The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-09-26 00:00:00

Royal Family of France

King and Q

nof the Belgians. In days gone by,

a similar interchange of friendly greetings between
royal personages would have been watched with in-
finite jea'ousy, as the harbinger of some great change
in the relations of their respective nations. Our
greatest poet has said, " there is a divinity doth
hedge a king ;" and our forefathers, and some even
of the present pi,iteration, would have carried the
expression even further, and maintained that a fata-
lity, or at least some portentous event, must follow
the withdrawal for a moment of that " hedge" of
ceremony with which sovereigns have ever been
surrounded. That feeling has now, it seems, passed

Sovereigns, however mighty their domi-
nions and vast their empire, are beginning to be re-
garded as portions of our common humanity. They
may exchange the ordinary civilities of society, and
even entertain its friendships, without any very dis-
astrous result occurring to disturb the world. They
are no longer regarded as mere diplomatic machines,
or the kingly and queenly personages on a chess-
board, who approach each other only to check-mate
or to be check-mated.

We must confess that we cannot view this change
with either fear or distaste On the contrary, we
trust that it may tend to bring about results of in-
finite value to the whole civilised world, by intro-
ducing into the diplomacy of nations a better and
more candid t.pirit. When the sovereign of a great
nation does not hesitate to unbend in her intercourse
with a friendly power; when kings and queens
begin to regard each other as friends, instead of
meeting as rival competitors for power and influence;
when the amenities of the social circle take the
place of the stiff formalities of diploma-y, we may
hope for a more speedy and peaceful settlement of
those eve' • ecurring international questions which
so largely affect the welfare of their people.
On this ground we are prepared to cast away as
an obsolete and unworthy feeling, that jealousy, with
which, as Englishmen of an old school, we might
have been disposed to regard the recent visits of
her Majesty and her illustrious consort to the courts
_of friendly powers. We have no wish to mew up
the occupant of the throne of Great Britain as we
would cage a bird ; and to insist that, of all the in-
habitants of Great Britain, the Sovereign alone shall
not he permitted to enlarge her intellect and tastes,
and store her mind, with that knowledge which ex-
tended intercourse with the world is calculated to
afford. Her Majesty we know is an Englishwoman
—proud of her position, and wedded to her people's
happiness; and we have no fear that a visit to Louis
Philippe, or to King Leopold, can make her love her
subjects less, or render her less resolved to maintain
their liberties, or those Protestant institutions which
form the best guarantee of their security.

A change appears to have come over the temper of
the Welsh agitator, " Rebecca," which we fear must
shortly lose for her the sympathies of our contem-
porary, the London Times. From merely agrarian
matters—tolls, tithes, rents, &c.—she has lately
been bestowing her august attention upon political
matters ; and, should so unfortunate an event occur
as the retirement of Mr. Feargus O'Connor from
the exercise of his talents as a demagogue, which is
threatened, we are provided, in the person of Re-
becca, with a Chartist leader of the first water—one
who is not afraid to add the exercise of " physical
force" to the " moral force" tactics of that most

wary, and yet unlucky, patriot.
At a recent meeting of the Rebeccaites, held'at
Mynydd Mawr, and presided over by a Chartist
attorney, we find a petition to her Majesty proposed,
which, after praying for the consolidation of turn-
pike trusts, the repeal of the new poor law and the
tithe commutation act, proceeds to demand, amongst
other matters, the appointment of assessors to regu-
late the adjustment of rent between landlord and
tenant, (a leaf out of the great Irish agitator's volume
of specifics,) and "the assembling of a new Parlia-
ment." (!) A demand which may with reason be

suspected to have been suggested by some itinerant
member of the Anti-corn-law League. And amongst
the speakers at the same meeting we find one, an
opponent of tithes, declaring that it was " shocking
to think that under the name of religion they should
be the means of crushing the farmer to the earth,"
a sentiment which might have been nursed beneath
the broad-brimmed beaver of John Bright himself.
Anotl,or gentleman, who was in a tuneful mood,
sung (doubtless to a harp accompaniment,) the fol-
lowing very significant effusion : " Oh, would that I
could see an end of misery and a hope of renovation,
reviving arms after destruction," (a species of reno-
vation of old gun barrels, we suppose,) and the rights
of man 1" Tom Paine could scarcely have beat this
in his most rabid moods.

