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Leader (1850-1860), 22nd March 1851, Edition Town of 1, Page 270

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      Untitled Article

      staying waters . So it is now in our sea of politics . It is absolute suspension . Men ' s minds are incapable of forming definite ideas . They sit and wait the next commotion ; and , from the unaccountable stillness now , they begin to fear that something is coming which will be very formidable . The Times , hazarding an oracularly inexplicit conjecture , hints a new free trade struggle against protectionist reaction : —

      WHAT MEN ARE THINKING OF . As you scud along a stormy sea , watching the wild regularity of the stormy waters , you will note how as one raging mountain chain has passed , before the next comes up , you seem to have fallen into a peaceful valley of still waters : you have fallen below the level of the tearing wind ; fix your eyes on the surface by the side of the vessel , and you shall see nothing but little mimic billows , which seem to chafe in sport ; the exhausted ship sinks to repose . But look closer into the waters , and you shall see the same boiling seething of the mass ; the hiss and jangle of the little mimic waves within the trough is about to be again overwhelmed by the roar already rising from the next raging mountain as it comes heavily but not slowly on ; and the vessel does but steady before the next stunning thunderclap of the

      never" Some of the dangers with which we were threatened have turned out mere bugbears . The place of the Anti-Corn Law League has been supplied by a very gentle brood of Titans , in the shape of Financial Reformers , Educationists , and some special agitations against a tax or two . Cobden , instead of presiding over a Convention and proscribing country gentlemen by the dozen , is making himself useful at the Exhibition . Mr . Milner Gibson prefers yachting to the Admiralty . Mr . Bright shows no sign of a Benjamin Franklin . Mr . W . J . Fox confines himself to the delivery of set speeches of a more ideal than practical character . Some of the once formidable race have almost disappeared . Nobody can

      say we are nearer a democracy than we were six years ago , if so near . On the other hand , after a long struggle , the hottest Protee'ionists are at , hist , cooling , and the Corn Laws arc beginning to he spoken of with pious regret . But meanwhile how fares the party itself in charge of Free Trade ? Does it hold well together ? Does it increase in numbers and credit ? If Lord John Russell and his friends had to look on while another body of statesmen were winning the battle of Free Trade , they have at least been since allowed the opportunity of consolidating the conquest . In the slang of the day , a large * political capital' fell into their hands , to be cmployed for the good of their country , and the Htren » thening of their cause . Free Trade was to be secured by u . proper use of its prestige and results , just as the conquerors of a country can easily hold it while the

      memory of the deed is still fresh in the minds of the conquered . Is the cause of liberal government now stronger for its recent , successes , and for the heavy blow and great , discouragement given the classes and monopolies ? The question presses for a reply . * * * * FiVerybody who waits on Providence , believes the approaching fall of the Ministry to be the first step in a series of dispensation !) that in to lead him to power . The vultures arc hovering over the prey . JO very day has its omen . Defeat * , vacillations , delays , complaints , and forebodings oucccvd one another with disastrous fre - quency . AfFairs at last have come to that pass that the most secure and sanguine of Free traders are saying , that the battle of Free Trade will have to be fought over again , with all itH ill-blood , ith nocinl perils , i (« questionable instrument ! * , it parasitical agitations , itu cost of money , of temper , of character , and of time . "

      There in much truth in these adumbrations , but not all the truth : there is the half that belongs to the past , but not that that belongs to the future . Jt in true that the gross mismanagement of the Freotrade party , in suffering this unconsolidatcd and unfinished fabric to remain under the incompetent , guard of the Whigs—who never really cared for it—may renew a struggle for its defence , a wasteful contest far worse than the last in every characteristic ; it in true that the Protectionists desire to l ) e active ; but the public at largo feels that Prolection can neve ? ' be restored . Hut it also feels , that the main body and substance of Free trade is practically conquered already , so that any ulterior measures are mure appendixes and supplementH ;

