On this page
-
Text (3)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
females and . tottering princes on questions pe . rtaining to religion , ' bur she will not be free , free to choose each man Ms faith ^ till she is free , to choose her institutions ; : ? We shall begin , to be- * lieve in the sincerity of the Protestant Alliance when yve find it co-operating ; with the Friends of Italy * Maziini , backed ( by Lord Shaftesbury , Would ^ do something ; for his country ; we are -quite ' sure that the Protestant Alliance ; and Miss Can * riinghame neve * will . ¦ ¦ ' -
Untitled Article
SECEET DIPLOMACY . The Eastern ; question , ' suggestive of niariy questions ; must by this time have made the more reflective of the people of England ask themselves who are thei ? ^ tilers , and whether ^ after all their vaunts of liberty , they are better off , in point of self-goVtSrmnenti th $ n their neighbours . What do we know of the affairs of Turkey aiid of our > present relation ^ as d ° xbuntrjpy to the Foreign Pi ) Wei's with whom we have aut ! i 6 riz 6 d certain Diplomatists , little known to u $£ to deal ? Lord Palinerstohi the Hberat menibei ' for Tivefcfcon , has 1
told us'tha 6- 'lie '' itivitefe , stf ^ st Wi < s and ; will tit all tihies listeiii ' if n \> t defer to' thb recommendations of his d ^ untryiilen j Lord Palni ^ stbn ; the Piplohiatisti has * io ' t srtrch ^ cbiirideri ^ e in but ihstmcts or in bur vHsdoii ^ and "has illristjta ' ted : the distinction wlucli lie < 2 raWs fcet ween ' otir acquaintance with Foreignanddomestic affairsy by ^ bsti pOning his applicatioris "for oiit advice till & timeV when refractory CaBmetf , instead of Wity Potentates , are the parties dealt with inhis department . He ; arid 11 is Mleaguesy rapttirortsly cheered' by flunkey bur ^ esse ^ , ai-e talking but-oif-tlbbrs liberalismand
reforms of tlib SevVerage ,, as if J&ngland ignored the universe arid had ho higher , destinies than to becohie ^ a tiiodel of parochial' excellence , and no greater ' dutvr than' to keep' \ her citizens' ignorant aiid healthyl Lord John Russell , who approved of the Queen ^ s ' supeYihtendihgliOrd Palmerston ' s despatches , is considered to be more '' confiding : for he , vindicating the hotiour of his country and the determination of the Cabinet , talked pompous platitudes at Greenock about England's position , and declared her ready , with a Well-spurred warhorse , to go forth with u Brumm ' gum " Ha ! ha ! " if she could by no possibility avoid it . Mr . Gladstone , who was well drawn , and who has written in times past very considerable liberalism to his
present Chief , was more mincing . He would not commit himself to anything except an assurance that his colleagues were " wise and eminent men , " and a compliment to the people on their " thoughtfully confiding in their rulers . " So far , this is all we know of the " Eastern question . " A selfgoverning people , a commercial people , and a great Power , know only that Diplomatists are mystically arranging their destinies , and that their gracious Queen , but not their beloved Houses of Parliament , is probably controlling the tendencies and correcting the mistakes of the loyal nobleman who ia her , —and they say , our , —Secretary for Foreign Affairs . We have for some time been in possession of this information .
At one time it was hoped that Mr . Layard , — Ex-uuder Secretary of State—smarting at the government ' s neglect of his claims , and knowing enough of Nineveh to be conceived , —by some extraordinaiy process of reasoning — intimate with , Constantinople , would penetrate tho mystery and set the people and the Stock Exchange at rest . Independent members , reverencing an ex-official and a travelled liberal , postponed their anxieties and awaited , week after week , the explanations which the author of tho groat book ou marbles and mummies was to start
At , length the questioning , and what must be called tho answering , came ; a full house , representatives of the people , listened . They heard contentedly a shambling interrogation , and , still smilingly , a shuffling reply . Since then they have drawn their predictions from the morning papers , and diverted their doubts by grouse-shooting . Diplomacy , they know , is a secret and a gentlemanly craft . They are too well-bred to interfere with it ; and there certainly is an apology for their acquiescence in tho indifference of their constituencies .