Is there no lesson to he derived from such a change
in the objects sought by this Rebecca agitation,—
this increase of daring and presumption? We sub-
mit that there is ; that it warns us of the danger of
extensive organization for any purpose, and reminds
us how soon that organization may be converted, by
designing leaders, from an originally insignificant
purpose to the pursuit of objects dangerous to the
very existence of the nation. As a mere local out-
burst of resistance to local malversation we have
hitherto regarded this movement of the people of
South Wales. We see it now deliberately proposed
that " the pot be taken down for Carmarthenshire,
and be made to boil on for Glamorganshire," that
the system of outrage and intimidation which has
disgraced one portion of Wales for months past be
transferred from county to county ; and at the same
time that its objects be altered and its demands ex-
tended to the verge of threatened rebellion and war
against the throne and the constitution. Surely it
is now time that a stop should be put to a state of
things so dangerous !

Whilst upon this subject we may take the oppor-
tunity to remark upon the somewhat anomalous po-
sition occupied towards this conspiracy by our con-
temporary, the Times. That the grievances of the
Welsh people, whatever they are, should be made
known through the press may be, and no doubt is,
very proper. That the claims of the Welsh people
for justice should be advocated by the press is also
right. But that a leading Conservative journal
should intrude itself as the uninvited mediator be-
tween that people and their landlords, or the British
C wernment, is both unseemly and impertinent.
Aad still more so it is when we find that its repre-
sentations of fact even are given in the spirit of a par-
tizan, rather than in that of a faithful witness. With
the recent eccentricities of the Times reporter before
us we can scarcely doubt that a Jack Cade in Eng-
land, should such a character arise in the present
day, or a Captain Rock in the sister country, would
!illy honoured, in their destructive movements
b) the presence of a reporter from Printing-house

Square, ready to sympathise in the h,ortd ot

against scholarship, and of the Ott

and landlo

l'here c

e can be as little doubt that

such power is mischievously exercised, when on the
one hand we find it directly, t

bowh unintentionally,

prolonging the existence of lawlessness and ow

and on the other misleading the extcutive ihe
üblic at home by garbled stateinews au“? !i-averted

If we look abroad through the world with an ob-
servant eye, it is impossible not to be struck with
the conviction that we are fast hurrying towards

vast and important changes in the relations, exter-
nal as well as internal, of civilised nations. Europe
is at peace, it is true. Her mighty artnit.s no longer
trample her battle-fields. The sword is in its scab-
bard ; and the trumpet's sound, which urged to
conflict, is exchanged for the busy hum of industry,
or the murmur of intellectual strife, from the lips of
men awakening to a sense of their influence in the
new order of things which is approaching. But in
this very pause of national progression—this truce
to international strugg!e—are to be found the indi-
ca ions of that change which is now " throwing its
shadow before," and of which, in fancy, we hear
the sound, like the far-off surging of the coming
empest. It is not in the din and hurry of life that
the mind of man is most active, and most disposed
to investigate its claims to a share in the regulation
of the affairs of the world; and it is not amid na-
tional conflict—amid " the pride, pomp, and cir-
cumstance of war"—that those internal changes are

wrought, which exercise so important an influence
upon the destinies of nations or of m nkipd. In a
state of peace it that such changes are silently and
slowly, but surely, brought about ; that the demo•
cratic element works up to the surface of society,
and grows in power until it threatens to overwhelm
all those checks, and to break all those ties, which
for ages have bound THE GIANT to the earth.

