The Press.
London, England, 1858-09-25 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 25, 1858

you involved in European implication that in any
year you may have your taxes raised, and the demand
for your labour destroyed, in pursuit of some phan-
tom in which your rulers persuade you that you are
interested; and your own want of information un-
fortunately renders you easy victims to the delusions
practised upon you. Not five years ago you rejoiced
in peace, and there was a growing prosperity evident
in every part of the country. Since that time we
have sacrificed 40,000 English lives, and have spent
100000,0001- sterling in one short war. You were
consenting parties to that war ; your comrades shed
their blood in its worthless contest, and you have
paid a portion of your day's labour and day's wages
ever since to defray the cost of it, and your voice, so
far as it was heard at all, was in favour of the war.
What is gained by it? Who has gained except the
military class and the eaters of taxes ? To working
men these wars with Bassia, Persia, and China,
bring only taxes, want of employment, precarious and
diminished wages, and that pressure upon the means
of living which urges them to look to emigration as a
remedy for the evils they endure. And it is a
remedy, and the only remedy, until great changes
take place in public opinion and in the laws and
policy of this country. If you emigrate you may
reach a country where land is accessible to you,
where there are no great hereditary proprietors, as in
Scotland, who dare outrage Heaven and mankind by
keeping 20,000, or 50,000, or 100,0(X) acres of land
depopulated that a handful of men may enjoy the
pleasures of the chase. You may flee to a land
where laws of primogeniture and entail are unknown,
or known only to be abhorred, and where the soil is
left free to the industry and enterprize of the whole
people. You may find a home where such destruc-
tive delusions as the balance of power ' are unheard
of, and where the toil of the nation of which you
become a part is not absorbed to the amount of fifty
millions sterling a year to pay for wars that are past,
and for preparations for wars that are to come. You
may become a part of some youthful and growing
pe .ple, with whom a feudal proprietorship of land,
national debt, great armaments, oppressive taxes, and
a sham representation, are but traditions of a melan-
choly past, tube studied only as rocks to be avoided in
its new and more prosperous career. If Ido not see
tow the Government can be called upon to provide the
means of emigration, do not suppose I think emi-
gration unwise. On the contrary, I feel assured tbat,
with the past and present policy of England, labour
will find its best reward in Canada, in the States, or
in Australia. I would prefer that Englishmen should
stay at home, that our country should be well
governed, that its foreign policy should be just and
rational, that its burden of taxes should be light ;
but, seeing small chance of such a state of things, I
not only cannot blame, but I must applaud, the reso-
lution of every man who is determined by his Indus.
try and his economy to provide the means of convey-
ing himself and his family to another, and, to him
and them, a more happy country. Government can-
not enable you to emigrate. Many of you can, by
severe effort and saving, obtain the means to cross
the ocean ; to many, I fear, this is not possible. I
can only hope, for them, that our countrymen may
become wiser; and that, under the influences of a
more sensible policy and a greater economy in the
nati .nal expenditure, we may be entering on a period
of prolonged peace, during which even the poorest,
and most suffering of our population may make somo
sure progress in the way of comfort and independ-
ence."

CAPTAIN LEICESTER VERNON ON
CHERBOURG.

AT the annual meeting of the Royal Ilsley Cottagers'
Society, held at Langley-hall, near Newbury, a few
days since, Captain Leicester Vernon, in proposing
the toast of the " Army and Ntivy," thus sketched
our periodical fits of alarm :—He could assert,
without fear of contradiction, that the united ser-
vices have always, however adverse the circum•
stances, realized the expectations of their country.
England ought to he proud of her army and navy,
for they are second to none in the world. That
being so, he would ask, how came it that the bold
Britons were liable to periodical, he might almost
say constitutional, fits of terror and alarm ? It was
because the people were always conjugating the verb
of self•alarm into every mood and tense. Their first
bugbear was Russia, yet, after a two years' war her
armies were destroyed, her FeTonghold ruined, her
fleets imprisoned or sunk, her finances crippled, and
her resources exhausted. That alarm passed, and
then came the terror of French invasion, which,
however, by dint of geography and by aint of his•
tory was overcome. The first assured the people
that England was still an island, and the second
taught them that it was the habit of England to in-
vade France, and not France to invade England.
They also recollected tbat they had once military
occupation of Paris, and that no foreigner ever trod
on British ground except as a prisoner or a guest.

