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yo. 421, April 17,1858.] THE LEADER. S75
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THE NEW BELGIAN PASSPO11T SYSTEM. When T...
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THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. The House of Co...
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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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The Railway, The Press, 1hb Soldier, And...
the world and his wife travel on railways , the Austrian rulers must allow the civilians under their power some opportunity of making money enough tci pay imperial taxes . In the Italian provinces the Emperor has allowed railways , but with something of the same fear that liome tolerates the printing-press , and sanctions books printed permimi superiority . An illustration is given at Milan . The line connecting Milan with the Sardinian frontier is making progress , and will be finished , it is thought , in the autumn . The company propose to build a magnificent terminus at Loreto , close to the gates of 5 dilan ; but the Austriaus wish to occupy the
site with ' eight little fortresses . ' Those mere soldiers , the Austrian generals , men who have no ideas beyond the camp , who have not even a country to fight for , see in a railroad merely a possible routefor an enemy , and to'' command the approaches * is a cardinal point in military tactics . The management of the railway is a secondary consideration ; the regulation and despatch of passengers a small question . The saving clause is eight little fortresses . Imagine booking your luggage at the cannon ' s mouth , or some German sabreur stamping your ticket with the hilt of
his sword . The idea of an irritable old Field-Marshal ruling a staff of railway officials is really worth considering as a kind of reform . A negligent pointsman would be bayoneted on the spot , passengers getting out . before the train stops would receive a well-directed fusillade ; a sluggish coal-train would be accelerated by the brigade of field artillery in full pursuit , and an express train would be brought to by a" well-aimed cannon-shot . Another railway proposal of the Austrian Government beats Mr . Stephenson and his Chat Moss work to nothing : —
•* The Austrian Government also wishes to establish a mine beneath the bridge of Buffalora , on the Ticino , where the Lombardy line and the Piedmontese line are to form a junction . It has requested the Sardinian Government to do the same on its own . side of the river . " This is truly excellent . Our miserable English engineers have been blundering on from invention to invention as to the best way . of stopping trains . Drags on the wheels , throwing sand on the rails , and other devices have been adopted , but they are all contemptible beside this grand Austrian proposition . Accidents arc impossible when such a means of stopping headlong express trains arc in the hands of the railway auihorities . To fully
appreciate the wisdom ot tins notion we must understand the peculiar position of any railway running direct from Sardinia to any part of Austrian Italy . The stoppage of all trains on this ill-advised route would , in our opinion , be the best plan ; and no doubt some of the military managers of the road -will keep their hands in ' by ordering " field practice this afternoon to blow up the G .-10 v . u train from the frontier . Ambulances for wounded passengers to be provided ; burial parties to be detached from the sixth military division . " Heaven and the Kaiser can only know and appreciate the benefit to the empire of an occasional extinction of passengers from Piedmont , and when the spy system of Austria has acquired suflicicnt delicacy of detection , we may expect a brilliant bulletin : —
" Milan , Mon < lii }' . —Tina morning an express tram of ideas coming from the Sardinian frontier was blown up at lluftiiloru . Wo need not add that the ideas were subversive . " At Bruges , what Mr . Disraeli would call " the genius of the epoch , " conies into competition with ivvery old institution . The newspaper , comes face to faco with the confessional . The Bishop of Bruges ( may his pastoral crook never be straight !) has issued i \ circular to confessors regulating the
injunctions to their penitents in re newspapers . The penitents , after being examined in tho roll ol ordinary sins , arc to bo asked what newspapers they read . If the publications nrc radical or heterodox , tho penitent is not to receive absolution until hu promises to abstuiu from the forbidden pleasure . The penance for disobedience is not luicl down ; to stand in a white aheet ( quite blank ) would not bo inappropriate . 'I'lln , nmilnaaApu \ wt \ I imf V \\ o \ I't ] In PMll < lmifl SOKH !
