The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1880-01-27 00:00:00

........----_
Monet &until (BAIRN.

DORCHESTER, TUESDAY, JANUARY V. 18ffl.

A PROPHEV3 VOICE.

Whatever may be the national sin and disgrace into
which Imperialism has already brought this great
maim in the eyes of Europe and the wcald, we have
not yet been so abandoned as to be left without warn-
ing. That there is still hope for England is manifest
In the fulfilment of the premise—" Thine eyes shall
see thy teachers." In Scotland the industrious, arm
taking, patient, and long.lasting voice of Mr. Glad'
stuns has exposed to philosopher., to men of common-
sense, loch by inch, the details of Government
blunders and Government failures. The ream is
°payload by Mr. Gladstone as thoroughly am it is by
the river of fade and arguments which sweep from the
fetal abstinence platform' and press. Yet was there
something wanted:
"Be that convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still"
And the very elsboration and completeness of Mr.
Gladstone's arguments had the effect which is said to
be produced upon some people by a lengthy teetotal
lectur•—they forced iOrrie, who were convinced when
the argument was halfway, to the other side in very
weariness before it was over. Even Aristides the Just
was ostracised in his own city by this very rebellion of
the will against conquest even by intellect and justice.
But lest our intellectual teachers, led by Mr.
Gladstone, are not enough, or are, rather, too
much to sway our wills, there has stood up
another "old man eloquent," whose strength of
appeal has been mainly drawn from the source of
strength and the fountain of right. That giant
tribune of the people, Mr. John Bright, at Birming.
ham, delivered the speech of the week, when, like •
prophet of old, he called attention again to the
eternal principles of right and troth, which cannot be
departed from without the inevitable punishment
coming on the heels of the misdeeds—unless, indeed,
repentance is vouchsafed to the misdoers. The voles
of Bright lea. the voice of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and
If our rulers will not hear, and are fain to silence the
prophet by such petty contempt and indifference as
they hope may wear him out, it is for the people to
remembm that we shall have to bear the immediate
burden, and our sucarisors the awful retribution
which must follow perseverance in the evil course.
Mr. Bright shows that the people, the so-called
"lower chimes" of Britain. are the ones from wbom
the greatest benefit is to be expected after education,
endle hits a blot when he mays boldly—" It is not the
poorerclasses of the country who are always the only
danggross dames ;"—" Education does nothing in
political matters for the rich." His most scathing
remarks are when he comes to our late wars—" harsh
and crag wars on uncivilised or half-civilised men."
"What is it that makes, if anything makes, this need-
le. and terrible slaughter different in its nature from
those transactions which we call murder ?" And Echo
answers" Murder." If it be not murder, the deliberate
slaughter of our men by thrusting them into an hostile
army, if it be sot murder to slaughter thousands of •
meplcd whom the Leisure Hour,— magazine most
of Sir Bartle Frere's party--declares to be
boned and trustworthy, and who we know
are brave, where are the extenuating dram-
stanose ? Mr. Bright puts it too plainly for
as to altar a word , We have had excuses
made for them, and excuses which were not justified
by the facte—szomes that the Zulus attacked Natal,
which Is absolutely and entirely false. We have had
statementa with regard to the Afghans very much of
the same character, that they were going to throw
their inEneami with Another and • northern power,
ead that they insulted outrageously the envoy sent to
negotiate with them—all of which I believe there is
not a particle of foundation for." No wonder that
"theses" followed this statement when we remember
how it was sought to inflame the British mind by false
statement' respecting the repulse of our envoy from
All hiusjid, which led to the beginning of the Afghan
wag.
"At most, in regard td either of them powers, the case
as one of suspicion, but suspicion which the mat
experienced persons said there wao no ground for. But Is I
tht upon mere suspicion that • country like this
should mad, in the one cam twenty thousand, and in the I
other feisty thousand troops to invade territories and to
put to death not less than twenty thousand men engaged
in the &tenor of their own country, which, in our cam,
we consider honourable and needful I (Hear, hear.) Well.
this has been done on the bare suspicion, which both in
tits cam of Natal and of India was a suspicion declared to
be wholly groundless by those most competent to Judge—
(cheers)—the Governor of Natakand that eminent, and in
his character and condna, most Christian bishop, Bishop
Colonic." (Caere)
Mae pointing out that Governors-General end their
councillors were to &great majority wholly unbelieving
In these grounds of suspicion, the veteran speaker
peaseeded
The people of England through their rulers, have hew
stadia sword and firs and rapine through countries
which wore governed in their own way satisfactorily to
themselves, and who had not stirred one simile step to
disturb even the minutest interest of this kingdom.
(Odes of 'Shame., It may be that these transactions
golly be viewed Ins different light elsewhere and by other
nee The psalmist says, ' When he maketh inquisition
ter blood Ile remembereth them,' and I cannot conceive,
unless all our theory of Bible instruction and Christian
hhowledge, said Christian belief, be but • fable, that them
transeetions will not be absolutely condemned by the
highest tribunal 'ln the land of the hereafter ' 11 I may
use the vowie with which Longfellow concludes his
charming 'Hiawatha.'ln the land of the hereafter'
more is, as we believe, a tribunal before which the crimes
and the vistas of men will be weighed in an unerring
seek. (Cheers.) Do you think that the equivocations
nod the falsehoods of blue-books and of plitievil
and ministerial speeches will be accepted For
my part I look with dread, I look with a pain
which I cannot describe, upon what has recently
been taking plate, and what even now is not ended, and
may not for a long time be ended. These foreign quottiolli
Solna to me to press more upon the hearts, and ought to
press upon the helots, of an the people of this counter.
We are so free from war at home. We live in this island
~rounded by the free ocean, and no one molests us. We
beset of our freedom, we boast of our internal peace, we
beset of our instruction, of our Christian missions, of our
amnia of freedom end illation to ea admiring world:
and yet en the world now looks on and seen the transac-
tions of the teat two years, and all good men, I lyitme,
with astonishment and regret. (Cheers.) You recollect;
I dare say, many of you, • poem written by one ot our very
best poets, who puts into the mouth of an ancient Britioh
Queen, who is supposed to have lived more than two
elioomed years sips, acomplalntsnd a denunciation which
eke uttered against the power of Rome, which at
that Rise was invading her country and slaughtering her
people. She is made to say in the indignation of her heart
'Rome shall perish I Write that word
It' the blood that the has spilt.
Perish. hopeless and abhorred,
Deep in ruin and in malt.'
- - - -

