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Constantinople is an European question , and all precedents since 1815 — Greece , Belgium , the Danish succession , &c . —dictate the rule , that such new dispositions must be effected by the joint consent of all Europe . In form this hist averment is correct ; in spirit and true force it presents but half the truth . It is true , as the Note represents , that , 20 , 000 men stationed at the Bosphorus could better maintain the power of Russia in Southern Europe than 100 , 000 on the mouth of the Danube : it is not less true that the same
effective guard could close the Dardanelles against European trade , cut off England and her 3 , 000 , 000 / . of commerce " from Trebisond , and destroy the commerce that a million of pushing Greeks are carrying on as our middlemen—taking our goods and supplying us with grain . Austria , "who must play second to Russia , may find it compatible with her judgment to give the Southeastern gate of Europe to Russia , who already possesses the ITorth-eastern ; but how would Western Europe consent P Already Russia is
intriguing to " annex" Sweden and Norway , and to reduce Denmark to the position of a vassal , thus gaining the North-western gate ; her next step would do to aim at the Pillars of Hercules , and to strive for possession of the fourth gate . But even short of that , she would , not long hence , have it in her power to give or to withhold from Western Europe the trade of the Baltic and of the Euxine , making the ports of Northern Germany await her pleasure , and holding the keys of the great granaries of Europe , from Dantzig to Odessa .
All these ulterior consequences are involved , and not remotely , in the proposal of the Memoir to recognise Austria and Russia as the " heirs" of Turkey ; and it is for Englishmen to say whether they will passively witness a progressive assault , not only upon the liberties , but upon the commerce of the "West . "We do not perceive in Lord Jphn Russell ' s language that air of " discouragement" which the French writer imagines
—rather the reverse . "We suppose that the leader of the House of Commons spoke under a perhaps overweening sense of the unpopularity which has clung amid our trading classes to the bare idea of " a war in Europe j" but even the utterance of the words is an advance in the direction of boldness ; and now that trade itself is manifestly at stake , the timidity of the trading spirit may be overcome ; for the timidest of creatures will be bold in defence of that which it
loves . The one doubtful point to us in Lord John Russell ' s suggestive fragment of an explanation , is the apparent reliance on " France , " meaning Napoleon the Third . Most assuredly , in the event of an European war , that personage would take the side that appeared most likely to win ; and as England is so hesitating in the approach , to war , at the commencement he migjifc be most attracted by boastful offers of alliance from Austria and Russia .
If England possess a man equal to her fame and to the juncture , she will find a bold position the easiest and safest . There are other parties to be consulted besides the two great Emperors , who profess to bo the " heirs" of the monarch they are going to destroy . If England perseveres as sho has done , in sticking to red tape and treaties , while negotiating wfth powers that uphold red tape and treaties for their own ends , and use arms and forco to break those treaties when they please , sho will merely give up Turkey to tho " heirs" who seek to consummate their
inheritance a la Macbeth . But if eho desires to keep open tho south-eastern gato of Europe , there is still a way , though there is no time to bo lost . Russia and Austria have , been busy in cajoling tho Servians and Montenegrins , tho Bosniacs and Wallaca ; and England seems to havo rotreated from communication with those peoples ; while Franco is attitudinizing at Constantinople , or turning her attontion , for her own ends , towards tho southern shores of the Euxino . But tho
Sclavos of Turkey still have a will of their own ; and if a powerful voice askod thom , " Will you bo free and independent P" wo believe that they would rise up , in valley and mountain , and would bo a federal nation , as bold to assert their iudopondenco as tho Circassians . The Federation of tho Danube has all but existed : if it did , tho question of tho Dardanelles would bo solved , and the path of English commerce would bo free to Northern Asia and to India .
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INTERDEPENDENCE OF TRADES . Nothing could prove the dependence of one trade upon another more than the actual state of certain staples of our native industry . The three principal are all suffering in some degree from a violation of the allegiance which one ought to own to the other . In Manchester , after an unusually prosperous season , some of the factories are put upon short time ; because , it is said , there has been " a glut . " Now there is no sign of any such state of things .
It is well known that , six months ago , stocks were short ; the factories have been described , upon reports generally trustworthy , to be working to order ; and although there may have been some working for stock within the last month or two , it would exceed all probability to suppose that the markets have been " glutted" in the sense in which that word was used in 1842 . But there is another explanation . Tho spring season is rather late ; the homo demand has not yet become very pressing ; and buyers on speculation aro willing enough to wait , because the
natural movement of prices has been disturbed by the extravagant , if not fraudulent , speculations in the raw material . The dealers in the raw material represented that it would fall short , and this had a great anticipative effect on tho prices of tho manufactured goods . Buyers looked forward to a year of brisk demand , checked by high prices . In fact , the supply of raw cotton proves to be infinitely greater than ever it was ; and instead of tho demand being checked by price , there is every prospect that the price of the raw
material will scarcely form an appreciable elemont in tho movements of tho market . Tho suppl y and demand will bo regulated much moro effectively by tho price of labour , and tho rim ^ o of prices in general . Now , their legitimate profit is to bo got out of an exchange of one material against anotlior , reciprocally moro valuable to those who receive , than to those who tjivo ,- and tho foolish
attempt to snatch an unfair profit out of tho earlier sales of cotton wool , by a false pretence of scarcity and artificial prices , must not only bo defeated , in tho long run , to tho speculators who set that manomvre in motion , but must extend its disastrous effects to the manufacturers , and to tho hands who are now thrown out of work by the suspension of throe thousand looms in Manchester and Salford alone . Here wo ue
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March 12 , 1853 . 1 THE LEADER . 253
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MORE CHAPTERS FROM THE GENESIS OF PARLIAMENT . The British Parliament , like vermin , is generated in corruption—there is no doubt of that . The committees , always excepting present company , admit it , and the evidence , which the daily papers will print , proves it . Not more closely allied in business relations , are Coppock and religious liberty , Brown and our glorious constitution , than the conscience of the elector and the purse of the candidate . All this may be learned in the lobbies . We are by degrees getting at the anatomy of Parliament ; we pray heaven that the result may reward our submission to the odorous horrors of the dissecting-rooms .
