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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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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS , No n . otice can l ) e ' taken . of anonymous communications . YVhntereris intended for insertion must be authenticated by th-e name and address of the writer ; not necessarily for publication but as a guarantee of his good faith . It is impossible to acHno'wledge the mass of letters we receive . Thrir insertion is often delayed , owtug to a press of matter ; and when omitted . it is frepiuently from reasons quite independent of the merits of the communication . We cannot undertake to return rejected communications . Our Title- Page and IffDEx for Vol . VI , 1855 , will be given nex't week During the Sessi n of Parliament it is often impossible to find roam lor correspondence , even the briefest .
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There is nothing so revolutionary , because there i 3 nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law ofits' creation in eternal progress .- ^ -DR . Aknoid .
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in play . Whig intriguers , Disraelite lampooners , reviving the high-bred amenities of the Satirist , and husky Chartist spouters , produced a discord of execration-against the Earl of Aberdeen , because that cold but honest and sagacious statesman sacrificed power and reputation to his conscience , and laboured to save England from being dragged at the chariotwheels
of the French Emperor . It "was not , and is not , a reproach to him that he hesitated to identify the policy of his Cabinet with that of a man , who , after treading under foot law and right , and the institutions he had sworn to protect , after nameless and numberless infamies , came forward as the hero of a crusade in favour of the public law of Europe , and the civilisation of the West . Lord Aberdeen knew that
Out of this unnatural complicity has sprun g an alliance of convenience , not an alliance of ° the nations , of reason , or of ^ mutual esteem ; and , like other unions of like aEoy , it may result in indifference , recrimination , and contempt . Oiir populace , high-bred and low-bred , is in tire habit of saying , with an air of overpowering confidence : — " We could not have refused the French alliance . " Is not the phrase an admission of the worst doubts and ambiguities ? An ominous fallacy lurks in the word Aixi&NCE ! A . French : Alliance does not mean
a compact with an Emperor and a populace , but a concord of policy established between nations Hf reasoning men . We Say that theie is = no reasoning Frenchman , who is at the same time l honest , who does not abhor the regiment the Coup d'Etat , and suffer remorse for any act that may Have facilitated its sticees " s . But th ^ re was need to lose the alliance of France , even , of Imperial France . England might have recognised , officially , her existing government ; it is a sound principle to acknowledge every defatto Government that arises in that classic land of transformations .
But , from a formal recognition , a friendly , and even cordial understanding , a perfect disposition to act with good-will and good faith , to an ostentatious and sentimental connexion of Courts and Cabinets- —ati hereditary monarchy , supposed at least to be enshrined in the hearts of a loyal people , embracing with ecstacy a Phenomenon df successful perjury arid violence- —from t / kctt to this was mores than
the one step that costs so much . After the Second of December , England , true to herself , her principles , her liberties , held Europe in the palm of her hand . All the reigning dynasties were distrustful of the French Empire ; scarcely one was yet free from the menace of the Revolution ; Great Britain might then' * kave Commanded the policy of Imperial France . But our Government has , from first to lagt , played into th-e hands of the French Emperor \ in peace as in war , we have been content to act a secondaiy and subservient part . After setting up the idol , wefell down to adore it . We created
opportunities , invented successes for him , arid then , in servile amazement , crouched before his fortunes and his genius . The successive operations of "the war have been so condxicted , as to give all the eclat , all the prestige , all the aspect of power to France , and now , peace is to be concluded at a signal from our ally , in his capital , on his conditions , precisely at the moment when his harvest of glory is gathered in , and ours lies waiting for the sun . It is known that , for some time , confidential letters have passed between the Imperial Cabinet at Paris and the Court of St .
Petersburg . The most courteous , nay , the most obliging dispositions have been professed : to repeat a memorable form of words , " Now that France is satislied , Europe is content . '' These letters , the tenor of which is known , not at Vienna and Berlin only , but at Hanover , and throughout t"he circle of petty German princes , arc probably less umbiguous than the recent communications between thoFrench ami British Cabinets .
