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«" of that class in Parlia : No. m* , -^...
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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. ¦ ¦ SSSS&ffis...
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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1858.
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^tlUlir ;OT lUtS. 1 ,
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There is nothing so revolutionary, becau...
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STANDARDS FOR THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. W...
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THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. We expoot much ...
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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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«" Of That Class In Parlia : No. M* , -^...
of that class in Parlia : No . m * , - ^—«™> n
t he i ^ apeb ,. ¦ - «»" ¦ ¦ THE LEADER . 999
Notices To Correspondents. ¦ ¦ Ssss&Ffis...
NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . ¦ ¦ SSSS & ffisi ^ si ^ -mmgggsi We * annot undertake to return rejected communications .
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Jfl & tiihtt :
Saturday, September 25, 1858.
SATURDAY , SEPTEMBER 25 , 1858 .
^Tlulir ;Ot Luts. 1 ,
gfothUr Mains .
There Is Nothing So Revolutionary, Becau...
There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed -when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress . — -Pk . Arnold .
Standards For The Reform Bill Of 1859. W...
STANDARDS FOR THE REFORM BILL OF 1859 . Whatever may be the Reform Bill designed by Ministers for the session of 1859 , it is not foreshadowed in the fragmentary projects that have been laid before the public through the columns of some of our contemporaries . It is impossible that the leaders of the Conservative party can have taken up the subject at all with any intention of trifling . If they do not intend to terminate their tenure of office by a political suicide more ludicrous
than lamentable , they will not attempt to satisfy the want of public opinion by any paltry schemes for tinkering the present laws regulating the representation of the people . Any such notions would be unworthy even of a playhouse manager , who would foresee the danger of tantalising the public expectation with large announcements on the bills to put off the public expectation with some miserable farce or interlude . The party which has systematically opposed any changes hi the statutes relating to the institutions of the country can only have consented to
¦ waive its resistance and to initiate its own school of Reform by a measure intended to bear the impress of statesmanship , and to justify a change of action bv the elevation of the statesmanship . The storms of party'have subsided ; those circles who have sworn by certain Liberal leaders , appear to have exhausted either their invention in the ^ business of improvement , or their energy for action . The office of working statesmanship in the prosecution of Reform , therefore , is left vacant , and the statesmen who
began life on the same side of the House with the representatives of the Tory party , who have heretofore qlung together in pubho lite , find themselves accidentally at the head of a nation no longer divided , and actually being called upon to take up the duty which others have suffered to lapse . We have never affected to regard the Tories as the enemies of their country , or of the constitution , though we have believed them not sufficiently to appreciate the true spirit of the constitution in leaning to the prerogative of the Crown , while , the special safeguards of this country are to be found in those statutes which "establish a
concurrent power with the Crown , the Lords , and the Commons , down to the humblest burgess of the land . At present there are no Tories , but only tho heirs of men who conscientiously inclined to the opinions designated by that epithet ; the heirs , however , living in a different day , sharing larger
experiences , and manifesting widely different sympathies . These circumstances alone mark a period so [ totally different from that of the last Reform Bill , conflict , that the measures taken up in tho spirit of that old contest oould only bo a mistako ; while an attempt to evade the supposed inconsistency , by bringing forward a neutral measure , vsould constitute a' hoax in national statesmanship unprecedented for its moanness and its folly , Tho statesmon responsible for taking up the conduct of ^ flairs at the present day for reconciling tho inheritance of . tho Tory party with the reqiuromonts of
the a"e cannot , we say , intend any stratagem of that kind : and while we acknowledge the apparent difficulty and perplexity of the problem thrust before them , we cannot help doubting . whether they fully perceive the opportunity presented to them by the striking difference of the time . The mere outward aspect of English life is enough to justify the instinctive sense of J & ngnshmen who have been heretofore recko ned as " Tories , that it demands altered fashions and an altered spirit . The last Reform Bill was passed in days when the very look of our streets was unlike the present ; when London had but 1 , 655 , 000 men , wonfen , and children , instead of the two millions and half which we now reckon ourselves . It is true that we had gas-lights in London , but in those days gas was not the universal light from Sy dney to Toronto , oi tne
and we did not find in every provincial town empire , whether from Glasgow to Bristol , or from Montreal to Melbourne , the same style of living , the same drawing-room , the same ships , the same " new police , " the self-same way of goingon , mutatis mutandis , as in the City or as in the Westend of our own metropolis . We had not in those days penny papers or omnibuses . Railways were still in embryo — ho network replacing the old high-roads of the country . We had no large steamships , no weekly post with America , no v ^ o ^ v , ^ «^ of « r > 'Hrktvljinrl Hill for the whole
civilised world . We had not adapted the screw to great merchant g UipS or the navy . We had no electric telegraphs . We still were without someof thenewest inventions for multiplying the uses of commercial mediums of exchange . We had not expanded the uses of the banker ' s clearing-house . We had not discovered gold in California or gold in Victoria . We had not seen those enormous emigrations to the British colonies and to the United States which have bound those outlying countries to us by the very heartstrings of our population . We had had no Irish famine , a miserable
peasantry still starved on con ' -acre , where now the word is almost forgotten , and Irishmen begin to rejoice , not in potatoes , but in an English style of wages We had not then had free trade , which lias not only made Euglaud . the entrepot for the commerce of the globe , but has given her the start oi that commerce , has taught her farmers to forget distress , and has multip lied the population of the towns with a reflex influence on the rural of the population ; insomuch that \ ye have seen in England , and even in Ireland , agricultural labourers assisting in the trial of machinery . We had not then the immense development of newspapers and cheap literature . The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge , inaugurateciin 1828 by Lord Brougham , did not begin to tell upon the country till some time
after the old Reform Bill had passed , biuce time time the Cosmos , whose aged author has been felicitated on his ninety-first birthday by Prince Alfred has become a household book , purchasable at almost every railway station ; and with this universal appropriation of the ideas definitively given to the age by this aggregate intellect , we have had a gradual improvement in the popular manners through all grades of society . Witness the order of the Exhibition of 1851—the million in the glass house ; the way , in which the mob kept the streets at tho Wellington funeral , and at the celebration of Peaco ; and tho actual enrolment of tho working classes , during the latest demonstration at Leeds , to perform the duty of a guard whilst sovereignty passed along .
