On this page
- Departments (2)
-
Text (8)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
rT/n ^Ju/> 9
-
Untitled Article
-
= f ttlilit Mairs. ¦ . 1 . W ¦ became ,
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . ofmattor ^ and when omitted , it is . frequently . from reason " auftfe independent of the merits of the commumcawScSnnot undertake to return rejected communications . - , „
Untitled Article
THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION . We cxpoot much from the mocMng of tho British r&ssoeiabioii ^ TOw ^ sscmbled—ai ^ Ij ^^ without demanding or receiving much assistance from Government , whioh raroly iuionloros with . science but to bias or pervert it , ns iL nwoly takes voligiou iu Imnd without lessening and linyiirMiig its honelloiul influence , has already ooninbutod very much to advance , and still moro to dilluse , scumtilio information . It moots at « propitious timo whon tho public attention is Jlxcd on some important problems , the solution oi wlneh , or at
Untitled Article
the a ~ e -cannot , we say , intend any stratagem of that kind ; and while we acknowledge the apparent difficulty and perplexity of the problem thrust before them , we cannot help doubting -whether they fully perceive the opportunity presented to them by the striking difference of 1 he time . The mere outward aspect of English life is enough to justify Hie instinctive sense of Englishmen who have been heretofore reckoned as lories , that it demands altered fashions and an altered in fi . o a ~ ,. -nnnnntl we say , intend any stratagem of
spirit . The last Reform Bill was passed , days when the very look of our streets was unlike the present ; when London had but . 1 , 655-000 men , women , and children , instead of the two millions and half which we now reckon ourselves . It is true that we had gas-lights in London , but in those days gas was not the universal light from Sydney to Toronto , and we did not find in every provincial town of the empire , whether from Glasgow to Bristol , or from Montreal to Melbourne , the same style of living , the same drawing-room , the same ships , the same
paid to any claims on behalf of that class in Parlia ment ; witness the anx iety to improve the dwelling : of the poor , to provide parks for the people 11 London , Birmingham , Manchester , &c . ; witness the efforts of individual employers to act witi those that work under them—from . Mr . Salt , of Saltaire , to Anne Marchioness of Londonderry ] witness most especially the bearing , of the Cburt and people to each other at Leeds . The factisthatj the period before the passing of the Reform Bill was a very bad school of politics . We English had lived under an aged king whose infirmities compelled a certain difference in the nation inpaid-to any claims on behalf of that class in Parlia
juribus to our political independence . Through various combinations , the Tories had been able to make their principles of prerogative dominant . Thej trampled on the native institutions of the country ; their insolent domination taught them a bad morale , and they attempted to prevent discussion by an obscene insolence which provoked habitual retort and Radical coarseness . Our fathers of those days lived in a school of conflict and corruption ; we have lived in a school of reform ; and if our education is still incomplete , the spirit of the school is entirely regenerate , as compared with that before the Reform era . Any statesmen , therefore , who
attempt to legislate for the people as they are now born and trained , undertake a task wholly different from that which the persevering Liberals accomplished in 1832 . It might be appropriate enough for the Liberals to think of re-editing their old bill , of 1832 , but if the Conservatives come into the field , if they are to place their works in that series of classics , they would degrade themselves by becoming mere editors of the Whig-Radical statesmen of 1832 . Many of the difficulties which deterred them from Reform have disappeared ; and if they have perplexities of their own , they do not confront the greatest
obstacle which stood before the Liberal of that day ; they have no Tory party arrayed against them ; they have , on . the contrary , political rivals who must agree if their bill be substantial enough , and a people only waiting to hail them with applause if they do their duty sincerely and diligently . The whole condition of the people removes . the doubts which prevented Conservatives in those days from agreeing to political changes , and amongst the present political confederates of Lord Derby there are men who have learnt so much of the working-classes , in actual conference and co-operation with them , that their dread of almost any conceivable extension
of the suffrage has been cured by-the most practical treatment . We appeal to Cabinet Ministers themselves to testify to the truth of our remark . But these altered aspects of the time , while they remove many barriers to the action of Conservatives on the path of Reform , impose upon any Reform Ministry responsibilities entirely new . Tho statesmen in oflice have to bring forward a measure worthy of a people whose good order , industry , and intelligence have been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt . They have to submit provisions before a nation whose average intelligence has been elevated to a p itch perhaps unprecedented in the world . They have to enlarge constitutional statutes where already the basis is generous and liberal .
They have , in a glorious constitution , to make an amendment whicli shall be a real improvement , not simply a tinkering , to warrant tho use of a great name . They have , in short , to submit another bill in tho series of our fundamental statutes worthy of the English people of the present , day , and . of the . measures which have preceded it . Should the task be undertaken in a spirit congenial to its grandeur and its importance , the Conservatives may lend us another stage on tho inarch of progress , while identifying their own principles with the growth of the nation , and immortalising themselves amongst tho workmen who have , through successive ages , been allowed to lend a hand in building up tho constitution of tho country .
