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Untitled Article
pageantry or procession . The Reform Act was not comprehensive enough for nationality . It shuts out too many of the very people but for whom it would never have been brought in or carried through . How many of the trades' union men are voters ? And why should they not be ? Why not ? even if it were only for the
prevention of trades unions , which would scarcely exist with a representation that fairly included the operative classes . Brave and intelligent operatives ! how admirably they behaved in those political unions without which all the Whigs in the world never could , nor would , have carried the Reform Bill ! How firmly they resisted all propositions tending to break up those bodies
prematurely , and peril the measure , by demanding a more extended suffrage , even though the want of extension was the exclusion of themselves and the perpetuation of their own disfranchisement ! They will have their reward yet ; that is , provided they so determine ; but waiting is not commemorating . Our tree of liberty has not yet borne sufficient fruit , nor spread its foliage wide
enough for a national dance under its shelter . It is as bare as a may-pole , and without the garlands . But it will grow . And if the progress be rapid , there may be the centre of popular festivity . If not in this event , in what else that is political can we find the fitting stimulus and occasion for any such fete as it is the fate of America to enjoy ? Public good and freedom have ever come to us piecemeal—here a little and there a little ; each class has
got something in turn ; now the Church has been saved , and now the Catholic has been emancipated ; philanthropists have obtained the abolition of the slave-trade , and Dissenters the repeal of the Test Act , and mechanics that of the combination laws : one child has had a penny-bun and another a slice of plum-pudding , but there has been no family feast . And if legislation , revolution , or reform have not yet marked out for us an anniversary festival , military glory has failed up to this time , and therefore it has failed for
ever . The lights of Catnperdown and Trafalgar have burnt out . Waterloo is nothing but a field-officer ' s dinner ; or if it descend lower , it onl y survives in the service . The Pitt and Fox birthdays were always mere faction , and few will keep Wellington ' s
birthday after he is dead . Suppose the corn-laws were repealed , —might not that do ? It might make weight if completed on the anniversary of the Reform Bill , like William the Third and glorious revolution lumped in with gunpowder-plot . Our religion is too sectarian and unimaginative to be called in for help in this matter . The Church holds tho 9 fc fine old
buildings which it never built , as the rich hold paintings and statues . It has in them the possession of a corporation property , but does not make them the means of public gratification . The Dissenters , in the pride of their poverty , made plainness a principle . In their growing wealth , they nave not yet raised their chapels above that barn style of architecture which reminds them of the
Untitled Article
754 National Anniversaries .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 754, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/6/
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