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America would plunge us into anew Holy Alliance , would place the two natural champions of constitutional freedom and national independence on opposite sides ; and would neutralize the sole remaining terror of the despots — the sole thing that can make them pause in their career—the sole antagonist of the Holy Alliancethe Anglo-American Alliance . Are the English people , are the men of Manchester and Glasgow , Leeds , Liverpool , and London , content to be the tools in that gigantic
and criminal " dodge" ? We cannot believe it . Yet how are we to get out of the false position , from which neither part y can retract P In one way alone — by superseding the Ministry that dared to put us there , and by placing the conduct of public affairs in the hands of a statesman able to maintain our dignity with spirit , and at the same time , by hearty frankness and chivalrous courtesy , able to convince the Americans that we have their dignity also , their friendship , and their interests at heart .
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BRITISH REACTION . ON THE CONTINENT . The actual state of Europe imposes upon us the duty of regarding with the ugliest suspicion the conduct of Ministers towards the United States ; for the reaction—which has made such decided progress since the year 1849—has assumed a new relation to this country . It is true , that the transition from the administ ration of Palmerston to that of Malmesbury was softened by the intervention of Earl Granville . It is true , indeed , that even before that time , Lord Palmerston ' s own method of conducting the foreign relations of this country had been cramped and warped by the active intervention of his colleagues ; and the public has long since been informed how , in Vienna , at that time the most important capital of Europe , a special messenger and a tea service were waiting to supersede the diplomatic influence of the Foreign office .
The Whig Government , with its anti-democratic leanings , had already consented to employ the Earl of Westmoreland , and to dabble in lad ylike presents of conciliation . The Granville capitulation was a step further . The attempt at the Mather surrender went too far for the moment , but a show of concession to public influence in this country has covered that mistake for the time . It would appear that Her Majesty ' s Ministers have succeeded in convincing Austria and Russia that St . James's has become an
effective member of the Holy Alliance . llus is the new term in the advance of reaction . The Emperor of Austria is making a royal progress in Hungary , marked by courts martial and gross severities to satisfy old grudges against individuals ; by insulting ceremonies to the Hungarians , reminding them that their independence is destroyed ; and by a more thanNapoleonic abundance of lying official narratives , sent back to . the West of Europe , for the purpose of making us believe that the Emperor parades through his faithful Hungarians , amidst fervent expressions of delight . At the same time , it is proclaimed that a note from the Cabinet of St . James '
the Austrian Government , gives assurance that measures of precaution will be taken to prevent the retirement of Kossuth , at Notting-hiu , from troubling tlio good relation established between England and Austria . The Earl of Westmoreland is announced to make a- tour in Italy , as we have said , on an anti-Minio principle . Some person in the Whig Government sent Lord John Russell ' s
father-inlaw to represent English feeling in the Italian peninsula ; and ho did it fairly enough , by addressing the Italian people , and telling them that England desired their success in achieving national independence and personal liberty . Some person in the Whig Government encouraged the Sicilians to believe that England would support them in acquiring an independent sovereignty ; but some other persons in that Cabinet withdrew that support , gave the lie to the assurance of Lord John Russell ' s father-in-law , and suffered Italy to fall again , unhelpod , almost uncomfortod , beneath the heel of Austria . After that good work of Whig transition , " back again , " Lord W « 8 tmor « lanrl la to make a tour in the
South for the purpose of encouraging the Absolut ^ t party with the assurance of official Eng-IihIi sympathy . In an ticipation of his appearance , the constitutional Government of Piedmont is obliged to fall away from the sturdy , unflinching
is unaccountably thrown into the scale against constitutional government . The reaction is making its way m every form , but simultaneously in different countries . We saw last week the progress which the ultramontane party in France is making in the exclusion of classical authors from the public schools . It is now announced that the Austrian Government likewise intends to exclude classical authors from the University of Vienna . The clergy , which our ministers affect to combat in Ireland , though ,
attitude which it had maintained between its two antagonists , Rome and Austria . It partially yields its Civil Marriage Bill , by rendering the religious ceremony a constitutional part of the legal form . It conciliates Austria by proscribing a numerous list of journals , including Mazzini s Italia e Papolo . Piedmont , one of the outposts of constitutional government , is manifestly receding before the advance of Austria and Rome ; and we understand better why she should recede nowwhen we learn that the weight of England
without the slightest success , are carrying the reaction back far beyond the standards of 1815 , not only under the confessedly despotic r 6 gim . es , but also in France and Piedmont ; and England is labouring to maintain the good relations established with Austria . The Herald publishes in its leading columnswith a very mild caveat of its own against official breach of the law—a strange letter , alleged to be from a Paris correspondent , but whether of English or foreign extraction we are left to doubt . The writer naively desires to be informed ,
why the French refugees in Jersey and Guernsey are not expelled by the British Government . " It may become a question demanding the immediate and serious attention of our Government whether the French R ed Republicans and political refugees of all colours shall be allowed to collect and congregate in such numbers in places so near—so very near — to the French coast as Guernsey and Jersey . " This is noticeable language in the leading columns of the Government journal . The writer adds , that a " friendly " Frenchman might " understand how , under my Lord Palmerston , these gatherings in the Channel Islands should be allowed , or even
encouraged ; but what I cannot comprehend is the continuance of such things under Lord Malmesbury and the Earl of Derby . " Our readers will not be so slow of comprehension . The writer , however , indulges the belief that the " causes of annoyance and irritation will be speedily removed . " The " feeler" is evident and comp lete . These phenomena in the direction of the continent , we say , impart the ugliest suspicions . It is impossible not to connect these signs of an intrigue on the continent of Europe , in which Downing-street would seem to be involved , with the otherwise inexplicable policy of Downingstreet west of the Atlantic .
