot come too soon for the silent people . If there Tvere a general election , the Parliament elected now would be a War Parliament ; but not a few seats would have altered occupants . There would be more men in the House impatient of a polite war , in which soldiers slay each other by thousands while emperors pass compliments ; . the stifled nationalities would not be forgotten ; and , in short , we should . hear the Commons demanding a real war , with honest officers and an honest finance . The disposition of the English people is seen in the colonies , where they are free to speak out : in the United States , the anti-British element ^ is kept-alive by the emigration ; in Canada , the people are loj'al Tbecause they have their own way ; we have this week rumours of a new war bursting upon a sham peace with barbarians at the Cape ; and in Australia there s a working class insurrection against the foolish taxation of an incapable system of Government . Such are Englishmen when they speak out ; and there are more adhere those came from .
Maeoh 10, 1855.] ^Hob 1/ Ii.Dbt. 231
Maeoh 10 , 1855 . ] ^ HOB 1 / Ii . DBt . 231
The Brussel S Pamphlet. We Are Condemned...
THE BRUSSEL S PAMPHLET . We are condemned to live in da 3 'S of universal mystification .. —Examples , abound ; let us _ take the latest . A pamphlet is published at Brussels " On the Conduct o the War in the East ; The Crimean Expedition ; Memoir addressed to the Government of H . M . the Emperor Napoleon III . By a General Officer . " * This pamphlet is attributed by the Belgian press to Prince Napoleon J ^ rCjme . It reviews the operations of the Allies in Turkey , in Bulgaria , in the Crimea , from , the landing at
Galiipoli in April , 1854 , to the battle of Inkerman on the 5 th of last Novembei ' . It exposes the want of unity in council and command ; the recklessness on one side , the vacillation on the other ; the incapacity and inconsequence on both , which have marked every stage in the progress of an expedition disastrous even in its successes , since its first blind and precipitate adoption at the command of a fatalist , at the desperate instigation of a diseased and dying castaway .
This pamphlet , quoted and commented upon in foreign journals , creates what is called a sensation . The French official organ declares that it is the work of a Russian hand , and threatens proceedings against the publisher before the Belgian tribunals . But wo have not heard of any such proceedings . Prince Natoleon , the putative father of the pamphlet , remains silent , neither acknowledging nor denying a connexion , to which the features of the offspring lend at least an air of probability . After some days , M . Em ; ile de Gibaudin , * London : JcfFa .
who had been charged by accredited rumourwith a sort of obstetric relation to the foundlingin other words , with having produced and put in order the pamphlet—replies with enigmatic brevity to this malignant gossip by a conspicuous paragraph in his journal , La JPresse , to the effect that " he is incapable , as his friends know , of assuming the disguise of a General Officer , even in the Carnival , and that certain positions involve certain responsibilities which are not to be accepted hy halves : "
explanation which may mean nothing , or too much . Just at this time , Mr . Jeffs , the active and enterprising foreign publisher in the Burlington-arcade , is busy getting out a translation of the pamphlet , for which he has already orders enough to exhauBt an edition . Then it is , and not till then , that the Times , which , like other questionable potentates , is for ever ascribing its supremacy to the " national will , " comes out with an article eagerly looked for by gaping worshippers , and made up as usual of an ¦ equal
tissue of sophisms and suppressions , admirably adapted to the intelligence of an honest , clearsighted , independent , and conscientious public . Now , what does the Times tell us about the pamphlet ? £ > oes it disprove the " attributed " authorship , or refute its damaging assertions ? Nothing of the kind . After a windy and wordy flourish about- the benefits of " free discussion , " and a terse sentence of some ten lines or so , garnished with gentilities of expression not usually heard in polite society ,
our great contemporary " prefers to impute the composition to the persons on whom Prince Napoleon has unwisely bestowed his confidence . " It then proceeds to " justify" the " strong expressions" to ^ yhich we have alluded by detecting * two grave errors in the first pages of the pamphlet : one , a transposition of names , Delacour for Delavalelte , and vice versd- — the other , an inexactitude of dates , March where it should have been February . And thereupon mark this astonishing deduction :
" Such being the inaccuracy of this pamphlet on points which are known to everybody , we leave our readers to judge of the value of the statements which rest upon its own authority . " Now it will , we believe , occur to plain understandings , that whereas " points which are known to everybody" are very often inaccurately known , statements of fact by an eyewitness lire c ^
