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of Napoleon , Proudhon , " cest le vol . " To retain arms by right of " purchase , " or long possession , is an offence , in the French police law ; to snatch them away is the principle of property . The naivete of this circular is amusing , but what we are noting is the fact , that this adventurer , backed by the more uneducated classes , and by
an immense army , is openly subduing the more intelligent and cultivated classes of France ; those classes which have given to France her character for intellect , science , and art . Under the controul of the inferior classes , the physical , or non-intellectual , is making inroads over the whole world . The two exceptions which we note are these :
The first is republican America , which , by favour of its new aggressive policy , is asserting itself over an extended domain , and is so far carrying a superior intelligence to overcome an inferior intelligence . The second exception consists in the constitutional part of Europe , mainly England , which retains a position of precarious neutrality , menaced by the semi-barbarous invasion which it fears rather than defies .
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THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE , v . THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY . Our remarks of last week on " Italy and the Italian Cause in England , " were , it now appears , singularly apropos . A strange light is thrown upon that Report of the Society of the Friends of Italy from which we extracted passages of deep significance . The Protestant Alliance , a very fierce and futile society of intolerant declaimers , whose platform oratory is identified with Exeter Hall , sounds the alarm , inditing fervent addresses with an apostolical twang , and
appealing to " Protestant Europe" in behalf of the " Word of God , " of which the said society is the well-approved depositary . Let us for a moment examine the logic and the sincerity of these evangelical crusaders . In September , 1852 , they suddenly awoke to the fact , that Italy was once more under the dominion of the Papacy ; in spiritual as well as political bondage—a bondage rendered more dark and cruel by the fitful gleam of freedom that had for a moment scared the oppressor and blessed the land with light .
Our readers have not forgotten the case of the Madiai—a Tuscan gentleman and his wife , of blameless lives , who were lately condemned to the galleys for four years , with hard labour , for reading the Bible and forsaking the ltoman Church . Our readers have not forgotten the case of Mr . Hamilton , the . English schoolmaster and missionary , who was turned houseless upon the streets of Naples , in the teeth of formal treaties . Our readers have not forgotten the cruel expulsion of the English missionaries from Hungary in the depth of winter . We cite these three instances of rocent
occurrence ; many more might be adduced to prove thai ; the Church of . Rome , logically and consistently a persecuting Church , rules supreme over life , law , and conscience ; , throughout the western and southern continent of Europe . In France , the coining Empire has sworn an alliance , offensive and defensive , with the priests . The . Body-guard of the Pope in Italy , it persecutes and harasses Protestants at home . Even . Prussia , half afraid of the .
Reformation , coquets with ( hut admirable principle of authority and submission embodied in the infallible Church . The Papacy , which in IH 4 \) wan : i homeless outcast—rejected by Italy , derided in ( Germany , a Huppliant in France—iH now , by the grace and aid of bayonets , more insolent , more overweening , more imperious than ever . And what ban " . 1 ' rotestaut Kngland , " represented by my Lord ShaR . rsbury and Exeter lla . ll , been doing to uphold the failing cause of " pure and reformed religion r 1 " They have spouted and Htormod . jroin pulpit and platform against the ab ^ trff ^ Bte y ^^ of the " Babylonish Lady ; " they - < inyft " " ^^ mmE ( ry Aiurliain '' letters ; they have htirrfici ^ jlwffiMfr )! jfff > of sectarian bigotry , and 8 trlV ^ i ^^ @Ttt 8 ^ iaM / e dead pains and penalties agaiii ^ t . iw ^ i ^ S ^ J ^ K ' J ' ' ' ^ . Y nuv " insulted ajiUvpr ^ f ^ ejl T ^ dJ § nost sacred mysteries of the ^ ^ f ^ l jp ^ P ^ jFj'H ^ M' ; am ' ' by way of an ex-* ^ ip&J ^ j ^ lai&ft , they have burnt saints in .. » , <;^ c * , J ^ d ^ a ^ fej &itHl cardinals with fagots , on T lffl ^ fc ^ mi £ i [) rafiri ! ig not ho much the Roman ^ wJ ^ " ^ K ' ' ' eontempf / . Andwhat did Uicho same Protestant champions
