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MAi^H 2fc 1852.] ' -^^: ;¦ ;/¦[ ' T^-^^^...
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ADVANCING ORGANIZATION OF SOCIAL SERVICE...
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OUR SECRET DIPLOMACY IN EGYPT AND SOUTH ...
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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 Real Key To Public (Economy And Effi...
like a man in their ships r and in ours ^ he does not like to be treated like a dog / . The cool , reluctant , harassing delays with winch sailors Hariff about a ship newly put in commission , the war in which the most experienced hands wait to see the less cautious ^ the new Gaptain , if he be an [ Unknown man , and the difficulty which an officer ^ f unpoptilar character finds in obtaining men , are wen-known facts * A ship recently put in commission was very slow in obtaining her crew . And the blarneying address which Captains put forth to catch the illiterate sailor , only add to the unpleasant character of the whole affair . To look for lore of country in men who
prefer foreign service—to expect patriotism from men who are trapped like wild ducks , and treated like dogs , is a strange departure from that general policy of our government which looks to $ the conservatism of interests rather than to the chivalry of passions . \ There is , indeed , a stronger love of country in . our sailors than in any other class ; a love of country which , like all the feelings of sailors , is more sound , and simple , and healthy , than the vanid idolatry of our glorious institutions into
which our landsmen have converted the patriotic sent iment . A . tar's love of old England is , in factj the religion of the Union Jack , and it is happily undisturbed by the class divisions of political sectaries , and imcontaminated by the breath of faction , which on shore makes us forget that we are Englishmen , to remember only that we are Conservatives or Radicals . We recollect being on board of the U . S . ship O / wo , in the Bay of Trieste : it was in the autumn , of ' 40 , when war with France was daily expected , and a
collision between pur miserably undermanned ships and the French fleet was far from improbable . The English sailors , who formed a large proportion of the crew of the Ohio , crowded round us , and expressed a warm ; determination to return to the Union Jack in the event of war breaking put . Even a stronger proof of faithfulness was ^ iven on board the U . S . ship Columbus , at a time when the Oregon Question was becoming critical . The Captain called the crew aft , and honourably told
them that war with England was approaching , asking , did any desire to be discharged P The English sailors to a man ( and they formed twothirds of the ship ' s company ) answered that it was time for them to rejoin-their own flag . We cite these instances with pride ; but to rely upon them as an excuse for the system that drives men into foreign service in time of peace * in the confidence of recovering them in event of war , would be equally disastrous and mean . from
We are promised a reform ; not , indee < 3 » the Reform party , which has had the opportunity for years , and has wasted all its energies on impracticable proposals to reduce the army in the teeth of uncertain peace throughout Europe ; or has not wasted its energies at all , but has lain supine in official routine while the millions continued to be spent for nothing . The reform is not to be expected from that party which makes sham motions to stop the supplies , speaks as if
in support of such a motion , but flinches from its reality . The reform that wo descry , if it prove not a phantom , is indicated in those few words with which Mr . Walpo | e seemed to echo Lord Palmerston's , that in their arrangements respecting volunteer corps , Government would show no distrust of the People . Now if that were true , it would indeed bespeak a return to sound national action , not onl y in the matter of volunteer corps , but in the whole relations of tho Governniont to tho People .
Mai^H 2fc 1852.] ' -^^: ;¦ ;/¦[ ' T^-^^^...
MAi ^ H 2 fc 1852 . ] ' - ^^ : ;¦ ;/¦[ ' T ^ - ^^^ kii ^^ ¦¦ / : : . W \ ,
Advancing Organization Of Social Service...
ADVANCING ORGANIZATION OF SOCIAL SERVICES . "Do not call it Socialism , " says an excellent iriond . to us , when we recount tho practical progress which is made b y the principle of Concert . ' -Uo not call it Socialism ; tho public will then u nconsciousl y adopt it without fear , and we shall attain tho thing that is desired by waiving the name . But wo cannot accopt that advice , and ior theso two reasons , independently of our dis"Ko to covert speech—first , bocauso by identifying the practical operations of tho Social idea , wo Prove to tho public that tho idea is riot tho
butruoar that some imagine ; and secondly , because oy showing tho principlo which is common to many rocont improvements , wo at tho same timo snow that there is moro whore they came from , socialists will not silently lot the public adopt wiow ideas , and consent to be called anarchists
precisely for having recommended those ideas ; still less will they consent that the public take some of the benefits , and forego the rest for want of knowledge . That a town should take thought for the wants of its individual inhabitants , and provide those wants by a general pleasure * * a total innovation on tie oacpnomic philosophy of modern times ; and that philosophy ; having possession of power for the time , has been able to refute the propounders of such an idea by the mere fact that it was not accepted . But now we see Croydon
undertaking a general plan of drainage , and providing itself with a general and constant watersupply ; The result of the latter provision has just been tested in a very satisfactory manner . We all know that in cases of fire , the difficulty is to obtain a supply of water ; a fire breaks out at Croydon , and the constant supply of the one element proves amply sufficient to subdue the other in a manner unprecedented for facility , promptitude , and certainty , where water is the extinguisher . The separate system does not work well in
society . Under that system the graveyards where we inter our dead are made depositories of poison for the living . An act was passed to place the whole interments of the metropolis under one authority ; but it was passed by a Government which equally lacked the power to resist the claims of the saaitary reforms , and the good faith to fulfil what it affected to adopt . The means of executing the law were withheld by the supreme Executive , although they were confessedly simple and easy ; and this year , under a new and professedly an honester
Government , the whole question of the unfulfilled law is reopened . At t ^ e interview of the Sanitary Deputation with Lord John Manners , the incontrovertible facts—the fatal mischief of the old plan , the practicability ef the proposed plan , the financial feasibility and saving , and the indecorum of sufTering a law affirmed by a great majority of the legislature to be evaded—were recorded in the plainest terms . And although the Ministers of a precarious Government may hesitate , there is no doubt that the persevering exertions of the Sanitary Reformers willnPtlonelience becrowned
with success . A provision for the general interment of the dead , by a public organization , is now only a question of time . . The machinery for the self-education of the people is not less manifestly developing itself . A plan has been suggested to the Society of Arts for bringing the Mechanics' Institutes and cognate societies within its central superintendence . The Society has declared its willingness to accept that post , ^ if a sufficient number of other societies signify their desire to join it j and not to leave that question to chance , the Society has issued circulars
to the several institutions , putting direct questions as to their willingness to combine , their several resources , wants , and so forth . That they would profit by combining we know already , from tho experience of tho Yorkshire institutes : and who practically obtained the establishment of that experience P We much suspect that they were men belonging to tho condemned order of Socialists ; and we know that the secretary of tho Union is James Hole , one of the most outspoken , one of tho most zealous and forcible writers on Social Science , as he is one of the most practical appliers of the principle of Concert .
