תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

he has called into existence. We decline the term of Deist, because it has usually been employed to designate those who mainly believe in God as the Maker of Heaven and Earth,' but who reject the idea of his intimate, ever-present communion with his creatures, as presumptuous and irrational. While we, on the other hand, confess our utter ignorance as to the making' of the Universe, and only say, God is its Life-' the Eternal Self-Consciousness, the Infinite Personality' pervading all reality, and known to us primarily through our own souls.

But though many of us speculate or theorise on spirit and matter,' the origin of Evil, &c., we do not (whatever may be the case with German Pantheists) fill up the chasm between right and wrong with the name of God. We believe in His ineffable purity; and though our thoughts may beat hither and thither against the mystery wherewith we are darkly bound,' the worship of our hearts and the service of our lives are not affected by it. Nor do we assume a new name from the paltry desire of founding a new sect, but for the practical object of indicating a distinct position, which we conceive to be vitally different from that of others. Equally removed from Orthodoxy on the one hand, and Infidelity on the other, we essay to unite the long-severed truths held by each, which, by their equal tenacity of life, call for equal right to exist in man. An ideal of life rises before us, whose intensity of action, thought, and worship surpasses all the past. If Professor Newman can suggest a more explicit appellation for us, well and good. Meanwhile, I am sure that those whose sentiments I have here ventured to delineate will agree with me in rendering earnest thanks to him for his most valuable contribution to that religion of the combined heart, mind, and soul, which, by whatever name it may be called, has stirred the human spirit with unutterable love and aspiration, from earliest Atlantic' ages, to this heaving, doubting, yet truly onward-moving, Europe in the nineteenth century. PANTHEA.

[ocr errors]

LORD JOHN RUSSELL AND ODILLON BARROT.

THE orator of the Reform Bill, and the radical leader of the extreme opposition in the old French Chamber of Deputies, have both reached a position which, allowing for the differences of land and race, is wonderfully similar. The patriot aristocrat has entrenched himself on the outer boundaries of political reform; the French minister unfurls the standard of despotism upon the very citadel of the republic. The watchword of the one is finality,' of the other, 'repression.' The policy of the one is borrowed from Castlereagh, that of the other from Casimir Perier. Both have pretended that they are the pure champions of liberty, and each has proved that the boundary of his political creed is class and party. Both have led oppositions, made stirring speeches, written severe letters, and knotted the meshes of party intrigues. Each has used the people for his own purposes; each has excited the populace at reform banquets to overthrow a ministry; and each, when he became the depository of power, has put forth his hand to oppress, to demoralise, and to domineer for the interests and for the glorification of his faction. To arouse public expectations, and then to betray the people; to pamper them

with popular excitement, when out of power, and despotically to repress it when possessed of power; to promise much, and to perform little; to manifest, in words, the sternest political virtues when out of office, and to betray the meanest political vices, by acts, when in office; these are the characteristics alike of Lord John Russell, the descendant of one of the tools of the Eighth Harry, and of Odillon Barrot, the new man and quasi liberal chief of the middle classes in France.

The Nemesis of Faith does not exact a more terrible retribution than the Nemesis of Principle. If politicians lack principle and employ its symbols; if they commit the dire offence of carelessly uttering what they do not mean, in order to obtain what they wish to possess; if they use the sacred words of liberty; if they appeal to the sovereignty of the people to arouse the people, for the purpose of self-glorification and from a lust for power, the day will come when they will oppress the people, trample under foot their own doctrines of former days; commit the same crimes which, with so much pride, they once charged their opponents with committing, and stand up before the world, in the pages of history, as reckless renegades, as selfish partizans. For all classes are despots, all factions are unprincipled, and their leaders, necessarily, despotic, unprincipled, and insolent; whether they be the Whig aristocrats of England, or the liberal bourgeoisie of France. Who used the press, the hustings, the Commons' House to cry up liberty and reform, and denounce tyranny and corruption in 1830-1-2 in England, to the utmost possible extent?-Lord John Russell and the Whigs. Whose rallying cry was Peace, Reform, and Retrenchment?' It was the cry of Lord John Russell and the Whigs. Who have preached finality,' for the last ten years, and then declared that the people of England were not anxious for reform?-Lord John Russell and the Whigs. Who in 1848 imitated the policy of Castlereagh, employing spies to entrap the people in private, and the Felony Act, to gag them in public?-Lord John Russell and the Whigs

It is wonderful, as we said above, how similar, allowing for the differances of temperament and race, the age of constitutional England, and the youth of constitutional France, has been the career of Odillon Barrot to that of the great Whig statesman.

