On this page

• Text (3)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    OUR HAMKUBG EXPORT TRADE . The charge which we make against this present system of management in moral matters is , that it results in the most atrocious profligacy . If the proof of the pudding is iu the eating , then we say that our cooks stand convicted . Scarcely a fact comes out which does not prove some widely-extended disease . When Mrs . Wooler was poisoned , much indignation was expressed at the suggestion that the poisoning of people was not uncommon in this

    country . Was England , cried the champions of our fame , to be confounded with Italy in the middle ages ? Unquestionably ; if frequency of poisoning is enough for the parallel , we do stand convicted of sharing the crime of mediaeval Italy—the spread of Christianity , better enforcement of the law , advance of civilisation and progress of the intellect notwithstanding . What is more , the persons who are implicated in these crimes are for

    the most part educated persons . In Mrs . Wooler ' s case the hand that administered the poison is unknown , "but Palmer had passed the College of Surgeons ; Dove has had rather an unusual amount of schooling and experience for a farmer ; in Monogiian ' s oaso the men were principally of a somewhat lower grade—but they were still surgeons and insurance offioer ; moving perhaps among the working classesjpbut possessing some degree of

    Untitled Article

    possible . Lord Clarendon neglected that rule while speaking to Mr , Buchanan on the subject of arbitration . So far our foreign secretary was guilty of culpable laxity . Subsequently he did put the proposal into writing ; but here again , as if to carry out the fatal rule of laxity instead of regularity , his more accurate method was defeated by ihe negligence of his subordinate . He stated his offer in a

    contracted to that of apology . Our Government asserts that it abandoned the enlistment , and apologised . This is a . quibble . When the apology was made to Mr . Buchanan , he wrote to Lord Clarendon that he should forward the despatch to his Government " with great satisfaction *; " and our Government ( Premier and Foreign Secretary ) have cited this despatch . over and over again , as expressing the " satisfaction" both of Mr . Buchanan and of his Government with the apology . Now , this boasted apology was made without reference to the fact that Mr . Crampton was

    personally implicated in the recruitment , and that at the time when Mr . Buchanan wrote the American Government knew nothing of that aggravation of our offence . Nay , JLord Palmebston has stated in Parliament recently , that the American Government was satisfied , as if nothing had happened since the writing of Mr . Buchanan ' s note . That is , Lord Palmerston has spoken to the House of Commons , as . if Mr . Crampton ' s complicity had not subsequently been found out ;

    as if Mr . Buchanan's satisfaction in forwarding a note amounted to the satisfaction of President Pierce at the contents of the note . ; .. ; and as if that contribution to the correspondence expressed the latest state of it , although : the interpretation put upon it has been expressl y disavowed . Lord Paxmerston might exactly as well state to the House of Commons that the Czar Nicholas had no designs npon Turkey in proposing to arrange for dividing the inheritance of the " Sick Man . " If you will

    select your date you may mate any statement whatever , by omitting subsequent contradiction and disproof . You may state , for example , that King "William is King of England , if you think yourself licensed to ignore the fact that King William has died and has been succeeded b y Queen Victoria . At the beginning of . 183 7 , it was true that King William was King of England , and it was true that in the middle of July , 1855 , Mr . Buchanan had

    much satisfaction in transmitting the copy of Lord Clarendon ' s note to Washington . But it is as little true that the Government of the -United States z ' s satisfied with the acknowledge : ments of the British Government as that King William is King of England . As to the fact itself , it is now of minor importance ; but it is of importance that English statesmen should make truthful representations to the House of Commons .

    The letter to General Watson Webb , which has been published , showing that Lord Clarendon had , on a particular occasion , no hostile feeling to the United States , has , as the reader will at once see , comparatively little bearing on this question . Everybody who is acquainted with Lord Clarendon shares the common belief , that , personally , he has no hostility to the United States , and that , if it depended upon that single statesman , it would be as easy to arrange all difficulties as it would have been to settle them with Lord Aberdeen .

    Laxity becomes criminal where such fright-/ ful cowsequ . en . ces are at stake . It is worse than carelessness in playing with fire to play with the friendships and hostilities of two vast empires . But carelessness must bo the very excuse of our official . It has been said i , that Lord Clarjsnjdon offered to refer the ff ^ f ttral , American question to arbitration ; he Wdtthr