violations of the genernf rule . "' Pos ' t-orilccrcTvrnoTB may carry thorn about , and compositors nmy sot up tho typo—for otherwise they would lose their sil . uatious . Magistrates nrc peVmillcd to peruso , that thoy nmy proacoulc , thuni j and ' men of letters ' are to apply for permission to mid them , that they may ' refute thorn . ' This last clause , is intcrciiHng . Wo would advise Lord John ltusscll , who is undeniably a man of loiters , to npply to the Bishop of London for permission to read the Times of lust
Wednesday . He will find in it an article which he ought to refute . The management of the clerical and Bonapartist press in Belgium and Paris shows how this mighty engine of freedom , as some people call it , is made the docile , mechanic slave of despotism . Some observers of the material progress of the world also anticipated that railways would overrun national distinctions and level higli privileges , would make obsolete the baron ' s feudal fortress
and the brigand ' s cave . We do not quite see the use of expecting mental or spiritual results from mere material novelties . The railway has not done so very much in this way . Aristocracy has its first class , and there are two other classes for the inferior castes . As to brigandage , the other day , in the Roman States , the brigands seized a station , signalled the train to stop , and robbed the passengers as adroitly and rapidly as the railway officials take tickets . Old , unrcformed instincts of human nature triumph over the new ways into which an age of mud , iron , and machinery would bring us . As a compensation , we find that railways
take little away from the romance of travelling . The old associations which hallowed the stagecoach and roadside inn now begin to cling to the train and the station . Lovers are expected b y the express ; ' the next station ' and ' the down platform ' are words which , commonplace as they read , quicken the pulsations of the heart when the traveller thinks of the beloved face he is hastening to see . When stage-coaches were first introduced ^ superseding family travelling-carriages , or when carriages themselves were brought in , superseding ^ the saddle and pillion of lover and lass , husband and wife , the same feeling that the romance of
travel was destroyed was mournfully expressed . Mrs . Slipslop , in c Joseph . Andrews , ' denounces the vulgarity of the stage-coach , and intimates that she was not used to such a mode of travelling . Looking forward , we may expect the day when the romance of travel will be associated entirely with railways , and some new-fangled scheme of locomo ^ tion by air or magnetism will be denounced as unromantic and uninteresting : Then some Washington Irving of the Great Western will dwell with poetical pathos on all the dearly-loved features of the old-fashioned railway train , will describe how
young and old welcomed its cheerful whistle , how favourite engines were tended by aged stokers who tearfully regretted the rage . for reforms , how the wife and the 3 weetheart watched for the evening express until twilight faded into darkness and the starlight shone on the rails of the station , and how the retired station-master , surrounded by his grandchildren , told wild stories of the night trains—the little listeners asking to go next day to the British Museum to see a preserved specimen of the last locomotive .
Yo. 421, April 17,1858.] The Leader. S75
yo . 421 , April 17 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER . S 75
The New Belgian Passpo11t System. When T...
THE NEW BELGIAN PASSPO 11 T SYSTEM . When Trance had resolved to relax the severity of her passport system—intensified for a few weeks after the January attempt , and still painfully rigorous—it Mas scarcely to be expected that Belgium would adopt tho measures adverted to last night by Mr . Monckton Miles in his question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer . We much regret that the new Belgian ministry has improved upon the example originally set by France , and added to the established restrictions on the intercourse between London and Brussels . Surely , Belgium has nothing to fear from her English visitors , from her close neighbours and cordial friends . As if her regulations were not already vexatious enough , it is now decided that , no
Englishman is to receive a passport from the Belgian authorities in London , as has boon tho practice liitliorto , but that in all cases in which British subjects desire to visit Belgium , they must provide themselves with British passports . Great inconvenience is thus inflicted , since in almost , every in-Mlanen the system produces dolay , dillioulty , and embnrrussnicml . What possible interest can bo served by impelling Iho journey of an Englishman to . Brussels , Spa , or Oslend ? It in upon tho French Iron tier that impediments might reasonably btrrtntlcipatedpbuti-why-Bepnruto-Loixdon-audJBi . ' . uan soLs , the one fmlonmlly linked with the other by an ' endless ladder' of steam-packets and railways ? " AVo will cite two or three incidents of reoent
occurrence in exemplification of tho system which wo liavo described as a grievance An English Lrcndonmu has u daughter living with a * relative at Oslcml . JIcj received ti telegraphic despatch an ' nouueiug that tho you . no ; lady was dangerousl y ill , and hastened to tho Belgian Consulato at four
o ' clock in the afternoon to obtain a passport . This the authorities were compelled by their responsibility to refuse . They referred him to the Foreigrtoffice , where it was impossible that he could obtain hia passport until the next day . Thus lie lost the Dover boat and forty-eight hours . Two English merchants arrived in London from Liverpool on their way to Antwerp , whither they were called upon imperative business , for a few hours only . In fact , it was essential that they should return to Liverpool upon the
second day after their departure . Arriving in London without letters of recommendation , they applied at the Belgian Consulate . There they could obtain no passport , a . nd for two hours * business they suffered two days' detention . A City tradesman has a son at school at Brussels , and had an opportunity of running over to spend a Sunday with him . The new passport regulations took him by surprise , and he lost his trip altogether . _ _ .
