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in the bvarone age . Napoleon did not execute the ideas of other people , did not even employ the resources of an original intellect in carrying on schemes marked out for him in outline ; he was for many years the indefatigable servant of h is own will , and his brain propounded the schemes which his labour embodied . At the height of his career he was in the . position of a man consciously engaged in the work of social invention—consciousl y shaping the course of h istory by the rule of his own conceptions and the bloody agency of battles . How far he did this work well ; how far his conceptions were
sound , how far whimsical , how far retrogressive ; how far history has accepted what he did , how far cast it out—we do not stop to inquire . It is sufficient that we note here what was the form of his greatness . The world , in its grosser moments , hardly knows a higher . To be an inventive social agent , to group men and nations according to new factitious arrangements that shall take root and cease to be factitious , to cut and carve after new patterns the civilized humanity of our planet- —people call this Conquest ; but there may be grand as well as devilish statesmanship in it . What a man that would be who could devise a new factitious arrangement that would benefit Ireland ; and what a man that would be
that could practise this kind of invention over the area of Europe for twelve or twenty years ! But it is rarely in modern times that a man is so placed as to be able to practise this species of activity on a large scale . Napoleon could do it because he had the French Revolution for his inheritance—the accident of a thousand years . But for this , his burning , glowing , inventive soul would have fumed itself to death for ennui , done feats of pamphleteering or engineering , or founded , perhaps , some vague Corsican sultanship in the social detritus of the East . But the man and the opportunity met .
The greatness of Wellington consisted , no one can deny , in his relation to Napoleon . What Wellington might have been out of this relation , it is useless to surmise . What he did in early life in India , and what he has been since Waterloo in the political councils of England , might help us to form a guess ; but the guess would be at best a vain one , and the very element we should be trying to omit would mingle in the formation of it . To England and to the world the greatness of Wellington is summed up
everlastingly in this one fact , that he was the man whom . England employed to break the power of Napoleon , and who succeeded in doing so . Who does not know the facts P Napoleon , the heir of the French Revolution , had reared upon that patrimony such a pile of terrors to all the vested interests , and to many of the dearest rights of Europe , that the nations made war against him , and England joined in this war . Looking about for Ivor instruments , she chose for one of them an officer of Irish aristocratic birth , who had sliown the highest military capacity , and great
administrative talent , during years of service in India . Determining on the Spanish peninsula as the scene ' of most efficient operations against her enemy , she sent this " Sepoy General" thither m a position of responsibility and command . . Rising from step to step , gaining victory after victory , boating , one after another , the ablest generals sent against him , ho stood forth at last as the greatest master in the art of war that tho < HII ( Ml II 51 A i (\\\ u s »/\ i ¦ 1 / 1 nnA / 1 ¦ i ¦ " - ^ - I- ' »¦ rh anirwtiit * tiiwl amod nations could duce—tho saviour and
pro censor of Spain , ana tho pride and hope of England . Meanwhile , partly by these successful a-HHiiults of his on one of . Napoleon ' s favourite political constructions , partly by the operation of other causes nearer the centre , tho Napoleonian I npiro foil suddenly to pieces . As was fitting , ''(! great military commander who had < contribu ted so signally to this result , was nominated \ K nis country as its representative- in those ' ¦"" "uils of potentates on whom it devolved to
rearrange tho system of Europe . But the chained "unjon again broke loose ; the appeal , was again m ' (! to bayonet and cannon ; Wellington and Napoleon mot for thefirfft time on the plains of j' ^ l guirn , and 1 / ho hero of Salamanca and Vittoria )(! <'« une the conqueror of Waterloo . Napoleon Y" onwhod , and Wellington had struck the > lovv . . FrOin that time be lived among . us , like a j "" whose main work wan over , taking part , lovvover , ia our civil affairs as tho first servant j >! U jo English crown , faithfully discharging all ¦ Ia clu f' * 'H in that , capacity , and filling up every ay with tho most punctual attention to routine .
Here , too , the measure of the man -was the measure of the situation . Loyalty , rectitude , strong ^ miraculous , unconquerable sense in accomplishing any end presented $ o him , were the characteristics of Wellington ; Probably no man on the earth ever went through such a quantity of work , and at the same time performed it so uniformly well . The qualities which he wanted in comparison with Napoleon were precisely the qualities which would Jiave been de trop in his circumstances . Not the military chief of a nation which had cut off its sovereign ' s head , and thrown government to the winds , but the highest military servant of a nation in which the whole machinery of government was firmly fixed
according to the plan preferred by his hereditary instincts , that which in Napoleon was a towering personal ambition , was happily reduced in Wellington to the mere honest desire of a military man to gain professional " credit , " by the discharge of his duty . Nor was he troubled with that ideality , that fondness for social invention , that abounding fertility in original conceptions , which might have had the same effect as ambition , and made his individuality uncomfortably large for the limits of his position . Inventive enough , whether as a military man or as an administrator , he could always devise a plan for the occasion , and in hardly any known instance was his plan wrong in relation to its end . But his invention was not of that kind which , embraces
ends as well as means ; it was content to act along the line- of his professional career . Napoleon ' s greatness consisted in great positive achievements and great positive attempts on the social state of Europe ; Wellington ' s in the splendid performance of the professional duty committed to him of undoing these achievements , and preventing the success of these attempts . The greatness of the one , therefore ( and here is the ground of its inferiority ) , consists precisely in its negative relation to that of the other . Napoleon said , " Such and such things shall be ; " Europe and England said , " They shall not ; " and England sent Wellington to make the veto good . The value of what Wellington did is therefore the inverse value of what
he prevented Napoleon from doing . His inheritance from the past was a war against Napoleon , and he brought that war to an end . It is conceivable , indeed , that another man , with the same inheritance , might not have stopped at the same negative result . A man with similar ambition to that of Napoleon , and with certain conceivable peculiarities of position , might have aspired to raise a new fabric on the ruins of the Empire he had crushed . But equally his character and his position restrained Wellington from any such aim . England was no crownlesa kingdom to be seized by a successful general ; and at tho Congress of Vienna the British Duko stood while tho crowned heads sat .