Disinterested man in Paris regard with something like dismay the turn winch the reaction in favour of ponce is taking in that capital . Reconciliation with Russia is assuming vaguely the shape ; of si Russian alliance . Is the establishment of nn identical policy between two groat ubsolul isms to bo one result of the Conference ? To this probability , unhappily , other and anovc complex inlluencca tend , which force us to acknowledge how -widely and variously our aristocratic and exclusive system ailed h our national chai'acter in the sight of continental Europe . That a peculiar sympathy exists between Russian and
Great Britain was not prepared for war , that to take the field immediately would be to expose her resources to an ignominious contrast with those of France , to throw a band of brave men , and not an organised array , Upon the enemy ' s shore . Our readers will bear us witness that at the risk of whatever popularity or convenience
THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE FRENCH . ALLIANCE . The dangers and embarrassments of Great Britain only commence with the Conferences or Congress of Paris . The crisis of maladministration is insignificant , compared with the crisis of policy . So long a 3 the war lasted , in spite of the outcry against the sacrifice of our army , the misconduct of operations / the incapacity of commanders , and all the
disastrous consequences inevitable from a system of favouritism , privilege , and intrigue , the public feeling , a compound of blindness and sympathy , of ignorance and pugnacity , was excited by passing events , and judged only of immediate ' results . The short-comings of fehe governing class were fitfully remembered and forgotten amid the tumult of-the siege , and the successive hazards before Sebastopol . The nation pondered over the maps with all the Wonder of a child just initiated into geography , read the correspondence from the Crimea with a
"bewilderment of indignation , relied on the might of England , was absorbed by the news , and never dreamed that while the Departments improved their administrative methods , the policy of England might involve more ruin than all the blunders of all the subordinate offices during a century . The public would listen to no political doubts . When the soldiers were fed . and clothed , —when Mr . Russell was satisfied , — when the English in the Crimea returned the hay they had borrowed from the French , all went
merry ; and the capture of tho southern side of Sebastopol came to brighten complacency into joy . A large and various class were more directly concerned in the fortune and fate of sons and brothers in tho field . The political epicureans , with eyes half closed , looked on in supercilious apathy . The enthusiasts and malcontents , more restless and dissatisfied than their fellow citizens , and scarcely less ignorant , held their breath , like gamblers , in the wild hope that a revolutionary apocalypse would burst upon Confusion . It was nothing to them
that Courts and Cabinets , dreading revolutionary principles far more- thrm Russian armies , sedulously restrainod the war within political and diplomatic limits . They urged with frantic fatuity the prosecution of the struggle * : thoy gave their strength to their cuomu ^ ' aiul jeered at tho timidity of loss delirious politician a . Wlu > but the desperados of the Revolution couhl hope that when the old monarchies of Europe were divided by dillerencuH of polioy , they would call in the arbitration of an expectant democracy V This was enthusiasm : but selfishness was also
might attach to fellowship with , the common delusion , the Leader , from the first , abstained from joining in the howl which drove Lord Aberdeen from office . We say now , as we have said before , that the day may come when thereasonable public opinion of this court try will repent of its rash aspersions and more rash confid nces , and will appreciate the motives of a statesman who feared to trust the honour of
England to the keeping of the December Usiir pation . Above all , the 1 nation may regret having rushed into the arms df a giddy and cynical statesman , who sealed his complicity with that astoxinding crime before the blood was -dry on the Boulevards . Lord Palmerstco * himself may wish that act undone , when he feels that he is a subordinate in his own Cabinet , and that his description of the French and British nations , as "having one Government with two Executives" was not exagge ration but Irony .
This war was , from the first , an act of French Imperial policy , and that policy alone has it subserved . We do not say that Russian ambition was not a danger and a menace to Europe ; we say that no honest or far-seeing English statesman would have hastened to embark this country in a war , "by the side of a government to which all the heart and intelligence of France are in natural and ineradicable
opposition . The time had come and passedin 184 . 0—the time must inevitably have come again , for a struggle between the principles that England represents , and the principles represented by Russia—it may be between the power and policy of England , and the power and policy of Russia . But that opportunity was not supplied when Lour a Napoleon set his foot on the neck of the French nation . When
legality had been trampled out m . Iranee m blood and terror , it was not a time to propose an armed alliance in the name of the public law of Christendom . The Russian Emperor , under a false interpretation of treaties , had , in the face of tho world , violated a frontier . The French Emperor , in the dnrlcness of the night , had violated oaths , laws , political and personal
rights , human lii ' e , in the accomplishment of a llagitious ambition . Never was a moment more inopportune , more innuapiciou . s for that alliance , which nil intelligent men in both countries had desired since 17 D 2 , to which the Republic of 1848 hud sacrificed its existonce , and whioh wo pray may endure as long as the nations . But when France had suilored that
unspeakable injury , was it the best way to secure her friendship , by exulting in the bucccnb oi tho mnn who had reduced her , as far as a civilised nation can be reduced , to degradation ?
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SATURDAY , FEBRUARY 23 , 1856 . ¦
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February 23 , 1856 . J THE LEADI 1 . 179
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 23, 1856, page 179, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2129/page/11/
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