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STATISTICS O 3 ? THE NEW HOUSE . Speculation ¦ as to'the strength of parties in the new House has a special interest , inasmuch as there is no immediate likelihood of any division -which would test the unity of the " Liberals or the numbers of the Opposition . There will be no attempt at opposition to Mr . Evelyn Denison as Speaker , and there is no probability- that Mr . Disraeli
will precipitate any move likely to show how very small is the party of gentlemen who still follow his leadership . Even Lord John , althoughjiis independent position gives him a vantage ground , is not likely to break with the Government too soon ; nor will Mr . Gladstone , with all his readiness to act with a minority , lead into the lobby that reduced Pcelito section which should detach about
ono half its forces to supply tellers for the rest . . Deprived , therefore , of the prospects of that best of Parliamentary companions ;—a division list—we fall back upon a careful survey of election , addresses and hustings declarations . The ministerial arithmeticians calculate , wo understand , upon a majority of 108—and perhaps , as an average- estimate of the probable majorities of PaIjMKKsion on . various questions , it is a prett y fair reckoning . Counting aa Liberals all who support an extension of tho
franchise , and are generally favourable to roforms both ecclesiastical and civil—the strength of tho Liberal party in . the House ia 382 . This total is not arrived at by putting men down as Liberals merely because they have once been called so , or because they call themselves Liberals without spo city ing any reform a the y will support ; it if based on specific declarations from their owu lips on tho hustings , or in their writfcon adilresacH , when ; i statement one way or the other was likely to affect tho poll . VV ' o have
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pent the paeans they liave uttered over the revival of imperialism in Prance . Its eclat has'bewildered . them ; they talk of the Napoleonic age as feeble historians talk of the age of ItEO X ., which lasted nine years , and of the Awtoniues , which lastedforty-two years , while the period of civil liberties that went before the Antonines embraced five uninterrupted centuries . . The . Roman Republic conquered nations , the Roman Emperor speared bears and wrestled with gladiators ; the last representative of Caesarism . sits in a chair of state
ing -with pious love the designs of Jiis deified predecessor , of cultivating the complicity of the priesthood , of affecting to reverence the privileges of private life after lie had violated every public law . After robbing the Roman people of their rights , he allowed the claims of a few freeholders to destroy tlie symmetry of the Forum . He affected also to act as a censor of morals : but the dates of his decrees on this
subject mark the opening of an era of unnatural depravities and bestial pollutions . The boast of AtrairsitTS was , that he turned Rome , by the magie of his magnificence , into a city of marble ; the boast of Lofis Napoleon ' s flatterers is , that he has adorned Paris and revived the power and prosperity of France . "What was true in the one case is true in the other . The Lower
Empire rotted to dust in an age of architectural splendour ; Prance is smitten by a deadly disease while Paris sparkles with the white stone monuments of her ¦ Lok . enzopaid for by a people heavily laden , poor , and struggling against a partial scarcity . These grand erections are . held ' lip as , emblems of political stability , of which . Rome affoids a fitting illustration . The Empire converted at the commencement of every reign into the theatre of a violent revolution , its gradual
decadence and ultimate' collapse were demonstrations of the order bequeathed by Augustus ; but Louis Natolion , after a reign of glory , will confide his sceptre to the Empress -. Regent , who will nurse the nation for her son , -who , from being the Child of France , will become its Father , and there will "be no more anarchy , but ' Napoleonic communism and a stagnant peace . Possibly , but also possibly not- —a pistol-ball , a fall from a horse , or some other accident may , at any moment , surrender
France to the violence of an African military mob , and the frenzy of a hundred factions . ATTGUSTtrs , to seduce the aniiy , made Use of the name and inheritance of-CiESAn ,. and , having mounted to a throne by the steps of a tomb , proceeded to abase the moral energies of the people "by employing them on works of vanity , by annihilating individual character , by swamping men in crowds , by practising the arts of amusement and benevolence . ¦ " . The organisation of the Empire "
, said Tacitus , " was the disorganisation of society . " But society had been corrupted , it was urged , before ( Lesar rose . " Yes , " answers IMT . Ampjewe , in his admirable studies of Imperial history , " it had been corrupted , and its corruption was the ruin of liberty ; but is despotism excellent because it is favoured by public apathy and private infamy ? Arbitrary government , in Rome and elsewhere , must have been at a . loss for apologies when it attempted to justify itself by showing
that it was a form of authority congenial to a viciousnnd enervated generation , " France appreciates the argument , and Louis NapolEON employs four hundred thousand men , a countless body of police and spies , two mute legislatures , and a vast official staff , - to prevent the French from disclaiming a satiuiied submission to tho institutions of tho
