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^ December 27> 1856,] THE LEADER, 1235
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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. Meethte. Tydv...
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No notice can be taken of anonymous coir...
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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1856.
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There is nothing so revolutionary, becau...
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SWITZERLAND, FRANCE,, AND PRUSSIA. NEurc...
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CHRISTMAS GAMES. Is.-Christmas to be ove...
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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Transcript
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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.
^ December 27> 1856,] The Leader, 1235
^ December 27 > 1856 , ] THE LEADER , 1235
Notices To Correspondents. Meethte. Tydv...
NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . Meethte . Tydvii ,. —The correspondent who addresses us from this place is informed that the gentleman whose Name he sees advertized has nothing whatever to do with the work in Question .
No Notice Can Be Taken Of Anonymous Coir...
No notice can be taken of anonymous coirespondence Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarilv for publication , but as a guarantee of his good faith . We do not undertake to return rejected communications
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Saturday, December 27, 1856.
SATURDAY , DECEMBER 27 , 1856 .
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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 thevery law of its creation , in eternal progress . —Dk . Arnold .
Switzerland, France,, And Prussia. Neurc...
SWITZERLAND , FRANCE ,, AND PRUSSIA . NEurciiA . TEii affords another illustration of the discriminating morality which now prevails in Europe . The guardians of public order might have "been expected to bestow some censure on the authors of a hopeless insurrection . Had . the insurrection represented any principle , or any popular sentiment , it would have been denounced as the work of incendiaries , misguided or malicious ; but , having been a lloyalist enterprize , undertaken in the name of legitimacy , it receives
official sanction , and is nowhere reprobated , although it has endangerecLthe peace of the ¦ world . This , however , is . not " tlieConly ^ paradox connected with the dispute h ' et \ v ^ n £ 3 Prussia and Switzerland . Tjiedebick WiLii | Alr , who so lately preached from the throne on the blessings of tranquillity , and stood aloof from the combination against Russia , is now a German Hotspur , the most ' warlike sovereign on the Continent . France , which menaced him
less than two years ago , promises . her sympathetic neutrality ill his behalf ; so that we are in the presence of three astonishing anomalies —insurrection defended by diplomacy , Prussia in a martial attitude , and France the abettor of Prussia . But we are also in the presence of historical and political certainties which demonstrate the right of Switzerland to resist tins league of the powers on both sides of the Rhine , and the insurgents within her own frontier . Ncufchatel never lost its
rank as a free state , the member of a sovereign federation ; it was never more intimately connected with Prussia than with Switzerland ; eight years of independent existence have given it as good a claim to recognition as the JbYciich Empire ; the link'which attached it to the Prussian monarchy was a fiction as frail as that by which Portugal claims to this day the dominion of the East and West Indies ; finally , the principle which must now bo admitted to settle such
questions is that , when the population of a state , however small , has declared its will , that will is . prior to all other assertions , paramount to all documentary titles , and cannot bo set aside without leaving open a source of perpetual discord and danger . " Wo affirm this maxim ; but , apart from it , Prussia is now preparing to cany out , in the face of Europe , an act of piratical violence in Switzerland .
The attitude of . France is an exemplification of tlie immorality which is the instinct of the Empire . Wo could not expect , indeed , that Louis Napojveon" would bo grateful to the Swiss ltopublic which gave him an asylum , and one-rod to defend him with all her forces . Ho was not grateful to Franco , which raised him out of obscurity , and gave him an opportunity to become the most illustrious 01
bestowed on an attempt to root out the independence of the oldest liberal state in the world . For the policy of Prussia and France is no less than a scheme to root out the independence of Switzerland . They put their demands in such a form , as made compliance on the part of the Federal Government impossible . They require a sovereign Federation to disown its laws , and to surrender the right of jurisdiction over offences committed within its own territory . The Federation
the most infamous ruler in . Europe . He rejects , in Switzerland , the right of popular choice to which , lie appeals , in France , as his own title to the throne . Bat it might at least have been anticipated that the imperial Cabinet would not publish an invitation , to the Prussians to create a dangerous war , among the Alps and on the Khine . Notorious as it is , that the Empire abhors the neighbourhood of freedom , we may well be astonished by the turpitude of the approval
declines to make this sacrifice , which , -would leave it without a political existence , and forthwith Prussia prepares an army and Germany opens a highway for the invasion of Switzerland , while France pronounces for the claims of the invader . England , through her organs of opinion , declares herself unmistakably in favour of the Swiss ; but , in this self-governed country , public opinion and foreign policy have nothing in common . We wait to see how long and