in ' 48 and ' 49 , when the Papal throne was tottering , and all Italy struggling into the light of a free conscience ? They stigmatised the men on whose banners was inscribed " Abolition of the secular Papacy , " as anarchists ; they connived at , if they did not approve , the restoration of the Papacy , as the representative of " order ; " they discountenanced and calumniated the National Italian party , as revolutionary and subversive ; they never raised hand or voice in favour of that traditional Protestantism
which the England of Cromwell taught to conquer . And what do they propose to do now , these officious champions of the " Word of God" ? To undertake , in the name of Protestant Europe , an excursion to Tuscany , " in order to obtain an audience of the Grand Duke , to implore his clemency and mercy for our fellow-Christians !" But in order to " dispel all suspicion of any political motive , " the deputation is to be polyglott—English , Swiss , Dutch , French , and German . As if the Grand Duke were an independent power ! To this complexion the official Protestantism of England has come ! Meanwhile their unhappy clients , the victims of such advocacy as that of Exeter Hall , are languishing in the midst
of malefactors in the Maremme . Let us ask the noble president of the Protestant Alliance how Aehas behaved towards the Society of the Friends of Italy ? Has he given in his adhesion to that society , or lent the influence of his name and character to its objects ? Now the programme of that society is plain enough for his lordship to understand . "Abolition of the Secular Papacy ; " " Spiritual and National Independence of Italy ; " of Italy , the stronghold of the Papacy . We will tell Lord Shaftesbury in what the impotence of his Protestantism consists . It is not national , but sectarian ; not thorough and direct
of purpose , but " safe" and " expedient ,- " it is afraid of itself , and halts at its own conclusions . It will not stir a step to make Italy free , but it will go on its knees to the Grand Duke of Tuscany in behalf of some occasional victim . The Church of Rome is at least consistent with herself . Claiming to be the absolute possessor of infallible truth , she persecutes heretics even to extermination , and would burn theirbodics to save their souls . When she asks for religious equality , she means equality as a stepping-stone to supremacy . But when my Lord Ashley preaches Protestantism , we ask him what Protestantism he means : the Protestantism that slanders fellow-churchmen
like Dr . Pusey , burns the Pope in effigy , proscribes Itoman Catholic brethren , and devotes to persecution here , and condemnation hereafter , all who claim to think or to worship according to a broader or more ancient faith than his own ? It is not by such Protestantism , nor by such champions that the Papacy is to be encountered —no , nor even the Madiai to be released .
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WELLINGTON AND NAPOLEON . To constitute a great life , it has been said , two things are necessary—great qualities in a man himself , and a great inheritance from the past . Not only must a man have noble faculties ; there must also have been prepared for him , whether by the wisdom or by the blunders of predecessors , a , certain field of circumstances wherein his faculties may have scope . Napoleon was a great man , and hi ' s inheritance from the past was the chaos of the . French . Revolution . Newton was a great man , and his inheritance from the past was the incomplete astronomy of the days of Kepler . Had Napoleon not come in the rear of that immenno social convulsion , his constitutional gifts , extraordinary as they were , would never have led to such splendour of fame ; and had Newton , with all the patience of his mighty mathematics , intervened at any earlier moment in the history of astronomical speculation , his would not have been that superlative honour which consists in having ascertained the highest physical generalization that can be asserted of the universe .