[ocr errors]

London, it is true, has not, like Paris, been cursed with a state of siege,' but she has had her 10th of April, with the future President of a Republic sworn in as a special constable. London has not been

blocked up with barricades, but she has been infested with spies. Everything here has been on a small scale, as small as the men who direct affairs, but the comparison is not the less disadvantageous to the French Russell.

We all know what our Russells and Broughams were doing in 1830, and what they are doing now. Let us see what their counterparts, in the vicious and cowardly statesmanship of liberalism, were doing and saying over the water.

In 1832 the Deputies of the opposition met at the house of M. Lafitte and resolved to present a balance-sheet of the situation to their constituents. They elected a committee to draw up this document, (the famous compte rendu), and among that committee we find the names of

MM. Odillon Barrot and De Cormenin.

When the committee met to settle the address it was found that the draft of De Cormenin was too bold, and that of Barrot too dynastic. It was necessary that a happy mean between these two extremes should be found, and the two gentlemen set out for the park of Saint-Cloud to arrive at an understanding on the subject. Louis Blanc tells us, that we may judge from its undecided and slightly sad-coloured style, that the sparkling and vigorous author of the Letter on the Civil List,' M. de Cormenin, had not the greatest share in the composition, consequently, the glory may be suffered to blaze upon the brow of Odillon Barrot. And let the reader mark this. Valuable as is the document in the pages of history, it is ten times more valuable now. From its sentences we can extract sufficient to describe the present position of France in the hands of Barrot the minister, written by Barrot the ambitious candidate for office. This compte rendu was dated the 28th May, 1832 :—

The government announced to France their intention to succour Italy against Austria, and protecting the nationality of Poland from Russia. And yet, in spite of formal promises, in spite of the old and new interests of France, they have abandoned Italy to the domination of Austria, and left Poland, Poland whom we could assist, to perish, although they cried from the tribune that it was our duty to save her.'

If it was so great an offence in Louis Philippe to abandon Italy, what must be the sin of Odillon Barrot, who has not abandoned,' but invaded Italy, and bombarded Rome; not content to leave the work of despotism to Austria, but to take part in the iniquity!

'The government,' continues this celebrated manifesto, in summing up, 'ought to have securely established the revolution, and they have broken its natural supports by the dissolution of the National Guards of the most warlike and devoted towns.

They ought to have favoured the liberty of the press which saved France, and they have pursued it with their actions, ruined it with imposts, corrupted it with amortissements, and overwhelmed it with fines.

"They have declared that they would restore the supremacy of the laws, and there is not one which they have not perverted or falsified in the application.

"They should have relied upon the Chambers, and they have stifled their initiative; they should have repaid, by hospitality, the debt of France towards the patriot refugees of Poland, Italy, and Spain, and they have disgraced this hospitality by the shameful conditions which they joined thereto.

They guaranteed for us internal security, and unceasingly has it been disturbed by émeutes, by violent conflicts between the people and authority, by aggressions more and more audacious of the fallen government

....and they have so admirably entangled us in a labyrinth of diplomatic intrigues, that it is impossible for themselves even to assign a term to this state of anxiety which is neither peace nor war, and which destroys our commerce and industry.'

[ocr errors]

Who now declares the state of siege?' who now pursues the press in the law courts, and crushes it in the Assembly? who now dissolves the

National Guard, and repays the debts of France to Poland and Italy by threats, bayonets, and bombshells? who now has involved France in a labyrinth of diplomatic intrigues, and for the sake of dynasties and despotism, violated his oath of allegiance to a constitution not yet ten months old? The renegade radical, the quondam agitator, the pompous rhetorician, the servile copyist of Thiers and Guizot, the inflated Russell of France-Odillon Barrot!

Thus it is. The two statesmen who stand in the front of the rulers of France and England, like yet unlike, are doomed to play the tyrant today, who yesterday were all on fire for what they called liberty. They have aspired to parts which they cannot play-tampered with the names of principles, to find refuge in expediency-and flattered the people when they were strong, to insult them when they were weak. Alas! the dif ference between these statesmen of France and England consists only in this-that while the one is a bladder puffed out, the other is a bladder empty. EUGENE.

