The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1852-12-20
The New Phase OF English Agitation.

ne duchess OF SUTHERLAND ana her arlS-
tocratic though amiable coadjutors ventured on
perilous ground when they appealed to the wo
men of England to sustain them in a crusade
against slavery in the United States. The
"order" to which they belong has hitherto
stood aloof from all agitation, a thing too
plebean and vulgar to be tolerated by patrician
tastes. The men who agitated against abuses
which fenced in aristocratic privileges have
been sneered at as worshippers of mob infn-
ence; and their arguments have been met by
an appeal to the snobblshness which more or
less pervades the middle branches of society.
To commence an agitation, or to contribute
to its force, was to provoke the professed con-
tempt OF the fashionable and titled classes.
The thousands who live only to bask in arts
tocratic sunshine echo the condemnation, and
scout an agtator as the veriest bore magma
BILE. The distinguished sisterhood Of Stafford
House have wiped away the stain from the vo-
cation. They have clad its followers in court
dress, removed the faint of its origin with
sprinkling Of rose water. and honored its fol-
lowers with free entrance to drawing rooms
and boudoirs. 1t is no longer Glow" common,
or degrading. 1t has received the seal Of an
artificial nobility, and will hencetorward speak
with more authority than it had presumed to
hope for. 1t will date new from the
deeds of the Duchesses.
The battery opened at Stafford House will be
brongh. to play with irresistible power against
the entertainments of English wrong. The
plea that castles are an ordinance of God, and
that social misery is a part of the scheme Of
His mysterious providence, is available no
longer Maids Of Honor of the Queen, wives
Of Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State,
companions of Dukes and Earls, and Viscounts
and Baronets, have condescended to speak of "a
common orign' of our race, of "the progress Of
civiizalon,'' .'ihe advance of freedom every
where" and, above all, of "the rights and re-
qu,rements Of the 18th century" They have
made these the text of solemn homily with
which they favor "the vast regions of the west
ern world" The first application of the text
will be at their own doors. They will be ap
piled by British people to British ills, and yer
dict will be invoked from which they who have
suggested 1t must not shrink. None who watched
| the progress of the anti corn law movement few
years ago can have forgotten the effect pro
duced when gaunt, haIf-starved tarm-laborers
| in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, met at the close
of their long days labor and told their tales
| of woe amid the glare of torches and the i'm
perfectly suppressed curses OF their fellow suf-
| ferers. Emigration and great Commercial pros
| perty have somewhat lightened the misery
then complained Of; but the catalogue Of
wrong -doing is not, therefore, exhausted. 1t
will now challenge investigation. The cry for
education will resound through the land
to condemn the system which consigns the
children of the poor to hopeless ignorance.
| The factory operatives Of Lancashire and
Yorkshire will point to the monstrosites of
which their wives and daughters the vic
tins. The women who toll deep in the bowels
Of The earth, doing that for coal-owners which
horses should do. will once more make them
selves heard. The wrelchedness which is con-
centrated in the wynds Of GLASGOW, and which
is experienced everywhere in Scotland from the
absence of poor law, will have its exponent.
in high places. The poor-law of England
which makes poverty crime to be punished
not prevcnted-whch separates pauper hus
bands from their wives, and pauper parents from
their children-will be brought back 10 aristo
cratic memories as evidence that the worst evils
/. imputed to American slavery have a seat within
sight Of ducal palaces And when these nome
outrages upon British ivization shall have beer
presented and reviewed, Ireland will yet re
. main to pour forth her protest against thu
maudlin sentiment and spurious philanthropy
which find scope only on the continent o
America. The Chartst struggling for pc
litical equaliry-the operative and the Peasas