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tasmagoria of blood and terror , associates the efforts of the middle and working-classes in England , with the first encroachments of the Tiers JEtdt in France—encrcachments which led , inevitably , as he thinks , to regicide and to the desolation of the capital . Still , he is not one of those infatuated devotees of the past , who would reverse the order of events , and take shelter in obsolete forms . What he
moves midway between innovation and routine . He sees a bright as well as a black side to our growing democracy ; but his hope , obviously , is in Conservatism . " England -will open the door to democracy , but she will then oppose barriers to its advance . ' * At present the tendency is to take power out of the hands of the " permanent" classes , and to share it with the floating masses of the third estate .
But M . de Montalembert measure s England from a French point of view . He looks upon Administrative Reform as an attempt to multiply paid offices , and to create a vast bureaucracy upon the continental system . To aim at modifying the law of primogeniture , he considers equivalent to an attack on property ; to enlarge the suffrage , he believes would be to introduce uncontrollable and alien
elements into the Legislature . Generally , he argues that England must consolidate her institutions , check her " progressive" tendencies , and stand upon her ancient ways , or she may follow France into the Napoleonic abyss . It is easy to trace ,, the source of these ideas . Conversant as he is with English politics , M . de Montalembert writes Avith French traditions in his memory . Charles the First is to him the prototype of Louis the Sixteenth ; he applauds the English . " conquest" of Cromwell , as it is probable he would applaud the " conquest" of Lotjfs Napoleon .
These essays , then , though lucid , suggestive , and often philosophical , are penetrated by aradical error . Perhaps no foreigner can thoroughly comprehend the process by which England has come to . be what she is , or the reforms by which she may advance farther , and harmonise her institutions with the spirit of e . very successive age . But M . de Montalembert considers our
liberty ripe , and warns us to protect and not to improve it . We do not dread with him the approach o £ new reforms ; but , with him , we believe that a religious love of legality is the first condition "" of freedom ; for , in a selfgoverned State , to despise the law is to destroy the machinery of reform . There are many other points to be considered in these essays , which abound in valuable texts ; but these we reserve /
dreads is , democracy leading to military despotism , and , at this point , he utters his protest against the new Imperialism of France . His countrymen , he hints , have sought in their own abasement a refuge from their own folly . England , he continues , will never prefer submission to responsibility ; but , to escape the danger , he warns her , impressively , of the chasm , that is opened by the process of demoeratic reform .
Liberal by cultivation , M . de Montalum-8 Ert is despotic by instinct . He belongs to that impossible party -which pretends to reconcile liberty of conscience with infallible authority ; exactly as he affects to reconcile an admiration of our Protestant independence , with a regret that , we , as a nation , have strayed from the pastures of the Holy Roman Church . But we cannot forget that M . be Montalembert , while he pleads for freedom of thought , and grieves to see his countrymen
ruled by an Incubus , has not "been without a share in promoting that result . Did he not , by a course of perverse reaction , accelerate and do all that was possible to justify the -coup cTlZtat ? Did he not , after an evanescent show of quasi-liberalism , early in the reign of Louis Philippe , facilitate the policy of oppression ? Did lie utter one protest against the successive steps by which that intriguing philos opher neutralised the Constitution , and filled the Chambers -with the representatives of an official
constituency ? M . de Montalembert has a horror ' of Bonapartism , but his horror of the Revolution aided in placing a Bonaparte on the throne . And , to . him , reform means revolution , in the French sense of the word . < 4 If Radicalism and liberty , " heobserves , were identical , England would have a dismal future } " but , inwoven "with these phrases , we detect the old emigre idea—that progress is danger , and freedom anarchy . To him , as to
most Frenchmen , radicalism is rebellion in embryo ; and every English chartist mounts the red flag of the Faubourgs . Thus , as we have said , he is the converse of a French Republican . Most French Republicans , judging of England , ab . extra , fall into errors exactly the opposite of M . be Montalembert . They speak of English " tyranny" and " slavery , " and cannot imagine the development of free institutions among us , without barricades and
provisional governments . It is natural , in M . j > e Montalembert , to regret the establishment of absolutism in Franco . To an ambitious and powerful orator , proud of his eloquence , what affliction more sevex ^ c than the blow that strikes him dumb I But he , when the tribune cracked under his feet , might have remembered that with the liberty of the tribune the liberty of the press must be united ; and that while he " defended France against the enemies of order , " ho
obstructed her free progress , and by attacking Bonapartism with the weapons of legitimacy , helped to make liberty impossible . Ho accuses Lo * d Palmerston as " tho great dospiscr of the rights of the weak , " and " the great auxiliary of revolution against liberty . " Was he not hraiselfthe enemy of the French Republic , at a fame whoa to attack tho Republic was to invite the- Empire ? He admires the sclfrestraimng spirit of the English nation , which reconciles it to enormous taxes in times of pressure . He praises the machinery which
