The New Orleans crescent., 1868-08-23
ENGLAND PROGRESSING.

The world moves. The old world, we mean.
The telegraph announces a dreadful railway
accident in England Seven persons are
killed outright by collision; eighteen burned
to death, and never so many mortally crushed
and mangled or MANNED and crippled for life.
This is a cheering sign. 1t shows progress.
The new reform bill, extending suffrage to
million or so of the hitherto unenfranchised,
didn't show progress unequivocally. The
English radicals were obliged to accept it
with the best grace possible, from that enig-
matical leader of the English conservatives,
Benjamin Disraeli. But like all such gifts,
1T had to be taken with suspicious reserva-
tion. 1t might prove after all, Trojan
horse introduced into the radical camp
through the wiles of the conservative Ulysses
1t was, to say the least, in itself dubious
sign. There was no certainty that even this
elongation of the electoral lever would lift the
English out of the rut of old fogyism. But
the increase of railway carelessness, of rail-
way blundering and railway disaster, and
ofgeneral fatality attending the use of steam,
indicated by this catastrophe in the very heart
OF the united kingdom, testihes unequivocally
that they are at length rising up and bravely
advancing in the same road with the great
American model which Beales and Bright, and
Goldwin Smith have SO eloquently and per-
sistently commended to their emulation.
These indefatigable reformers cannot witness
without triumph and exultation this sacrifice
of human life on the altar of progress. The
occasion is one on which they may well
be congratulated. 1t is doubtless the
signal which announces the Inauguration of
new era, in which there will be an end to the
weak solicitude for human life, and to the
absurd soberness, nationality and security in
methods of travel and transportation, to
which the English have so long clung with
scandalous infatuation. The bondage OF old
fogy notions and habits once broken, a bond
age which repressed equally moral and me-
chanical forces, there is nothing to prevent
steam from playing the same part in English
civilization as it has played in American civil.
zation. In England, it has heretofore been
servant. Here it is a master In fact, it is
hardly too much to say that steam has been
the supreme master. In the ignoble and cir
cumscribed area of politics, people here could
not always settle down to any conclusion as
to whether they were living under negro su-
premacy or carpet-bag supremacy, sectional
despotism or a central despotism. But mean
while there has not been the least room for |
doubt that all, regardless of political rela-
tions and functions, of political advantages or
hardships, have been the common slaves OF |
the steam power. Radical policy is only a |
poor plagiarism of the antics which the steam |
power has played with all classes of the
people. The former, like the latter, |
claims responsibility for its doings, be |
they however shocking and calamitous. |
But the steam power is the more |
equal despot. 1t whirls us on |
according to its sweet will. On land or water |
We are at its mercy, bearing to it about the |
same relation which the stick bears to the |
rocket. 1t filings us down declivitous en- |
bankments. 1t plunges us from bridge abut- |
ments into watery gulfs beneath. 1t crushes |
us individually under wheels or against plat |
forms, or smashes US up collectively amid the |
promiscuous wreck of collided trains. 1t |
blows US up, bodily or in fragments scalds |
us; boils us; roasts us, just as may suit its |
present fancy. But, whatever the caprices of |
its rule, it does not appear to make invidious
distinctions on account of political opinions
of conditions of life, of nativity or race. This
charming illustration of the idea of equality |
and fraternity explains no doubt the abiding
popularity of the reign of the steam power
And herein is the reason why Beales, and |
Bright, and Goldwin Smith should rejoice at
the proof which has just been given that Eng
land is entering on the same career of progress
With the ITritnd States