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    <5flp ^J*r ¦ ^s ^t&Vit' SATTJRDAY, JANUARY 6, 1855.

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    - ^tthlir Maim

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    Untitled Article

    TO CORRESPONDENTS . All letters for the Editor should bo addressed to 7 , Welling-Nton-street , Strand ; London . y ^^^^ A ^^^^ v ^^ e nanie and [ address of the writer ; hot . necessiarUy fo ^? ubffiion ° butai a guarantee of bis goodfaith . Communications should *^^^ g £ ^ £ ? &j $ one side of the paper only-. . . If long , it increases the aitflculty of finding space for them . We cannot undertake to returnrejected communications . It is impossible to acknowledge the mass of letters we receive . Their insertion is often delayed , owing to a press of matter ; and when omitted it is frequently from reasonTquite independent of the merits of thecommumca tion . -

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    1855 r 1854 r began with a cry for vengeance from Simrpej ~ sntl ^ closed with ~ disasters 2 before Sebastopol . The past year has % eejt one of boastful . promises and of promises ^ broken ; one of vainglorious "threats , 1 jut of threats unfulfilled ; it leaves us with hopes deferred , and fears not absolutely stultified . The Crystal Palace , emulating its protoype of 1851 , which was consecrated to immortal peace , has still to deserve success , and

    languishes equally familiar and forgotten . Lord John Russell rescued in the last session his scheme ofX > xford Reform , and abandoned , with all the emphasis of childish tears , his scheme of Parliamentary Reform ; the p urification of the civil service is still a project of the future , although the horrible blunders of a resultless campaign prove that the

    spuriously aristocratic organisation ot our public service brings upon us loss , disgrace ,-and calamity . Last summer the army of Omar Pacha was exulting in the unstained laurels of the winter and the spring ; this winter we are pitying the poor helpless Turks , for whom a service humble enough can scarcely be found in Balaklava . Last summer we had the bravado of the bottle in the

    banquet of " disguised" Reformers , who were to " crumple up" all the Russian fortresses from Bomarsund to St . Petersburg ; this winter we have Sir Charles Napier coming back , after his nibble at Bomarsund , his squint at Sweaborg , and his slanting allusions at Cron-8 tadt . In , 1854 we had a visitation of cholera , the experience of which has proved that even feeble and imperfect remedial measures may check the pestilence : and we

    were blessed with a harvest which has taught us the solidarity of nations in abundance as in dearth ; in other words , that abundance after dearth will not restore low prices , though free trade lias effectually , through high and low , ' preserved us from famine after local dearth , while the landed interests are not rendered bankrupt by the beneficence of Heaven .. The last session gave * 16 , 000 , 000 / . to the war . and bequeathed to the recess that

    ^^ Beer Act which has occasioned almost the only domestic agitation that the dead season has experienced . To 1854 belong Alma and Inkerman—belong the Austrian alliance , the Prussian neutrality , the " flank march , " ^ and the besiegers besieged . The year closes with the completion ' of the alliance , defensive and offensive , between the three Powers , ' with Prussia still trimming ; with an immense

    Russian transit trade through that " neutral " Power ; with Russia still temporising ; and with the question whether the submission of the Czar will close up everything , and leave us nothing but the costs to haggle about , or whether his perseverance will extend the conflagration of war to the whole of Europe ? Will it stop in the Crimea , or where will it stop ? It is with these two questions that we bid farewell to 1854 .

    Never did human wisdom halt upon the threshold of a year and feel so signally rebuked by its own incompetency to forecalculate as it does now at the commencement of 1855 . Not only are we denied all knowledge of that immediate future , but we are forbidden even to conjecture what will happen . What alternatives lie before us , or what shall be our own part in the most probable

    alternatives , we dare not venture to surmise . We only know that a conflict of Titanic agencies is impending , and our worst fear is that the public men throughout Europe , whom the routine of our political system entrusts with the conduct of states , are top feeble , too insincere , too incapable of their high argument , to secure the victory for the right . -

    Lord John . Russell hints that Ministers wilL accept a " mere quiescence on the part of Russia—that they will not cripple her . for future harm— -that they wnT not" take swajr her unjust acquisitions , render her boundaries safer for her neighbours , nor punish her for her 1 jrimes . ~ We" are compelled to bid for the accession of Austria to 4 ; he alliance , although we

    know that Austria , entangled in past crimes , falters in her falseness and hesitates in her traditional ingratitude , les t the victims of her Own oppression should demand the price of their blood . And we are compelled to hope that those subject nations will by their very patience deny to temporising statesmen the pretext of a , ^ 5 i [ n " p ^ niis ~ e ~^ itKr ^ the ~ c "< 3 » in"nTon

    enemy . Spain , with her unconsolidated constitutional Government and her ill-defended possessions , —Germany , with her undetermined foreign relations , her dreamy Liberalism , and her muddled royalism , —Denmark , with her assertion of " representative freedom and her national complicity in the iniquities of her own Crown against Schleswig-Holstein , — Sweden , with her popular sympathy for the West and her royal leaning to Russia , —

    America , with her inscrutable agitations , — our own colonies converted by free government from rebellious enemies to loyal coadjutors in the war , —all these are regions which present the scene of vast movements still going on , pregnant with events for 1855 and succeeding years ; but subordinate in interest all of them just now to the' one great question of the present year—What shall be the dominant rule in Europe , autocracy or self-government—conspiracies of thrones or alliances of nations ?

