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ICmrahm
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direst and worst of all possible despotisms . In the fiT = t place I contend that the suffrage is no absolute ri ht : it i- He ritiht of ev * ry man to be free , in a sense—thougi Mr . CaiJyle would >> o d -ubt dispute thir . ; ii is nut the ri * ht of every man to rule , or to assist in ruling . Still less can it be the right of every individual to rule , or assist in ruling , after one particular fashion , that is , by giving a vote , by employing the so-called suffrage . He who writes or speaks , so as to move his fellowmen gives his " suffrage " indeed , and as " suffrage " far more important than the isolated vote at the polling booth . Absolute political rights of Government there are none .
That alone is right which is for the real good of all , or at least for the real good of the majority . Now it is absolutely essential for the maintenance of liberty that every man should not possess the suffrage . I will procet-d , as simply as possible , to state the reason . Man is not infallible ; an individual is not infallible ; a majority is not infallible ; the first essential of good government , in the long run , is consequently a division of power . This division is obviously inconsistent with universal suffrage . Under the latter , one single majority , and that always the majority of the moment , is rendered despotic and
omnipotent . Under our existing constitution , we have four , or , if you will , three independent agencies or powers . You may or may not count the Crown as one ; its reality as a power will always depend on the persor al character of the Monarch , and has compaiatively little to do with forms of Government . Ferdinand of Austria was a puppet , but Louis Philippe was a power , and so was George III . But setting aside the Crown , there remain the lords , representing the aristocracy of the country , the
commons , who are the representatives of the hundreds of thousands , the middle classes , including the yeomanry , and , thirdly , public opinion , perhaps the greatest power of the three , in the long run , which more or less perfectly represents the masses , and finds tongue in the press . Say what you will , public opinion , under our BritUh Constitution , is a real power , a most important element in the government of the country . Now contrast all this with universal suffrage , or a pure democracy , —for I regard these two as convertible terms . Where the masses
vote directly , their numbers will always enable them to swamp , to swallow up their brethren . The separate power of the middle classes , or of the aristocracy , cannot coexist with universal suffrage . The one majority directly resulting from the collective voice of a nation must be supreme . But do you not also see that it must needs be despotic , in the very worst sense ? that individual freedom of thought cannot coexist with it ? By public opinion finally every constitutional state must be guided , only one is guided at this present ; but not by the public opinion of this moment or of that , wavering as this needs must be ; but , on the whole , by the matured opinion of years . Is it possible that any thinking man , that any man with a soul , can w ' sh to bestow absolute power on the one majority of each passing year ? Is it possible that any Englishman ' s spirit should not revolt against such a vision of senseless , mad misrule as the bare idea elicits ? Let ?• Tennyson " speak for me , one of our greatest poets and wisest politicians . Mark und perpend ! " You ask me why , though ill at ease , Within this region I subsist , Whose spirits falter in the mist , And languish for the purple seas ? " It is the land that freemen till , That sober-suited Freedom chose , The land , where girt with friends or foes , A man may sneak the thing he will . u A land of settled government , A land of just and old renown , Whi-ro Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent , 11 Whore faction seldom Rathers head , JUit by degrees to fulness wrought , The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and space to work and spread . " JSlloui . l ) 1 IANDISD UNIONS PERSECUTE ol'imon , and inuucb a time wllbn 81 nolk thought is civil chime Ami individual fueedom mute ; " Though Power should make from land to land Mhe name of Brituin trebly great , — Though every channel of the State Should almost choke with golden sand , — " Yet waft me from the harbour ' s mouth , Wild winu ! I se ? k a warmer sky , A ml I will s « e before I die Th . palms and temples of the South . " Thv high wist / am of this poetical utterance can scnnly }><> extolled too highly ; those who discern it not ire beyond the renth of argument . Accordingly I will no farther trespass on your ppnec . lVrinit me , however , to subscribe myself an admirer , though i-n uncompromising advocate of that orthocloxy ' which appears to you ifletp , and one who linnly b hcves himself to be in possession of that Tiuth wlurh tom . ardently covet . My name , winch L ^ vwspon for withholding , is , v NS > -t ''* m / N A UCH KU ° u KxHY » V ' - " \ y uencb fin the English Church , Exeter . -: ¦ : : , ; ^
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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In the quiet circles , where poets are treasured according to their worth , and their capabilities of deepening and extending our capacities of enjoyment— for is not the author an auctor , an increaser f —there is one little bit of gossip which will be welcomed by all kinds of pleasant greetings , will be petted and commented on with fondness and ingenuity , and will be repeated with bright smiles to every fresh comer—a sentence we fling among them as we would fling a rose fresh-gathered into the bosom of her we love , merely to see the bright gladness of its effect j this it is : Alfred Tennyson has taken unto himself a wife ! Our
young bards might try their lyres at an Epithalamium . We could almost do it ourselves were Journalism a trifle more leisurely ; or we could fill our columns with the sounding verse of Spenser ; perhaps even adapt one of Marino ' s Epithalam'ums ( he has filled a volume with them ) were Fahrenheit a few degrees lower or Marino less fanciful and fantastic . We have no more gossip ., unless , indeed , we are to rely on a statement which has reached us that Carlyle will publish no more Pamphlets after
the forthcoming one on George Hudson ' s Statueat least for the present . The seven will form a volume ; and although the publishers would gladly continue through another volume , the sale is so large , yet Cablyle , disregarding notions of " supply and demand , " with an eye to Fahrenheit , resolves on maintaining his grand virtue—Silence . By the way , in the last Revue des Deux Mondes there is an article on his Pamphlets , in which the writer chuckles prodigiously over their
fierce onslaughts upon universal suffrage and democracy , but has only caught a partial glimpse of their drift . The paper is interesting , however , on various accounts . While on the subject of Carlyle ' s critics let us notice the rambling but spirited vindication which has just appeared , called Blackwood v . Carlyle , in answer to the very feeble article which appeared in the last number of Blackwood j it is hastily written but contains some powerful sentences .
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You know that exquisite ode which Horace in the fervor of passion and poetry wrote to his Lydia when she was brighter to his eyes than any star , sidere pulchrior ? Not the Lydia die per omnes nor the heartless ode wherein the old debauchee triumphs over her declining charms—charms which in their bloom had ravished his youth —( all the perplexing confusion of our schoolboy " construing " could not prevent our perceiving this ode
to be so savage and unmanly as to make us hate Horace )—it is to neither of these we refer , but the ode in which he draws that eternal drama of lovers' reconciliation in traits which are eternal , the Donee gratus eram tibi , Nee quisqnam potior brachia Candida ) Cervici juvenis dahat : I ' ersaruin vigui rege beatior , &c .
This ode , which Moliere has expanded into a little chef d'ecuvre , and called it Le Depit Amoureuoo , and which has been reproduced in a thousand different shapes , has found a dramatist in Ponsard , whose comedy in one act of Horace et JLydie introduced Rachel in a new character . Theopiiile Gautier is charmed with the piece , and with the acting . Jules Janin , whose knowledge of the
Latin classics is both comprehensive and minute , mercilessly exposes its dissonances of tone and feeling , and h ; is not a word to say for Rachel . We suspect he is right ; but probably Mr . Mitchell will give us the opportunity of judging for ourselves . Hitherto Rachel , who stands alone as a tragic actress , has given no real evidence of her command over comedy , though off the stage she is adorably playful and coquettish .
