Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 25th May 1850, Edition Country of 1, Page 11

Page 11
Page 11
11 of 24

On this page

  • Text (3)
  • Transcript

    • 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.

      Palmerston In His Decline. Palmerston Is...

      sand pounds , for Senhor Pacifico , which would have been equivalent to about £ 6000 for all the claims ; then he filled up the blank for all compensation claims at £ 8500 ( 230 , 000 drachmas ) , having forgotten the " interest" ! This was in lieu of the £ 35 , 000 or £ 40 , 000 which Mr . Wysehad originally demanded , but it exceeded the sum which even Lord Normanby thought just , and that which Mr . Wyse himself had demanded in later negotiations , namely , 180 , 000 drachmas .

      But the greatest success remained to the last . On the 8 th of May Lord Palmerston said— " I think that the convention which we have drawn up here will arrive at Athens before anything has been done to prevent its being put into execution . Things will not go on so quickly as General de la Hitte seems to think . * * * * All will be arranged . " But it became known in Paris on the 9 th of May that on the 28 th of April the courier had not arrived , coercive measures had been resumed , and the Greek Government had yielded .

      The British envoy in Greece , as M . de la Hitte says , " positively knew that an arrangement had been nearly concluded between the Cabinets of London and Paris , " and M . Gros had not " broken off ' the negotiations , but had merely suspended them , awaiting the arrival of further instructions . Lord Palmerston , however , chose to say that M . Gros had " broken off" the negotiations , and that the British Government must maintain the ultimatum which Mr . Wyse had proposed and the

      Greek Government had accepted . The negotiations between Lord Palmerston and M . Drouyn de Lhuys terminated in two long interviews on the 14 th and 15 th of May , lasting five and three hours respectively . The British Minister repeated that it was M . Gros who had broken off the negotiations , and that that gentleman had confounded an " arbitration" with " good offices . " On the 15 th of May M . Drouyn de Lhuys left London , recalled by his own Government .

      Looking back upon this long campaign of words and notes , we see the elderly Viscount busied in a sort of caricature of his former achievements : it is the manner of old , but life and substance are wanting . He is risking the embroilment of Europe to promote the higgling of a Portuguese Jew and a long-headed Scotchman . He lays elaborate plans to trap the French negotiator , and succeeds because the utter frivolity of his object must have escaped

      suspicion . The Minister of England engages himself for days in devices by which he seems to be forwarding an agreement with our neighbouring ally , while he is preparing verbal quibbles through which to defeat the whole negotiation . He succeeds in reserving for himself a loophole to make an attack on the islands of Cervi and Sapienza , some day , and to get up a new quarrel with France . He succeeds in making M . Drouyn de Lhuys

      believe that he has sent off certain instructions to Mr . Wyse and Admiral Parker , whereas it appears that he has sent other instructions . He manages to despatch his own courier too late , a cunning device which seems to have cost no end of trouble and equivocation ; he manages , by repeated shufflings , to record a claim on behalf of the Portuguese Jew and others more exorbitant than that backed by his own representative in Paris or Athens ; he manages to convert a squabble with the paltry

      Government of Greece into a grave rupture between the Governments of France and England about nothing . The objects which he proposes to himself are utterly vague ; the means by which he succeeds are such as could not have been suspected in a gentleman , nay , in a straightforward honest man of whatsoever class , or even , perhaps , in a diplomatist . His successes are of a kind to be valueless

      either to a statesman or a gentleman ; his victory is a defeat for himself , an embarrassment to his colleagues , a disgrace to his country . Even the parts which he has before exhibited—the smartness of repartee , the capacity for placing his antagonist in an absurd or difficult position—are wanting throughout the negotiation . The closeness of reasoning remains with M . de la Hitte , the dignity with M . Drouyn de Lhuys . Lord Palmerston cuts the figure of a jockey in the witness-box during the trial of a horse-warranty case ; his tricks are only tricks , his repartees are not smart .

