TOPICS OF THE DAY.
GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE.
Eunore exhibits a wondrous spectacle, of its governments called to account by its peoples. East and West, North and South, with the oldest of existing governments and the newest, there is the same exhibition of authority rendering account to its subjects. The oldest of all, the Papacy, is engaged in the en- deavour to reconcile its most ancient trusts with the most mo- dern form of political constitution. The newest, the Government of Louis Philippe, has been called to account with such effect that the dynasty is ousted; and the Provisional Government which has succeeded is fain to inquire the pleasure of the mob in the streets, as an element in its deliberations. Imagine our Cabinet Council adjourning occasionally' to the street-door for the better despatch of business! Paternal Prussia had not been nearly indulgent enough, and the complement of King Frede- rick William's concessions is wrung from him by riots : his gra- cious gifts are eked out with supplementary exactions. Absolute Metternich, who contrived for forty years to ignore the people of Austria, is rudely shocked out of his ignorance by a.mob, and he fairly runs away from that which he had been accustomed to hold as a nullity. The Elector of Hesse Cassel is brought to terms by a blacksmith. More than one German potentate is peremptorily called forth, like the manager of a theatre, to bow frightened apologies and promises before an enraged audience. King Louis Philippe takes refuge in the homely inviolability of the English " Smiths." The royal classes generally are seized with a panic of politeness towards their people. They are unfolding constitu- tions with a smiling alacrity, as linendrapers unrol silks or waist- coat-pieces before their customers. "That," cries Naples, with anxious persuasion, "is a charter that will just suit you.' " Any other little article " asks Wurtemberg. Never in the course of his- tory were the courtesies of the royal classes so largely developed. Amid the hubbub, few things are more striking than the pro- found tranquillity that possesses our own island. It was tested, not disturbed, by the mob riots of the five principal towns. A leading Ministerial paper draws from that quietirde the conclusion that there is no ground for disturbance : we have anticipated our neighbours, says the writer, and have nothing to do in the same line. This is not quite correct. Without making much account of the Trafalgar Square rioters, we have classes whose abstinence from sharing in those tumults was by no means unrecognized. We have Chartists. We have Spitaltields, Manchester' Paisley, and other weavers. We have large classes who hold themselves ' aggrieved by our Poor-law. We have Ireland. All these sec- tions of the community are neither prosperous nor contented. They do nut revolt, because, they arisnot so inclined ; but it would be very unsafe to suppose that their expectations are satisfied, or that their quietude would not be broken in times of harsher diffi- culty.
But what, it is asked, is there for our Government to do ? All the other Governments are conceding : what remains for ours to concede 4—Much, and of the same kind that ethers are conceding. The one concession, common to all those countries, is a recogni- tion of the people, their rights and claims. In Austria, the great European depository of the old Divine right dogma, the Govern- ment professed to exist independently of the people, and to act for its benefit spontaneously, like the sun—a vicegerent of Hea- ven. In Italy, the right of the people had been urged as an in- tellectual proposition, but silenced as political blasphemy ; it had been enforced as a popular tradition by armed revolt, suppressed by military discipline. In Prussia, it had been recognized as an abstract proposition. The denial has been forcibly refuted ; the abstraction has been coerced to assume a concrete form ; and in France, whose government professed to exist by and for the peo- ple, the dynasty has been cashiered for not acting up to that prin- ciple in sincerity.. By and for the people—the constitutional dictum of revo- lution—is the true maxim of government, if rightly construed. It is a maxim often professed, but seldom enforced by revolu- tions. It does not mean government by or for sections of the people—as little by mobs as by aristocracies. Less : aristocracies always act for more than themselves, mobs never do. In every community there are great diversities of will ; but there will always be, on essentials, a manifest preponderance of opinion ; and according to that the government 'ought to act. Sooner or later it must obey that preponderant opinion ; and it is better to do so at once, than to let it accumulate until it explodes in revolution. But government ought also to show that it acts in that man- ner, so that the people may perceive that their own behests are satisfied, in so far as they can be determined. That knowledge will always keep the people, on the whole, tranquil, and will beget a disposition to check sectional disturbances. It is some approach to such a state of things that has caused the present tranquillity of England : but there is room for rendering our tranquillity more certain and enduring, by a more manifest honesty, dili- gence, and fidelity, in the Government. Our risk of popular dis- turbance lies in the pretences, the neglects, and the evasions of our system. It is no bold tyranny with which we are charge- able, no open war of class upon class, no individual dishonesty ; but a general habit of compromise, and, as it were, of political adulteration. Our representative system is full of frauds, tole- rated by a frame of mind that abhors theoretical exactness. With a marvellous endurance of what is base, mean, and sordid, our Parliament suffers its portals to be haunted by the vilest vaga- bonds; and there is scarcely a Member but consents, more or less directly, to be under obligations to some of that class. Our (=a- tion is full of absurdity and injustice, and the most glaring in- stance of injustice our Ministers decline to revise. Our executive administration is enfeebled by an abuse of patronage, and by an ultra-mechanical routine which serves as a shield for incapacity and inertness. Our diplomatic system affects still a secrecy which has ceased in fact : kept up in form, it only gives to our foreign relations an air of unworthy maneuvering, and exasperates our people, by committing the country to a policy without paying it the compliment of seeking its concurrence ; although it is now evident that the real strength of all free countries does not lie in paltry tricks, but in truth, in facts, in the substantial strength and resources of the people. For all our boasting, then, there is a world of what is unreal, false, and vicious in our system. In order to keep our lead in advance of other countries, and to prevent Britain from being the scene of the next tumult when their affair is over, our Government should set diligently to work at the task of abolish- ing from our system all counterfeits, all concealment, all pretences. That it is which falls to our share in the general movement of po- litical progress, and which is the way to maintain our national tranquility.
It demands, indeed, men of keen sight, active mind, and ener- getic will ; a mournful reflection, to such as watch our Adminis- tration.
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