M . Libri , accused of stealing books and MSS . from the Hoyal Library to the value of £ 24 , 000 , and who asserted his innocence with so much energy that he deceived our contemporary—the Athenamm—into espousing his causo , has been brought to trial , and condemned to ten years' imprisonment . The position of M . Libri in the learned world makes this " scandale" painful . Edgar Quinet lias just published a spirited declamation in favour of secular education , De FEnseiqnmcnt On Peuple , correctly tracing the
anarchy of the age to its absence of any one dominant faith , and the contention of the various systems which insist upon all education being religious yet cannot agree as to the religion . To attempt the foundation of liberty while Catholicism is the national religion is , as he shows , a solecism ; and to attempt establishing liberty by liberty is to solve the problem by the problem ! The Continent at this moment bears out his previsions ; the reaction is all in favour of absolutism and suppression of free thought . In France they
are insolently rehabilitating the Inquisition ; in Germany as in France they are suppressing all the journals which criticise their acts . To read the prosecutions directed against the press , to see upon what grounds journals are seized , editors imprisoned and fined , while it rouses the deepest indignation in our minds , accompanied by the hope that such insolent tyranny will speedily meet its terrible retribution , rouses at the same time a feeling of hopeful pride that we in England are beyond such shameless exercise of power .
England does not find that free discussion shakes her power . We have " differences" enough , yet we do not dread them . Doubtless there are many who would willingly prevent the publication of all anti-Church and anti-State opinions , but we have gained practical liberty enough to see that the best cure for the evils of error is refutation , not suppression . A paper so violent and audacious as Julian Hahney ' s Red Republican could only exist in England , and , threatening as its contents are , there is greater safety in allowing the free utterance of its wrathful earnestness than there would be in
suppressing it . We have nothing bibliographical to record of Germany , beyond the announcement of the Goethe and Schiller correspondence , which is said to be of a more private and personal nature than the letters hitherto published . Otherwise the publishers are inactive .
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LEIGH HUNT ' S AUTOBIOGRAPHY . The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt ; with Reminiscences of Friends and , Contemporaries . In 3 vols . Smith , Elder , and Co . Among the insurgent minds of this century Leigh Hunt's position is singular . He has excited deep and lasting attachments among his readers , making them his confidants and friends ; but he has also excited an amount of exasperated obloquy and sneering depreciation so disproportionate to any offence against the « ' fair respectabilities and reigning dogmas " that
we have often amused ourselves with endeavours to analyze down to the cause thereof . He has puzzled and perplexed his critics . He has allowed them to understand very clearly that his spirit rose up against the tyranny of rulers and of creeds , and yet he has not fairly " committed himself . " A rebel in opinion , he has not placed , himself at the barricades . In the very movement of his audacity you see a saving clause . Some men intimate audacities parenthetically . Leigh Hunt has a parenthesis of propriety
even in his most insurgent moods . Attacking an enemy , he " makes allowances " for him ; attacking a dogma , he puts in a saving clause for what is sincere in it . This is not affectation in him ; it is constitutional . Indeed , we may say generally that the " affectations " so disagreeable to many readers , and so often harped upon by critics , whatever they rrwiy seem like , really are the natural characteristics of the man . He is a humourist , and his humours must be granted him . Not only is he a man with humours
which separate him from the crowd , but there exi . vis in his nature a strange blending of opposing elements , a singular deviation from the common adjustment of relative proportions . Thus , to take an example , the part played in his life by Imagination is something quite unusual in a man not led away by it , not of •« imagination all compact . " We arc accustomed to see men either making use of the imagination in a quite occasional manner , confining it almost to festal moods of mind , using it as the relief from worldly cares , the adornment and amusement of leisure ; or else wo see
them (—but this is a rarer class —) what popular language designates as " the creaiures of imagination , " subordinating the real world to the world of . fancy , and acting upon thx'ir fancies as upon the highest truths . Leigh Hunt belongs to neither cliiss . He welds with Fancy the great bars of life , he colours the objects of his most ordinary daily needs with the hues of Fancy , he brings his Imagination into active operation into the daily current , and seizes everything by the poetical side , and he does this -with such persistance that it looks wilful ,
Icmrahm
Xmrattm .
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328 Hfye ILt&tltt * [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), June 29, 1850, page 328, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1844/page/16/
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