The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1866-11-12
CH A r L ES TON .
MONDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 70, 1866
THE REFORM AGITATION IN GREAT
BRITAIN.

The reform agitation in Great Britain is
| attracting much attention. The feeling there
| is intense-more intense, perhaps, in the lower
stratas of society than it has ever been upon
any other purely political question:, while here,
also, there is some excitement upon the subject
We have ourselves subordinated law to popular
volition; obliteratcd distinctions; abrogatcd the
restrictions of organized society; hoisted the
masses; realized whatever there may be of
utility or grace in the social principle that
| "everybody," except Of the luckless people at
| the South, "is as good as everybody else, and
little better;" abolished the under-crust to
the pie Of state, brought our entire population
to the upper, and with feeling common to
innovators, have had IN overweening solicitude
to see others follow our example. We are
irritated that England should still preserve the
order of her traditional system that her ship
Of state should still sail erect and onward, with
just proportions of sail and ballast that its
bottom is not upward, as it ought to be; that
the cargo is not flooded with bilgc water, and
that there has not thus been that due
administration, for time ut least, of political
perverse as to acquiesoe in natural forms,
without anticipation of the juster views that
we may come to have upon the subject.
To the movements there occurring, therefore,
we look and listen with especial interest. 1t is
agreeable, in that it indicates social disturbance
People who act of their own evidences rather
than Of our examplc-who 60 by experience
rather than by preconceptions-ought to be
disturbed; and particularly agreeable in the
fact that it is political ground-swell; that the
privileged classes will only suffer, and that the
masses only will advance, and that too without
the assurance that they shall be elevated also
TO the wisdom and ability to make proper use
of such Advancement.
Of the fact that there is what may be called
ground-swell in England, there can be little
question. Mr.. BRIGHT is almost the only man
of distinction connected with it. Mr.. HILL,
Col. DICKSON, and Mr.. ScnoFIELD, and others
of responsibility, have concurred to q limited
extent; but generally the higher classes, either
in respect Of social position or intellectual
attainments, have kept aloof. There seems to
be common feeling, as well in the one class as
the other, that it is q movement to disturb
existing political and social relations; to ad-
vance the masses nearer to control Of the
policy and actions of the empire; to give them
Jurisdiction of its traditional principles and
forms; and Mr.. BRIGHT, in his recent speech
at Glasgow, in allusion to the fact that the half
of Scotland is owned by about dozen men,
would seem to have indicated the purpose to
bring his people up to the consideration, if
not to the re-arrangement Of some of the mate
rial conditions of the country
Now all this may be we'll. It is proper that
there should be balance in the social and
political condition Of every people. The people
are necessary to the government. The govern
ment is necessary to the people The people
could not exist in state of society without
the government. The government could not
exist at oil without the people. Both constitute
conditions of living whole; and if it be true
that the government is oppressive-that the
people are unnecessarily trammelled byit-that
wider range of individual liberty or individual
power would be equally consistent with the
well-being and stability Of the government
that wider range they ought to have. The
State ought to have the impulse which, in q
state of unfettered freedom, they could give it.
But still it is to be remembered that there are
no natural indications of the point to which the
power of tho people may 60 without endanger-
ing the stability of the government. 1t seems
to be conceded here that in that direction of
individual liberty there is no danger; that all
restrictions are Objectionable; that popular
volition should be supreme; that it should
| supersede laws, constitutions forms and tra-
ditions; that the uoz popnE is in fact the vox
Def even in the most natural sense of that
| expression; that to that end the voice may be
taken from the very lowest depths and that
thus only, where the voice Of the people, com
ing from the very lowest depths Of society,
shall, like the rams'-horns at Jericho, be potent
to roar down the political ramparts of the coun-
try, can we glide over their ruins to the real
ization of that Utopia which is the object of our
dreams.
But we know that this pleasant illusion is
not thus to be realized We know that no peo-
pie were ever sufficiently elevated to be without
government; that the yolition of tho more
masses Of society cannot be directed wisely or
rightly; that it will be swayed by prejudice or
passion; that it will be directed against all
that is stable in society, oil that may tend to
impede their progress, all that is elevated which
may tend to depress them that O government
in somo form, even in such circumstances muat
exist, and that the government SO existing, with
out power OF its own, but of this volition of the