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be realized by most people . If we wish to promote saving habits among the working class , we must point out some mode of investment which , while perfectly safe , is at the same time congenial to their desires , or captivating to the imagination . Such an investment is to be found in the land , and , therefore , our great aim shouldbe to remove every obstacle to the easy and safe investment of their savings in that direction . On this branch of the subject we have many things to say ; but must reserve them till next week .
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THE HAYNATJ AFFAIR . English feeling of the right sort has proved too strong for General Haynau ; insomuch that he has not only had to run for it in Messrs . Barclay and Perkins ' s brewery , but has even been obliged to decamp from England . It is true that the good old English feeling appears to centre rather among
the brewers of Bankside than among the polite circles which hang about the offices of Government and the quasi-official press ; but it proved to be not at all confined to brewers . Although a fastidious shudder at Lynch law or mob justice shook some polite frames in the West-end , on the whole the brewers found a very hearty response , not only in the press but in society at large .
Some of the devices to which the opponents of the brewers have resorted may pursue General Haynau as a sort of back-handed libels flung after him by his friends . Some have supposed , for example , that the attack was organized beforehand ; which , it it had been true , might have exposed to the General the pretence of the officials , that " England" tolerates the tyrannical excesses of Austria . But even the Austrian General must know how extravagant is the supposition : not only was his own visit prepared in a manner that could scarcely reach the public , but , in fact , such an assault as that made on him would have
been defeated by any conspiracy to get it up . The conspiracy would have been discovered , and the very participators would have been afraid to act with so much vigour as they did in their extemporaneous sally . Again , some of General Haynau ' s friends have extenuated his conduct on the score that he was nut personally responsible for the performance of his official duties . They even say that he was too lenient for his Government , and that his
leniency provoked his exile . Not a shadow of proof is advanced in support of this assertion ; but , if it were true , if General Haynau has really sufficient understanding and heart to perceive the atrocity of which Austrian officers have been guilty , officers , too , under his general command , how base must have been his subserviency to so criminal a system . We know , indeed , that the most degraded forms of cruelty will find their defenders ; and we have heard even of Englishmen wearing the Austrian Eagle who have vindicated the flogging of women as " necessary . " Men of this
3 tamp may find their compeers among a degenerate aristocracy , or among polite writers for distinguished journals , but certainly they are new types Df their countrymen : and , in spite of the written apologies which echo their extenuations in columns that reflect the sentiments of Downing-street or Palace-yard , we believe that the utterance of such feelings in any mixed circle of Englishmen would subject the speaker to treatment almost as rude as that experienced by General Haynau among the brewers . But General Haynau will perceive from this sort of exoneration how base his conduct must
be thought in England , since the only way of releasing him is by separating him from his own military career . " How , " it may be asked , " if he is to be relieved from responsibility for the customs of the Austrian army , can he claim as his the victories of that army ? How , if he could feel the criminal and degenerate character of the Austrian Holdiery , could he retain a commission in an army so debased ? " The apologists clinch the nail of his accusation .
With a characteristic audacity the Leading Journal carries its defence so far as to apologize even for the admitted fact of the flogging : the afterdinner bravado of the Anglo-Austrian adventurer is deliberately printed in the leading columns of the Times ! The argument of the Times is twofold : first , that the Hungarian insurgents were as cruel as the Austrians , since they put a number of persons to death j secondly , that flogging is not oo very serious a calamity after all . The Times publishes a list of 407 capital punishments inflicted by the Hungarian insurgents , without reckoning general massacres . What then ? Grant that the
Hungarian insurgents were cold-blooded barbarians , and say if that is to vindicate the General of commissioned buccaneers . But , with all its elaborate research , the Times cannot match the refined cruelty of the Austrians : it endeavours to make up for quintessential quality in that matter by arithmetical quantity : — " As a mere matter of arithmetic it is plain that the score of Hungarian homicides runs up to a much higher figure than the Austrian , and that , if the Austrian authorities punished one woman with the lash , that woman's
own confederates had previously put several female loyalists to death , besides more heinous atrocities . As to the everlasting story of the woman who was flogged under Marshal Haynau ' s command , of course it is painful enough ; but , after all , there is much less substantial inhumanity in flogging a woman for rebellion than in hanging or shooting a woman for her loyalty , as the Hungarians did . Of the two we would rather be flogged than hung , and we should imagine there are few women who would not be glad to save their necks at the expense of their shoulders . "
The Times seems to think that the sting of the horror lies in the amount of suffering , and does not feel the horror that the indignity to the sufferer may be worse than death , or that the crime of the man who exposes a woman to public flagellation may be worse than that of the murderer . According to this reasoning Virginius was a more abandoned character than Appius Claudius . It is precisely the converse of Pauline Bonaparte ' s naive remark when she was asked by a lady if she did not feel very uncomfortable in sitting naked as a model for a painter , — " Oh , no , " she answered , " there was a fire in the room . "
There is some complaint that the brewers broke the laws of fair play , and were guilty of cowardice in setting upon one man . English crowds are not addicted to cowardice , and they have been remarkable for vindicating fair play ; but there is a manifest reason for their neglect of the ordinary law in this case . There are offences which so outrage the code of manliness that the offender is , ipso facto , outlawed from the privileges of that code . Woman-flogging , or misprision of womanflogging , comes within that outlaw category .
