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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.
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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . JtEBiHTB Txdvil . —The correspondent who addresses us from this place is informed that the gentleman whoso Dame-he sees advertized has nothing whatever to do with the work in question .
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SWITZERLAND , FRANCE , AND PRUSSIA . ETetjfciia : teIi affords another illustration of the discriminating morality which now prevails iii ; Europe . The guardians of public order might have been expected to bestow some censure on the authors of a hopeless insurrection . Had the insurrection represented any -principle , or any popular sentianent , it would have been denounced as the "work of incendiaries ,-ruisguided or malicious t > ut , having been a-Royalist cnterprize , undertaken in -the name of legitimacy , it -receives
the most infamous ruler in Europe . He rejects , in Switzerland , the right of popular choice to which he appeals , in France , as his own title to the throne . But it might at least have been anticipated that the imperial Cabinet would not publish an invitation to the Prussians to create a dangerous war , among the Alps and on the Rhine . Notorious as it is , that the Empire abhors the neighbourhood of freedom , we may well be astonished by the turpitude of the approval
bestowed on an attempt to root out the independence of the oldest liberal state in the world . For the policy of Prussia and Prance is no less than a scheme to root out the independence of Switz eiiand . They put their demands in such a form as made compliance on the part of the Federal Government impossible . They require a sovereign Federation to disown its laws , and to surrender the right of jurisdiction over offences committed within its own territory . The Federation
the prerogative of national independence 3 they intend to practise no severity on . the political prisoners ; they are assailed by buperior forces . "We maybe unable to assist them ; but we should prohibit our Government from taking part in the great conspiracy against the Republic , of-the'Alps , obnoxious to Continental monarchies and empires . "What they are asserting is the privilege of enforcing their own laws against their own criminal subjects ; but their laws are mild ; they have no Devil ' s Island or G-uiana fen , for the torture of malcontents .
Let it be remembered , moreover , that England is in no way pledged to acquiesce in the Prussian claim . The protocol of 1852 la a simple record of a Prussian protest Lord Maxmesbuby might have more discreetly declined to compromise this country ,- even by the semblance of assent ; but though he signed the instrument , it was merely as a witness . England has not yet guaranteed the literal execution of the treaty of Vienna , revoked repeatedly by the common act of Europe . Fbedebigk William , however , has stretched that palimpsest upon a drum , and sounds tlie attack on Switzerland .
declines to make this sacrifice , which would leave it without a political existence , and forthwith Prussia prepares an army and Germany opens a highway for the invasion of Switzerland , while France pronounces for the claims of the invader . England , through her organs of opinion , declares herself-unmistakably in'favour of the Swiss ; but , in this self-governed country , public opinion and foreign policy have nothing in common . We wait to see how long and
how fiercely the fire will rage . The only quarter to which the Federation turns for help is across Savoy to Piedmont , where the riflemen in green are invited to . take part with the free rifles of Switzerland . In addition to this alliance , which is very problematical , the Swiss hope to be favoured by insurrectionary diversions in Europe . They will also reeai their mercenaries—the janis saries of Naples and Koine . Nor is it
improbable that advantage will be taken of a war of national independence in the Alps and the valleys at their feet , to renew the revolution , which would thus be supplied with a citadel and centre of operations . The chief doubt would be , whether the first attack of the invaders could be repelled , so that the Swiss and Europe might have breathing-time . When it is remembered that the troops of the Federation , organized and in reserve , amount to no less than two hundred
thousand men , that they are physically superior , although inferior in discipline , practice , and accoutrements to the Prussians , that every male inhabitant of the invaded cantons would be an active enemy , that the Federal array would scatter through the valleys and cluster round innumerable separate points of defence , and that frequently the Swiss have defeated fourfold their own numbers , it is evident that the King of Prussia has not a mere coming , seeing , and conquering before him . The Swiss do not appear alarmed by the prospect ; nor arc they inspired by the
desperato activity of despair . On the contrary , their movements are marked by calmness and deliberation ; they know their own strength , and they will make trial of it against the strength of Prussia . But it . 1 ms not yet come to a declaration of war . At the hist moment France will probably protest . There are many steps from a suspension ol relations to a battle . Should the collision take place speedily , it will tako place in the winter , tho season most favourable to tho mountaineers * . " If ever tho Swiss arc attacked , they will know how to defend tho country ol William Tell . " Those- are tho words o !