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hands of Professor Taylor alone . The onus " probandi lies upon our accusers . Is Rugeley an entirely exceptional case ? Is there anything in the configuration of the cotintry iu that part that should make the people monsters , in comparison with their neighbours ? Is the water atrociously brackish ? Do the people feed entirely upon pig ' s flesh , or on sausages of more malignant material ? Have the virtues of the population been poisoned out of them by the adulterations of the grocer the druggist , and the butcher ? There is , in truth , nothing to establish the peculiar
blackness of Rugeley m the moral map of England . Yet , what are the facts ? We find that many of the inhabitants are accused , and by each other . Here is the respectable surgeon , and what is the story told of him by his neighbours ? That his father-in-law disappeared mysteriously ; that a visitor died under circumstances which rendered a Coroner ' s inquest necessary ; that his wife was poisoned ; that his brother followed the wife , his boon com * panion followed both , and his servant was to have been in the same retinue . Seven children
have disappeared—seven , although his wife had but four . Having thus involved himself in these difficulties , he became amenable to the criminal laws of the country , and had ; to con ^ - front a fate which is usually extended only to the humblest people who have not the money to get out of the "way , or influence to make justice get out of their path . But Palmer was a " pleasant gentleman , " and there was a sympathy with his" embarrassment . There is the postejnaster , a highly decent and amiable
man , who commits something very like a felony , if it is not actually a felony , to oblige his neighbour . Such are the courtesies of society , that politeness will go the length of felony ; and people say that we are too severe upon our civilisation . Then there is the Coroner who receives game and notes of more than one kind , the itinerant representative of justice in the district . Amongst the ladies of the place was Anne Palmer , the wife of "William ; and he , coming up as a witness to exonerate his mother from a claim of debt on
A EESPECTABLE NEIGHBOURHOOD . It is discovered that the instruments of civilisation are used for the purpose of barbarity . The extension of chymical science enables us to detect the workings of crime with a minuteness and a certainty perfectly unknown to the times of the Borgia or the Brinvilliers ; but the same ingenuity teaches evasion of detection and fresh inventions of atrocity . While Professor Taylor is discovering how to detect murder by poison , 150 persons supply him with materials to work upon , and a Palmer cons the volume about poisons as
sedulously as the Professor . The principle of guarding against risk by the insurance of lives suggests a m , eans of trading upon murder , as the insurance of vessels by sea originated the crime of baratry , or the intentional loss of vessels to obtain the insurance . We have been charged with pressing this view of " our civilisation" too freely and too closely . It has been said that we drew our experience from the town , and applied it to the innocent country . Palmer has taught us how the village surgeon can excel the latest Manchester villain in the ingenuity of his operation a .
We deny the charge . We have not picked the facts ; we have not taken them from any one class of society . Those who accuse appear to presume that the cases of crime are not more numerous than the cases of detection . ; yet wo have had only one Palmer , one Monaohan , and some few other doubtful cases , out of tho five hundred that have como to the
his account , avows that Anne Palmer fraudulently put the name , of" Sarah Palmer" to the bill he had drawn . That amiable , respected , and unfortunate lady , therefore , was a forger . But how do we know that . we have got to the end of the confessions that might be made if Rugeley were put upon its confession ? The Coroner , acting under the . compulsion of the law , has enforced a kwid of partial day of judgment for Rugeley , —has made the graves
give up their dead , and tell their secrets : what if we could have up the whole church-yard in evidence against the living generation ; and then bring the living inhabitants into tho witness box as witnesses against each other ? Yet again , we deny that the . Hugeley is peculiarly criminal : it is only characteristic of English society , in the adulterations of its trade , the treacheries of its private relations , the subornation of its insurance , and the prostitution of its most sacred guarantees .
We could , on the moment , take other country towns , equally rustic , - equally removed , it might be supposed , from the contaminating influence . of a great city , and equally marked by violation of established law . We do not say that in all the casos to which wo refer there would be tlic same total breach of natural law , that the same atrocious inhumanity would mark the mutiny of society against itself . But nothing is more characteristic of tho present day , than tho confusion which exists in tho chastisement of infraction
against conventional as well us natural law . Indeed the punishment , is moro severe in the case of conventional than of natural Inw .
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84 THE LEADER . [ No . 305 , Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 26, 1856, page 84, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2125/page/12/
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