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&m fHE I/EAPIB. fcKfo.&g7 5 A^HSPPSg S@ ...
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^TO!PIOBS TO CORRESPONDENTS. ' Bnrine th...
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SATTJBDAT, AUGUST 22, 1857.
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, - . , '^tt'ltfti* <5HTitli*« • JyUUlIC JlUUirS * ' ' •
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? There is nothingso revolutionary, beca...
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: » - ¦ THE VICTORIAN ERA. Ytgtobia has ...
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AMERICA ON INDIA AND ENGLAND. Tarn Ameri...
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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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.
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^To!Piobs To Correspondents. ' Bnrine Th...
^ TO ! PIOBS TO CORRESPONDENTS . ' Bnrine the Session of Parliament it if often impossible to flnd i-oom for correspondence , even the briefest . KIs i mpossible to acknowledge the mass of letters we re" eeive . Their insertion IS-ofteti delayed , owing to a press of matter j and when omitted , it ia frequently from rea-Jsons ^ nite independent of the merits of the communication . , Wo notice can be taken of anonymous correspondence . "Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily for publicatibn . but as a guarantee of his good faith . "We cannot undertake to return rejeoted communications .
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Sattjbdat, August 22, 1857.
SATTJBDAT , AUGUST 22 , 1857 .
, - . , '^Tt'ltfti* ≪5htitli*« • Jyuulic Jluuirs * ' ' •
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? There Is Nothingso Revolutionary, Beca...
? There is nothingso revolutionary , because there ia nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep thingB flared when all the worldis by thevery law af its creation in eternal progress . —Dr . A & hpxd
: » - ¦ The Victorian Era. Ytgtobia Has ...
: » - ¦ THE VICTORIAN ERA . Ytgtobia has sat upon the British thron e twenty years . During that period the members of iiot mare than twenty families iiave governed the empire . The governing classes , embodying a gigantic political monopoly , have been , represented by select sections of their own . order—Whigs and Tories , at intervals— -and have" been responsible for whatever events , springing from political or administrative causes , have marked the history of
the present reign . It is the fashion to paint this history im ( brilliant colours—to sketch , again and again , the panorama of a far-wafted commerce , deserts blossoming like the rose , population expanding , liberty developed , and national"powar ^ consolidated . And rightly so . We have ^ flourished since 1837 , and are altogether : ti greater people than when the crown of Hanover rested for the last time upon the coffin of an . English King . Extensive conq uests * gold discoveries , mechanical
inventions , and a « ts of fostering legislation , have made us more than , a century ago , we ever hoped to be . 13 ut what if , by a methodical analysis , w could distribute the merit of our progress since the death of "Wtlhsiam TV . between the industrious , middle , and privileged classes ? What share would fall to the corporation which , officially
or unofficially , rules the realm ? It « iay assign to itself all to which it can justly lay claim ; but there is another side to the ac-CQumt . The Victorian era has been signalized W a 'Series of national disasters , ' —and are not the' managers of ifae ' State responsible for its calamities ? It wotild be unjust and unreasonable to press too . closely the application of such a maxim ; but we have an aristocracy whieh as addicted to swaggering , » and it may bo useful to remind it that all failures are not
those of commerce , all misfortunes not the result of accident , all crimes not recognisable by the Courts of Common . 3 Jaw or ^ E quity . "We boast of our prosperity—we hme sacrificed a peroepbi'b'le proportion of it while temporizing with restrictive laws . "We have a snlondid dominion in Asia— - ~ ifc has been twice , . imperilled , aad blotted foully with the blood of : massacre .
Out colonies are magnificent— -but rthe most magnificent of them has been in rebellion . Within twenty years we have had the insurrection in Canada , the slaughter in Afghanistan , the famine in Ireland , tfche Monimputhiahire riots , the 'horrible and heart-rending' tragedy of starvation and pestilence in . thevOpimea , and tUe climax of puljJicaSHotion iiu'British . India—nnofc to mention the cholera panic , the partial scarcity of food in England
preceding the repeal of the Corn liaws , and the destructive inania of speculation ia 1847 . In 1837 we alienated and exasperated the inhabitants of our most important Atlantic colony ; in 1840 we provoked a fearful outbreak in the centre of England ; in 1841 our blundering conduct of a military expedition led to the destruction of an army , accompanied with horrors unexampled except during the retreat of Napoleqit from Moscow ; in 1845 , while closing the ports against foreign , corn ,
we desolated Ireland with famine ; in 1854 we send a Buperb army to the Crimea where it perishes from sheer "neglect ; in . 1857 , in spite of warnings and prophecies , we permit a mutinous movement to sweep away the entire army of Bengal ; the ancient Mogul capital is snatched from us ; English women and children in the East are ruthlessly murdered by the soldiers whom our administrators supinely watch while they _ organize this terrible rebellion .