The accomplishment of such a consummation,
throughout Europe—the elevation of democracy,
not by violence, as at the close of the last century,
to run riot for awhile, and then to be prostrated for
another generation; but the gradual uprising of a
power, which feels its own strength and acknow-
ledges its own responsibilities—we see at hand. In
the growth of friendly relations between civilised
nations we see it; in the growth of commerce, and
the spreading conviction throughout the world that,
in its civilisation and the industry of its people, is a
country's strength. But is the result of this change
to be, or not, for the permanent good of mankind ?
That question, the solution of which must depend
upon the spirit in which the change is wrought, we
purpose briefly to speculate upon; and in doing so
we shall confine our observations principally to our
own land, although we are satisfied that the indica-
tions are equally and similarly significant.
What then do we witness in the present temper
of the British people ? Everywhere we see the frail
remnants of feudalism crumbling before that awa-
kened power of democracy to which we have re-
ferred. The throne is no longer, as of old, hallowed
and revered per se, although- few there can be who
do not love and honour its lovely occupant. Lofty
lineage and ancestral honours are glowing dim in
the splendour of newly-won and inordinate wealth.
The glittering equipage of the merchant rolls side by
side with the cumbrous family coach of the far-de-
scended ; whilst the demesne of the former, increas-
ing field by field and farm by farm, threatens at no
distant date to swallow up the last of those posses-
sions, the gift of monarchy or the reward of con-
quest, which for ages have owned the latter for their
lord. Unportioned talent, treads upon the heels of
lethargic aristocracy and self-satisfied wealth ; and
wrestles for the victory in every walk of science and
of power. The bench, the bar, the church, the
senate, the camp, are opened to the intellectual
athlete; and the world's honour waits upon the
steps of the victor. Nor is the struggle confined
within these limits, wide though they are. The eyes
of the middle classes are equally turned towards the
acquisition of station and of rank by the force of
their own unaided energies; and if they do not, as
yet, contemplate the summit of their ambition, at
least they aspire to a large share in the controlling
of those .who have reached that eminence, and now
hold in their hands the powers of the constitution.
But amongst the lower classes a somewhat
change.] state of things presents itself. Fallen, and
falling lower day by day, in the scale of comfort, the
labourer looks with a jaundiced eye upon the con-
test, of which he feels that the most. substantial re-
wards are wrung from his unceasing toil. The de-
cline of the old feudal feeling has done nothing for
him. The admission of new elements into the con-
stitution has only left him more hopelessly at the
foot of that ladder which some have ascended and
others are struggling to ascend. Hence, we see the
working classes are everywhere rushing into com-
binations, into the delusive mazes of Chartism, into
wild and speculative theorism, and, occasionally, even
into violence and insubordination. These classes
are fast becoming ready instruments for the dema-
gogue. They swell the triumphs of the fierce agi•
tator ; and threaten, ultimately, to he arrayed against
property, against order, and against the law.
Now to what does all this tend? To good or to
evil ? Obviously to the latter, unless we can devise
an instrument to control and guide to a right end
these numerous elements of intellectual and physical
power, which are intent upon achieving for them-
selves their several objects, and, we may add, their
irreconcilable objects. And in what direction are
we to seek such an instrument? We cannot seek
it in an enlargement of the powers of the executive;
for against such a step we must encounter the com-
bined opposition of the entire mass of the nation,—
of the talent, the rank, the wealth, and the physical
force of the people, whom it would tend to thrust
back from the realization of their various and con-
tradictory hopes. And equally vain, ultimately,
would be the attempt to give added power to demo-
cracy ; for, pacify a portion of the struggling masses
as we may, we only widen the gulf which divides
them from the masses below their condition. Be-
tween prope tv and the depth of poverty and wretch-
edness there can never be permanent peace. Con-
cede all that theorists of the wildest order demand ;
extend the suffrage to the utmost; give political
power to toil-enslaved and suffering millions ; and
you only hurry forward the conflict between the
possessors of wealth and those who have it not.
It cannot be, therefore, in merely theoretic legis-
lation —in organic changes of the constitution,—
that the remedy for the dangers of our present state
of society lies. We have tried such a remedy
already in the Reform Bill, which has only tended
to push forward the crisis which is approaching,
Still less do we conceive that the remedy is in eco7
nomical legilation,—in the corn-law repeal and other
similar appliances of our modern race of philoso-
phers. The power of capital is large
andeno permanent
security; too large for the nation's happiness
and any measures whose tendency is to
weaken the bonds which still
bind a large portion of
our population to their superiors,—any measuru.
es
which tend to draft our peaceable agricultural pop
lation from the healthy and virtuous pursuits of out.