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924 SCtK ULt&TSt V* [Saturday,
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" THE GREAT DAY " IN SMITHFIELD. The " g...
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A GLANCE AT BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC. ...
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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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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Truth Of The Anti-Popish Turmoil. Death ...
they not contrast these endless squabbles between the innumerable sects—each the " only genuine , " each to itself the only infallible—with the peace that should reign in the truly Catholic Churchuniversal and eternal ?
924 Sctk Ult&Tst V* [Saturday,
924 SCtK ULt & TSt V * [ Saturday ,
" The Great Day " In Smithfield. The " G...
" THE GREAT DAY " IN SMITHFIELD . The " great day" at Smithfield was a dull day , and the Times , fighting for the outposts of Free Trade , ascribes it to the fact that there were so many beasts ; the warm weather , which makes meat difficult to keep ; and the fat , which people will not eat . " Some of the fault must rest in the graziers themselves , " who bring in so many beasts as to beat down prices . How is it , we may ask , that all this is not regulated by " the higgling of the market" ? How is it that erraziers , regardless of squeamish stomachs ,
have so long persisted in feeding for fat ; until science , not commerce , has detected the beauties of symmetry" ? How is it that they have overstocked the market ? Because there is ho " concert " to regulate graziers and breeders . The higgling of the market affords no guide till the mischief be done : the higgling of mis great market-day , indeed , will teach a bitter lesson to many who have
gone back with beasts instead of gold to pay their rent ; and they may con the lesson for a year ; but it taught them not before ; and they will mistake again . It will enlighten their minds , however , next rent day , upon the reduction humbug . They have need of reductions , working as they do ; but ten or twenty per cent , is not enough ; and they know it . For a very strong feeling of discontent is spreading among them—kept under by a very
remarkable fear . Take a broader view of this non-consumption of meat on the great day—the market-day for the most meat consuming of our national holidays . Protestantism is uncommonly warm , just now , and surely that ought to have encouraged a jolly consumption of beef . And are there not thousands , even of those whose thoughts wander towards beef rather than doctrines , who would relish joints less dainty than the sirloin ? Thousands!—they are millions . Millions are in want of meat . Are there , then , no
agriculturists to supply it ? Why , we see here meat redundant , and know that there are hundreds of thousands of labourers slackly employed . Is there not land enough ? Why , we know that much laud is but half occupied , and much of it starved for want of labour . We are a great nation , ;—but we have land , labour , capital , and consumption in posse ; yet we cannot bring them all together ! There are the elements of " supply , " and the elements of 1 * demand , " and yet we cannot wed them ! We go on trusting to the " higgling of the market , " which cannot even check the nauseous overgrowth of fat ; but we do it " on principle , " for the sake of consistency in political ceconomy .
Our consistency sent home many a farmer with more discontent than cash . And they are beginning to talk—in an undertone , for fear of their bugaboo . Take the first you meet—not a Buckinghamshire man , for he is so close to the headquarters of " Protection" that he is naturally poor and angry . Say it is a Shropshire man . Your Shropshire man is not speculative , and considers his own farming rather " high ; " he has no jealousy against landlordism in the abstract , and yet Shropshire begins to talk uncommonly like John Bright on some points . Shropshire admits that there are farmers who are in fault—that some have too little
capital ; though he , Shropshire , is quite able to manage all the land he has . He perceives that to have too little capital for your land , and too much land for your capital , are convertible terms . But , as he said to us this very week , " When gentlemen talk about capital 1 can ' t understand what they mean by telling a farmer to lay out £ 200 in draining : is not that taking away his capital ? " No , we answered j the gentlemen will tell you that it is a very proper way to invest your money . " What , when I can be turned out of my land for offending a gamekeeper , or the agent—and , let me tell you , it is a much worse thing to offend the agent than the gentleman . Besides , why should I spend my money in something to leave to the gentleman and his heirs for ever ? No ; if he will spend his money in improvements , I will pay him a per nnigeTofit yand gladly , and that is justice ; and e will encrease my agricultural capabilities frtSQuroes or upfcrtiances ?] , I will pay him a per ctfhtage for that . But let me use my money in farming ; o * don ' t tell me that 1 have too little w ^ ital /* f ; V .:-. ; » . / ^ I . ' \ •""*? ' " V , ' ' ,- " •¦ ' , \ » m g-¦ ' >;¦ ¦ ; . \ vV J JT 3