In a dee p sense , possibly , the two things always go together . Possibly , on the one hand , no nobly constituted individual is ever born into the world , but there is already going on the precise series of circumstances to which ho may most hopefully ally himself ; and possibly , on the other hand , every grand train of incidents once set in motion lias the power to draw from the everlasting fount- of nervous energy a soul made exactly to control it . But a rougli everyday philoHophy taken no account of these possibilities ; mid hunee complaints are unceasing ,
that the right men are not found in the riffhf circumstances . All our possible Hampdens live in villages in the Orkneys ; the man who could be the philosopher of the century sells apples in Tottenham-court-road ; and he who could be the Napoleon of England is , by the last census a Spitalfields weaver . " Wellington , " said Napoleon , "owed more to fortune than to himself . " It needs no great boldness to assert that the saying , in the sense in which , it was intended , is not a true one . Fortune did essentially no more for Wellington than
it did for Napoleon himself—it gave him a suitable inheritance , it brought him in contact with his destined opportunity . The inheritance of Napoleon was the French Revolution . The inheritance of Wellington was—Europe at war with Napoleon , and England implicated in that war . The greatness which Wellington achieved was as much the result of his own intrinsic ability applied to the management of his opportunit y , aa
was the greatness of Napoleon . Both brought great faculties to a great task—both fairl y and perseveringly built the edifices of their respective reputations ; and if there is a difference between the two—if the greatness of Wellington and that of Napoleon are , and ever will be , distinct things in the imagination of mankind , —it is not because opportunity did proportionally more for the one , and ability proportionally more for the other ; but because there was a radical difference
between the two cases , jointly and severally , as regards the kind of ability , in possession , and the kind of opportunity given . In the order of historical time , as well as in the order of mental magnificence , Napoleon stands first . His inheritance , as we have said , was the chaos of the French Revolution . Not once in a thousand years is such an opportunity put up to auction . A great and intelligent nation—a nation claiming to be the most civilized on earth , and endowed at least more than any other with the quality of social plasticity , had
broken loose from all the traditions and moorings of the past ; had crushed and guillotined out of itself every element of hereditary rule and almost every principle of ancient authority ; had thrown defiance and disaffection into all the nations round ; and , at length , set upon unanimously by the powers of these nations , was struggling for its right to continue in its course . This man and that man did feats in its behalf—this man and that man aspired to the championship ; and the man who in the end proved himself the most capable was not a Frenchman at all , but an Italian educated in the French service . In this
factitious Frenchman , this Corsican flung into France , there were united in a higher degree than in any other known man , all the qualities required by the situation , or capable of extending and enlarging it—ambition to desire , courag e to attempt , intellect to scheme , skill and activity to execute . The first strategist of his age , he was precisely the man to secure to France her wellearned anarchy , by scattering the armies that were reimporting order , in the Bourbon form oi that article , from the hostile courts of the rest oi The servant of no creed except that
Europe . JiUIUIH'i J 1 1 V > DLl * Uil . 1 V V * *« w » -- * . . , which was implied in his own dogmatic constitution , acknowledging no law except that wJiiu arose from the application of his own judgment and generosity to successive external emerge - cies , he was precisely the man to mdoctrmaw afresh the anarchy which he had saved , and w become the master of a people who would acscoi no new authority except such as might » HHU 0 ! a new- incarnation of phy sical might , bagacio ., highly cultured in many respect * , not im heartedwith instincts alive to wJmt was incv < iimi
, Jieuri . eil , vvil-ii . luai'iuubn . w ' . . HutO able in his own age , and a curious «™ ltiv ?" ,, ;_ , the opinion of posterity , he did not aim at dci h a mere Goth or Attilai but at being the cluua ^ teristic conqueror of a civilized epoch—a " the stamp of Caesar or Charlemagne , but «< centuries more forward . Lastly , g » ited vjiu prolific invention , an ideality which playoa institutions , and cities , and thrones , and «« actual matter and circumstance of human s «« ; ' V
as the ideality of n poet plays with J »« corning fancies , ho was the man to covor i . u for a time at least , with nevr BWial ^""^ tions , and to simplify or comp licate n < «\ r ^ by factitiouH political combinations . ¦» » { quality of tfapoltwm—hh » prod . gous » vc , n ness , his intellectual ^""^^^ lidM ever else wo cliooso to call it—H * s " " ^ right of superiority over all the men oi «
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920 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 25, 1852, page 920, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1953/page/12/
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