ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

that he had heard of his Commandership of the Bath for his first three battles; and he adds, I have fought nine since.' The last victory over the great destroyer yet remained, and it was complete. For more than forty years,' he said to Sir J. Outram, I have so ruled my life that, when death came, I might face it without fear.' The telegram told the sad news to England on the 7th of January. It seemed to dash down every satisfaction, to dim every triumph. Of itself, without favour and without suggestion, public opinion, perhaps with some exclusive injustice, had made him the hero of the hour. It seemed as if all men felt a self-reproach that he had not been known before, and now, when he came back, how they would make it up to him! But this was not to be. Like so many regrets, these were only of use to those who felt them. Britain had lost, not only a great defender in arms, but a man whose fame it would have been good for her to have been able to celebrate. The simplicity of his character, the absence of the gaudiness and glitter which too often accompany even true glory, the strong Puritan element which the dignity of his life at once attested and made respected, the self-reliance and patent duty of his whole career, made him perhaps the safest object of popular idolatry that the course of events ever offered to a free and moral nation.

It was with mingled feelings of disappointment and happiness that the old garrison heard of the determination of the authorities to evacuate Lucknow. Brigadier Inglis had offered still to hold the Residency with 600 men, 100 of them being of his own regiment, but the gallant offer was not accepted. The retreat was so successfully covered by a feigned attack on the Kaiser Bagh, that it was accomplished without the loss of a man. A Captain Waterman by some mischance was left behind asleep, but he was able to come up with the retiring rear-guard, though mad with terror at the position he for some hours had occupied, alone in the Residency, surrounded by an army of infuriated foes.

By the order of the Governor-General the survivors of Lucknow were received at Calcutta with all the honours of war. The Queen's representative went to meet and congratulate them; there were the eager eyes and sympathetic faces of fellow-soldiers and fellow-countrymen, and the sound which had for so long been to them one of terror and destruction now was heard booming welcome and peace. But when, one by one, the sad procession came to view, the wan and wasted cheeks, the weak and trembling forms, the almost universal garb of woe, betokening the widow or the childless or the orphan, the cheers died away on the lips about to utter them, and the scene was felt to be too solemn for triumph or for joy. None, however, would have anticipated

anticipated that for some of these unhappy persons the hardships of fortune were not yet exhausted, and that they would have to undergo the perils of shipwreck on their homeward voyage, to escape only with the loss of the little they still possessed, even the records of their trials and sufferings.

From the night of our silent retreat a curtain has fallen over our deserted citadel: the fierce glee and inconsiderate triumph of the enemy that occupied it can have no historian. Of the retributive victory we as yet know little more than the fact that the British standard waves again over the beleaguered fortress, soon to become the centre of our indisputable dominion. Then may the wisdom and vigour of our future rule expiate the gigantic imprudence which incorporated the kingdom of Oude with the Empire of India, without precaution or defence against the interests we thwarted and the passions we aroused, and for which Britain has already paid so heavy a penalty of blood and tears!

ART. VIII.—1. L'Empereur Napoléon III. et l'Angleterre. Paris, 1858.

2. Speech of the Earl of Clarendon in the House of Lords, March 1, 1858. London, 1858.

3. Lettre au Parlement et à la Presse. London, 1858.

4. Documents pour servir à l'Histoire de l'Application de l'Article 24 du Traité de Paris en Moldavie. Londres, 1857.

5. La Question des Principautés devant l'Europe. Par M. A. Ubicini. Paris, 1858.

6. Signor L. C. Farini al Signor Guglielmo Gladstone, Londra. Torino, Dicembre 1857.

7. To Louis Napoleon. By Joseph Mazzini. London, 1858.

Τ

IT is a frequent complaint that we live in a prosaic age, that

the bloom is rubbed off which the world wore when it was young, that the hue of romance no longer colours the objects which lie along the every-day path of human experience, Yet Fortune is a merry jade after all; and she has recently been performing her choicest freaks among us, with more of vivacity and energy than the decorous forms of a constitutional government are usually found to allow. The late Minister of England had contrived to keep his seat on the top of her famous wheel during such a number of its revolutions, as had all but covered what may be termed the utmost space allowed to the activity of human life. But suddenly a difficulty that he himself had created, as if for the purpose, by a contempt of the most ordinary caution and the best established customs, caught him in his giddy ele

vation,

vation, and precipitated the old favourite of millions into the depths of the Tartarus of politics, almost without a solitary cry of regret to mingle in the crash of his fall, or a word of sympathy to break its force.

The career of the late Ministry, especially since the Peace of Paris, well deserves a careful examination. It has been too eminent, as its friends would say or too prominent, as the admission even of its enemies would run-to escape from notoriety. In the work of legislation, in the great department of finance, in what may be called its spirit of administration, and in the extended details of a foreign policy which had excitement for its daily food, it either deserves the chronicler or must invite the critic. But though these things are great, there are greater things than these. Its sayings and doings, its non-sayings and non-doings, have found at once their climax and their close in a great international complication.

