The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1864-01-05 00:00:00

DORSET COUNTY EXPRESS

DIRCHESTER. TUESDAY. JANUARY 5. Net
THE PAST YEAR.

The year 1863 is now numbered with the
things that were. It has been a year of
anomalies—of uninterrupted peace among our
neighbours, with all the burden and stir of
preparation for war—of manufacturing dis-
location on an unexampled scale, with an
overflow of exports unparalleled—of social good
humour, checked by political disappointment
and disgust. At the sacrifice of many hopes and
sympathies we have refrained from interfering,
by force of arma, in the troubles of both East
and West; our Government has submitted to be
taunted in turn by our three greatest
and accused of irresolution, because we
would not deviate from a neutral policy
in foreign affain. Our motto has been peace,
yet we have spent—we are afraid to say how
much—on experimental ships and weapons of
wOO% Old England was never in a less
Quakerly mood that it has been during the past
year, when temptation to resist the evil done
beyond our shores has been strong and incessant;
but the deliberate judgment of the country has
never been in a heartier condition of repugnance
to warfare for ideal or dynastic objects. Our
great domestic difficulty in Lancashire, we are
happy to learn, is coining to an end, and great
praise is due to the multitude of unemployed
mill hands, that they have passed through their
trials and vicissitudes so nobly. The value of
our exports has gone on increasing, until in
November it had reached £12700.000 ; and
there seems no reason to doubt that the total for
the year will be considerably above its prede-
omen. We own that it is somewhat humiliating
to record side by side with this signal pionf of
the nation's prosperity, the flight of popula-
tion from one of the healthiest and, most
prolific portions of the United Kingdom ; and
would earnestly urge upon the attention of Par-
liament, when it again assembles, some measure
that shall tend to remedy the present unsatis-
factory and insecure state of things in Ireland.
The foreign events which have most strongly
Lemuel the sympathies of England are the struggle
of the Southern States of America for inde-
pendence and the Polish insurrection. The
latter, in little more than a fortnight, will have
completed the first twelvemonth of its course.
It began on the 22ud of January, 1863, when it
had been found that educated young men who
loved their country were the chosen victims of
conscription, and the young men therefore left
their homes, went armed into the woods, and
began their struggles against unendurable
oppression. In that struggle they have
been joined by their countrymen, and an
effectively, that Poland bah now became a
name of dread and difficulty to the Czar, whose
false position forces him either to abjure all the
traditions of his office, or descend into the worst
brutalities of crime. In February the King of
Prussia publicly refused to the representatives of
his people the right tooontrol the national expendi-
ture ;and the 0 reeks, w h o lutd bye quiet resolution,
chased King Otho back to his own Germany, by
230,000 votes, expressed their deldre to take an
English Prince for King. The event of
March in England was the marriage of the
Prince of Wales. It was on the last day
of the same month that the French army
in Mexico was rescued from the ignomy of com-
plete defeat in the capture of Puebla, by the
intercepting of &convoy of supplies to the starved
garrison. In April the German Diet and
the Meet were arguing, and a son of
Prince Christian, now King of Denmark,
became King of Greece. In May it was
Madagascar's turn to have a revolution—that
being the month for the assassination of the
King Radama the Second. June opened with
the French Emperor's discovery that all the
arrondissements of Paris had Sent to the Frenth
Legialatire Chamber members opposed to his
despotic form of Government. In July began
for us a fresh warmn New Zealand. August was
the month in which the bombardment of

Kagosima showed that we bad a small war also
upon our hands in Japan. In Feptember, men
Who remembered Charles I ~ saw with great interest

the stupid Kingof Prussia dissolving"hisChnmber
of Deputies, and bringing his claims of Divine
right into direct conflict with the Prussian Con-
stitution, and that teemed abroad to be the
strong and right mind of his people. But the
Prussian people proved more stupid than
their King. They did return again their I
own popular representatives, but meanwhile
the Federal diet and the Danes had been sparring;
and the death of the late King of Denmark, in
November, was received u a signal for &German
rush after a patriotic will-o'-the-wisp. His
Majesty of Prussia is left in possession of his
people's libertiet, and his wise people, careless
about their own true rights, are running a-muck
against those of the Danes. While thus the
sound of active conflict begink to be beard in
Central and Northern Europe, Poland battles
and bleeds daily for liberty; and acr,,as the
Atlantic, those who should realise the civil
liberty for which so many in Europe still daily
contend, are fighting with each other for
dominion and fraternizing with the servants of
the Czar. Let us cleave fast to peace and quiet
while we may; the day may not be very distant
when we also shall be forced into the new and
growing turmoil of the world. Where the
liberties of the people are most clearly assured—
in Eugland, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland—
there is no element of war to be discovered. It
is despotism alone that breeds war, or has ever
bred it. Whether it be the passion of the
irresponsible unit, or the wrath or reatlessness
of the people whom be rides and gulls, it is
always and only he that destroys liberty who
murders peace.