Empire . Certain it is , however , that Rome , debased and debauched enough to make way for Ojbbah , was infinitel y more debased to make way for the successors of Augustus . France may have been morally degenerato in 1851 , but we know wliat sho is in 1857 . Supposing tlic best result—that she will now pass under a succession of Bonapartist Emperors—what then ? Out of twelve
to be celebrated by another Sue'ionius , how many possessors of unrestrained authority are likely to bo Antonines , and how many UALiauLAs ? When the modern Augustus disappears , when tho nation discovers that during its Bleep it has lost itja virility , there may be some men in England who will
reaud watches a fight between a swarm of matadors and a Spanish bull . It is Imperialism , not -the- " . ' Emperor , that corrupts ; as M . Ampeub has justly pointed out , GrEORGKE I ., as an emperor , would have been a iSTEBO , George IV . a Helio gabaxus ; while jS " eho 7 fenced round with constitutional limits , might have been a very respectable king . " The institutions that protect nations against monarchs protect monarchs against themselves . " The obiect of
French Imperial policy is to govern the state by means of a vast , impersonal , irresponsible machine , regulating finance , education , religion , manners , sumptuary customs , the traffic of the Bourse , trade , navigation , industry , setting aside the power of the press , extinguishing individual action , absorbing the nation in the pursuit of material gains and pleasures- Those who are willing to be thus governed are" corrupted ; those who resist are literally destroyed—for imprisonment and exile amount to the obliteration- of
the individual as a citizen . The moral life of the country is by this process drained away ; yet the founder of the system is applauded as a saviour of society . It is somewhat remarkable that he should at any time have achieved popularity in England , conspicuously Christian as England claims to be , for the Empire is essentially a pagan institution . The perfect working of Imperialism would be equivalent ; to the maddest development of Socialism ; both systems treat society as a
tune from France , marries a Russian princess , and dances with the wife of the Czah . . JL swarm of locusts have been fattened ; but how many have been impoverished to inflate their unnatural appetites ! There has been no real production of wealth , only the exhaustion of industry to promote speculation . Resuming the whole inquiry , what have been the gains and losses of France under the Empire ? Masses of doubtful masonry have changed the face of the capital , to the delight and wonder of complacent tourists : the
hovels of the poor have been razed by the merciless combinations of strategic boulevards ; a knot of stock-jobbers Aftve been enriched ; the population has shrunk , as in , a pestilence or famine ; the production of food has . diminished ; agriculture is neglected ; tho towns are aggrandized at tlie cost of the provinces . ; over two-thirds of tlie -territory' of France the exhaustion of vital forces is apparent ; the rural districts are deprived of large proportions of adult labour ; unreinuneratiye public works in tlie metropolis have wasted the national treasures . It
is computed that -witlnn five years forty millions sterling have been amassed by the holders of stock on the Bourse—a sum . extracted from productive industry , in addition to the vast loan s lavished on the Russian war and the Paris improvements . "We point to this array of clouds that darken over France , without desiring to exaggerate' the evil or to misrepresent its causes . It may be traceable to one set of circumstances or to another , "but it belongs to the period of the Eiuipire , which declared itself to be the realization of peace , order , and prosperity , which promised stability , security , and confidence , but which seeks to vault over with a marble roofing an immeasurable abyss .
mechanism , instead of an organisation ; both sink the individual ; botli exalt the state ; both endeavour to drill villages into battalions and cities into camps ; the one is the paradise of pedantry , the other the climax of corruption ; and a strange confusion of both is exhibited by the reigning power in Franco . There is an attempt to crush the citizen under the weight of the multitude ; to create in the bureaucracy a central administration of public affairs , general , special , and local ; to treat Paris literally as the heart of Franco , transmitting
its impulses to the remotest departments ; to infuse into the mind of the populace that sort of Brahminical serenity which is content with gazingon the Ineffable and fancying that all tho citizens arc represented by tho Emperor , and the Emperor by all the citizens . The democratic leaders , clamorous for equality , have had some share in promoting this result , for while insisting that men shall bo equal , they have forgotten , to secure that they shall be ireo ; and tho masses to whom they preached the doctrine of a society smoothed to one dead level havo boon burled against them by the man who has converted the
national army into tho national enemy , and universal suffrage into a machine of universal enslavement . They are now the servants of one master , or tho victims of one oppressor ; they have witnessed tho reduction of every class to uniform political annihilation . Franco has been swallowed up in tho Empire ; and the apostles of ecuiality ai-o compelled to watch the ascent in tho social scale of a rabble of parvenus bloated with the profits of gambling . The real monument of Napolconism is tlio Count de Mouny , \ x \\ o > withdraws a prodigious ibr-
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Afbji ., 25 , 185 . 7- ] THE L-EADEB . 33 $
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 25, 1857, page 395, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2190/page/11/
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