On this page
-
Text (2)
-
376 1-H E X E A P E Ik. [Saturday,
-
THE CAMBRIDGE BILL. The franiers of the ...
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.
Middle Class Statesmen And The-I Army. T...
look at facts and fail to see that the extreme peace party , whether they are right or wrong as to the future , are wrong as to the present , ] STever probably in any age or nation did the war spirit run higher than it did in , England at the commencement of this war . ILook at the subscriptions to the Patriotic Fund . Ijook at the enthusiasm which followed the troops .
X / ook at the crowds round the pictures of Alma and Inkerman in the print-shop windows . . Look at the newspapers , which collectively , if not individually , are a good index of public opinion , and mark the torrents of brag and bluster which they pour forth , and the swaggering threats which they are uttering at this moment against any minister who shall venture to show himself conscious of
our real position . The peace orators have totally failed to make head against the tide ; they have only chafed it . And what security can they possibly have that this spirit will not break out again on the first affront , or apprehension of an affront , to our national honour ? The old Adam will be too strong for the young Bright for many a day to come .
Besides , even if progressive civilisation were likely to extinguish the war spirit in England within any calculable time , our aversion to war Would not produce the same aversion in our neighbours . Nothing could be more pacific than the declining Byzantine Empire ; but unfortunately its pacific tendencies were not reciprocated by the Vandals and the Turks , and it wanted the only instrument which could have disposed Vandals and Turks to peace—an efficient and formidable army . Europe is full of great standing
armies , kept up by despots and liberticides for their despotic and liberticide purposes . Any one of these crowned conspirators , or the whole combined , may any day pick a quarrel with us for the sake of plunder or " glory , " or from hatred to those free institutions whose very breath is pestilential to oppressors . "We must be provided against this as a man travelling through dangerous roads would be provided with arms against robbers , though carrying arms in itself may be a barbarism and a nuisance . As freedom
recovers herself ^ begins to spread again through Europe , this danger will , of course , decrease , and the mutual reduction of armaments will become a feasible , as it is always a rational object of diplomacy . But in the mean time we must be prepared to guard the ark in which European freedom , has taken refuge , and this can only be done by letting Cossacks of all kinds know , that if they attack us they will get as good as they bring . Mr . Bbight himself need not have been ashamed to wear the laurels of
Marathon . ¦ * We must have a sword ; and as we must have a sword , we had better have it sharp . A militia , like that of America , is the natural and the best defence of ' a free country . But even America , though separated by the Atlantic from the great military despotisms , finds it necessary to keep a small standing army ; and we cannot be safe without a larger nucleus of regular troops and professional commanders .
If , as it appears , wo must make up our minds to regard this standing army at present , and probably for a long time to come , as one of the necessary institutions of the country , it becomes the duty of all public men to learn to understand it and to do their duty towards it , as they would in the case of any other acknowledged institution . Neglect of it is simply suicidal , and can only tend constantly to ostracise from office statesmen who are so unwise as to declare themselves impossible . You must do your best by the army aa it stands ; and the leaders of the
middle classes have plenty to do , and that not of an uncongenial or inappropriate kind . They are not called upon as civilians to ape the military character ; their duty is to see that the administration of the army is just , economical , and efficient ; to secure reward to merit ; to keep down jobbing ; to repress blackguardism ; and , by taking ca re that the citizen is not lost in the soldier , to guard against those dangers to freedom which the mere principle of a standing army too frequently involves . The finest army that this or any other country ever possessed was that of Cbomwem *; and Cromwei ^' s army was a middle-class army , of ficered by men from
the middle classes . " We know the value of peace to liberty as well as other interests ; and we heartily honour Mr . Cobden and Mr . Bright for their exertions in the cause of peace . By continuing their exertions in the face of so much obloquy , they have shown more true courage , however inopp ortunely , than they would have done by blustering for war . But we repeat it , statesmen must look at facts One daythrough the progress of civilisation
, and by the blessing of Heaven , universal peace may come upon the earth . But at present the world is full of the seeds of war . Fanaticism , cupidity , and piratical ambition are everywhere around us with the ready means of aggression in their hands . The most we can aspire to at present is never to take up arms except in a just cause ; and when we are compelled to begin the struggle ,
to carry it on with generosity and chivalry , such as is falsely ascribed to the feudal butcher 3 and robbers of the middle ages , and has been truly shown by our common soldiers in this war-.- The military character has its vices , but it has its virtues also ; and Mr . Bright must be twice a Quaker if he can shut his heart to heroism . By doing so he justifies a similar prejudice against the commercial character , which likewise has its
moral infirmities . The factory may sometimes contain as much crime and misery as the camp . The gentler and better spirit of humanity struggles alike against War and Mammonism . Against both it struggles fitfully and weakly . Against both it must struggle long , we will notf sayfor ever , in vain .