Jo us it seems that this staring , quidnunc way of looking at a great question , this Huhim ' ssiou to an entire dependence on the wisdom nnd uprightness of a bimvm ia an absoluto symptom of national decline . We cannot understand a free people being less interested in tho relations of their country than a constitutional Q , uoen , nor understand why , when diplomatists can safely bow to
the interference of a toyal mistress , they cannot also give ear to , the voice of an educated nation . They ' Are not merely the servants of courts and cabinets * They are , according to our national self-delusion , the servants of the peopled As servants , they should ; be responsible *; and we forget , what they fullwell remember , that secrecy is ine-r spbnsibility . It is , however , our own fault . England has lost her solicitude for everything that does not visibly affect her interests , and blinded by selfishness as well as ignorance , knows not what her own interests are . She has but one
principle—that war is to be avoided ; but one object-r-the acquisition of wealth ; and what have these to do with the advances of distant despotisms and the craft of secret diplomacy ? Hereditary monarchs may be anxious to maintain a useful , or a proud position , in the ; world ' s eyes ; a comfortable people requests andleaves . ;( Jod to save its Queen , and valuing its birthright of independence only as , a means of being idlej forgets that'the estate ; lias . beei * entailed , and asks , if pressed , What . posterity has done for , it ? ; Diplomacy triuiuphs , ; diplomatists prosper , and courts ^ well > pleased ; the people look on > enquiring into
the use of the collective wisdom , understanding thatthe Eastern ; Question is important , and being informed that the Earl of Clarendon manages that department . They will prime another independent member soon , and in Februaiy , if the crisis is oveiv we shall know what dangers we have been runntng ,, and foe able to guess what treacheries our secret servants ; have been ., endeavouring to perpetrate , ,-snd what further contributions Russia has made to the chapter of " accomplished .. facts ;!' Meanwhile the Cabinet is not divided ; but amateur and talkative diplomatists say thai Turkey is to be . <
Untitled Article
, THE APPEAL AGAINST CHOLERA . PohI'ENts which alarmed our ancestors were nofc al ways phantoms . Visifatioiis of calamity have not always been wrongly called judgments . It often happens that the scepticism which first laughs at the portent , or denies the judgment , discovers in the one a sign , and in the other the consequence of infringing a law belonging to the code which sustains the divine government of the universe . It happened a week or two back , that a girl in Berlin placed her candle near to the spout of a pump , and she was horror-stricken by a
sudden gush of flame , apparently from the midst of the water , as though she had set fire to the streain . A local writer observes , that if such an occurrence had happened two centuries back , all the Jews in the place would have been tortured , for having poisoned the springs , and cursed the city with cholera . It is probable , also , that they would have been fined for that offence , and thus the exchequer would have benefited through the supposed infliction upon the people . For it was always the most refined species of torture for the Jew to squeeze money from him . Fifty years back probably the story would have been denied ,
as incredible , and the gal would have been laughed at for her delusion . In the present day we look a little deeper , and discover the source of the flame in some buried corruption , which sends tip hydrogen gas with the water ; and we discover in the filthy neglects of a community , how it has been stirring up for itself the sources of disease . It is not always that hydrogen gas presents itself exactly in the proportion to take fire , but it can be detected by the senses brooding over many a collection of stagnant Avater , and pointing to tiie existence of gasea even more noxious to human life .