      and no primary or vital interest is felt about supplementary matters . Even if the next struggle is to be opened by the Freetraders and Protectionists , enemies of days of yore , it will not end there ; but the real struggle will be about something else . About what ? Who shall say ? We may only fish a conjecture out of the ideas now floating in men ' s minds . What , then , are men thinking of ? They are thinking that this bigot hubbub about Popes at Rome and Anti-Popes in Downing-street , or elsewhere , must soon pass away ; that little Wood Budgets are but dwarf phantoms of a sickly stagnant night ; that little suffrage questions have been spoiled ; that the great "labour question " will soon demand some settlement ; so likewise will taxation—and national debt—and land .

      Ay , land . In this lull , caused by the idleness of political leaders , men are beginning to go to the bottom of things ; and we are beginning to ask each other whether all this ado about nothing touches what we really want—whether , being so rich , we must also be so poor—being so wise , also so utterly unwise in all our plans—being so powerful , also so helpless that we must open our mouths

      and awaitthe spontaneous bounties of a John Russell . Until the time of Charles the First , the bulk of the national expenditure was derived from thelandholders , and from certain estates which the King kept in his own hands—the land being held on condition of military service , then commuted into money payments . The land was also liable for poor-rates , in lieu of the confiscations of Church revenue ; of which a third had been devoted to the poor .

      Our taxation system—is that the construction of deliberate and final wisdom ? It was the Westminster Parliament that first voted an excise upon beer , wine , &c . ; and Oxford imitated the example . Pryme said it would be necessary " to use the people to it . " Thus the burden was transferred to the shoulders of the working classes . In 1775 , poorrates amounted to £ 1 , 496 , 906 ; taxes amounted to £ 8 , 000 , 000 . In 1833 , poor-rates amounted to £ 6 , 700 , 000 ; taxes to some £ 80 , 000 , 000 . Yet poorrates , not taxes , were declared to be the ruin of the agricultural interest ! The Malthusian workhouse

      test was then applied : it reduced wages and increased competition , while rent had doubled , and in some instances quadrupled . Thus our taxation system has been made to throw the burden off those who originally bore it , and still decreed it ; to increase the pressure upon the poor ; to make the poor work harder and be fewer—to exhaust their labour , extract their earnings , and leave to them not even the common solaces of humanity . These are broad facts , disguise them as you rnay by " details" and " practical" pedantries ; and they are dangerous facts—even to those who think they profit by them . For injustice never yet was profitable .

      But how is it that the poor , the People , are thus put upon ? They are not represented . Rent and capital are . Free trade saved us from one insurrection , —a food insurrection ; but it has not cured the essential political injustice- — -the unworkable construction of the political machine . In America representatives and direct taxes are apportioned according to numbers , and the census , taken every ten years , is a useful engine in that constant readjustment : with us the census is a mere " statistical" inquisition , regarded by many as a costly impertinence , without fruit or use . With us aristocratic power is suffering its inheritance to slip from

      it to the money power . Our representative system was purged of " rotten" boroughs , but is deliberately and intentionally kept full of scandals . Fight insignificant boroughs , Bridgnort . Ii , Iloniton , Uarwich , Thet , ford , TotiK \ s , Stafford , Richmond ( inYorkshire ) , and Lymington , with an aggregate population of 40 , 000 , return sixteen members ; London and its metropolitan districts , with more than two millions of population , centre of the national intelligence , return the same number—sixteen : in the eye of our Parliamentary system makers one borouglmionger of these favoured sites is worth fifty Londoners !

      Men are thinking of these things—of tho unavowed but , slow revolution which has converted land / rm / . v into Xmuhnmiers ; which han shifted public taxes from property that has grown ( stronger to people , who are kept weak and poor , are told to be few , and are not , allowed to Khans in the government , though we boast that representation iscocxtcnniv e with taxation . Men are now thinking of these things as they think in the quiet of a night between the busy day « : but tho day for active , exertion is again dawning , and men are about to rise with the will that the thoughts of tins night shall become the deeds of the morrow .