(Loud cheers.) It was not a Prophecy of the British
Queen ; it was written one hundred years ago by a British
=but it might have been what she thought, and the
t site expressed. And what she has prophesied has
cams true at Rome ; it has fallen, it Is a ruin everywhere,
and there is no ruin more complete and certain than that
of the ulna:" Roman Empire. I believe. as I road
history, el sacred or profane, that the punishments
there recorded as having fallen on ancient rulers and
their peoples will visit modern rulers and their peoples if
they in the pursuit of Empire and glory, In the
sacrifice of countless multitudes of human lives. (Cheers.)
It seems to in. that what haa taken place in past times
musk take place in times to come; the retribution, some.
times of nations and sometimes of individuals, comes
slowly, but it is ore to come. A groat Italian poet has
said:
- - - • • •

The sword of heaven Ii not in haste
To srnfte, nor yet deth linger.
felteerat We may be quite sure that in some shape, if
we, the pOOlll4 of England, tolerate the bloody and
crimes which are committed in our country's
name, if are so committed, and we do not retnon•
'trate sad condemn, we shall have no acquittal at the
tribunal by which the actions, not of individuals only,
but of aatioa§ and peoples, are Sn.liy judged."
- -

hand:ale was fought in a war proved to be
Itlillicissiuy,and now we are in Afghanistan, a country
as large as Fraeos, as mountainous as Switzerland,
slaughtering and hanging the natives af the villages.,
and woman are turned out into the frost and snow, at
the command of a Government professing to be
Christian and humane. Well might Mr. Bright con-
tinue ' , Let us abandon our pretension., let us claim
no longer to be Christian, let us go back to the heathen
time while we adhere to the heathen practices. Let
us no longer, as I see some of the leading men of this
country have within the past few weeks at the opening
of churches and the laying of the foundations of
churches, join in a mere regard for the Christian
religion. I say, take down at any rate the Ten
oninninndmenim inside your churches, and say no
longer you believe in or read the Bermon on the
Mount."

-----
Nothing can weaken the effect of words like
these, or we should not venture to add a line of oiar
own. But, even from the stand point of expediency
which the Government have taken to justify their
ethdeede, they ars perpetrating that worse than crime
--a astir of blunders. Granted that Russia lithe foil of
freedom, and therefore of Britain, we shall not be
gazers by fighting her with her own false policy and
tyraanical weapons, for we ourselves shall sink to be
but another Russian despotism, more contemptible,
and more crime-laden, because we have ewer,' I into
the light of freedom. The Titan that threatens to
trample the world under the hoof of the Cossack horse
,aust'bs resisted, notonly by putting him in the wrong,
but by showing ourselves to be right. Time was whim
there was no fear of Russia attacking India, because
Afghanistan would be too difficult for her to pars. Now
Afghanistan is our deadly foe. There was a time
when all over Africa the English name was the symbol
of love for freedom and the black man. We have now
reuslaed into fragments an honest and trustworthy
mace, and have even invoked the Swazi murderers to
overwhelm Sekokuni. If Britain is to restrain the
groat Octopus whose feelers are ever reaching out to
rob and subjugate, she must gain allies by her justice
and truth. Turkey must not be alienated for the sake
of a pestiferous island, the Afghans mast be won book
to our side, peace must be kept with the United
States and no cursed Imperial jealousy be allowed to
divide us from those who feed us ; even China must he
relieved of the hateful weight of our opium trade, and
will repay us in the Kuldja district by her anti.
Russian alliance. Every way we turn it is not only
the duty but the interest of Ragland, ealleolaq with
the possibility of a long struggle with Russia, to do
justly, to love mercy to walk humbly with God."
And such justice and' Wimps and mercy may have
the glorious effect of turning the threatened bitter
into a peaceful rivalry, and the Russian
disarmed by one fairness and firmnesscom-
E,
may compel their tyrannous nobles, an their
oolonsla and pars* tc! alter their policy
and extend freedom even tO filiblifiA, now hopeles, Of
any help from Europe. Thus, bistead of parpstuating
Sae blood•stahusd plan of force and inur, Britain,
following the example of Christ, shall be the herald of
"Piece on sixth, goodwill to POlO Discus.