What we propose then on the present occasion is, to examine the reciprocal attitudes of England and France. It is true that one immediate difficulty, paramount in its kind, was got rid of, when the Palmerston Ministry was overthrown. The hands of that Government had been so utterly paralysed by its incomprehensible and most unworthy concessions, that its removal was as a first step absolutely necessary for the clearing, so to speak, of the atmosphere. But there has been a national controversy; and a controversy between France and England is of necessity a matter of moment—a matter not to be forgotten because it has passed away, though only to be remembered for the purposes of good-will or of prudence. In the present instance, we are not as yet entitled to say that the question slumbers in the past of diplomacy, and exists no longer. On the contrary, proceedings are pending in our courts; the displacement of an Ambassador, greatly and justly regarded among us, has followed upon that of an offending Ministry; and the correspondence of the Governments has been wound up for the time in an appeal, which seems to be susceptible of more senses than one, by the Emperor of the French to the loyalty of the English people.'

The parties in this case, as it would seem at first sight, should be either two or four. It would in ordinary circumstances be the natural course either to regard France and England as being each a political integer, or else to divide both the one and the other into government and people. As to England, it is clear that the division must be made, for the dualism is beyond all doubt. Nothing could be more contradictory in their letter and in their

* Count Walewski's Despatch, March 11, 1858.

spirit

spirit than the proceedings of the Ministry and of the nation; the dogs were coupled, but they could not hunt together. What the Ministry encouraged, the nation repelled; what the Ministry gratuitously tendered, the nation unconditionally refused; what the Ministry took to be justice, the nation interpreted as disgrace. On this side the water, therefore, we have had two parties, at the least. There is the old agent of the master, dismissed for breach of trust; and there is the master with his new agent, of whom it has thus far been found that he has not for practical purposes much misconstrued his principal. Beyond the Channel the case stands very differently. The French nation, tingling as it does to the very fingers' ends with vivacity, running over with a thousand kinds of talent, and almost unrivalled in the power of giving expression to its thoughts, is nevertheless, under its peculiar institutions, unprovided with any distinct or independent organs of the wishes or ideas it may entertain; we know its feelings only from the chance-medley intercourse of individuals in private society, or from the official descriptions of its government. But in official language a State, when it deals with foreign Powers, assumes the concurrence, and at times even imagines the enthusiasm, of its subjects. It is, therefore, allowable, when we see the name of the French nation quoted in this controversy, and when we are terrified with glowing descriptions of its excited condition, to admit into our minds the possibility that that name 'may perhaps be taken in vain. This does not imply that the popular feeling is wantonly falsified by the ministers of the Emperor. These high authorities must not be supposed to deceive; but they may themselves be misled by subordinate persons who speak to them smooth things, and therefore they cannot help misleading others. With us it is a canon that, if the people be without proper organs, its sentiments cannot be certainly known. Even if they were on each question already matured, still they could not be gathered into general results through those myriad rills, that connect individual with collective life. But, in truth, it is in the process of expression itself that the public opinion is in the main developed and matured, even as the iron takes its shape amidst the clang that announces the labours of the blacksmith. From this want of competent and regular organs in France it has come about that we really have but the very scantiest means of judging what are the feelings of that country on the subject before us. At one time we are told that the resentment of the French against England can hardly be restrained; at another that the popular discontent is aimed at the Emperor. On these heads, then, we shall affirm nothing, as we know nothing. Accordingly, we have three, and no more than three,

parties

parties in the cause-the Government of France, the English nation, and the Ministry, now defunct, by whom that nation was misrepresented.

And we must aver at the outset that this discussion is not one in which England stands on the defensive only. She has her own causes of complaint, alike just and grave. On both sides of the Channel there is a sense of wrong. The Government of France has been encouraged to make appeals which have proved fruitless, and to commit itself to their propriety. They have conceived that the state of British laws, or manners, or both, was such as to afford shelter to schemes of anarchy and murder. Such impressions are not formed by a foreign government, except upon information from within. They were taught to believe that the existence of this state of things would be admitted, and that a remedy would be promptly applied. We cannot wonder, that the failure of their wishes and expectations has left behind it considerable soreness. Through the publication of the Walewski despatch in England and in France, the credit of the Imperial Government was hazardously staked on effecting a change in English law. That credit cannot but be damaged by its having been found that the change which was proposed we utterly and as one man repudiate, and that it as yet remains subject to doubt whether we can and ought to make any change at all.

On the other hand, the people of England deem themselves wronged by the manner in which their laws have been arraigned. They are laws, of which the benefit has been impartially extended to all political fugitives, of all colours alike; to ex-Kings, exlegitimists, ex-constitutionalists, ex-Napoleons, ex-republicans: and we well perceive that, if they are surrendered or impaired to gratify the resentments, or promote the interests, of any one party during its heyday of power, they will thenceforward have lost their virtue for all parties alike. We are aware that no one has more largely profited by these laws than the present Emperor of the French; and though his worst enemy would not charge him with any plot that had assassination for its object, yet it is no exaggeration to say that, short of the limit thus defined, he availed himself to the full not only of their lawful scope for his own protection, but likewise of the facilities afforded by a secure privacy to devise and execute measures contrary both to their spirit and to their letter. And without doubt, one cause of the sensitiveness of the people of England on the recent occasion has been this: that they have not felt quite certain whether it was his intention, under cover of the excitement following upon the recent plot, to pledge us to prevent others, by restrictions upon liberty formerly unknown among us, from doing that very

thing

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »