On this page
-
Text (4)
-
950 ^A^^^aWMM- '' > CB4*r?ntB4tV,
-
USE OF NATIONS TO STATESMEN. " The fatal...
-
THE GRAVES OF A CITY. The disposal of th...
-
LORD CLARENDON BELIEVES IN SPAIN AGAIN! ...
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.
-
-
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.
The Appeal Against Choletta. Pqrtsy^S Wh...
the divine laws . If we ate to have any release it must be by conforming in act to the divine rule , and making ourselves the instrument to carryforth the laws by which alone we can live . If love of lucre , indolence , complicity with ignorance , or strife with crude opinion , make us continue to neglect these laws , it is but the mockery of piety to pray that we may be exempted from the consequences .
950 ^A^^^Awmm- '' > Cb4*R?Ntb4tv,
950 ^ A ^^^ aWMM- ' ' > CB 4 * r ? ntB 4 tV ,
Use Of Nations To Statesmen. " The Fatal...
USE OF NATIONS TO STATESMEN . " The fatal incubus which weighs heavily on the foreign policy of your Government , is not so much love for the Czar , as fear arid hatred of democracy . It would be vain to dissimulate that aristocracy and plutocracy , as leading elements , will always less fear the despot than popular liberty . }> There is much truth in this assertion of Kossuth ' s ; although its truth . was , perhaps , more evident some months back , than it is now . Certainly
there is no present fear of democracy in England . The quietude of the country , the general slumbering of political subjects , has not only lulled the energies of the working classes , but also the alarms of the Governing Classes . Nevertheless the feeling lies at the bottom of much that cramps the energies of our public men . To say the truth boldly , public men , who , in former times , used to claim the support of the people , are now afraid of the people .
It is not easy to understand the rationale of this fear , especially as applied to continental politics . There have no doubt been revolutions ; but , of all the involutions effected within living memory none have been so permanently deplorable , so sanguinary , so subversive , as the revolutions conducted by Absolutist sovereigns . The terrible upheaving of the French nation , at the close of last century , with all the confiscation of property and the terrorism that followed , cannot compare with the chronic rebellion , the sweeping confiscations of property , for the humble as well as the rich , and the constant destruction of life , carried
on under the Absolute monarchs of Austria and Naples . They imprison thousands in dungeons , they confiscate property without mercy , they cause men to be slain by gun or gallows , or to pine away their lives in poisonous dungeoHS , by wholesale ; and they continue to do so year after year ;—crimes which the worst of revolutions cannot excel , and to which republican rule , in any part of the world , within the present generation , has presented not a parallel , but a contrast . Why , therefore , the lovers of order should fear the people , and not these crowned atrocities , it is difficult to understand .
The more difficult , since experience , in our own country , teaches us how wholesome and safe is the reliance on an entire people . We have some reluctance to employ , so freely as many writers , the word " democracy , " since it signifies a principle which tends to separate men into classes . Properly speaking there is no democracy , in an exclusive sense , where the whole body of the nation has its full influence upon its own government , and upon the conduct of the State towards
other States . All the supreme victories of opinion gained in this country , have been gained neither in the name nor for the benefit of a class . Magna Charta could not have been won by the Barons , if they had not been supported by tho people ; and the best enactment in that statute , which secures for every man trial by his peers , makes no distinction of class . That Bill of Rights , which secures many rights for the English people , and has been the great statute of our liberties , secures its benefits , without limitation to any particular
classes . It could not have been attained by the country gentlemen—the Hampdens and Crom wells , who wore the officers of tho long contest which resulted in its ratification , if they had not been supported by the great body of the people ; nor could tho people have recorded that statute without , tho leadership of tho Hampdens and Cromwolls in the field , and of a Soinors in the Council and the Cabinet . Those measures have been attained by national means , and for national advantage .
