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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 . Daring the Session of Parliament it is often impossible to find room for correspondence , even the briefest . . ; . Itis impossible to acknowledge tlie mass of letters we receive . Their insertion ie often delayed , owing to a press of matter ; and when omitted , it is frequently from reasons . ojiitei » dj 3 Be (» den . t of the merits of tlie communication . ' ' No notice can be taken of anonymous correspondence . Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily for publication ,, bufc as a guarantee of his good faith . We cannot undertake to return rejected communications .
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THE YICTORLAN EBA . Victobxa . has sat upon the British thron e twenty years . During that period the members of riot more thaiL twenty families have governed the empire . The governing classes , embodying ; a gigantic political monopoly , have been , represented by select sections of their own . order— -Whigs and ^ Tories , at intervals—and have been responsible for whatever events , sp ringing from political or administrative causes ,- have marked the history of the present reign . It is the fashion to paint
this history in . brilliant colours—to sketch , again and again , the panorama of a far-wafted commerce , deserts blossoming like the rose , population expanding , liberty developed , and national / power ieonsolidated . And rightly so . "We have nourished since 1837 , and are altogether a greater people than when the crown of Hanov . er . rested- for the last time upon the coffin of an English . Bung . Extensive conquests , gold discoveries , mechanical inventions , and acts of fostering legislation , have made us more than , a century ago , we ever hoped to be . But what if , by a
methodical analysis , we eould distribute the merit of our- progress since ; the- death of " WiiiiiAMr . iy . between the industrious ^ mi ddle , and privileged classes ? What share would fall to the corporation which , officially or unofficially , rules the realm ? It may assign to itself all to which it can justly lay claim ; , but there is another side to the account . Tha Victorian era h ** been signalized "by a series , of national disasters , ' —and are not the- paapagers of the State responsible for its calamities ? ' It would be unjust and unreasonable ! to press too closely the application of such a maxim , j . but we havs an . aristocracy which is addicted to swaggering 1 , and it may be useful to remind it that all failures are not
those of commerce , all misfortunes not the result ' of accident , all criniea not recognizable by . the . C / Qurts . of Common Law op Equity-. We boast of ! our prosperity—we have sacrificed a perceptible proportion of ib white temporizing witU restrictive laws . We have a splendid dominion in Asia- —it has been twice imperilled , and ) blotted foully with the blood of massacre . Our eolomeu are' magnificent—but the most
magnificent of them has been in rebellion . Within twenty years we have had the insurrection in Canada , the slaughter in Afghanistan , the famine-in Ireland ,. the Monmouthshire riots , the * horrible and heart-rend ^ ing' tragedy of starvation and pestilence in the Oiijniea , and the climax of nublio affliction in British India *—nob to-mention the cholera panic , the partial soarciby of food in England
preceding the repeal of "the Corn Ijavrs , and the destructive mania of speculation in 1847 . In 1 $ 37 we alienated and exasperated the inhabitants of our most important Atlantip colony ^ in 1840 we provoked a fearful outbreak in the centre of England j in 1841 our blundering conduct of a military expedition led to the destruction of an army , accompanied with horrors unexampled except during- the retreat of Napoleoit from Moscow ; in 1845 , while closing the ports against foreign corn ,
we desolated Ireland with famine ; in 1854 we send a superb army to the Crimea where it perishes from sheer neglect ; in 1857 , in spite of warnings and prophecies * we permit a mutinous movement to sweep away the entire army of Bengal ; the ancient Mogul capital is snatched from us ; English women and children in the East are ruthlessly murdered by the soldiers whom our administrators supinely watch while they organize this terrible rebellion .
