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is that Emperor of all the Russias , whose subjects are serfs , and who helped another rival , lately , to suppress the Protestant kingdom of Hungary , as Tie had suppressed the Catholic kingdom of Poland . Russia protects the ignorant spurious Christians of Syria , but coerces the real Christians of BTungary and Poland . The third special friend of the Christian , who protects Montenegro against its sovereign , is the great Monarch who causes Christian men to be tortured and Christian women to be flogged in Italy , and teaches Christian children that Grod and Emperor are nearly convertible terms .
Truly , if Christianity depended for its influence on its self-appointed " friends , " it would be sadly misunderstood by the world . The precept , to do as you would be done by , is hardly intelligible in the Austrian translation . It once had friends —members of the working classes ; and it scarcely began to grow insincere until it . went to court with Constantine . It once had a Master who taught that the chief duty of a Christian was to love God with all his heart , and his neighbour as himself ; but instead of being a temporal emperor , the author of the divine doctrine suffered under
the Gyulai of that day more than 1800 years ago . So little progress have the friends of Christianity made towards the object of their obtrusive friendship .
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A MUNICIPALITY FOR THE METROPOLIS . The London Corporation is wiser than that Corporate Potentate which governs India j for while Sir James Weir Hogg entertains the Court of Proprietors by vindicating the rights of the Company to govern India , and defending the duties of tne Secret Committee , as though the imperial Parliament , and the imperial public , of Gfreat Britain were not discussing the very existence of the Company , the representative body of the City has awakened to the conviction that the plan of compelling Britons to be free , and to pay money for it in spite of their will , is not the way either to become popular , or to continue safe .
The Athenians driving the electors to the poll with a rope across the street , were noi ; a more Chinese spectacle of inverted reason , than the Corporation of London prosecuting its citizens for the price of a freedom which the latter decline . The inhabitants of London have a standing objection to the restrictions and imposts which freedom entails east of Temple Bar j and they make free to go without their freedom . A few obstructives might be coerced ; but a whole public cannot be made into a constituency against its will . That branch of the Corporation energy , therefore , was directed entirely in a wrong path ; a path of reform is one much safer and more hopeful .
Now , if the Corporation could really take heart of grace , and try to attain a position which is at once befitting and possible for it , it might not only secure its continued existence , but possess greater dignity and power than it has ever yet enjoyed iq . history . A contemporary has observed , that London can no more be made a separate question than Turkey , and has enforced the suggestion that the Corporation should identify itself with the desire , rapidly extending , though yet not organized into any public movement , for obtaining an incorporation of the whhle
metropolis . There are many advantages which would attend an alliance between the City reformers , and tho reformers without . The extra-mural reformers have the immense balance of population . Some of the Parliamentary Boroughs , especially those of Westminster and Marylebone , include a population of a very high character for wealth and intelligence , such as would impart to any municipality a eharactor of power and dignity unknown to civic institutions since those days of
the middle ages when cities wore states . On tho other hand , tho Corporation of London has considerable wealth and a central position—a civic palace , a civic parliament house , long associations with tho history of tho country at its beat times , tho sanction of immemorial existence , and special privileges of a very valuable kind—such , for oxamrplo , as tho ri ^ ht of tho Corporation to appear directly before Parliament , and tho daily attendance of tho . " Remembrancer at tho two houses of
tho legislature . Through tho Corporation of London , tho municipality of the wholo metro - polis might acquire the advantages derivable from those privileges ; and it would then be worth while for men of intelligence , of wealth , or of professional distinction , to bo a membor of tho
Parliament of the State of London . It would be worth while to be Lord Mayor of that municipality . Such a result appears to us to be possible . Should the metropolis be thus incorporated , the beneficial uses to which it might turn its power are innumerable . Its power of imparting unity and efficiency to sanitary administration has been repeatedly mentioned ; its convenient direction of metropolitan building and street improvement * is not less obvious ; its substitution of a good and general system of rating , in lieu of the preposterous expedient of taxes on coals .
wines , and so forth—an odious octroi—would be popular to , the citizen and beneficial to the civic exchequer ; its power to improve the condition of the working classes , b y considering tb , e arranging of the quarters in which they live , hy extending the grounds for their recreation , and by facilitating general arrangements for shortening the . hours of labour , are also easily discerned . But beyond all these material improvements we may add the introduction , for the . first twne . into London , of a practical public spirit—a love of London
as Lopdon—a desire to promote the dignity and -welfare of the whole , such as we . find in most places , but is unknown in the only metropolis in the world , which is cut up into separate parishes without a municipal unity . Th . e reform of the London corporation might b , e , made a measure to abolish nothing , to degrade nothing , but to elevate old London into a state of sucli dignity and magnificence as it never dreamt of "being , and to aonfer a power of good such , as never yet existed in . parish officers .