Meanwhile it is to us revolting , but to some amusing to see the indignation of the undetected part of the House , to notice the Spartan morality , with which Satan , with the hoof concealed , rebukes the idiotic crinieof those whoseonly fault , weknow , in his eyes is , that the crime has been successless and discovered . Beautiful is the spectacle of an indignant Parliament cheering the proposal to make the Attorney-General , himself petitioned against , the instrument of wrath upon offending eleetioneerers ; and winning is the talk in which
the vivacious Viscount , to whom all subjects and all departments are alike , cordially concurs in the proposition , except its sting , which he wants removed . Everybody , not petitioned against , is fiercely pure , and virtuously patriotic : and the British public is satisfied . Accordingto the Tories , we are still to "let well alone , " " stare super vias antiquas , " though national demoralization is what they call " well , " and though novel expedients of modern swindlers are what they term " vias antiquas . " According to certain organs of the present Government we are simply to wait ,
to be thankful for this addition to our experience , and to expect that the new Reform bill , thanks to such experience , will be but a list of temporary appliances to meet minor evils , instead of a measure for renovating the constitution , and destroying those decayed and rotten parts of the present system , whence all the mischief springs . Secret voting , and an extended suffrage may now , say
the Whig journalists , be postponed , though tne former would make the purchase of an elector a hazardous outlay , and the latter , the purchase of a constituency a moral impossibility . We must begin by beautifying our present system , and then—proceed to its abolition . Such is the moral of the election committees , as drawn by some of the supposed Government organs . We trust the counsel have no direct instructions from
the client . Our readers will be familiar with the details of tho several cases recently under investigation . It would , therefore , be wasting space to give here the quotations of the vote-market . Everywhere brisk , it seems to have been generally high . A nation of shopkeepers understands the first principle of the snop ; and our iree and independent electors place a higher value upon their qualms of conscience than even upon their plate , for the simple reasons that they are perhaps even scarcer , and certainly have been less in use .
At IIull it has grown so much a practice for tho candidates to show their sincerity by their sacrifices , that agents take it for granted they are to spend as much money as possible , to corrupt in favour of purity of election , and to bribe electors to vote for tho Reformer . Lord Goderich , who is young , and in these matters fortunately inexperienced , is turned out , taking much hearty sympathy with him into his retirement . Clay should have known bettor . If he has restrained tho ardour of his supporters hitherto , why was ho not equally successful at tho last election P
At Chatham there . must bo great dismay . I ho committee not only unseated the philanthropic Smith , who got Government appointments for everybody , but they also recommend that tho right of returning members should bo taken from that borough . It seems that tho Government candidate always gets in , tho dockyard intorost is so overpowering . To be sure there is
this apology , that all Governments coerce voters alike , ho that , except for tho poetry and principle of tho thing , it doos not much matter Bosidcs , what aro tho tradesmen to do , now that they can no longer get their sons into the Postoffice P With the ballot threatened on tho one hand , and no vote at all on the other , they really boo no inodo of OBcapo into future tomp tation . They remon strate that they aro not free agents ,
and cry aloud for the moral training involved in resistance to gainful immorality . At Cambridge , notwithstanding the softening influences of an eminently pious university , the voters are great scoundrels . In Barnwell , indeed , some ray of virtue ( political , of course ) is visible : the electors of that locality having their honest preferences , and selling a vote to Liberals for five pounds which they would only part with to Conservatives for ten . But the general principles of the inhabitants seem to be loose , and when an election passes over without the voters all selling themselves , the unfortunates only " miss it by holding out . " . _
These are the kind of discoveries in which each separate investigation has resulted , and these investigations , it must be remembered , bear no proportion whatever to the actual cases in which bribery is known to have been committed . Petitioning , under the present system , is most expensive , most needlessly expensive of course , and even in the committee rooms , as before , the eternal property qualification becomes the real question as to the fitness of the candidate . Unless he is willing and able to buy the co-operation of knaves he must forego the honours of Parliament . Where is the poor man to find his thousand pounds for the conveyance of a hostile witness to Boulogne , and where is the conscientious man
who would obtain his dignities by such a course P How many Captain Clarkes are there to undertake such delicate missions , and how many honest aspirants to political fame or usefulness have the pleasure of knowing so accommodating a Captain Clarke ? But this evil may correct itself . Some day it will be discovered that Parliamentary agency is not a mystery , and that it is a lucrative profession . We shall then have young men betaking themselves to that pursuit , whose only chance will be in conducting cases on such terms and in such a way that petitioners may see where they shall land before they venture to embark . Let this experiment be fairly tried ; we doubt not it will be successful .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 12, 1853, page 253, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1977/page/13/
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