The general body of the public have certainly not interfered with the diplomatic system by which our governing classes have pretended to balance the affairs of Europe . Their success in this direction has been at least equivocal . They began with a sort of unrecognized war in Portugal ; they were beaten by Prance in the matter of the
Spanish marriages , and by America on the Oregon frontier ; they have twice been on the eve of war with the French , and twice with the "United States ; they have been compelled to undertake one irregular and one regular campaign in Persia ; they have had two Chinese wars ; . they have been dragged into a contest with Sussia and then , dragged
out of it . Surely the Ghiild is not very expert at diplomacy , "But it may be that our governing class is wo rth what we pay for it . It may be that a scandalous revolt in a great colony , one army massacred , and another rotted ' to death , a famine , a menace of domestic insurrection , a mutiny of a huudred thousand soldiers , three or four wars , and endless perplexities do not constitute a heavy price to be paid for the advantage of being governed for twenty years by the houses ^ of Bedfobd and Debby . But veould the nation
consent to contract for another twenty years at a similar cost ? Supposing that we pi » ogress to the year 1877 under similar influences , and with a similar aggregate of calamity , the account may be rendered thus :- —a million of the population at home will be swept off by famine ; we shall send ten thousand British troops through the Eastern gates of Central Asia , and they will be hunted down and cut off to
a man ; we shall u / nderfcake a great war wj , th unlimited resources , and we shall establish a besieging army among rocks and swamps where its flower will be blighted , and twenty thousand men lost to the nation by cold and by unattended disease ; having suppressed the mutiny in Bengal , we shall eee Madras and Bombay in flames , and hundreds of innocent lives will be sacrificed because we have an
unalterable system ; we shall quarrel with America over some mud-bank in the Sb . Lawrence ; and at the close of this period we shall be declaring ourselves the greatest nation on the face of the earth , disparaging all other institutions in comparison with our own , and never dreaming that in some dark day of our history we may incur a disaster
which will prove too much even for the elastic energies of Gtaeat Britain , The complications of diplomacy have been referred to but wo have no desire to assign the evil to causes exclusively arising from the incapacity or recklessness of the governing classes . No one nation can make the diplomacy of jpurape ibs own , or march iu n utraight line under a cross fire of formidable
and irresistible mfliieiices ; but the most fr ightful of the calamities in the list arose from sheer blundering aoad from helpless imbecility on the part of those who had the conduet of affairs ^ The Cjanada rebellion was the offspr ing of a blind and aggressive policy . " When the landed aristocracy of the realm , saw famine blackening the distance , knew that the food of millions had been destroyed , and understood that their Corn Law privileges were inconsistent with the welfare or even existence of the country ,
the bulk of them stubbornly and stolidly stood , idly gazing at the approaching cloud , when they might have thrown upon the blasted fields of Ireland one harvest from the Danube and another from the Mississippi . Tet even in "this case they were not "without excuse . They defended a policy , and with that policy many of them sincerely believed the interests of the empire to be identified . But where shall they find an apology for the Afghan massacre , the destruction of the Crimean army , or the disaster in Bengal ? For these
they are responsible , and yet not they alone , but the public , whose opinion is never ripe , and which confines itself to staring , wondering , regretting , uttering maledictions , and allowing men who have failed , to undertake new failuares at a coat of ten thousand men or ten millions of money , sometimes of the men and the money together , and always of that national reputation , which is more precious than either . We lost an army in the Khyber pass ; we consoled ourselves that it would serve as a
lesson . We lost an army at Sevastopol ; still we thought that no price could be too high for such a lesson . Our governing classes in India have run riot in maladministration , and have allowed a splendid army to melt away into seditious anarchy . We suppose we shall again hear that this will be a lesson . It will be no such thing . We shall put down the mut iny , and pay its tremendous cost , and we shall then close our eyes , and wait till we are informed that another ten thousand men
have been frozen dead in a British camp , or smitten with pestilence , through the apathy of their administrators ; and when we are weary of these successive calamities we shall begin to speculate upon , a change of system . At present we may profitably cast a retrospective glance over the events of the Victorian era . It may be good for us to have acknowledged , that from the dazzling account of prosperity , progress , and glory , certain deductions must be made , by which the total results are materially modified—much to our edification , if somewhat to our shame .
America On India And England. Tarn Ameri...
AMERICA ON INDIA AND ENGLAND . Tarn American press , as well as private letters , have given the lie to those who expected that our cousins across the Atlantic would exult in the menace to England from India , We knew better . Some American statesmen who have had reason to remember either the arts or the vacillation of certain English statesmen , may chuckle at seeing tne Englishmen caught in their own trap ot negligence and overweening confidence ; some who remember the unfair advantage taken py our people in Central America , may not do lauou
displeased at the retribution which has upon us from the barbarians in the East ; buu Americans have far too much Ang lo-Saxon blood in them to rejoice in the prospect oj victory by Asiatics over the British race j ana they are far too much hard-headed men ot the world to miscalculate the odds dn the present contest . Whether we look to the quasiofiRcial Union of ¦ Washington , or to the independent Herald of New Tork , wo find tUo same calculation . We do not believe , says
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 22, 1857, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22081857/page/14/
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