We are reporting an actual conversation , not inventing a tale " founded on fact . " Shropshire perceives that the tenant farmers might obtain better terms if they were to act together . " But our members don't represent us or act for us . Our member is related to the Earl of Powis , and has great influence in the county . Besides , it is not easy to find a gentleman who will be so unpolite as to oppose him . And you know , sir , "—with a something between a wink and a blush— " when a man is a little in arrears with his
rent , it is not likely he will vote so as to displease his landlord . " But Shropshire perceives that it might not be a bad plan , in such cases , to select some borough member already in Parliament , and , repudiating the putative member , invite the other to act for the yeomanry of the county—supplying him with information . " If a few counties did that , really it might have a moral effect . " Then what right—Here the farmer becomes rather obscure , talking round about , feeling his way , and trying to say his say , by answering the questions he awaits rather than by spontaneous declaration .
What right has the landlord to his land if he will not cultivate it , or let it be cultivated to its fullest extent ? As we proceed in this branch of the question , Shropshire grows grave , reserved , hesitating , —he is entering the domains of his bugaboo ; but , suddenly , he bursts again into his native ingenuousness . " If you raise that question would it not be dangerous?— The Labourers?—Are not they only too ready to rise upon that hint and make a disturbance ?"
Perhaps they are ? But what are you afraid of ? Do justice to your labourers . If you tenantfarmers had better tenure , would not you be able to employ more labour , and better employ it ? Could not you make the labourers happier ? Is not their interest yours ? Will you not be stronger with the labourers at your back ? If the tenantfarmers of the country were acting together , and with the labourers , could you not obtain better terms ? Faint heart never won . " Be just , and fear not . "
" A good motto , —a good motto ! But , still , a disturbance !" Can things go on as they are ? Shropshire falls into a brown study . And well he may . He has begun to think—he has long ago begun to feel . He is thinking of that land question as a screw—and it will be a screw . He does not yet see his way ; he still feels Conservative ; but when a man sees his money going , his neighbours sinking , his prospects darkening , the fear of his bugaboo gives way to a more instant fear ; and then the Farmer will begin to talk with the Labourer about the Land .
A Glance At Both Sides Of The Atlantic. ...
A GLANCE AT BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC . The great word in German politics now , it seems , is Dualismus , Dualism . This is the solution of the German question ; this is the grand result of all that gathering of armies and making of enthusiastic speeches that was to throw Europe into convulsions . The adage has been verified—Parturiunt monies , nascetur ridiculus ( Dualismus . " It is all settled now , " say the Prussian diplomatists , rubbing their hands ; " we are to have a Dualismus .
By the Olmiitz treaty , the two minor questionsthose of Hesse and Holstein—have been roughly tinkered up ; and , in the all-important question of the future organization of Germany , Frederick-William has consented to accept a Dualismus . The future system of Germany is to be that of a double constellation ; Prussia in the north , and Austria in the south , are to act as coequals in the supremacy ; and the other states , even if some of the smaller of them shall not be mediatized , are to be compelled , by the necessities of the case , to range themselves , according to their geographical position , their traditions , or their interests , on the one side or on the
other of this balanced antagonism of forces . The details of this scheme of a Dualismus are to be elaborated in the Dresden Conferences , which are to be opened in a few days ; but , as Austria and Prussia have laid their heads together , there is little doubt that the essential notion of the thing will be fully carried out . " Such are the sayings and ex * , pectations of the German diplomatists , who pin their faith to the arrangements of the Olmiitz meeting . Meanwhile there are hostile growls from two quarters . The German Democrats and Reformers , especially those of Prussia , declare that the whole thing is but a device of coalition in the
cause of old Absolutism ; that the Hesse and Holstein businesses have been vilely botched ; that the aspirations of Prussia , and even the King of Prussia ' s blustering claim for a more influential position in Germany , have been given up to a petty sense of expediency ; and that the hope of a suitable organization of the great Germanic section of the European Continent is now farther off than ever . The Governments of the minor German states , on the other hand , and especially those of "Wurtemberg and Bavaria , see in the proposed Dualismus an extinction of their own faculties of independent action .
