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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.
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be confounded with the Royal army , gentlemen of family in the crack regiments will lose their proportionate rank , and be deprived . of their opportunities . Ministers consent to do without that great and tried army in India , because the Crimea is to be a monopoly of the families , and the faithful Commons oh&y . War goes on abroad , and ttis state of things goes on at home .
Iiord EiiiiENBOEOTTGH : challenges the Peers , on Monday next , to stand up and protest against a recreant supineness that lets our flag draggle in the dust . Mr . XiATaeb will call the Commons to their duty . But , after all , the true responsibility lies with the Nation an 4 the Electors . The time has come to ask these plain questions—Shall we submit to this provisional Government ? Are
these representatives false ? Do they speak our mind , perform our will , defend our interests ~ and honour ? Shall we be the puppets with which false representatives play the sMttle game of party- ; or follow the strongest man , tfcsjb speaks our mind , is prepared to execute © ur wiflV bold enough to seize the STvord of State , and to show that once more it shall cease to be a bauble ;—the man that
is ready , when we mtist go through with war , not to play with the lives of other men the dismal farce of an official fight , but to lead us through the storm , sternly to the wellearned peace beyond ? We must ask ourselves these questions : —can we not anstoer them ?
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THE MORALITY OF MISSIONS . Loins Napoueon tells his Senate that being an existence indispensable to Providence , he is invulnerable till lie has performed his mission . W hereupon eminent political writers tell us that it may be doubtful whether this fatalistic belief is true or orthodox , but that at all events it is brave , heroic , and thoroughly Napoleonian . We confess that the distinction between the heroic and the true
eludes our apprehension . The religious journals would , perhaps , understand it * better . But we can quite understand the distinction between either and the Napoleonian . It is Napoleonian to betray the confidence reposed in you by a people , to convert to your own selfish ends the fruits of revolution and the agony of a nation , and to seek to throw a halo round all this by talking fustian about your " Star . "
It is time to call for some explanation of the doctrine of missions . What security has Society against the most infamous attempts , if any rogue or fanatic may allege a secret warrant from Providence for breaking down all the barriers of morality that stand between him and the object of his ambition P Sua cnique Deus Jit dira cupido . To believe that a pistol , well aimed , will not hit you , is a very innocent superstition , of which Louis IN ^ apoIjEOK is entirely guiltless , for while he
declares himself invulnerable , he keeps a corps of disguised guards to protect his life . But to believe that you are a chosen instrument in the hands of Providence to overturn by fraud and violence a constitution which you have sworn to guard , and to butcher or exile tliose who are likely to resist you , if your belief is not true , is an awkward hallucination , more especially if you are the person whose ambition and cupidity directly pro / it , in spite of sanctimonious abnegations .
A mission which dispenses with veracity and morality implies a direct revelation . That revelation must be authenticated . "Where did Louis Napoleon receive his divine commission , and what was ita specific object f We have had several proclaimed . It is the interest and tho right of humanity to know ; . . There is a mission of duty , which is
prompted by pure nobility of soul , which justifies itself to humanity by self-sacrifice , and which needs no authentication but the divinity in a man ' s own breast . Such was the mission accepted by Washington , when , with everything that could tempt personal ambition ^ and ever y pretext for indulging it , he set himself with a pure soul to consolidate the liberties of his country . Such a mission was offered to Louis Napoleon ; and he fulfilled it by aggravating the disorder and
exaggerating the terror around him , till he had found an excuse for accomplishing his design , through the agency of a soldiery which he had been all along perfidiously bribing for the purpose . The world at present worships the star of triumphant roguery on a grand scale . By the end of the century perhaps it may have had an experience of stars , glory , and prsBtorians , which will lead it again to listen to the oracle of duty .
The idea that you are yourself indispensable to the designs of Providence is one which we will venture to say never entered into any religious mind . It is the offspring of impious vanity and selfishness . The greater and better a man is , the less he thinks of his own agency , and the more he thinks of the end for which he works , as any one may see who will study
the lives of true heroes . Had Louis Napoleon ' 8 creed been -heroic , and had he himself been in the path of political duty , he would have said to his Senate , " Learn to rely less on the life of a single man . Let us labour together to establish those principles which will make our country free , orderly and happy without me as well as with me ; the rest is in the hands of Grod . " When will Trance have a ruler who can sincerely speak thus to his people ?