Our Secret Diplomacy In Egypt And South ...
OUR SECRET DIPLOMACY IN EGYPT AND SOUTH AMERICA . Otrn debonair Leader of the Commons lias scarcely disappointed expectation by the gay and bantering air , the free and easy assurance with which ho handles the box of a Minister , and waves aside tho questions of more Members . Ho not only astounds every officer of tho House , from tho ushers that attend on the deliberations , to tho porters that . hover around tho
gates of that , solemn assembly , by tho torriblp familiarity with place and power that only genius can don in tho course , of ono week , but he runs tho gauntlet of what our neighbours , when they had a parliament , were wont to call " interpellations , with an affectation of bonhomie that defies inquieitivonoss , and an assumption of frankness that revolutionizes all precedents , and disarms all suspicion . So , when Lord Palmerston ' s squire , Mr . Monckton Milnes , was moving , a few nights since , for the correspondence with
Sohwarzenherg on the refugee question * what could be more dashing and confident , and , at the sajne time , more courteous and kind , than _ the Bight Honourable Benjamin Disraeli ' s replyP "My hon . friend appears to entertain the notion that the essence ofdiplomacyis mystery . " Whereupon the Minister ,, whose very name popularly , suggests that power has turned his head , proceeds to treat as an ignorant joke of
outsiders the ancient superstition , that " it is quite impossible , whenever pur diplomatic interests are concerned , for any member or members of her Majesty's Government to give a ^ straightforward answer . " We are to believe that our Tory Ministers are resolved to be Radical , if in nothing else , at least in plainness of speech . Their frankness is to be what bad translators of French would call " brutal . "
The ex-political romancer is likely to be found a very Proteus in novel expedients for " surprising the religion" of the oldest inhabitant of the House of Commons . His assumption of frankness is evidently a part of the new Downing-street uniform , which none but himself could have invented for the new company of " her Majesty ' s servants . " It is so new , so decidedly original . On the hustings at Aylesbury he mystified the public mind by " going to be frank , " and never getting anywhere : —in the House , he is more straightforward than Sibthorp himself . Now who does not recognise in Cassio muttering , " I'm not drunk , " the type of all
mankind , past , present , and to come , whenever that " glorious state" has overtaken them . A Minister so lavish of professions * of frankness , and so perpetually appealing to his straightforwardness , deserves far deeper distrust than do the graver ambiguities of the sorriest old hack of Downing-street in his barrenest hour . But we pass from the man of the moment to the question of the day ; and we insist on the miserable results , more flagrant than ever , of that secret diplomacy we have so often , had occasion to denounce . Labyrinthine diplomacy is the ruin of the very interests it affects to guard . What is more common than to find her
Majesty ' s Government in the very thick of an embarrassment before we have obtained the faintest notion of the stages by which that embarrassment has been reached P Correspondence , consisting mainly of asterisks , is sparingly doled out , if not altogether refused "for reasons of public service " during protracted negotiations ; and it is not until all the damage has brilliantly exploded , that we are regaled with a ponderous bluebook , which leaves us where it found us , in hopeless confusion of dates , places , and events . And all this , too , for the advantage of the " public service . "
Not to entangle our readers in the tedious perplexities of the Argentine question , which has just received so violent a solution by the defeat and flight of JRosas , we will simply inquire to what extent our commercial interests have been improved or advanced by what Lord Beaumont calls the different policy of different Governments ; by we know not now many treaties , how many negotiations , how many blockades , and how many tons of diplomatic waste paper P JSTot only is the indopondonco of the Banda Oriental doubtfully assured by the presence of two liberating flags , but that free navigation of the great rivers which we have wasted blood to effect , and which would
open now markets to our merchants , is still in abeyance , and if the present opportunity in the crisis of defeat and victory be lost , may be hopelessly suspended . In tho meanwhile , Lord Malmesbury finds nothing better to do than to give a geographical sketch ( which a visit to Mr . Wyld ' s globo would improve or supersede ) , and a political aperfv . of Bolivia and [ Paraguay , Of course tho House would not expect him to enter into details where ho had received no private or official information , save of tho interesting fact of Rosas embarking with his daughter on board an English steamer ; the particulars of which are to be obligingly , laid on the table .
This is a very pretty specimen of tho refadymade experience of Dowmng-Btreet , that changes but never dies . But tho latest exposition of our toxt is to be found in the newest phase of that great Eastern question , in the antiquities , if ^ not in the development of which tho author of Tancred is profoundly " at home . " . Here we find " secret diplomacy" in its glory-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 27, 1852, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27031852/page/13/
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