The general body of the public have certainly not interfered with the diplomatic system by which our governing classes have pretended to balance the affairs of Europe . Their sueeess in this direction has been at least equivocal . They began with a sort of unrecognized war in Portugal ; they were beaten by France in the matter of the Spanish marriages , and by America on the Oregon frontier ; they have twice been on the eve of war with the ^ French , and twice with the United States ; they have been
compelled to undertake one irregular and one regular campaign in Persia ; they have had two Chinese wars ; they have been dragged into a contest with Russia and then dragged out . of it . Surely the Guild is not very expert at diplomacy , but it may be that our governing class is worth what we j > ay for it . It may be that a scandalous revolt in a great colony , one army massacred , and another rotted to death , a famine , a . menace of domestic insurrection , a mutiny of a huudred thousand soldiers , three or four wars , and endless
perplexities do not constitute a heavy price to be paid for the advantage of being governed for twenty years by the houses of Bedfobd and Debby . But would the nation consent to contract for another twenty years at a similar cost ? Supposing that we progress to the year 1877 under similar influences , and with a similar aggregate of calamity , the account may be rendered thus : —a million of the . population , at home .. will be swept off by famine ; we
shall send ten thousand British troops through the Eastern gates of Central Asia , and they will be hunted down and cut off to a man ; we shall undertake a great war with unlimited resources-, and we shall establish a besieging army among rocks and swamps where its flower will be blighted , and twenty thousand men lost to the nation by cold and by unattended disease ; having suppressed the mutiny in Bengal , we shall see Madras andi Bombay in , flames , and hundreds of innocent lives will be sacrificed because we have an
unalterable system ; we shall quarrel with America over some mad-bank im the St . Lawrence ; and 1 at the close of this period we shaft be declaring ourselves the greatest nation on the face of tho earth , disparaging all other institutions iu oomjaarison with our own , at ^ d' neve r dreaming that in some dark day of our history wo may incur a disaster which , vd \ l prove too much even for the elastic energies ot Q-r . eafc Britain ,, The complications of diplomacy have been referred toj but we have * no desire to assign the evil to onuses exclusively arising from the incapacity or reckloasnoss of tlio governing classes . JSTo one nation can majto the diplomnov of Europe its own , or march in a straight lino under a cross fire- of formidable
and irresistible influences ; but the most * frightful of the calamities in the list arose from sheer blundering and from , nelpless imbecility on the part of those who had the conduct of affairs . The Canada rebellion was the offspring of a blind and" aggressive policy . When the landed aristocracy of the realm saw famine blackening the distance , knew that the food of millions had been destroyed , and understood that their Corn Law privileges were inconsistent with the welfare or even existence of the country , the bulk of them stubbornly and stolidly stood idly gazing at the approaching cloud , when thev might have thrown upon the blasted
fields of Ireland one harvest from the Danube and another from the Mississippi . Yet even in this ease they were not without excuse . They defended a policy , and with that policymany of them sincerely believed the interests of the empire to be identified . But whereshall they find an apology for the Afghan , massacre , the ? destruction of the Crimean army , or the disaster in Bengal ? For these they are responsible , and yet not they alone , but the public , whose opinion is . never ripe r and which confines itself to staring , wondering , regretting , uttering maledictions , and allowing men who have failed to undertake new failures at a cost of ten
thousand men or ten millions of money , sometimes of the men and the money together , and always of that national reputation , which is more precious than either . We lost an army in the Kbyber pass ; we consoled ourselves that it Would serve as a lesson . We lost an army at Sebastopolj still we thought that no price could be too lasses
high for such a lesson . Our governingg in India have run riot in maladministration , and have allowed a splendid army to melt away into seditious anarchy . We suppose we shall again hear that this will be a lesson . It will be no such thing . We shall put down the mutiny , and pay its tremendous cost , and we shall then close our eyes , and wait till we are informed that another ten thousand men
have been frozen dead in a British camp , or smitten with pestilence , through the apathy of their administrators j and when we are weary of these successive calamities we shall begin to speculate upon a change of system . At present we may profitably cast a retrospective glance over the events of the Victorian era . It may be good for us to have acknowledged , that from-the dazzling account of prosperity , progress , and glory , certain deductions must be . made ; by which the total results are materially modified—much to our edification , if Bomewhat to our shame .
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AMEItICA ON USTDIA AND ENGLAND . Tub American press , as well as private letters , have given the lie to those who expected that our cousins across the Atlantic would exult in the menace to England from India . We knew better . Some American statesmen who have had reason to remember either the arts or the vacillation of certain English statesmen , may chuckle at seeing the Englishmen caught in their own trap ot negligence and overweening confidence ; some who remember the unfair advantage token » 7 our people in Central America , may not oe displeased at the retribution which haa lal" > unon us from the banbarians in the East ; DuB
Americans have far too much Ang lo-Saxon blood in them to rejoice in the prospect ot victory by Asiatics over the British rao ° ! ^ they are far too much hard-headed men ot tue world to miscalculate the odds in . the present contest . Whether , wo look to the qun « - official Union of Washington , or to the independent Herald of New York , wo find the same calculation . ' We do nut believe , says
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SATTJBPAT , AUGUST 22 , 1857 .
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» There is nothing ' so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by thevery law ofata cieation in eternal pro areas ..-t-Db 1 . A » ho : li >
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 22, 1857, page 806, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2206/page/14/
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