Will the Belgian Government persist m thus limiting the intercourse between Brussels and London , inconveniencing London , and inflicting heavy damages on Brussels ?
The Straits Settlements. The House Of Co...
THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS . The House of Commons was bewildered , ou Tuesday evening , by a discussion on the Straits settlements . Lord Bury , who some weeks ago presented a petition from Penang , Malacca , and Singapore , asked whether the Government were prepared to place those dependencies under the direct administration of the Colonial Office , and complained that they had been oppressively treated by the East India Company . The case of the settlers may be succinctly stated . They occupy two islands and a peninsular station in the Straits of Malacca , the great channel o f communication by sea between India and China , and Singapore , in
particular , has attracted an enormous trade , general value of the Straits commerce rose from four millions sterling in 1840 , to fifteen millions in 1857 . Originally the settlements established by the East India Company in the Malayan waters were of peculiar importance to that body in connexion with its monopoly of the Chinese trade . ; but these conditions having ceased , Singapore has been converted into a huge penal settlement . The necessity for this has also ceased , a 3 Mr . Mangles admitted , since the Andaman Islands have been selected for penal colonization , and the
Company docs not appear anxious to retain , its local prerogative . What the settlers desire , then , is that the Straits settlements shall be ranked among British colonies , with the prospect of a legislative council based upon their grand jury , and to this concession we think they are justly entitled . Their energies have fostered an immense traffic among the ports of Eastern Asia , and what has been their reward ? That they have been deluged with the criminal classes of British India . We think , however , that Sir John Elphiustone might reconsider his description of tiie Bugis as among the most lawless and savage of Oriental barbarians . It is of Indian convicts and Chinoso secret societies that the
European community at , Singapore complains , not of the pacific Bugis , who are the most industrious traders of the entire region , and who bi-ing prosperity wherever their far-wandering flotillas anchor . The boldest of all the races in the archipelago , they arc celebrated for their love of justice and fidelity to their engagements , and of all the merchants who carry their wares to the maritime mart ofDobbo , they contribute most to tho active trade of the Malayan Archipelago . The sight of a Bugis fleet is invariably welcome at Singapore . Even tho Chinese would be received without jealousy were the Government to keep them well in hand , and check the formation of their secrot societies , for they arc an enterprising race , hud several members of the Chinese tho most
community at Singapore arc among respected of tho inhabitants . All persons locally acquainted with tho Straits settlements will concur tu tho opinion of Mr . Mangles , that tho mysterious organizations of thoso strangers should be vigilantly watched . Moreover , no ono will deny Uuvt Uu ? nnmonso number of tigers swimming to tho ' island froriTUic maiuiairdW ^ stitittes-nn-obstaole-toits colonization ; but surely . Sir John El p hinstono exaggerated the difficulty when ho described it as 'insuperable , ' although lie foil short of the mark when ho said " scarcely n month passed without some native being oarried oil' bodily by thoso animals . ' * For a lbng timo it has been computed that tho lives lost from this ouuso at Singapore have aVeragod one a day . But a nation that Ibuilds breakwaters might
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 17, 1858, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_17041858/page/15/
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