The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-09


tary machinery was no longer needed to press
their wants and wishes upon society at large.
Times have changed. It never enters into
the dreams of q minister now that he may be
obliged to make new peers in order to coerce
or outnumber the rest. The House of Lords,
as if by established rule, surrenders to any
considerable and well-ascertained preponde-
rance of sentiment in the House of Com
mons. The House of Commons is vividly
aware of it; and there is a consciousness in
what is called 'the country" of similar under
standing gbetween that assembly and itself. tits
aless definite understanding at present than the
other, but it promises to become equally
vivid by-and-by. That the active members
of the working classes, q great mass, tho
roughly rely upon its operation, we do not at
all doubt Indeed, they are taught to do so
by authority. The dogma of the day
in politics, the doctrine of our great
Liberal minister and of all our little
ones is, that the temper of the
nation is its wisdom-its wish, law. "Pres-
sure from without" is elevated into the best
of arguments What this practically comes
to is, parliamentary sanction of the republi-
can idea. As the House of Lords is regularly
controlled now by the Commons, so, and in
precisely the same way, the Commons ac-
knowledges the control of pressure from with
out; in other words, it more and more lends
itself to popular agitation as its natural pro-
pictorial machinery. Therefore it is not to
be wondered at if the masses have ceased
their efforts to operate IN Parliament-as
their aim was IN the Chartist agitation-and
now more hopefully operate upon it. The
difference is great; and the difference is all
on the radical, republican, or revolutionary
side.
And coincident with this significant and
settled change in their mode of operation,
there is, as we have already said, an equally
tnr1tf oort nd att ln1 nho in tha dc
they work for. No doubt the poor and hard
worked have always held first in view the
amelioration of their own lot; what they have
most lopged for is ease and comfort-what
they have most resented is the daily spectacle
of unequal fortune. But till lately, mixed up
with these prime aspirations and resentments
have existed others-not more natural, but
| far more noble. There was resentment that
| in the governance of their country they had
| no part or lot-ambition to have a voice, too,
| in all that concerned its prosperity and its
| glory. However rough and vague these ideas
| may have been, they were honorable; they
were wholesome; and being brought into
| practical operation they make all the differ
ence between true high republican govern
ment and the sordid folly of socialistic COM
| munities. The perpetuation of such ideas
might very we'll have bred republicans, but
| they would not have produced Reds. Now
we do not for a moment suppose that any
| thing like the Red element in French radical
ism exists among us. But these more whole
| some, national, patriotic aspirations seem to
have disappeared; and that is undoubtedly
a step toward Red Republicanism. We hear
of several things which the working classes
now ''go for, steadily; reconsideration of pro-
| perry in land; emancipation from the tyranny
of capital; association for tightening labor,
and for taking in the shape of wages larger
share of the profits of industry; but of very
much that was included in the cry for a voice
in the councils of the nation we no longer
hear. Interest in imperial legislation and the
conduct of our affairs as one of the family of
nations is quite subordinated. There is no
| excitement about anything that does not i'm
mediately bear upon labor, and the fruits of
labor, and the social condition of them
selves-the struggling mass of poor
people. We do not complain of this,
| though we are sorry for it: for thus
it seems that we have reached or are
fast nearing the point at which country ends
and class begins: in other words, the point at
which the radical develops into the revolu-
tionary. The significance of these gradual
and obscure changes is brought out when we
consider that our new reformers even pass
beyond the country. They are in conference
and alliance with similar aspirants in France
IN Germany, in almost every nation in Ea-
rope. Nobody could have supposed ten years
ago how rapid and how solid would become
the international relations of working men,
everywhere seeking class interests alone
nor have many people now a true concep-
tion of the facts and probabilities in that
matter. And their importance is by no
means diminished by what is going on in
France, or what is likely to go on there for
| years to come.
These, then, are some of the reasons Why
we think the republican agitations of which
we hear so much just now are not to be dis
regarded. We have no space to recapitulate
them, but if the reader will do so for himself,
he will find them somewhat formidable,
though none of them lead us to look for i'm
mediate or very striking effects. Others yet
might be cited; one, for instance, which a
loyal Minister would not fail to press home
to the Queen, circumstances being what they
are. 1t is poor trick of concealment which
would hide the fact that for a good many
years now the strong sentiment of love and
loyalty we'll earned by the monarch has been
wanlpg-among the masses, that is. No
advantage so enormous could be more easily
regained of that we have a test in
the reception of the Queens books some
time ago, and in the affection universal in the
country for the Princess of Wales. But it is
Ssning and We venture to say, since nobody
else Will say 1T, that to lose lightly what
might so easily be held fast is unfortunate
That anything can be done except in this way
to check or to anticipate republican agitation,
we doubt. As we have already said, accom-
pllshed legislation favors it.; the sentiment
which prevails in the Government and in the
House of Commons faYors it, while as to the
superior classes 1--WE are obliged to use some
such phrase) all political life seems to have
died out of them. Like ttose admirable