    . . ow owfc the offer , but it was simply in , , QPnveTsation . with Mr , Buchanan . He did ' ^ Pt ^ ay ^ t the offer was m ade in the name 4 , Strike Cabju ^ t ; ho did not , according to all ^•^ wpt jtput , the . offer into black and white . ¦ ¦¦ '"S ^^^ 'Mimster appears at all times ' v ^ & ^ T ^ M st ^ ^ ta to writing ; a ™* 3 M » fo JTOfotfKl w miflwdwatandingflTare

    letter dated November 10 , 1855 , addressed to Mr . Crampton , at Washington . After stating the offer , he said , " You are instructed to communicate this despatch to Mr . Maect . " Mr . CJRAJCPTON did not communicate it ; he kept it to himself until February 7 , 1856 . In a note to Mr . Marct he explains his neglect

    thus : —— " As I was aware that the negotiation of the question regarding Central America -was in Mr . Buchanan ' s and Lord Clarendon ' s hands , I considered the despatch as meant merely for my own information as to what Tvas going forward upon a subject in regard to which I inferred you "were already informed . " Thus Mb . Crampton receives the

    most important despatches , assumes that they are only sent pro formd , and puts them in his portfolio half read , when peace and war are at stake ! Really we are compelled to acquit our officials of malignity at the expense of their repute for decent attention to business . Hot can we accept the judgment of such men on the accurate interpretation even of then * own treaties ? They profess to give us the real interpretation of the Buiaver-Clayton

    treaty ; but positively we are justified in asking whether they have read that treaty ? The treaty has been explained over and over again , but the explanations themselves rather suggest the negative of the question \ re have just asked , —rather imply that none of our ministers have read the treaty . Sir Henry Bulwer signed it : Las he read it ? Perhaps if they were to apply to that source of information , they would find that their arguments do not stand upon very good ground .

    Colonel Walker has indeed cut the ground from under their feet . To dispute about the possession of Central America is like disputing the tenancy of the whirlpool of Scylla or of the Maelstrom . It is clear that as the negotiations have hitherto been conducted , upon the grounds hitherto occupied , by oiir side at least , we never can come to a conclusion . The

    question nrust be taken up on other grounds . We know that it is possible to rest it upon grounds totally different from any yet taken , and we are convinced that when those grounds are stated to the public , —when , we are enabled to show , as we shall be enabled to show , that the whole dispute may be settled in the simplest manner , the public will be indignant indeed if it should still remain unsettled .

    Untitled Article

    ishly , and more generally . Had they judged the King of Prussia , not as his acts seemed to bear on their incidental interests , but as they were related to the interests of the nation he governs , they would have perceived that he has been wise in his generation ; for he well knew that , after standing aloof from the war enriching his treasury and preserving the friendship of a powerful neighbour , his sane - tion would be invited to the conditions of the general peace . To accuse him of perfidy , and .

    at the same time , to approve the consistency of Austria , is a folly only equalled by the cowardice of reviling the King of Naples , and encouraging the military scourge of Lombardy . The English , 'public shoxdd at once reconcile itself to the certainty , that liberty has gained nothing from , the Russian war ; that the presence of one German diplomatist , more or less , at the Conferences will make not a shadow of difference in the diplomatic result , that the negotiating powers form a confederacy of absolutism and aristocracy , and that the lords

    and gentlemen who went last week to raise the Polish sympathies of the Premier , committed an act of puerile insincerity . Does the public believe that they , for a moment , imagined that Lord Paxmerston would ask Russia to tear herself in . pieces at the Paris Conference ? It is the practice in Japan , when a noble has offended the throne , to send him a poniard with a request that he will disembowel himself , without delay . He complies because , by submitting to suicide , he escapes execution . But did it enter into the hearts of Breadai .-bane or Beal to think of Count Okloff

    listening to a proposal for the rehabilitation of Poland ? It is time tbat this insincere and self-deceiving infatuation should be put aside '—" that this old , hysterical , mock disease should die . " A revolution that would cleave into fragments the most absolute empire on the earth , is not to be effected by the bland " representations' * of a knot of dilettanti deputed to Downing-street by the patrons of an annual ball . What is to be done in Europe must be done by another process .

    PRUSSIA AT THE CONFERENCES . We have invariably recognised the right of the King of Prussia to preserve a strictly German policy with reference to the Russian war . We were the first to suggest the admission of Prussian representatives to the Paris Conferences . And now that Baron Manteufpel and his colleagues sit at the Council Table of the Plenipotentiaries , it is supposed by liberals and " patriots" that the scale is turned in

    favour of " despotism , " and that Russia has gained a vote . But there is an obvious reason why the Prussians at Paris are harmless . Their diplomacy is not mord * sinister than that of the other powers . Prussia is a part—and not the worst part—of the continental system , which , from one limit to another , is dynastic , corrupt , and tyrannical . If Englishmen desire to obtain abroad a real reputation for political liberality , they must consider the European Governments less

    self-Prussia is at the Conference . Well , the Conference , with or without Prussia , could have been no more than an assembly of diplomatists convened in the interests of monarchy and aristocracy .

    Untitled Article

    $ 76 . IK / ME ABffRp . [ No . 313 , Saturda y

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 22, 1856, page 276, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2133/page/12/