No doubt London would be a capital plunder, but
the question was, how to get it? When the Allied
Sovereigns were in Lon fon, they were taken to the
top of St. Paul's to see the panoramic view of the
metropolis. Blucher accompanied them. " Fine
sight, marshal," said an attendant. " Ya, ya," re-
plied the old Prussian, with his keen eye firmly
fixed on Fleet-street, and the wealth of the world,
" Ya, ye, it is a very fine sight, but what would it b.
for one plunder !" The next alarm came from
America, and there was " a difficulty " with Cousin
Jonathan, which, however, passed away. Cousin
Jonathan's red-hot politicians sometimes fired broad-
sid at us, but tho sensible mercantile part of his
community took care not to have their guns dis-
charged against their best customer. Glory was a
fine thing, but they saw no groat harm in the
almighty dollar. All that was passed and gone ;
they were now called upon to be frightened to death
about Cherbourg, for that being finished the French
have a famous ambush in which to hide a fleet. He
remembered that Louis XIV. began Cherbourg, not
the harbour, but the fortifications ; France had then
Et fleet, but he recollected that it was destroyed by
Russell and by Ruoke at the battle of La Hogue,
which battle was fought so near her shore that a
French army, intended for the invas;on of England,
saw the destruction of the fleet. He also remem-
bered that in the reign of Louis XV. Cherbourg was
besieged by the English ; it surrendered at discre-
tion, and there were twenty-seven ships of all sizes
in the harbour, all of which were taken, and the
batteries and forts were blown up. Louis XVI. re-
commenced the works and harbour of Cherbourg,
and the French had a fleet there, but he recollected
that a Rodney had destroyed it for them in the West
Indies. Napoleon the Great carried on the works
with vigour; the French had a fleet then, but it was
destroyed by Nelson at the Nile and Trafalgar. The
works were now finished under Napoleon 111., but
he had not, as yet, any fleet to occupy it. They
were, nevertheless, told to be alarmed: he confessed
that he felt none. When he looked down the Eng-
lish list of seven or eight hundred men.of-war, and
he saw it filled with scores of French names, lie saw
what nation built the ships, and what nation took
them. He concluded that what British sailors had
done before, British sailors could do again. It was
the fashion to say, " things are altered ; battles will
now be fought by steam," but that was simply
absurd. Battles would always be fought by men,
and their bstties would be fought by Englishmen ;
therefore, he felt no doubt or alarm as to the result.
God forbid that there should be war either with
France or America. The interests of commerce, the
interests of humanity, the interests of civilization,
and, above all, the interests of Christianity, were
opposed to it. But, should such an unfortunate
event take place, then with such an army and navy
as they bad, England may say with the poet—

The mind we lawny by and the head we bear,
Thall never sagg with doubt, nor shake with fear.

MR. HENLEY, M.P., AND COLONEL NORTH,
M.P., ON " PROGRESS."
THE annual meeting of the Theme Agricultural
Association was held on the 17th inst., under the
presidency of Mr. J. H. Ashurst, of Waterstock. In
the afternoon a dinner took place, which was attended
by the Right Hon. J. W. Henley, M.P., Colonel
North, M.P., Mr. T. T. Bernard, M.P., and a con.
siderable number of the gentry and leading agricul-
turists of the district.

Mr.HENLEY, M.P., in responding to the toast "The
Members for the County of Oxford." which was
enthusiastically druuk, spoke in eulogistic terms of
the ploughing match and show. The right hon.
gentleman then proceeded to define " progress " in its
political sense. He said :
There has been a great deal of talk within the last four
years of what is commonly called " progress. " Now, in
my opinion, the word progress is entirely a catch word.
Everybody is calling out for progress, but before we
endorse the cry, it is necessary that we should inquire
what is meant by progress. Some mean by progress that
Bill is to put Ihs hand into Jack's pocket and help himself,
without leave or licence ; but it that is to be culled progress
then I frankly confess that I am not friendly to anything
of the kind. There are other persons who are for another
kind of progress. They are always for keeping the ball
rolling. They don't know or care whether it is to go back-
ward or forward, up hill or down hill, or whether when
once put in motion it is to roll on until it reaches a place
which cannot be named to ears polite, and which, there.
fore, I will not mention now. In point of fact, they don't
care where it goes sl long as they call it progress. Now, I
tell you fairly that I am not for progress of that kind. But
if people mean by progress that we are to give a patient
and careful attention to all the various wants of society—
complicated as those wants are in the different phases of
society, and divided and split up as society itself is—if
they mean by progress that we are to devote our best care
and attention to questions affecting the general well-being
of the people ; to destroy by every means in our power
everything that we may see wrong, and to amend all
imperfections, then I own that I am favourable to progress,
and that I always have been. lam not now speaking

919

among strangers, but with men among whom I have
lived during the whole of my active life, and I would appeal
to any one whether any man ever came to me upon a public
matter and pointed out an)thing amiss without finding me
ready and willing to give him a helping band in obtaining
amendment. I believe myself that we ought to carry on
our public affairs on the same principle as we manage our
private matters; but I never will put my foot forward,
unless I know where I can safely put it. So long as I
have my foot on firm and solid ground, I will keep it there
until I know where to put it on firmer and better ground.
But if any man will show me the firmer and better
ground, then I should have no objection to go cordially
with him.

Colonel NORTH, who also acknowledged the com•
pliment, expressed his full concurrence in all that
had fallen from his right hon. friend, as he was, and
always had been, for leaving things as they are unless
they saw that by a change they would be improved.

MR. EDMUND CONSTANTINE HENRY PHIPPS, attache
to herMajesty'sMission at Mexico, has been appointed
attaché at Berlin.

THE Hort FRED. W. A. BRUCE, brother of his Ex-
cellency the Earl of Elgin, the bearer of the treaty
between this country and the Emperor of China,
arrived in town, on Saturday, from Marseilles and
China. The hon. gentlemen, immediately after his
arrival, waited on the Under-Secretary of State, Mr.
Seymour Fitzgerald, M.P., at the Foreign office, and
had an interview. A few hours later Mr. Bruce left
town for Knowsley-park, Lancashire, to visit the
Earl of Derby, who arrived there on Saturday from
attendance on the Queen at Balmoral.