" new police , " the self-same way ot going on , mutatis mutandis , as in the City or as m the Westend of our own metropolis . We had not in those days penny papers or omnibuses . Railways were still m embryo — no network replacing the old high-roads of the country . We had no large steamships , no weekly post with America , no penny post , no Rowland Hill for the whole civilised world . We had not adapted the screw to great merchant ships or the navy . We had no electric telegraphs . We still were without some of the newest inventions for -multiplying the uses of
commer-STANDARDS FOR THE REFORM BILL OF 1859 . Whatever may be the Reform Bill designed by Ministers for the session of 1859 * it is not foreshadowed in the fragmentary projects that have been laid before the public through the columns of some of our contemporaries . It is ¦ impossible that the leaders of the Conservative party can have taken up the subject at all with any intention of trifling . If they do not intend to terminate their tenure of office by a political suicide more ludicrous
than lamentable , they will not attempt to satisfy the want of public opinion by any paltry schemes for tinkering the present laws regulating the representation of the people . Any such notions would be unworthy even of a playhouse manager , who would foresee the danger of tantalising the public expectation with large announcements on the bills to put off the public expectation with some miserable farce or interlude . The party which has systematically opposed any changes in the statutes relating to the institutions of the country can only have consented to
¦ wai ve its resistance and to initiate its own school of Reform by a measure intended to bear the impress of statesmanship , and to justify a change of action by the elevation of the statesmanship . The storms of party have subsided ; those circles who have sworn by certain Liberal leaders , appear to have exhausted either their invention in the business of improvement , or thoir energy for action . The office of working statesmanship in the prosecution of Reform , therefore , is left vacant , and the statesmen who began life on the same side of the House with the
representatives of the Tory party , who have heretofore clung together iu public life , find themselves accidentally at the head of a nation no longer ¦ divided , and actually being called upon to take up the duty which others have suffered to lapse . We have never affected to regard the Tories as tho enemies of their country , or of the constitution , though we have believed them not sufficiently to appreciate tho true spirit ' of tho constitution m leaning to tho prerogative of tho Crown , while , the special safeguards of this country arc to be found in those statutes which establish a
concurrent power with the Crown , tho Lords , and tho Commons , down to the humblest burgess of the land . At present there are no Tories , but only the heirs of men who conscientiously inclined to the opinions designated by that epithet ; the heirs , however , living in a different day , sharing larger experiences , and manifesting widely different sympathies , Those , circumstances alono mark a period ao totally difforent from t ] l ^ of the , laa < . IWorm-Bill"conuloirTlmt" ¦¦ the measures takxjn up in tho spirit of that old contest could only be a mistake ; while an attempt to evade tho supposed inconmatenoy , by bringing forward a neutral measure , would constitute a hoax in national statesmanship unprecedented for its mdaunoss arid its folly . Tho statesmen responsible for taking up the conduot of affairs tvt tho prosont day for reconciling the inheritance ot tho Tory party with tho requirements of
• cial mediums of exchange . We had not expanded the uses of the banker ' s clearing-house . We had not discovered gold in California or gold in Victdfca . We had not seen those enormous emigrations to the British colonies and to the United States which have bound those outlying countries to us by the very heartstrings of our population . We had had no Irish famine , a miserable peasantry still starved on con ' -acre , where now the word is almost forgotten , and Irishmen begin to rejoice , not in potatoes , but in an English style of wages . We had not then had free trade , which lias not onl y made England the entrepot for the com . nierce of the globe , but has given her the start of that commerce , has taught her farmers to forget distress , and has multiplied the population of the towns with a reflex influence on the rural of the
population ; insomuch that we have seen in England , and even in Ireland , agricultural labourers asr sisting in the trial of machinery . We had not then the immense development of newspapers and cheap literature . The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge , inaugurated in 1828 by Lord Brougham , did not begin to tell upon the country till some time after the old Reform Bill had passed . Since that time the Cosmos , whose aged author has been felicitated on his ninety-first birthday by Prince Alfred has become a household book , purchasable at almost every railway station : and with this universal
appropriation of the ideas definitively given to the age by this aggregate intellect , we have had a gradual improvement in the popular manners through all grades of society . Witness tho order of the Exhibition of 1851—the million in the glass house ; the way in which the mob kept the streets at the Wellington funeral , and at the celebration of Peace ; and the actual enrolment of . tho working classes , during the latest demonstration at Leeds , to perform tho duty of a guard whilst sovereignty passed along . ...
Bat this ninl . urn of tho outward asnoct of the But this picture of tho outward aspect of the people portrays changes far deeper , and going to tho very stuff of tho conscience Such things happened iu a formor timo as would now be impossible scandals . It was tho suffering condition of the workingclasses in 1842 which compelled an improvement in our imperial ooonomy , with the effects that wo have witnessed . But this wealthy country cannot , as it has shown in moro recent days , tolerate sufferings amongst tho poor which aro regarded as natural calamities in other countries , and liavo been in our
own in past days . It was tho sufibriugs of tho ^ VjQi : king + cJassosJi ii ^ lS ^ S ^ wl ^ ioh--lli'str « proinp ( . ed- » Mrr Canning to attempt a movement for tho repeal of tho corn-laws , and ho thon failed ; but wo have had tho ropcal , and when tho famine broke out in Ireland , all England felt tho nucosaity of aiding our brother men , Imperfect as our systom may bo in many respects , there is undoubtedly a bettor fooling between tho difl ' oront classes of society ; landlords and omploycrs generally admit larger responsibilities towards thoir working-poonlo ; witness tho respect
Rt/N ^Ju/≫ 9
Jskmfttx .
Untitled Article
SATURDAY , SEPTEMBER 25 , 1858 .
= F Ttlilit Mairs. ¦ . 1 . W ¦ Became ,
^ it li ltc affatrB ,
Untitled Article
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 the very law of its creation in eternal progress . —Dk . Arnold .
Untitled Article
¦ . '¦ ¦ ' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ : : ' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ X ¦ ¦¦ ¦ ¦ . . . ¦ ¦ ¦¦ ¦ . " . . ¦ . ¦ : . . ¦ : . ¦ ¦ . . . ^ . * U . S ^ embek 25 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER . 999 . ... ___ ¦ . ¦
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 25, 1858, page 999, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2261/page/15/
-