THE NON-INTERVENTION POLICY.

It is the fashion to talk of non-intervention as the rule of English policy. But non-intervention is not the rule.

The rule of English policy is utter denial of any relation of duty towards the world, utter contempt of Justice and disregard of Honour; care only for the Shop, and for our allies the Despots, whose welfare is supposed to be identical with the Shop.

Lacking a name to characterise so revolting, so hideous a system, they have christened it non-intervention'-par excellence, the peace-policy.'

Do we not love Peace? Truly we do; but we love Justice more. And till Peace and Justice be synonymous, while Peace' means anything but Justice, we would not have Peace.'

We object to the pretence which hinders the real advent of Peace. We object to those who, when the streets run with blood, exclaim ⚫ It is Peace, simply because none of their own family have been murdered. This is the non-intervention policy.

We object to those who, when a town is on fire, refuse to lend a hand to extinguish it, because their house has party-walls. The non-interventionists again.

We object to those who assert that, they are excused from the duties of Humanity, they have no quarrel with Injustice, because of their 'geographical position' or 'peculiar constitution;' that their moral position depends on the geographical Justice on some peculiarity in their Constitution. This is the creed of the non-interventionists: in proof whereof we refer to Lord Palmerston. Our most Christian statesmen, when told to love their neighbours, do not indeed ask who are their neighbours, but openly plead and bar their 'geographical position.'

We object to the Peace'-preservers whose souls are branded with the shame of complicity with the massacres of Gallicia and the bombardment of Rome, and whose hands are red with the blood of the Punjaub. We object to such Peace' as won for Louis Philippe the title of the 'Napoleon of Peace,' the applause and fellowship of those who support,

6

and are supported by, the policy of non-intervention; the 'peaceful' policy which betrayed Poland and Italy, which invented African razzias; the 'Peace' which needed a Spanish marriage for its maintenance.

The Patron-saint and friend and exemplar of the Traders-in-peacethe master of the non-intervention school-was at war with Africa during the seventeen years of his most peaceful reign-as the men of Lyons and the Rue Transnonain might testify. But the African war did not affect the Shop.

The men who have no concern with Rome, 'because of their geographical position,' vote thanks and medals to the overrunners of India.

The cry of non-intervention is not honest. It is a cant word to deceive the nation. The non-intervention of English diplomatists is an excuse for occasions, when the Shop is in danger, or when Liberty fights against odds. It is not used else.

Our geographical position and peculiar constitution prevent us from interfering to rescue Rome from the barbarians, to aid the development of Italian freedom proclaimed and promised by our agents when a purpose was to be served.

Meanwhile, our geographical position and peculiar constitution allow us to protect the King of Mosquito. But then the cost is very small.

Our peculiar constitution prevented us from intervening to stay the massacres of Gallicia; our geographical position debarred us from maintaining the stipulations of our own treaties with regard to Cracow.

But when the Liberals of Oporto went nigh to overthrow a worthless Court, then we could interfere to ruin the Liberals, though acknowledging that Right was on their side.

The same game was talked of towards Switzerland; but the Swiss settled their affairs before the non-interveners could interfere.

It is non-intervention when such policy may serve the cause of Despotism: then only. For the Shop is believed to depend upon Courtcustom. So they hold together. If you have any doubt of that matter, read-not the news, but the state of the Funds. They rise and fall with Despotism. They indicate exactly the peculiar constitution of the non-intervening Traders, no matter what may be the geographical position of their correspondents- the Despots.

6

But we are wronging the Peace-men.' They would interfere for Justice.' Would? Yes, Hell may be very handsomely paved with their intentions. They would interfere persuasively;' and, while cities are being bombarded and sacked, talk quietly in and out of Parliament, it does not matter where, yet not too loudly, lest some friendly King of Bombarders may hear them, of the wondrous power of gentleness. How much better it would be to arbitrate these quarrels !' Then our trade need not be interrupted.' Whereupon, some laugh in their sleeves: all, perhaps, except the Cossacks, who have not yet learned politeness.

[ocr errors]

'Arbitrate say the most eminent of the non-interventionists-those who deny national duty and make a mock of national honour. Arbitrate! But there can be no arbitration between Right and Wrong. It is a quarrel to the death.

What arbitration between Italy and the Austrian Emperor; between Poland and Nicholas?

« הקודםהמשך »