The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-01-04 00:00:00

PRINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY.

Few of our readers can be so cold in sentiment and
creedless in religion, as to approach the close of 1852
without experiencing feelings of a deep and hallowed cast
coming into connexion with the solemn close of one year,
and the dawning prelude of another. Tried indeed by any
standard,—from that of mean and miserable Utilita-
rianism, up to lofty and unbending Christianity,—the
year which is about to join those " beyond the flood,"
must ever rank with one of the most eventful and remark-
able in the world's annals. Without, however, endea-
vouring to prove this by a detailed analysis of specific oc-
currences, we have only to recal two of those great events
which have marked the past year, in order to justify its
claims upon history : we allude to the re-construction of
the French Empire in the person of " Napoleon the
Third," and the death of that mightiest of the mighty, in
heroic fame and worth, Arthur Duke of Wellington. As
to the former of these, speculation can only dream ; and
hence we must, in faith and hope, leave the possible
future of that mysteriously-fated Empire, France, to re-
pose in the hands of Him whose undivulged purposes it is
not for mortals to predict, or prognosticate. But this,
with no presumptuous dogmatism, may be asserted—the
last 50 years of French history ought to teach the English
Nation to prize with increasing reverence, and venerate
with more enthusiastic homage than ever, that eternal
law of political righteousness Principle is the best
Policy. With all its drawbacks, here in this ocean-
bulwarked Land, we have more national freedom, social
happiness, and domestic privileges than perhaps any
Empire in the World; and be it remembered that, under
God, we owe these costly mercies to that magnificent
Constitution which has lately been described as

"That peerless growth of patriotic mind,

The great eternal Wonder of mankind i"
As respects the second great event which has signalised
the past year—few will deny that, if ever one man, more
than another, embodied a personal reverence for the
great principles which are enshrined in the political
sacredness of the BRITISH CONSTITUTION—it was the
glorious Warrior, whose death has palled the heart of
England with the moral drapery of deep and unaffected
grief. On this theme, however, it is quite unnecessary
to enlarge. Painting, poetry, sculpture, public obsequies,
—have, each and all, according to their appropriate
distinctness, revealed the profound sentiment of national
sorrow, with which our bereaved Empire has followed the
greafest of her heroes, and the truest of her patriots, to
his sepulchre. And here let us borrow words from "The
Hero's Funeral," a poem just published, whose truthful-
ness will commend them not only unto the poetical taste,
but unto the Christian patriotism, of the reader :
"Mere vulgar Heroes of the vicious stamp,
Whose names suggest a carnage or a camp,
Meteors of crime, the monsters of the past !
Who sweep the world with desolating blast,
May point the moral of some future page:—
But, when the Warrior, Senator and Sage
Meet in one Man, like Him we mourn to-day,
Conscience predicts what unborn years will say,
That he had passed into the Nation's heart
Of which he grew a principle and part,
And when he died, far more than boundless grief
Sought in the burial-pomp a fit relief,—
Each for himself put funeral raiment on
And wept a friend, in mourning Wellington."

This allusion to the conduct of the populace, suggests,
in conclusion, a line or two, on what we venture to con-
sider, not the least or lowest of those mortal phenomena
which have accompanied all connected with the great
Duke's death and burial—we refer to the unity of the en-
tire British press on this occasion. Such a political con-
cord from the myriad-tongued Press of an unfettered
nation like our own, has no parallel in the history of the
past, and (humanly speaking) cannot be expected to be
repeated by the evolutions of the future. It was, indeed,
a solemn truth, that on his funeral day,

"The sun went down with unrecorded crime
And left the British character sublime."
But, scarcely less expressive and instructive is the fact—
that all discords in the press were hushed into sacred ob-
livion, and all shades of political sectarianism melted into
a touching unity of regret,—when " 7'he Nelson of all
lands" became its mighty and majestic theme. Amid,
then, the inevitable differences of opinion which perturb
with fervish excitement the social and civil framework of
this great country,—let us hope and believe, that, at the
hidden core of all vital principles, the heart of Great
Britain is sound ; and that from the destinies of our land
the shielding care of the Almighty is not yet withdrawn.
—Brighton Gazette.