But , if the greatness of Wellington , so far as he is a figure in the history of Europe , must irrevocably take its measure from its negative relation to tho genius of tho man he overcame , ho was , nevertheless our foremost national hero in the present age . And that is enough . If he did the will of England - — if he was but the inflexible arm wherewith wo struck the giant—if he remained within the limit of liis instructions , and added no
factitious element of Jus own—is it for us to complain H Ho is no man whom the fame of Napoleon does not affect , but he is no Englishman who admires not Wellington . The old man who so recently tottered along our streets , gazed at by all , and whoso body the leaden cofllu now enshrouds , what a fifty years' work did ho not do ? Who will ever forget that feeble , venerable mien—that bloodless , grand old face V Side by side , while history lasts , will that face be remembered besidi ) the olive countenance of the ( Jorsiran—narrower , but as linn . . Let all tho nation do honour to the dead , and may his virtues survive ; among us under new forms !
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INKANTICIDK—ITS KKMHDIHK . Wiikn wo Haul that it is a cant of tho day to keep silence upon an evil until a remedy could be HUggOHted , wo by no moans intended to assort , that , a remedy ought not to be sought with all practicable diligence ; but we meant thai , to keep a veil over tho evil is often tantamount to keeping the same veil over the remedy ; Hineo it is the very evil itself , which , in most eases , must furnish the suggestion of the remedy . Audit often happens that , unless we bring the whole ease before us , wo tikumblo on Hupposcd remedies which only tend
to aggravate the evil . Such is eminently the truth with regard to infanticide ; and the failure of checks upon that crime heretofore must , be ascribed to the very partial views upon which legislators have acted . At the present day we see the Morning Chronicle , with undoubted sincerity , advocating a renewed sternness in verdicts and sentences as the check ; though , we believe , such severities would only tend to aggravate the
crime . For a period , increased rigour might strike terror ; but it is too common to confound the effect of new and of old laws , and to imagine that a first panic will continue its influence in resisting steadfast incentives to misdeed . The causes of infanticide are greater than the personal motives of the individuals who become the instruments in the social horror ; and the remedy must be larger in its application than an appeal to the fears of the individual .
Another presumption must be got out of the way . Charles Lamb startled a common-place visitor , by observing that " a thief might be a good man ; " and instances less questionable than that of Rousseau might be cited . " Every swallow does not make a summer , " nor does a single fault , or even crime , prove the badness of the whole nature . Half of the crimes immediately
in question are committed by women , rude rather than bad , who are placed under a conflict of circumstances too strong for them . There is little that can be called absolute " badness" in any well-grown healthy human being . ; and assuredly idiots or creatures of stunted faculties are for the doctor or the lunatic asylum , rather than the hangman .
The proximate causes of infanticide are poverty and shame ; the predisposing causes are , ignorance , natural instinct , and artificial obstacles to the accomplishment of that natural instinct . ] Vfen and women are born with passions which enforce their own dictate , incessantly and remorselessly ; but society , which requires abnegation of that instinct under pain of poverty and disgrace , does not train the human being to know either the necessities of abnegation or its helping guides . A girl is expected to behave like a philosopher , but is left to think like an animal ; and the perverse discipline which
suppresses the natural affections , without supplying the feelings of education , inevitably creates byits permission a special depravity . " You shall not trust to your instincts , " says the police of civilization , " although you are not supplied with the guiding insight of knowledge ; " and infanticide is but one result of the wretched condition between instinct stunted and knowledge withheld . To hang girls for accepting the suggestions of depravity when they are forbidden the suggestions of natural instinct , and are debarred from the suggestions of knowledge , is to punish the pupil for the fault of tho teacher , death being both the fault and the punishment .
The rude impulses of humanity remain in their force , and obedience is rendered to the Jaw at tho wrong end of the process . Children shall not be , says the law : children shall be evoked , sa 3 'H instinct : and the wretched girl , bandied between impulses and prohibitions , neither of which she understands , obeys both—tho instinct first , and the law afterwards . The child is born , but does not live . Hero law has only half done its work . If it is bent on denying infant existence , except cum jrrivilcgio et auatoritatc , it should either educate the instinct out of tho rude girl , or place the uneducated woman in duresse .
Or , if it waives absolute prohibition , and it ) content with counteractives , folding to reprens , but not weighing intolerably upon frailty , then it must shape its counteractives by the nature of the- incentives . To tho condition of parentage two persons are necessary , but tho law has chosen to place the larger load of responsibility on ono alone , and that the one which is the weaker . This was done under the dogmatic , presumption that tho woman ha « the matter in her own hands , and that to make her responsible would be the inowt
effectual mode of prevention . dtfut it is a presumption against natures which has evidently made woman more yielding than man , and has also endowed her with a minor sense of responsibility . The infanticides are a reply to the premimption ; and one of the first steps should bo to fix the responsibility where it i . s due , making the father equally liable for his child as tho mother jh , for tho life of both and to tho whole extent of his means . Such a law would go far to diminish that intolerable at'nao of holplossnogs
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September 25 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 921
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 25, 1852, page 921, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1953/page/13/
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