But this picture of the outward aspect of the people portrays changes far deeper , and going to tho very stuff of the conscience . Such things happened in a former time as would now bo impossible scandals . It was tho suffering condition of the workingclasses in 1842 which compelled an improvement in our imperial economy , with tho effects that we have witnessed . But this wealthy country cannot , as it has shown in-more recent days , tolcrato sufferings amongst ; tho poor which are regarded as natural
calamities in other countries , and nave been m our own in past days . It was tho sufferings of tho working-classes m 1828 which first prompted Mr . Canning to attempt a movement for tho repeal of tho corn-laws , and ho then failed ; but wo have had the ropoal , and when tho famine broko out in Ireland , all England felt tho necessity of aiding our brother men . Jjnpcrfoot as our systoni may be in many rospcots , there is undoubtedly a bettor foeling between the different olasses of society ; landlords ftutl omployurs gonoriilly admit larger responsibilities towavda their workiug-ueonlo j witness tlio respeot
paid to any claims on behalf ment ; witness the anxiety to improve the dwelling ! of the poor , to provide parks for the people ix London , Birmingham , Manchester , & c . ; witness the efforts of individual employers to act with those that work under them—from Mr . Saltj of Saltaire , to . Anne-Marchioness of Londonderry ; witness most especially the bearing of the Court and people to each other at ^ Leeds . The fact is thatj the period before the passing of the Reform Bill was a very bad school of politics . We English had lived under an aged king whose infirmities
compelled a certain difference in the nation injurious to our political independence . Through various combinations , the Tories had been able to make their principles of prerogative dominant . Thej trampled on the native institutions of the country ; their insolent domination taught them a badmorale , and they attempted to prevent . discussion by an obscene insolence which provoked habitual retort and Radical coarseness . Our fathers of those days lived in a school of conflict and . corruption ; we have lived in a school of reform ; and if our education is still incomplete , the spirit of the school is
entirely regenerate , as compared with that before the Reform era . Any statesmen , therefore , who attempt to legislate for the people as they are now born and trained , undertake a task wholly different from that which the persevering Liberals accomplished in 1832 . It might be appropriate enough for the Liberals to think of re-editing their old bill of 1832 , but if the Conservatives come into the field , if they are to place their works in that series of classics , they would degrade themselves by becoming mere editors of the Whiff-Radical statesmen of 1832 . Many
of the difficulties which deterred them from Reform have disappeared ; and if they have perplexities of their own , they do not confront the greatest obstacle which stood before the Liberal of that day ; they have no Tory party arrayed against them ; they have , on the contrary , ' political rivals who must agree if their bill be substantial enough , and a people only waiting to hail . them ¦ with applause-ifthey do their duty sincerely and diligently . The whole condition of the people removes the doubts which prevented Conservatives in those days from agreeing to political changes , and amongst the
present political confederates of Lord Derby there are men who have learnt so much of the working-classes , in actual conference and co-operation with them , that their dread of almost any conceivable extension of the suffrage has been cured by the most practical treatment . We appeal to Cabinet Ministers themselves to testify to the truth of our remark . But these altered aspects of the time , while they remove many barriers to the action of Conservatives on the path of Reform , impose upon any Reform Ministry responsibilities entirely new . The statesmen in oflice have to bring forward a measure worthy of a people whose good order , industry , and , intelligence have been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt . They have to submit provisions before a nation whose average intelligence lias been
elevated to a pitch perhaps unprecedented in the world . They nave to enlarge constitutional stal utes where already the basis is generous and liberal . They have , in a glorious constitution , to make an amendment which shall be a real improvement , not simply a tinkering 1 , to warrant the use of a great name . They have , iu short , to submit another bill in tho series of our fundamental statutes worthy of the English people of the present day , and of the measures which have preceded it . Should the task be undertaken in a spirit congenial to its grandeur and its importance , the Conservatives may lead us another stnge on tho march of progress , while identifying their own principles with the growth of tho nation , and immortalising themselves amongst the workmon who have , through successive ages , been allowed to lend a hand in building up tlio constitution of the country .
The British Association. We Expoot Much ...
THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION . We expoot much from the meeting of tho British Association now assembled at Leeds . This body , without demanding or rocoiving nmoh assistance from Government , which rarely interferes with science but to bias or pervert it , as it raroly takes religion in hand without lessoning and tJiwiirfiug its beneficial influence , has already ooiilrrbuted very much to advance , and still movo to UiUuse , scientific information . It moots « t a propitious time when tho public altont / on is fixed on some important problems , the solution of which , or at
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 25, 1858, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_25091858/page/15/
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