      The exhibition is deplorable . One seeks a solulimi in the Peerage— " Born in 1784 . " There it is . The Viscount is getting old . Not that his years are full , —but he has expended life with an open hand . Sooth to say , it is not only in the Foreign Department that a certain senility reigns over us . We must admit that we are under a Government of the

      past . In this year of grace 1850 , we are still under a " Reform Bill" Cabinet . Our official statesmen are , at least * elderly ; the very boys amongst them are some forty-eight years of age . If not old , they are used up . Earl Grey for example , is only fortyeight : he once had a liberal and colonial reputation ; but he came to the end of it . years ago , and is now retained in office by virtue of a reminiscence . Sir George Grey is in as good keeping as any of them , and he is only fifty-one . Lord Carlisle is still the youth of 1830 , and still preserves the freshness of his Reform Bill Liberalisms . Sir

      Charles Wood at fifty , exhibits signs of intellectual ossification . Lord John Russell is only fifty-eight , but though he has tried his hand at Suffrage Bills , and Jew Bills , and other measures to disprove his " finality , " he cannot get beyond Reform or Test and Corporation Repeal . Perhaps it was lack of youth which made him neglect to rise from his seat when the Protectionist Deputation waited upon him : the uncharitable farmers imputed it to Bedford pride or Russell rudeness . Lord Lansdowne consented the other night to be the mouthpiece among the Peers , of these Palmerstonian equivocations respecting Greece , but Lord

      Lansdowne is now seventy—not what he has been When we complain that there is no movement in public affairs , we are too apt to forget that we are under a clique of such old boys ; men not always old by the calendar , but all of them exhausted in the contests of the last generation . Hence is it that in a day when social reform is becoming a subject of general discussion , we have at home nothing better going forward with official cognizance than a mockery of the Reform Bill agitations , and that after the revolutions of 1848 , the conduct of our foreign affairs has shrunk to an anile burlesque on the intrigues of 1840 .

      May 25, 1850.] &&£%?&&£?«. 203

      May 25 , 1850 . ] && £% ?&& £ ?« . 203

      Sentiment In Politics. A Correspondent P...

      SENTIMENT IN POLITICS . A correspondent protesting last week against an opinion we proclaimed respecting Malthusianism , hurled at our heads the crushing sarcasm of " sentimentalism . " We accept the sarcasm with unmitigated serenity . We are sentimentalists . We proclaimed it in our prospectus ; and have done our utmost in every number of the Leader to make it evident that our grand object is to restore if possible heart-feeling to politics—to rouse men to generous motives better worthy of their better

      natures than the miserable traffickings and subterfuges which now pass current under that name . Nothing great was ever yet done by a man or a nation that had not some sentiment lying at the bottom of it . Masses of men are seldom moved except by a sentiment . And when we reflect how large a proportion of our actions depends upon sentiment , and see how wretchedly imperfect that

      philosophy must be which does not take the sentiments into account , we must see the necessity for including the sentiments in our politics . Politics is but the science of human nature in masses : it is social science , and must be subordinate to the laws which regulate men . Now , if you cannot get man ' s life without a large proportion of sentiment , how are you to get the nation ' s life without it ?

      But let us understand each other . There is sentimentalism which is absurd and imbecile ; there is sentimentalism which is powerful and exalted . There is the sentimentalism of the German student , who , with flowing ringlets and imperfect teeth , calls upon the Universe as " his bride "; there is the sentimentalism conveyed in capricious syntax and very hard words in " the last new novel . " But , we presume our stern correspondent does not mean to accuse the Leader of that species of imbecility .