If we , in England , have learned to feiu- tho means by which wo achieved our own greatness , perhaps it is because we have ceased to iill the measure of tho armour which wo mado for our-BOslvcH . We have shrunk to something less than the liberties secured to us by the Bill of Iiights . . Feebleand partial statutes subsequently past have abridged tho rights which that great statuto secured . Our latest grand political achievement ,
although national in the moveJneht that strove for it , was , by a want of generosity , in : its : active authors , an abridgment of the rights thatit professed to confirm . The body of . the people ,-aided the middle class and tire libei ^ l ; leaders , ] n , Qbtaining the Reform Bill . ; the , Liberal pleaders ^ responded to that national movejaaentj , by granting the franchise to a limited class , ^ No wonder that the excluded class felt that they were & class , and that they , like the leaders , ceased to have faith in the existence or influence of the whole nation .
Nevertheless the Virtue hag not gone from the English people . It has been remarked that , out of Ireland , the Irish are industrious , apd it may be remarked that , out of England ^ . the , English people are once more national in their action , and prompt to recover the freedom and self-government which they have lost at home * It was a national action in Canada , that gained for the
colonists the fullest measure of enfranchisement and local self-government . It was : the same movement , at the Cape of Good Hope , which defended the colony against convictisrn , and has secured to it an English constitution—English after the model of better times than now ; exist for England herself . The English people , therefore , still retains its thew and sinew , and its spirit , if only classes at home would cease to mistrust one
another . This experience of what the natural leaders of a people may do , by trusting the people and using the support of the people , deserves to encourage our statesmen to depart from the narrow course of class government and secret diplomacy , and to have some faith in the sympathy and the help of nations . ¦
The Graves Of A City. The Disposal Of Th...
THE GRAVES OF A CITY . The disposal of the dead is difficult and delicate . People in grief are ever unreasonable , ' and it is with them we have to deal when we compass the putting away of a Corpse . It may not be blameable in lonely persons to cling foolishly to the body they ofice linked with loving thoughts and the most cold may feel with those who do not like to see the form once cherished done away with speedily in a decisive way , ¦ But the wholesomeness of our daily life demands in all cases the quick and final removal of the . body from
the homes of the living . Our aim then should be to effect the removal by an . easy and effectual process — not forgetting the olden habits and superstitious feelings of the people— -but not unmindful of the more imperative necessity of caring for the public health . It is not a small or narrow topic . The city of London has black and busy streets , and life rushes through them daily all the year round ; but each year some three thousand of the citizens die in their houses . In many cases the dead bodies are kept too long . The wealthy keep them from a reluctance to part with
the cast off garment" of their friend , and tbe poor havo the same feeling , and a wish to postpone the burial * ' until next Sunday . " In all cases this delay of burial is bad—b , ut in cases of contagious disease it is positively the manufacture of ready made death . It is hard to persuade the ignorant of this . In Lambeth the other day some low Irish friends of a person dead of cholera would not sufFor the removal of the corpse , althou gh infection was sure to spread through the neighbourhood . And this flagrant impropriety is repeated in many localities in a form more or less mitigated according to the intelligence of the people . It is calculated that at any moment you
may say while walking through " the city , " " " There are now thirty or forty corpses lying in the rooms where living persona spend the whole day . '' The corpses of the poor are closed up in thin coffins , and a week is the average term of retention . " Beside them in their sleep , before them at their meals , " is the corpse— -not inactive for it actually deals deadly poison , around . More sorious than tho skeleton at feasts of old , for it reminds the people of death by slowly killing them on the spot . It was thought a terrible thing in tho Latin tyrant to bind together the living and the dead—but if necessity and bad laws . do that to-day , in the city , tho reality is as fearful for us as it wuh in days" of old .