A wretched settlement of the German controversy this Dualismus certainly is . A true organization of Germany , and such an organization as Democracy , with all its blundering as to the means , would really wish to propose , would be an ] organization prepared according to a full view of the entire condition of the various German Peoples , in their relations to each other , and in their relation collectively to the rest of the world .
Such an organization , were the preliminary enquiry into facts and tendencies dared to its utmost , would probably be a Federal German Republic . In lieu of which , a set of monarchical diplomatists set up this paltry Dualismus , this metaphysical cat ' s-cradle , this balance of the reluctant semi-liberalism of the Prussian King and his Government against the more confirmed immobility of Austrian statesmen . Besides , the word Dualismus is itself a lie . There is no real Dualism
in the case . Russia is at the back of the whole movement ; and though two powers are apparent in the foreground , the issue will show a tremendous unity of regulation and design . Such is the state of affairs at present ; but assuredly , if there is such a thing as a foreseen direction of human tendencies at all , the Democracy of Germany will rise one day ; brush away this cobweb of a Dualismus with all Dualismus-making Czars , Kaisers , Caesars , and other rubbish at the same time ; and arrive at something nearer the proper form of solution in the shape of a Federal German Republic .
How different the state of affairs on the other side of the Atlantic , as revealed in President Fillmore ' s message ! The contrast between the two hemispheres as far as political activity is concerned , is the same as that between Herries of Birrenswork and Joshua Geddes the Quaker , in Scott ' s novel of Redyauntlet . We , on this side of the Atlantic , are doing the despotic , the metaphysical , and the chivalrous—Russia , with its one man lording it like a god over millions , and constituting himself $ ie champion of absolute government and the destroyer
of Representation wherever he can thrust in a diplomat or an army ; Germany , with its Olmutz Treaties and its Dualismuses ; * France , with its Bonapartisms , its Orleanisms , and its Legitimacies ; and England , with its resistances to the aggression of a man with three hats on , living at Rome . On the other side of the Atlantic , again , all is positive , real , plain , and popular . A man of middle age , formerly a draper ' s assistant , and now President of a vast empire—raised to that office , too , not by revolution or daring adventure on his own
part , but by a recognized and legitimate process , which will throw up many more draper ' s assistants to the same height without exciting any remark or marvel—delivers a message to Congress , in which he goes over the chief topics under discussion throughout the field of his Presidency . The style is balrl , simple , and commercial ; the man speaks as the chief magistrate of a country all the citizens of which are his equals ; there is a deference throughout to the popular constituency he addressesshowing itself not only in the absence of
, all such egotisms as filled the King of Prussia ' s speech , but in a general tone which seems to say " I , once a draper ' s assistant , now serving the state in another capacity , give you these as my private opinions on a few topics 5 it is for you , gentlemen , to decide as you please . " And , then , the topics themselves—not diplomatic squabbles and Dualis ~ ? nuses , but railways , possible canals between the Atlantic and the Pacific , the state of agriculture ,
the tariff , and such like ! Here is a People with a business-like politics . The things that their Government is occupied about are the actual and stirring interests in the life of the People governed . True , America , too , has its abstract discussions and generalities—its questions of annexation , and its agitations about slavery and a Dissolution of the Union . But these generalities are real too ; they are not metaphysical cats ' -cradles done by diplomatists for their own amusement ; they are the forthcomings of genuine passions and sentiments
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 21, 1850, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_21121850/page/12/
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