Clever journalists and polite gentlemen may tolerate the custom of the country to which Haynau conformed ex-officio , and may find the rough indignation of the English mob very intolerable ; but it certainly appears that the bent of public feeling is wholly against them . The history of the affair with the brewers may be pregnant with instruction for foreign countries . There is a sort of poetical justice in it from first to last . The General , who had ridden rough-shod over Hungary , who found official welcome in this country ,
and nothing worse than a half-bantering allusion at the Peace Congress , found in London his own name a pillory . He is obliged to rush from the English public . By a romantic retribution , the General of woman-floggers takes refuge with a woman , and the scourge of Hungary is glad to be concealed in the forgotten room of an English landlady . The attempt to get up a little indignation on his behalf is drowned in the burst of more genuine sympathy with the brewers . Baron de Rothschild disavows
the office ascribed to him of having introduced the General to the brewers . Messrs . Barclay and Perkins , who have been described as calling their men to account , have , no doubt , found that the vat has its duties as well as its rights . They disclaim any such intention , and strike the General ' s name off their books in deference to the English feeling which regards the name of the Austrian conqueror as a disgrace to the visiting-book of an English brewery . Finally , the ruler of armies thinks it wise to evade altogether , and he does not emerge from the obscurity which he had sought until we hear of him at Ostend .
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we cannot learn that the grievance is so very heinous . To separate the several questions , which are rather confounded by these indiscriminate censors It may be very foolish to vamp up an occasion for using the marble arch merely because it exists ; but that is an old foible . There was the Wellington statue , wantonly created by decree of a dilettante subscription , and when it was called into being the official mind felt as much bound to provide for it as Frankenstein for the monster which
A GAR DE N , AN ARCH , A GUESS . A good deal of censure is cast upon Government , — in the subjunctive mood , —on the subject of a presumed encroachment in the park . Now , nothing is worse for the vindication of popular rights than a waste of suspicion or censure . Pour upon a minister a flood of unmerited reprobation , and he , emerging innocent , will take such credit for injured
virtue , that it shall carry him safely through half a dozen veritable atrocities . A number of independent Gracchi are eloquent in the papers about the inroad on the public in St . James ' Park , because an ornamental garden is to be made ; and it is a further grievance that the marble arch is to be provided for as " grand entrance" to said garden ; indeed , cunning folks do think that the garden was devised for the sake of the arch . As yet , however ,
he had created himself ; so there it is stuck on the triumphal arch at the top of Constitution-hill , perpetually pointing into town , like an ornamental finger-post for the use of strangers . If an arch is thus " upon" at the top of Constitution hill , why should not the public be put upon by an arch at the bottom of that allegorically-named clivity ? And , indifferent as the arch may be , it is quite certain that it cannot look worse than it did against the blank face of old Buckingham barracks ; nay , a green back-ground may improve it , and give it as it were , if we may be allowed the expression , a sort of beauty J
Then there is the question of the " improvement , " which is so described that we can understand nothing about it , except that it will cost nearly £ 27 , 000 ; which should at least indicate an improvement of considerable value — to wit , worth £ 27 , 000 . The lake , we are told , will be decapitated and provided with a new head " in front of the guard-house ; " part of the water will be filled up , and , by a process of guessing which we cannot very well define , we surmise that Buckingham Palace will be fronted and flanked by an ornamental garden to the east and north-east , with
the marble arch spanning the road of the Mall . Whether this is an improvement or not must depend upon the result ; towards an idea of which we have not the faintest data . Unquestionably the great naked space before Buckingham Palace does afford room for improvement ; but also it affords plenty of room for disfigurement . However , we have more faith in British gardening than in British archbuilding or statue-making ; so that on the whole we do incline to expect something better to look upon than the present composition of stony road , ragged tree , and iron railing .
There remains the question of right . Of course everybody has told everybody else , for the thousandth time , of the reply which somebody made to James the First , Queen Anne , or some ^ other crowned old lady , about the cost of enclosing St . James ' s-park , the estimate being fifteen shillings , which was thought too much in those days ! But it appears to us that the impatient censors overlook two facts : first , that the Woods and Forests is a department that really has behaved well to the public since it was endowed with the Morpeth
spirit ; secondly , that the proposed garden is to be a public garden . Now a public garden , properly so called—that is a real flower garden—as distinguished from a park or ornamental enclosure , will be a real gain to the Londoners ; and we are not to presume that the use of the word " public" is an official lie . As we surmise—going upon the safe ground of conjecture , unbiassed by the slightest aid from the published descriptions—the garden
will be open to the public , with " thoroughfares " through it as they now exist ; only the ground will be made more beautiful to look upon . Well , he must beavery stanch patriot indeed thatobjectsto beauty ' s encroaching on the prescriptive domain of ugliness ; and we must confess that we have no such inaccessible virtue . Neither should we regard it as a public wrong if that end of the park were rendered grateful and consoling to the royal eye . We do not see that any constitutional principle is involved , as it is in the maintenance of Beefeaters , on making
Queen Victoria and her household continue to contemplate the solitary sentinel exposed in a desert of aridity , when the red coat may be refreshingly furnished with a ground of complementary green . If sovereign and people can have a mutual pleasure , we do not think that the liberties of Englishmen are endangered by neglecting to grudge it . But , Heaven preserve us ! we are defending the
Whig Ministers ! We / There must be some mistake somewhere ; the sum must have been worked wrong . How can it have happened ? Perhaps the Ministers have been deviating into sense . Or we may ourselves be—we write the word with diffidence—mistaken ! What , after all , if the Woods and Forests are going to gulp a great slice of the park ? But it is not credible : even a Whig department would not cover a robbery so impudent with a He so mean .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 14, 1850, page 588, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1853/page/12/
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