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EDUCATED SCARECROWS . Mb . Milker Gibson ' s secular scheme , Sir J . Pakington ' s semisecular scheme , and Lord John Russell ' s Privy Council Extension scheme , are competing for the honour of educating the British peasantry . They are all laudable attempts , particularly that of Sir John Pakington , which is a dead-lift effort to show the world that Toryism is not so Tory as it is painted . But the drawback to them all is , that the being whose mind they pro ^ pse to improve , invigorate , refine , and elevate , is wanted for a scarecrow . Such , we believe , is the purpose to which our present civilisation in most of the agricultural counties applies the British peasant , under penalty of starving , about the time when his mind becomes capable of education .
Want— -shivering , white-lipped want—and the brutality , the grossness , the deadening of all affections which spring from it , is the evil which must first be remedied . A man ia incapable of education to any good purpose when ho is battling with sheer starvation from hour to hour . He is incapable of education , and if he were capable of it , he would not profit by it . ~ There is no use in opening his eyes if he is to see with them not a beneficent world of hope , but an iron and hopeless prison-house . There is no use in quickening his perceptions if he is only to perceive that with the form and faculties of a man he has
inherited tho lot of a beast . There is no use in kindling his affections if they are to awake in a homo where tho children must starve that the father must bo fed . You had better let him alone , or give him only that sort of education which Mr . Henley , with unconscious picturesquenoss , describes as teaching him to struggle through this life into tho life to como . Cram him with those texts of the Bible which toll him , or can bo twisted into telling him , that his feeding , lodging , and clothing awe postponed to tho next world , and that ho- must
respect Waterperry and its preserves- in this . srr : The laws of political economy , like all other laws of nature , ought to be respected . But , rightly understood , they do not enjoin any man to use his fellow as a > serf any more than they do to use him as a slave—which also in ancient times appeared a law of nature , and which , in some countries , appears a law of nature still . No chaos would result
if squires kept fewer hunters , preserved fewer pheasants , drank less port , made fewer tours on the Continent , and built better houses for the poor . No chaos would result , if that which is done " now by poor-laws , and workhouses , and gaols , were done by a better organisation . Letting alone the humanity part of the question , we should get more out of the land if the peasantry had more interest in the work and were better fed . Austere science is a
little apt to forget not only that the happiness of man is a real gain to his fellow , and a thing you may give money for without being a fool , but that willing and healthy labour is worth a great deal more to the community than the niggard drudgery of a starveling serf . We do not threaten the squires with a Peasant ' s War . The peasants are too divided , too dull , and , as Englishmen , too submissive to the law for us to expect anything of the kind . The patience , indeed , with which they endure their lot of scanty wages in all
weathers , and in the severest weather no wages at all , while others are luxuriating before their eyes in the produce of their toil , is equalled only by the heroic endurance of their fellow-peasants in the trenches before Sebastopol . But we do threaten every squire who can think and feel ( and fortunately this number is increasing ) with an insuri'ection in his own heart against the system to which he has the misfortune to belong . Many of the humane gentlemen of England would
have become uneasy before now , if they had themselves to grind the peasant , instead of grinding him through the tenant-farmer . When he assumes the form of the soldier , and becomes an object of sentiment , they are ready to do everything for him in their power ; and they forget that in his common character of a day-labourer he is feeding their luxury by enduring , though silently and ingloriously , all the hardships and privations which can fall to a soldier ' s lot .
You talk of the burdens on land . The great burden on land is the landlord ; and unless this burden can be removed , or changed into a benefit , in the end a crash must come . The necessity of landlords is pretty well disposed of by the examp le of Irauco , Belgium , Tuscany , and Switzerland . Let them demonstrate their own utility if they can But in tho meantime , to enlighten the peasantry is only opening their hearts to feel misery , and opening their eyes to see injustice .
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INTRIGUES . The Administrative Reformers have justified our worst misgivings by making over their cause to Lord . DKitnr , who , of course , readily accepts their programme , and will as easily get rid of it when it has served his purpose . So it seems not impossible that the aristocratic party of England , and the men whono principles of administration stand recorded in tno report of tho Dockyard Committee , will vido iuto office on an anti-aristocratic cry Lov administrative reform . Indignation is wn ^ ea on this , an well an on many other political phenomena . The only moral to be drawji is , that men of seiwo and honour should have mutual toleration and stand by each other . Tho Tories have also , we understand , l > eon negotiating with Mr . La yard , whoso roHolutiona they would support if ho would say
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£ 46 TJIE IEADBB . [ HATrmBAty *¦ *
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 12, 1855, page 446, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2090/page/14/
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