Lou 1 s ISa ]• o l k on . The sympathy of England belongs naturally to tho Swiss . " Thoy have a just cause-, they are tho weaker party ; they have been abandoned by Franco ; they nrb merely upholding
official sanction , and is nowhere reprobated , although it has endangered the peace of the "world . This , however , is not the only paradox connected with the dispute between Prussia and Switzerland . Fkedebice "William , who so lately preached froiii the throne on the blessings of ¦ tranquillity , and stood aloof from the combination against Russia , 'is now a German Hotspur , the most warlike sovereign . on the Continent . France , which menaced him
less than two years ago , promises her sympathetic neutrality in his behalf ; so that we are in the presence of three astonishing anomalies —insurrection defended by diplomacy , Prussia in a martial attitude , and France the abettor of Prussia . But we are also in the presence of historical and political certainties which demonstrate the right of Switzerland to resist this league of the powers on both sides of the Rhine , and the insurgents within . -her own frontier . Neufchatel never lost its
rank as a irce state , the member of a sovereign federation ; it was never more intimately connected with Prussia than with Switzerland ; eight years of independent existence have given it as good a claim to recognition as tho French Empire ; tho link which attached it to the Prussian monarchy was a fiction as frail as that by which Portugal claims to this day the dominion of tho East and West Indies ; nnau \ , the principle which
must now be admitted to settle such questions is that , when the population of a state , however small , has declared its will , that will is prior to all other assertions , paramount to all documentary titles , and cannot-be set aside without leaving open a source of perpetual discord and danger . Wo affirm this maxim ; but , apart from it , Prussia is now preparing to cany out , in tho face of'Europe . an act of piratical violence in Switzerland .
Tho attitude of Franco is an exemplification of the immorality which in tho instinct of tho Empire . We could not expect , indeed , that Loujb Napoleon would bo grateful to the Swiss Republic which gave him an asylum , and oilbred to defend him with all her forces . Ho was not grateful to Franco , which raised him out of obscurity , and gave him an opportunity to beeomo tho most illustrious 01
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CHRISTMAS GAMES . Is Christmas to be overlaid by its own machinery ? Is all the business of society to be converted to a game which loses its zest "b y becoming mechanical ? The pantomimes are not what they were , partly because Harlequin and Clown have grown so terribly anxious , with the ' pressure of the Incometax : and other modern improvements , and partly because the audience is not what it used to be . The prosperity of a joke is in the ear of the listener . We never had so
many appliances for keeping up the joviality of the season all our illustrated journals teem with evidences of it . Our markets and butchers' shops are far more neat and brilliant than they used , to be ,- the people at church are better dressed ; holly is more abundant , because there is a special growth for the special demand . But with all these systematic preparations , there is scarcely the spontaneity that once marked the English Christmas .
And this season is more clouded than usual . The sunshine of the home-fire glows less genially , because those who sit round it are not listening only to the storms of the elements—those storms which bring hardship in this month , but health in the months to come . They have other thoughts just at present . The great champions of Christianity are illustrating its principles in a fashion like a satirical burlesque rendered real . The "Powers" are dramatizing tho Inferno , and
Christendom just at present is playing the fool before Islam and Budhism , as if for the very purpose of wwconverting tho heathen . Turkey lias been brought into the European system , to find out what it is ; namely , a system officered by royal soldiers , who expend other men ' s blood in heaping up their own power , and form alliances , as they have at Paris , for tho very purpose of trying to circumvent each other . They arc footpads on a huge scale , who try to get their booty ¦ while- other men run tho danger .
Switzerland , tho small Republic , repeats the iablo of the Pigmies warred on by Cranes ; tho Cranes being sent by his Evangelical Lutheran Majesty of Pjiubsia ; a gentleman who went round Newgate with Mrs . Fuy to show his philanthropy , and now threatens to shed blood by wholesale in order to regain a fantastical titlo which Imd neither reality nor profit . That is Lutheran Cliriatomlom ! Catholic Christendom is equally aelf-satirical . Natlks preys upon tho vitals of his people ; tho Western Powers romon-
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_ Deoembeb 27 , 1856 . ] T ? HE LEADED 1235
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No notice can be taken of anonymous coirespondence Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily for publication , but as a Ruarantee of his good faith . We do not undertake to return rejected communications .
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SATURDAY , DECEMBER 27 , 1856 .
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There is nothing so revolutionary , because - thure is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to Tcee-p things fixed when all the -world is by the very law of its creation , m eternal progress . — De . Aknoi / d .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 27, 1856, page 1235, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2173/page/11/
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