how fiercely the fire will rage . The only quarter to which the Federation turns for help is across Savoy to Piedmont , where the riflemen in green are invited to take part with the free rifles of Switzerland . In addition to this alliance ^ which is very problematical , the Swiss hope to be favoured by insurrectionary diversions in Europe . They will also recal their mercenaries—the janissaries of Naples and Rome . Nor is it
improbable that advantage will be taken of a war of national independence in the Alps and the valleys at their feet , to renew the revolution , which would thus be supplied with a citadel and centre of operations . The chief doubt would be , whether the first attack of the invaders could be repelled , so that the Swiss and Europe miglit have breathing-time . When it is remembered that the troops of tlio Federation , organized and in reserve , amount to no less than two . hundred
thousand men , that they are physically superior , although iuferior in discipline , practice , and accoutrements to the Prussians , that every male inhabitant of the invaded cantons would be an active enemy , that the Federal army would scatter through the valleys and cluster round innumerable separate points of defence , and that frequently tlie Swiss have defeated fourfold their own numbers , it is evidont that the King of Prussia lias not a mere coming , seeing , and conquering before him . The Swiss do not appear alarmed by the prospect ; nor arc they inspired by the
desperatc activity of despair . On the contrary , their movements are marked' by calmness and deliberation ; they know their own strength , and they will make trial of it against the strongth of Prussia . But it lms not yet come to a declaration of war . At the last ' moment Franco will probably protest . There are many steps from a suspension of relations to a battle . ( Should the collision take place speedily , it will take place in the winter , the season most favourable to the mountaineers . " It' ever the Swiss aro attacked , they will know how to defend the country ol WiTiT . T . ui : TELTi . " These aro the words of
Louis Napoleon . The sympathy of England belongs naturally to tho Swiss . They have a just cause ; , they aro tho weaker party ; they have been abandoned by France ; they are merely upholding
the prerogative of national independence j they intend to practise no severity on thd political prisoners ; they are assailed by superior forces . We may be unable to assist them ; but we should prohibit our Government from , taking part in the great conspiracy against the Republic of the Alps , obnoxious to Continental monarchies and empires . What they are asserting is the privilege of enforcing their own laws against their own criminal subjects ; but their laws are mild ; they have no Devil ' s Island or Ouiana fen . for the torture of malcontents .
liet . it be remembered , moreover , that England is in no way pledged to acquiesce in the Prussian claim . The protocol of 1852 ia a simple record of a Prussian protest ; Lord Malmesbubt might have more discreetly declined , to compromise this country , even by the semblance of assent ; but though he signed the instrument , it was merely as a witness . England has not yet guaranteed the literal execution of the treaty of Vienna , revoked repeatedly by the common act of Europe . Frederick WiiiiiiAM :, however , has stretched that palimpsest upon a drum , and sounds the attack on Switzerland .
Christmas Games. Is.-Christmas To Be Ove...
CHRISTMAS GAMES . Is .-Christmas to be overlaid hy its own machinery ? Is all the business of society to be converted to a game which loses its zest by becoming' mechanical ? The pantomimes are not wiiat they were , partly because JELarle quin : and Clown have grown so terribly anxious , with the ^ pressure of the Incometax and other modern improvements , and partly because the audience is not what it used to be . The prosperity of a joke is in the ear . of- ' the listener . W ^ e never had so
many appliances for keeping up the joviality of the season ; all our illustrated journals teem with evidences of it . Our markets and butchers' shops are far more neat and brilliant than they used to be ; the people at church are better dressed ; holly is more abundant , because there is a special growth for tlie special demand . But with all these systematic preparations , there is scarcely the spontaneity that once marked the English Christmas .
And this season is more clouded than usual . The sunshine of the home-fire glows less genially , because those who sit round it are not listening only to the storms of the elements—those storms which bring hardship in this month , but health in the months to come . They have other thoughts just at present . Tlie great champions of Christianity are illustrating its princip les in a fashion like a satirical burlesque rendered real . The " Powers " are dramatizing the Inferno , and
Christendom just at present is playing the fool before Islam and Budhism , as if tor the very purpose of ujiconverting the heathen . Turkey has been brought into the European system , to find out what it is ; namely , a system officered by royal soldiers , who expend other men ' s blood in heaping up their own power , and form alliances , as they have at Paris , for tlie very purpose of trying to circumvent each other . They are footpads on a huge scale , who try to get their booty whilo other men run the danger .
Switzerland , tho small Republic , repeats the fable of the Pigmies warred on by Cranes ; the Cranes being sent by his Evangelical Lutheran Majesty of Pjiussia ; a gentleman who went round Newgate with Mrs . Fry to show his philanthropy , and now threatens to shed blood by wholesale in order to regain a fantastical titlo which had neither reality nor profit . That is Lutheran Christendom ! Catholic Christendom is equally self-satirical . Naples preys upon tho vitals of his people ; the Western Powers rcmon-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 27, 1856, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27121856/page/11/
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