A public , officer has drawn up si plan designed to destroy thin evil . To each corpao ho would givo twenty-eight . square feet of ground for twenty years . Jn twenty years a corpse has quite- turned to common earth , and a new body maybe put into tho grave . Ab sixty-four thousand London citizens die in twenty years , sixty-four thousand fmives will bo required : and instead of tho
monototioxis rows of plait * -head stones , the burialground of one hundred acres will be diversified " With Mounds ; treeS iWalks ^ and varied monuments It isfals ^ lntehded thstt the body acting as a Burial 350 ard should undertake the conveyance ofthe t ^ rpsesi t * y rail to this cemetery outside the citv aiid in 6 lttde in one charge for the grave the price of such service . Through this agency and by proper tact , the authorities' could compass the ready burial of the dead . Decent buildings for religious rites would also satisfy the superstitions of the people , andi reconcile friends to the business-like removal of the body by ¦ officials . The projector of thia plan ; is Mr . John Simon , a gentleman of rare intelligence and public merit .
There , is great need of an institution on this plan . Cholera corpses are so dangerous , that for them alone we require an organization for the timely burying of the dead put of our sight . But the details of the system will be minute and complicated in the carrying out . Tofindput and put down all the corpses of the citizens > wiilrequire a minute local agency , having V nice sense of the delicacy of the duties . To make the citizens properly bury their owa dead would be the best system . It would suit , the public usages of the countryy and habituate the people to ' -that useful education , the doing of their own work . No
nonsense , however , must be allowed . If an Englishman is a fool , his hbuge is not his castle If any citizen keep a corpse too long , his rights as a man must be put dawn , that the neighbours may not suffer hurt . It would reconcile the poor very much to this encroachment on their , bad , but old , habits , if there were the same , law for the rich and poor . Even if a body is covered up in a wellsealed coffin , one rule should be enforced , and its deposit in the ground compelled within a fixed number of days . Touching the construction of
the burial ground , hints might be taken from the Necropolis of Glasgow , built with varieties of architecture , on the side of a steep hill , and thus easily drained , while the airiness of the elevation gives to the usual associations of the grave a thoughtfulness , having less of pain and more of resignation . The Roman Catholic cemetery at Cork , with its flower-rgrown graves and pretty little tombs , is also not unpleasing . Akin to a sanitary and convenient system of bui-ial is the question of funeral processions . Good taste should cut short their extent and pomp . It
is a habit , induced by human envy , t hat reserves for 1 death its loudest tribute of respect . The friend to whom we seldom spoke a kind wordy is folio wed to the grave with an expensive show ; and we speak his praise when he is no longerour competitor . When Peel lived , Whig politicians were reticent of their admiration ; when he could be no longer sent for , " they praised him to the skies . This morality has led to our long trains of funeral followers . A man whose marriage , or other happy event ' of life , we scarce attended to , is honoured at his death by a crowd of friends free to confess his virtues . In Germany and France , weddings and christenings are made more of than with us , and the good fellowship of the people is thus happily tehowni We reserve our resources to come in at
the death . Why should we thus honour the surrender of life ? Why celebrate with any show the foot that a man has gone away , and is actually worthless ? And why should living and lively people be bored with slow bodies of black peop le treading along suburban pathways , or stopping our highways with gloomy coaches ? When a man is active and useful amongst us , let us love and honour him ; but when he leaves tho house of his body , let us look on it as coldly as on any house " to lot , " wheTe once we dined and chatted around a pleasant table , with a friend still living in our memory , although we see him not .
Lord Clarendon Believes In Spain Again! ...
LORD CLARENDON BELIEVES IN SPAIN AGAIN ! TirEitic is one country whose relations towards our own huvo been but too notorious . Spain » as a - ccpted from us a monarch , national lnde pendenco , political freedom , loans of money , loans of annies ,
and friendly aid of other kinds . She Has pn »» » £ to rqciprpcato our friendliness—to pay us , »/ - £ . us in Buppressing the elavo tmdc , and in snori . bo pur friend , our ally . $ be has herself traded m the smuggling of sjavca ; her court has P ™ " ' by the , C of that iJHicit commerce ; ourofiic ^ have beon insulted , by ,, her officers . S > 1 w i broken her word m the courL on ' Change , aW and lias marked her bad faith more especioliy o ^ tho coasts of that island which her Minister fcegg "
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 1, 1853, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_01101853/page/14/
-