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Leader (1850-1860), 25th September 1858, Edition 1 of 2, Page 999, Untitled Article

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      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 . - , „

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      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

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      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

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      SATURDAY , SEPTEMBER 25 , 1858 .

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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 the very law of its creation in eternal progress . —Dk . Arnold .

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      ¦ . '¦ ¦ ' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ : : ' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ 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/