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THE CLOUDED SKY . The sky is overcast , and gloom invades not only t he atmosphere , but the outlook both of the politician and the ceconomist . Rain , just now , means a damaged harvest , and a damaged harvest means hunger—means a darkening of our prosperitymeans , perchance , discontent . And rain so heavy lias not oppressed the harvest for years . It comes the more painfully after the bright warm hopes of the early summer : " laughing Ceres " hangs her head and mourns . It may pass indeed : the glass is rising ; the sun bursts forth again ; but the five days' rain-cloud is a dark memento .
Such visitations , as we continue to insist , are true " judgments . " We have , in many ways , broken " the laws of Nature and of the God of Nature , " physically , morally , and politically . It often happens , indeed , that wo fall short of a full obedience to those laws ; but not often that the disobedience is seen in so many shapes of conscious misdoing as it is in the neglect of setting our towns in order , in the alienation of classes , and in the violations of public virtue . And now , verily , the shadow of this clouded sk y discloses many a lurid fire of self-retribution kindling for UN .
Our political factions have been playing a rival game of bare-faced hypocrisy , ana they arc punished . Displacing a party which had forfeited its political vitality by the outrageous abuse of a chartered " hypocrisy ; the " Conservative " faction entered office with a greater hypocrisy of its own—displacing Free-traders on the
protext of restoring Protection , and keeping office by a capitulation with Free-trade . And now may come a bad harvest , which will raise prices so as doubly to lock the door against Protection and yet snatching the expected gains from farmer and landowner . ^ The " landed interest" which helped to send in the anti liberal , anti-national Ministry , sees its triumph menaced by the clouds of a sullen August . The most incompetent Ministry that ever intrigued itself into office , it would seem , may have to undergo the hardest of trials —the conduct of affairs when men ' s confidence is undermined , and their censure sharpened by trouble , if not hunger .
"Oh ! cries Free-trade , if corn fail at home , it will be supplied from abroad . " Whence ? From the Black Sea , which adverse powers can close against us ; or the Baltic , Russian lake ; or the United States , with whom we are letting incompetent Ministers drag us into a quarrel We do not , indeed , believe in a war with the United States ; but the Free-trade party , which has slighted mere political questions , has neglected
to take security tor the fulfilment or its promise , that England need not fear dependence for he r bread upon foreign countries . Now we are threatened with adiminished harvest , and the Freetraders have connived at those intrigues which have resulted in appointing a Malmesbury to forward our interests ia . the Baltic , the Black Sea , and the Mississippi !
Misfortunes never come single ; but the op . pressive weight of an , infliction depends upon our means of bearing it ; and a great nation should be prepared to confront great adversities . We must make proportionate changes if we would be so prepared . As it is , there is not a cloud in the sky that does not find us exposed rather than prepared . Practical government has fallen into abeyance or has been trusted to journeyman routine , and we are about to feel the effects . Ireland has been roused to Ultra-Catholic
fierceness by the No-Popery cry , and a return of the potato famine comes j as if Heaven were to throw the terrible sound of despair into the cry for good Government , and were to ask , through the shrill voice of suffering , what right political triflers have to tamper with the grave duties of the statesman ? Factions contending for power have set town against country ; ceconomical dogmas have taught capitalists in towns , and landowners in the country , that the humbler classes are no charge of theirs , but that the poor must take care for themselves : and now a scanty
harvest threatens want of work in our towns , want of food and of employment for the untaught , and already half-starved labourers of the fields . Factions have been wasting their time in the true faction fights of Parliament , and talking about " Sanitary Reform ; " and now the Asiatic cholera , marching from Erzeroum to Warsaw and Dantzig , comes to join its English ally , " summer cholera , " already visiting our crowded , undrained , unwashed streets , thick set " with unpurified grave-yards ; to be expatiated again by a fast , and an humiliation for breaking , with pedantic consciousness , " the laws of N ature , and of the God of Nature . " The soaking sky pours
down rains poisoned by what they fall u P » ?" . ** in the body of disease the heart mil sink . While we stand thus , comes the news of these unpleasing misunderstandings with our natural allies in America , or worse unders tanding witn our natural enemies , the upholders of tyranny in . Europe ; and wo hear the news with all the more dismay , because we have no confidence in those who have undertaken to govern us , and for us . But there is daylight beyond the cloud . There is nothing that England needs , just now , Bo mnen as a trial of adversit Wo have had too JittiCt
y . nationally , within the last forty years . Ane banking crash of \ 825 only affected classes ; « io railway crash of 1840 7 was also a class irritation ; oven the potato famine of 184 . 7 inflicted iw heaviest scourge on Ireland alone . JUngM * j almost scatheless , long prospering , i fl ^_ " apathetic , " content with things as they arc with injustice abroad , with unseemliness at hoin —content to bo governed by men who canno embody national honour . But out of the vc v disturbances come relief . Tho former famine , h » j isvi . ri >/ i i « r + ii « , » -rti , i r ) i ' /> nvArv AminoA Ireland , ft ""
has thinned oven England ; and already do we tho social effectB , North and South . I" P "J " paid hungry Wiltshire , hiring fair * i are in tended—by the labouring class ; in Norfolk ftn « Suffolk , farmers or © concerting against enug ™
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776 THE LEADER ^ [ Saturday
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 14, 1852, page 776, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1947/page/12/
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