If we break tho laws by which life is sustained , wo shall be punished for it—there is no escape from that sentence . If we construct society , nnd tho homes in which society lives , in such manner that we leave in existence , or create , brutal ignorance , mercenary disregard of the welfare of others , crowding of the poor , and accumulations of domestic filth ; nnd if , above all , we regard these defiances of sense and duty with indifference , then wo harden ourselves into disobedience against tho
laws which cannot be broken with impunit j ' , a"d tho judgment comes upon us in the shape of cholera . This is only n description of what wo have actually been doing ; nor do wo awake to it for the first time . Tho great black ditch which runs through tho low grounds at Battersen , has been black and noisome year after year . It has been denounced mnny times ; but besides leaving that ditch as a notorious conduit of pestilence , we have left tho population in a condition of such
stolid ignorance , that there is found a farmer Graham in that neighbourhood to defend the old black ditch , and to assert some right which he has in its passage through , those grounds . It is moral as well as , material filth that we have suffered to rem $ in , and ij | e are tindergoing the punishment . ¦ ' , 3 Nor i $ Fa ' t-jrier . Graham alone . It has been remarked that cholerai , as well as typhus , plague , and other pestilences , which are less feared because they are more familiar , although more fatal , take their centres ; in those parts of our towns that are t crowded with the and i
the roos poor gnorant . Under some supposed necessity , we blindly adhere to such rules of Jaw making and public polity as pre-supposed ( the necessary existence of very poor persons in the midst of wealth ; and we have deferred the task of enlightening the ignorant on the laws of divine government until we can settle the exact form in which we shall mingle with practical instruction a particular instruction on " the Three Persons , " or the accurate explanation of I" Baptismal grace . " We have , it is true , made no progress whatever towards settling these very
incondite , questions . The more we e xamine , the more we differ ; ' on the other hand , we / iave made some progress , not in arriving at final causes , but in understanding the march of the laws which regulate life . Nevertheless we postpone the duty of enlightening . " the people upon these laws , which we begin to understand , and which are essential to our obedience under the divine rule , until we have settled how we shall teach those very obscure points , towards which we have not made the slightest progress ia comprehending ourselves . For that perverse transposition of duties we are undergoing a judgment in the shape of the visitation which is now upon us .
_ It is not only in poor neighbourhoods that pestilence appears to lodge and flourish with a peculiarly favourable development ; there are spots also in better parts of the town which have been visited in a similar manner . We say that there is an appearance of " caprice" ia this course of the pestilence ; but there is no caprice in the laws of nature . There is a reason for it , perhaps a reason not very difficult to discover . It has been suggested in more than one of these cases , that the site which appears so peculiarly
unhealthy is an old burial ground , in some instances the burial ground where people were interred in the time of the plague . Here the soil , however long decomposed , has been preserved as it were in an enclosure ; and as a grain of musk will diffuse its sensible particles for an indefinite period , so the many grains of corruption here impacted ai * e ever diffusing a noxious atmosphere . Where there are not any of these traditional repositories of corruption , there are depositories of another kind . Houses , —nay , we suspect whole rowsor even
dis-, tricts , are built upon swampy ground , where the infirm earth has l > een strengthened by throwing in rubbish , the rubbish often comprising corrup " tible refuse . Here again a compost is hud down to be for ever a storehouse of pestilence for those who are miserable enough to live above it . Not only this has been done , but it is doing at the present moment . There is in the suburbs of London a pond lying upon " eligible" building ground ; it has been suggested that this pond should be drained , but the commercial views of
the person in possession are different ; he proposes to fill it in with rubbish—to make a mash of refuse , corruptible or not , in this pond , and then to build human habitations upon it ! To us , who have been taught to watch the laws which regulate health or death , this act appears an impious defiance of divine laws ; and surely tUo judgment will follow : the habitations will be the abode of premature death . JNor is it only these mercenary traders who are at fault : their responsibility is shared by society , by tho Legislature , by Ministers who know better and yet connive at
those social crimes . When the visitation comes upon uh , we are panic-stricken ; wo run helplessly to the ) public officers , whom we have reviled for " centralising '" their power ; we rush into church to oiler up prayers to be delivered from a punishment which wo have incurred by our own disobedience . That in not tho spirit to meet tho infliction . Tho punishment we must undergo , and wo flhall undergo it the less terribly to ourselves , if our spirit do not succumb under the burden . If wo have any reliance it must b « in those laws which we have infringed . If wo have any help to ask , tho petition must bo presented in tho form of our own cnlightoncd industry to rcutoro the frco working of
Untitled Article
OdTOBEBJ l , 1853 . ] % III KABEB . 9 A 9
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 1, 1853, page 949, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2006/page/13/
-