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      POPE ASHLEY . " I am the Truth , you are Falsehood "—such is the assertion of the sectarian dogmatist , call him Catholic or Protestant . For all his Protestantism Lord Ashley is a Pope , minus tiara and subjects ! He advocates a bill to restore penalties against the names of Roman , Catholic offices , and he does so on behalf of ** the civil and religious liberties of half mankind" ! He stands by his own " immortal faith / * and calls upon the House , expressly , "to repudiate and abhor " the ecclesiastical procedure of the Roman Catholics . Cardinal Wiseman ' s pastoral makes Lord Ashley "Tjethink himself of the power of which it is said that it had two horns like a lamb , but spake as a dragon . " Thus confident in his own truth , Pope Ashley , like another Peter the Hermit , sounds the trumpet to a religious war : Austria is panting to attack Sardinia ; another de Montfort is preparing to coerce the Waldenses ; Rome is assailing England ; but [ Protestant ] Ireland is rising " like a giant refreshed with wine , " and the People of England knows its adversary— " that which has baffled monarchs , and withstood the force of public opinion for successive generations . " An awkward admission !

      Lord Ashley also admits that Lord John ' s bill will be inadequate to cope with that foe ; but does he not see that it will strengthen the foe ? And why talk of the " foe , " which includes one-third of our fellow subjects ? Professedly Lord Ashley stands up for private judgment : but would he really concede it—would he defend the private judgment which doubted any point of doctrine that he considers essential ? No , Pope Ashley is not infallible : he stands up for private judgment ; but what he illustrates with so much animation is the usual substitute—public want of judgment .

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      GERMANY—RETROSPECTS AND PROSPECTS . German affairs are of a nature to try the temper of earnest and impatient lookers on . It is now three years since we heard that the Germans were determined to have a country , a federation , an empire—a united fatherland . Germany has not been conquered—it has had no foreign enemy to contend with ; and yet it is further from its object than it was at the outset .

      There was once a Germany : a mighty nation with a Monarch at the head of it . The Monarchy was an elective one : the constitution complicate , gothic , baroque . The right of election was exercised by a number of Princes , who soon became too strong for their Sovereign ; some of whom soon attained utter independence , and raised themselves into rival potentates . The electors had , then , destroyed the unity of

      Germany , and it was solely by their subjugation , by bowing them to the supremacy of a cential power , that German unity could be reestablished . It mattered not whether the Monarchy should be again elective or rather hereditary . Little did it matter whether the country should be constituted into an empire or a commonwealth . This only was very clear , that unity , or even union , demanded the submission of all powers to one supreme authority .

      ^ The Germans understood it in March , 1848 . They rose and put their foot—a clumsy foot , proverbially—on the neck of their Princes . They might have crushed—they spared them . The Princes were one with the People : ready to abdicate as much of their power as might interfere with the paramount interests of the common country . All members having been bowed down to acknowledge a head , it only remained to determine where was the head ?

      It was for the people to decides that for its representative , the National Assembly . Tho Assembly appointed an executive power , and , partial to monarchical institutions , it resolved in favour of an . empire , and elected an imperial vicar . There was no great harm ; there was , perhaps , great wisdom in all that . There is , we think , but little Republicanism in Germany , and the title of empire in not without the prestige of great historical associations . The principle being established , difficulties arose as to the choice of a person . The candidates , according to all tho laws of common sense , could only bo three—the Prince of Lippo Detmold , the Kmperor of Austria , or the King of Prussia . Either the weakest and humblest of tho crowned heads , to be backed by all tho omnipotence of popular will , or else one of those two powerful monarches who had

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      There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creationineternalprogress . —Dr . Arnold .

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      SATURDAY , MARCH 22 , 1851 .

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      270 8 T !)^! t £ a&er * [ Saturday

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), March 22, 1851, page 270, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1875/page/10/