The article proceeds to defend , with gratuitous verbosity , the political limitations of the war , and the necessity and advantage of the Austrian alliance—points noticed incidentally by the pamphlet , and certainly not constituting its chief value to the majority of English readers . In the course of this tirade the Times , however , contrives to insult " the next heir to the imperial throne , and a lieutenant-general lately in the command of a division of the French
army , " by describing his staff as " the rabble he had thought fit to attach to his person . " But it is when the Times arrives at " the grand subject of attack , the Crimean expedition , " that we bog our readers to observe its characteristic veracity . Speaking of the expedition , " We are told , " it says , " it was resisted in the council of war held on the 10 th of August , by the eloquence and profound military judgment of P « in ce Napoleon , supported by Admirals Hamelin and Dundas , " entirely omitting to mention the emphatic resistance of Lord Raglan himself , of General Bosquet , and the Duke of Cambridge . And what
counterevidence does the Times bring * against " these writers" as it somewhat loosely styles the author of the pamphlet ? Absolutely nothing but assertion , qualified by " we believe , " and " we have reason to doubt . " But the crowning assurance is to come : — " At any rate , enough has been said to explain whoso were tho timides avis alluded to on , a subsequent occasion by tho Emperor Napoleon , and it
is not improbable Uaaf tfae ^ whole ^ pampHet i « rarefy to that sarcasm . " Enough has been said ! when in your garbled summary of the only significant pages of the pamphlet , you have omitted the name of the British Commander-in- Chief from the number of those who resisted -the expedition . Referring to the account of the Battle of Alma in the pamphlet , the writer in the Times corrects the mistakes of the " General Officer" by his own assertions . That is all , and with a few more lines of vulgar violence , the article concludes .
Now we ask any reader of the pamphlet , or any reader even of the brief summary we gave of its contents last week , whether the Times has fairly met those points which are of vital interest to English readers of all classes and opinions . In order to put the pith of the pamphlet most clearly and decisively , we will take'the liberty to ask the following questions .
We believe them to be questions to which the British nation would be glad of a satisfactory reply , from whatever source tfaey may proceed . I . Is it true , or is it not , that the expedition to the Crimea was solely and secretly planned hy Louis Napolteon , and by him imposed upon the British Cabinet , and through Marshal St . Atcnatjd upon Lord Raglan ?
II . Is it true that Lord Raglan , Commander-in-Chief of the British army in the East , after expressing , in the council of war held at Varna , insuperable objections to the expedition , yielded those objections to the disordered impatience of Marshal St . Axnaxtd , and gave an affirmattvevote to what Admiral Hamelin had characterised as a " reckless adventure ?>} _ It is really high time that-we should be informed on these two points of the pamphlet , whoever ha its _ author . For the rest , it has
little value in our eyes . We have no respect for its supposed author , who , we think , w ould do well to remember the advice of the founder of his family , and to " wash the dirty linen at home . " But from whatever quarter evidence may come , whether from a Committee of Inquiry , from' a General Officer , or even from a Russian
spy , we take it for what it is worth , and when , as in this case , it happens to confirm with some authority all that has been written , all that Iras been , whispered , and all" that lias -fceen hinted , the correspondence of the" Times itself , the tenor of private letters from the camp , the common report , and the official silence , we do not seek to divert attention from the real
points at issue by insulting a personage whom nobody respects , but we fix attention on those points , and those alone , which concern the lives of our soldiers and the honour of our country . We say that if Lord Raglan , after formally recording his apprehension of all the difficulties and disasters which have pursued our troopa ever since they encamped before Sebastopol , had the inconceivable weakness to sacrifice the
lives of his soldiers , his own reputation , and his country ' s prestige , to the recklessness of a man in the clutches of death , who sought to expiate an infamous career , no words can express too strongly his unfitness for so responsible a command . In sterner days , such a general would not have been simply " recalled : " in ours he is made a field-marshal . We write these words with pain , for we know the high bearing , tho unblemished character , tho generous nature of Lord Raglan ; we only regret that a lieutenant of Wellington should have been compelled to yield his
judgment to a St . Arnaud . Are wo to pay the penalty of an alliance with tho heroes of tho Coupd'Hat ? Already wo know it is tho common jest of the intimates of tho French Emperor , that the alliance of'me Nephew has harmed England Tnore than the
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 10, 1855, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_10031855/page/15/
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