      He protests against our " making feeling or moral sense the test of truth—the criterion of a law of nature . " If he means that we are not to solve problems in mathematics by any Theory of the Moral Sentiments , nor to arrest the course of the planets by a passionate tirade full of points of exclamation , we perfectly concur in the protest ; but if he means that we are not to bring all political or social questions to a moral test , we tell him he has mistaken our aim . Nothing that our moral sense revolts against shall have our political approbation . Call it sentimentalism if you will ; we are

      not to be turned a » i ( le by an epithet . To take the case in point . We object to the theory of Malthus on moral grounds : we call it a social blasphemy , and as such refuse to accept it . Whereupon we are told that we make moral sense the criterion of a law of nature . Not so . In Malthus there arc two distinct points—a moral point , and an hypothesis purporting to be a law of

      nature . Now , against the conclusion drawn from that hypothesis , namely , that of " preventive checks , " whether moral or physical—we oppose the unequivocal verdict of our most powerful feelings which are outraged by such a conclusion . We say it is revolting , therefore untrue . We are aware of the evils of over-crowded population ( there is no over population yet ) and do not see any immediate issue from those evils ; but the issue offered by the Malthusians we indignantly reject as immoral . Respecting the second point , or that which Malthus asserts to be a law of nature .

      namely , that human beings multiply m a geometrical ratio , while food only multiplies in an arithmetical ratio , our answer is—the assertion is false . It has been accepted as a truth even by those who most rebelled against its consequences . It has been shown , as we shall shortly explain , that it has been accepted too hastily , and that it is not true . Meanwhile we may say : It is not the law of nature we oppose on moral grounds , but the political theory founded on that hypothetical law ; and to tell us that the application of a moral test to such questions is sentimentalism , is only giving a vague name to our very distinct purpose .

      Emigration And " Surplus Labour." Among ...

      EMIGRATION AND " SURPLUS LABOUR . " Among the innumerable blue-books which are regularly furnished by Parliament for the bewilderment of rural Members and the edification of painstaking statists , we have seldom met with one more interesting and suggestive than the annual report of the Colonial Land and Emigration

      Commissioners . Few of us who hear or read can repel a deep interest in the great many-shaped condition of the emigration question ; we note with solicitude the ebb and flow of our population , even use not blunting our interest ; nor can we resist the sense of increasing astonishment , year by year , as this annual report recounts the marvellous rate at which the human tide

      continues flowing towards America and our Australian colonies . Had Malthus been alive in 1850 he would have required to modify his gloomy conclusion that emigration is unable to provide an adequate remedy for the evils arising from a crowded state of the labour market . At the time when he made the last corrections in his Essay on Population , the annual emigration from Great Britain and Ireland did not exceed 20 , 000 . Last

      year it amounted to fifteen times that number , the total emigration having reached 299 , 498 persons in 1849 . This is the largest number which has ever yet left the United Kingdom in one year , although 1847 and 1848 were certainly both very remarkable years compared with any previous period . The aggregate emigration for the last three years amounted to 805 , 857 , which is not very far short of the ordinary increase of population in the United Kingdom .

      In the course of some remarks on the enormous emigration of the last three years , the Daily News expresses its satisfaction at the removal of so vast a number of the unemployed population , and ventures to doubt whether the drain has not been great enough , so far as Great Britain is concerned : — " It does not appear , " says our contemporary , " that any increased stimulus to emigration from England and Scotland is at present desirable . The public mind has been familiarized with the idea of emigrating ; there exists rather a predisposition to emigrate in considerable numbers , and to this healthy , spontaneous impulse we may safely leave the task of carrying off our redundant population . "

      Now , we should like to know what class of the community the writer of this article was thinking of when he concluded , that no increased stimulus to emigration is desirable ? Has he forgotten the condition of the great bulk of the agricultural population , who are mere day labourers , having no land they can call their own , and who are unable to earn more than 8 s . or 9 s . a week , simply because the supply of labour in that department is far beyond the demand ? Has he not heard of the

      30 , 000 needlewomen in London who are etriving to obtain a living , but cannot , because the excessive competition for work has reduced wages far below the starvation point ? Is he not aware that there are still some 250 , 000 handloom weavers in this island , the greater number of whom can with the utmost difficulty earn as much as will keep soul and body together ? Surely all these , with the four or five millions dependent upon them , must be anxious to Bee emigration going ° n at a still greater rate than it has yet done . Nor is it merely the working classes , who are too numerous to obtain con-

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), May 25, 1850, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_25051850/page/11/