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like a man in their ships ; and in ours he does not like to be treated like a dog . " The cool , reluctant , harassing delays with which sailors tang about a ship newly put in commission , the way in which the most experienced hands wait to see the less cautious try the new Captain , if he be an unknown man , and the difficulty which an officer of unpopular character finds in obtaining
m are well-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 love 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 vapid idolatry of our glorious institutions into which our landsmen have converted the patriotic sentiment . A tar's love of old England is , in fact , the religion of the Union Jack , % andit is happily undisturbed by the class divisions of political sectaries , and iincontaminated 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 tLS . ship Ohio , in the Bay of Trieste : it was in the autumn of ' 40 , when war with ^ France was daily expected , and a collision between our miserably undermadned 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 ta the Union Jack in the event of war breaking out . Even a stronger proof of faithfulness was given on board the U . S . ship Columbia , 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 j 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 . We are promised a reform ; not , indeed , from 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 we descry , if it prove not a phantom , is indicated in those few words with which ^ Mr . Walpole seemed to echo Lord Palmorston ' s , that in thoir 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 only in the matter of volunteer corps , but in the whole relations of the Government to the People .
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ADVANCING ORGANIZATION OF SOCIAL SERVICES . " Do not call it Socialism , " says an excellent fnond to us , when we recount tho practical progress which is made b y the principle of Concert . " Do not cpll it Socialism ; tho public will then unconsciously adopt it without fear , and we shall attain the thing that is desired by waiving the name . " But wo cannot accept that advice , arid t th
or ese two reasons , independently of our disliko to covort speech , —first , because by identifying tho practical operations of the Social idea , wo provo to tho public that tho idea is not tho' bugooar that soino imagine ; and sooondly , because by showing tho principle which is common to xnany recent improvements , wo at tho same time show that thoro is moro where they came from . Socialists will not silently let tho public adopt thoir 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 measure , is a total innovation oii the oeconomic 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 accepte ' d . But now we see Croydon undertaking a general plan of drainage , and
providing itself with a general anc ^ 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 . U nder 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 sanitary 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 untulnlied law is reopened . At the interview of the Sanitary Deputation with Lord John Manners , the incontrovertible facts- —the fatal mischief of the old plan , the practicability of the proposed plan , the financial feasibility and saving , and the indecorum of suffering 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 willnot longlience becrowned for the
with success . A ^ provision 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 ; 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 the experience of the Yorkshire institutes : and who practically obtained the establishment of that experience P We much suspect that they were men belonging to the condemned order of Socialists ; and we know that the secretary of the 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 tho principle of Concert .
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OUR SECRET DIPLOMACY IN EGYPT AND SOUTH AMERICA . Ouit debonair Leader of the Commons has 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 asido the questions of more Members . He not only . astounds every officer of the House , from the ushers that attend on tho deliberations , to the- porters that hover around the torriblo
gates of . that solemn assombly , by the familiarity with place and power that only genius can don in tho course of ono week , but ho runs tho gauntlet of what our neighbours , when they had a parliament , were wont to call " interpellations , with an affectation of bonhomie that defies inquisitivonosa , and an assumption of frankness that revolutionizes all procodonts , and disarms all suspicion , So , when Lord Palmorston'a squire , Mr . Monckton Milnes , was moving , a few nights since , for tho correspondence with Schwarjsofa .-
berg on the refugee question , what could be more dashing and confident , and , at the _ same time , mote courteous and kind , than the Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli ' s reply P "My hon . friend appears to entertain the notion that the essence of diplomacy is mystery . " Whereupon the Minister , whose very name popularly suggests that power has turned his
head , proceeds to treat as an ignorant joke oi outsiders the ancient superstition , that "it is quite impossible , whenever our 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 Cassiq muttering , " I ' m not drunk , " the type of all
mankind , p ^ ast , 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 m tke 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 tho tedious perplexities of the Argentine question , which has just received so violent a solution by the defeat and flight of Rosas , wo 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 paperP Not only is the independence of the Banda Oriental doubtfully assured by the presence of two liberating flags , but that free navigation of tho groat rivers which
we have wasted blood to efi'ect , and which would open new markets to our merchants , is still in abeyance , and if tho present opportunity in the crisis of defeat and victory be lost , may be hopelessly suspended . In tho meanwhilo , Lord Malmesbury finds nothing better to do than to give a geographical sketch ( which a visit to Mr . Wyld ' s globe would improve or supersede ) , and a political amer ^ u of Bolivia and Paraguay . Of course tho House would not expect him to enter into dotails where he had received no private or official information , save of the interesting fact of . Rosas embarking with his daughter on board an English steamer ; tho particulars of which arc to bo obligingly laid on tho table .
This is a very protty specimen of tho roadymado experience of Downing-street , that changes but nover dies . But the latest exposition of our text is to bo found in tho newest phase of that great Eastern question , in the myatorios , if not in the developments of which tho author of Tancred is profoundly " at homo . " Horo wo find " secret diplomacy" in its glory .
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March 27 , 1852 . ] _ .,. ' " THE LEADER , . 297
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 27, 1852, page 297, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1928/page/13/
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