    We begin the year with solemnly-recognised obligations that we have of late forgotten , resources Btich as no country ever commanded , an enterprise such as no free state has ever yet confronted , possibilities that would exalt the grandest ambitions which the world e ver saw ; but—alaa that we must say it i—we begin with public men and a public virtue not yet trained or developed to' the ugh occasion that awaits us .

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    TERMS O F SUBSC RIPTION TO ~*' 1 Ej ) e Scatter . . For a Half-Tear .. y £ 0 13 0 To be remitted in advance . « p- Money Orders should be drawn upon the 8 tbast > Branch Office , and be made payable to Mr . Aipebd E . Gaiiowat , at No . 7 , Wellington Street , Strand .

    &Lt;5flp ^J*R ¦ ^S ^T&Vit' Sattjrday, January 6, 1855.

    < 5 flp ^ J * r ¦ ^ s ^ t&Vit ' SATTJRDAY , JANUARY 6 , 1855 .

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    There is nothing so revolutionary , because tnere nothing so -unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by tne very law of its creation in eternal progress . —Db . Arnold

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    jA ? mABY 6 , 1855 ] fHE I 7 EA ]) 1 IL 13

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    THE POLITICAL SITUATION . The Clubs—those congregations of gentlemen who complain of the want of education among the masses , and who illustrate their intellectual superiority by passing their lives in the . intercommunication of inanities—being institutions Tvhich may be described as patent incubators of canards- ^—m uQ . have it that there ha » this week been a Ministerial insurrection ,

    that there have been several resignations , and that , but for the Prince and Lord Aberdeen , our glorious Constitution would have been made manifest to Europe by qur being left without a Government in the crisis of a great war . The Clubs are at no loss for an explanation ; they are not always certain of their facts , but they are always positive in an explanation . The Clubs say that there is one split about the Peace , and another split about the War , and generally that the Coalition is resolving , with the assistance of arithmeticalminded Sir Charles Wood , into its original

    integers of sixes and sevens—Lord Palmerston of course being the odd number . This is curious , but not conclusive ; and , without attaching credit to any of the conjectures of the coffee-room statesmen , and of those luminous politicians who read all ; the morning papers in a condition of continuous bewilderment , and get to the evening journals in a state of mental prostration , we may leave the Clubs to chat on chaotically in the singular innocence of belief that they are in some way concerned in the Government of a country which , according to them , is in a chronic Cabinet

    crisis . _ - We are , however , not unprepared to admit that the Government is , very probably , in some perplexity r and we are all the more ready tQ think so from observing that the nation is in precisely the same position . Peace or war ? is ^ he question on which no one , high or low , has made up his mind , because no one has made up ** his mind as to what heoneans ^ y peace or what he means by war—the conditions of the peace or the issues of the war . , .

    The fault of the Government , according to the most pronounced class of politicians , taking Mr . Layard as an example , is that they have had , and have , no direct policy . This is perfectly true—is a truism scarcely needing-the exposition—of- a _ tw _ Q _ hours ' scrambling speech , scattered , subsequently , in all its disjected commonplace , in a tenpage pamphlet . It is quite true that the Government only went to war because the

    country demanded war , and that the Government is seeking to make peace because the stable-minded public is rather inclined to a peace , in the one case undertaking a merely make-believe campaign , and in the present case pretending to no more than a sham treaty , worth as much as the vellum on which it is , or is not , engrossed . But a Government in England * controlled by a Crown which is without nolitical passions , is compelled to

    run with the public—certainly never to _ in advance of the public—and a Coalition Government more especially , formed tor mere administration , on no principles , finds it not only its interest but its duty toobey . The present Government has displayed no direct policy , itswantof direct policy nas resulted in its becoming the victim ot its military chiefs , French and British ; but the defect of the Government seems to us to be the defect of the time . A

    Government in England is , after all , ^ ryrepresentative affair : the Coalition Government represented national apathy , the disappearance of the politics of principles . . Political philosophy had nothing to do with the outburst of national feehn on the invasion by Russia of the Principalities : our fleets and armies were despatched not to re-

    - ^Tthlir Maim

    - $ tthlir Maim t i , ^

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 6, 1855, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2072/page/13/