376 1-H E X E A P E Ik. [Saturday,
376 1-H E X E A P E Ik . [ Saturday ,
The Cambridge Bill. The Franiers Of The ...
THE CAMBRIDGE BILL . The franiers of the Cambridge Bill have copied the Oxford Bill in some respects as the Chinese copied the ship , dry-rot and all . The Oxford Bill gives a veto on the measures of the Commissioners to any College which can find two-thirds of its Fellows sufficiently attached to abuses to exercise it : and the Cambridge Bill faithfully repeats this
melancholy provision . Checks and appeals abundantly multiplied are congenial to the English mind and acceptable to English legislators , especially if the appeal is from the right men to the wrong . But at least the Court of Appeal should he impartial . To charge a Commission with reforms , and give the very objects of those reforms a veto , is to enact a cumbrous nullity ; au exemption in favour of incorrigibles would bo at once more frank and
more . Government may hope that the same Parliament which passed the Oxford Bill will pass a copy of it ; otherwise the structure of the Oxford Bill would scarcely have been worth copying . It was not an original and deliberate plan , but an extemporised substitute for a more complex measure which it was found impossible to carry through the House . The original measure went too much into detail . Tho substitute , running into tho opposite extreme , settled nothing as regarded the Colleges , but left ; all to be
dobated over again between the Colleges and the Commission , at great risk of miscarr iage , and at the expense of a most needless repetition of argument and trouble . The question of local restrictions on fellowships for example , was one which had been discussed to the very dregs . The academical world , and the few non-academics who paid any attention to the matter , were at length fairly landed in the conclusion that students fellowshib
ought to be elected to ps y industry and merit , not for having been born on the right side of a hedge . The bosom of Stupidity itself , though it quenches the lightnings of the gods , had been penetrated by a ray of conviction on this subject . But the Oxford Bill invites Stupidity to reopen the question with the Commission , and gives it an appeal to ignorance in the Privy Council , an appeal to faction in Parliament , / and a veto of its own into the bargain .
The division of the initiative m College reform between two bodies is another bad feature in the Oxford Bill , which the Cambridge Bill reproduces . The Colleges have the initiative the first year ; the Commissioners , by default , the next . This principle seems to be borrowed from the Tithe Commutation Act . But the subjects are not analogous . A commutation of Tithes is pretty much the same thing , whether it is initiated by the parties themselves or by
Commissioners . But the reform of a College initiated by a Commission , may be a totally di fferent thing from the reform of a College initiated by the College itself ; and hence strange anomalies may be expected to result . Again , the commutation of Tithes iu one district is quite independent of the commutation of Tithes iu another , and may well be effected separately , and at a
different time ; but the reform of all the Colleges in a University , and the revision of theic statutes , ought to proceed upon a general scheme , to which the simultaneous consent of all the Colleges would be required . This is obviously the case as regards the mutual abrogation of restrictions on fellowships , and common contribution to university purposes . And what is to be done with twin
foundations like Winchester and IS ew College , or Eton and King ' s ? Are they to . be dealt ; with separately , if one of them chooses to exercise its initiative and the other does not ? The chief point in which the C ambridge Bill departs from the Oxford Bill is the very important one of the University Constitution . The government is vested , or intended to be vested ( for , according to some , the conveyance miscarries ) in a Board consisting of four Heads elected by the Heads , four P rofessors elected by the Professors , and eig ht members
of the Senate , elected , not by the University at large , but by the separate Col leges in turn , according to a certain cycle . Tins arrangement seems to us thoroughly vicious . Oxford has now a genuine repre sentative government , and something like a deliberative assembly , though a sinister ingenuity has cramped ' the latter with a sarcastic provision that it shall not debate and vote oil the same day . Cambridge deserved at least as much freedom . To keep up tho cliques ol Heads and Professors by making thorn
separate interests , ia to do puro misclnol . y ^ ° of the happiest results of tho free constitution at Oxford has been to break up tlio clique of Heads . As to tho Professors , they will probably soon ascend into Heaven ; out if they deign to remain on oarth , thoy ought to bo content to stand on thoir own merits , which as yet arc not of a vory dazzling orclor in either University , iristoad of domanclmg to have constitutions packed for tho immediate inauguration of their divinity . The nomination of the third element Oy
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), April 21, 1855, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_21041855/page/16/
-