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THE SUNDAY REFORM AGITATION . The Sunday Reform question , narrowed , for practical purposes , into a struggle for and against the opening of the Crystal Palace on the only day when clergymen cannot , but -working men can , make their way to Sydenham , is exciting the greatest interest throughout the country , and giving rise to discussions and public meetings in all directions . The provincial papers teem with reports of hole and corner meetings , held at hours when operatives could not be present , and convened for the religious purpose of making
dog-in-the-mangerism a Christian institution . Ladies , whose life is one long Sabbath of indolence , have held up fair hands in every town against the people ' s rights , and thought that they were doing Church and State a service by that easy act of piety ; and gentlemen , whose clubs are always open , and whose recreation everlasting , have , in the innocence of their ingenuous hearts , most loudly cheered their paatora ' proposed resolutions in favour of making a feastday a fast , and in contradiction of the scriptural assertion that the Sabbath was made for man ' s
repose , and not man for servitude to the Sabbath . Officially reverend persons , ministers of various persuasions , have banded themselves into a Sabbath Defence Society , and boldly throwing over the principles of Voluntaryism which they had hitherto professed , have held great demonstrations in favour of coercing , ( as our esteemod correspondent , Mr . Nicholls , so truly says ) where they cannot persuade . Mr . Hindley , a liberal member of Parliament , has illustrated his liberality by presiding at a conference of such an organization , for tho adoption in this
country of Jewish local legislation , and Mr . Baptist Noel , who seceded from the Church , on tho ground that he must be allowed volition , freedom of thought and action , so far as consisted with social peace and order , has shown the consistency of his croed by joining in the outcry against an operative ' s enjoying the very privileges which an honourable and reverend personage is thought a confoasor and a hero for having so boldly claimed . The clergy of all denominations , indeed , seem to bo equally infatuated in this matter , determined to array themselves in
unanimous hostility to those whom they may have once aspired to lead , and ho to disguise and disfigure the religion which they profess , that it shall become a subject first of abhorrence , then of ridicule , to the groat masses of tho people . Wot contented with this , nor satisfied at alienating tho working-claBBos from the faith which they have dared to caricature , they have advanced , still marching under tho stolen banner of Christianity , into the advocacy of strikes , and , with intent to conciliate emp loyers , have spread a recommendation , not authorized even in the Old Testament , as far as we know , that servants should not obey their masters , and that railway officials « ho . ula
not give the public their services on Sunday . At very many stations already , at all in due time , a book , entitled The Jfforkmaris Testimovy to the Sabhath , neatly got up in a cloth wrapper , is in course of presentation to every porter , policeman , and other railway employe who will accept it ; and the interesting information which it contains consists of a libel on the " gigantic public companies everywher e springing up around us , " to the effect—exceedingly detrimental , if credited , to the interests of the shareholders—that persons empjoyed by- these bodies on Sundays will , besides various specified temporal evils , undergo what the
author approvingly thinks the just , though undoubtedly severe , penalty of eternal damnation for theirusefulnessto the public In this wayall classes are simultaneously taught that statutory ^ observances do differ mast materially from primitive Christianity , and that the same religion which may ]> e beautiful whe , n it trusts to suasion , is hateful when it speks to convert ; by force . But we can scarqely regret the bigotry which has been displayedwhen we observe the intelligence and
, right-mindedness Pn the part of the class more directly aggrieved , which it has drawn forth . Wednesday ' s meeting at the London Tavern was a fair , manly , and generous exposition and assertion of the principles by which those who attended it are guided , and would suffice , if anything wo ^ d , to prove to , the Sabbatarians that unless they wish , to be defeated with ignominy they must leave the field as best they may at once ; for Wednesday ' s meeting , they must
understand , was not ¦ ' an effort , an isolated attempt , or mere local expression of opinion . It will be followed up , repeated and improved upon , in every great town throughout the country , if necessary j a Sabbath Defence Society is an idea which the people can perfectly and clearly comprehend . We have no doubt—Mr . Hindley and his friends need have none—that the Sabbath , o £ which they wish to rob the toiling poor , will be By thepoormostvigorously defended . Let honourable andreverend dissenters keep this in their recollection . If they will make religion the scapegoat of bieotrv , they must be content to find its
reception of the sternest . Moses surely never contemplated the period when Little Bethel and the beerhouses would unite to glorify their joint Diana of the Ephesians . , when the gin-palace anct the chapel would unite under one banner to keep the , ir several customers at home , when sectarian hurdygurdies would unite with the publicans' paper— " the barrel-organ of public opinion " —to announce that theCrystalPalacewas contemplated by the Fourth Commandment , and to request that Parliament , though it may object to Rothschild , will rigidly adhere to practices enforced a few thousand years ago upon a stiffnecked race by the . code of the Levites .
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ABOLITIONIST KITE-FLYING . The Duchess of Sutherland and her friends have been exhibiting- the address to Mrs . Beechor Stowe , and its signatures , in publ je ; the Spanish Government is going to emancipate tho slaves in Cuba ; and some of our own subscribers have sent us very indignant letters on the course whiclj . we are taking in American politics- We beliove that the Union , President Pierce , and the Leader will survive these blows . But whore fate threatens such awful influences it is as well that
we should understand what we have to confront . In the first place , to apeak of the moat important thing first , we are to be deprived of the approval of Mr . A . and Mr . B ., with a strong intimation that Mrs . B . ' s influence is conclusive against us ; and wo are told that wo are maintaining a system of heinous tyranny and cruelty . Perhaps there is no lover of freedom that has not been subjected exactly to the same charge ; should
and knowing how inevitable it ia , we scarcely care to rebut it , if wo had not some solicitude for the right mind of readera . Lot us assure them that we act according to tho best of our judgment for ' promoting the ultimate solution of the question of involuntary servitude , and we beliovo that President Pierce , ia common with tho most intelligent Americana who maintain the Compromise , is taking the only course which would render such a solution possible .
Ah to tho exhibiting of the Address , tho ohiof objection to it lies in the relations which , tho moat prominent of tho ladies getting up the affair have to distingu ished members of our own aLatesman class . Not addressing ourselves to \\ m ladies , whom w « regard as hnving been , very un-
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March 26 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 299
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Leader (1850-1860), March 26, 1853, page 299, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1979/page/11/
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