TOPICS OF THE DAY
18-5 4, A FEW more hours, and we shall have passed another of those imaginary boundaries in the 'continuous sfreani of on-flowing time, from which Hope loves to glance cheerfully ferward, and, casting away the burden of failures and disappointments, to take a new start with increased vigour and refreshed confidence. If Reason refuses to recognize the artificial reekoning of time by which the continuous succession of events is broken up into distinct masses, she gladly avails herself of the temper in which the distinction originates, and finds a most real source of strength and comfort in that indomitable human will which refuses to be clogged 'by the irrevocable past, and in that belief in the sympathy and help of the Power that rules the ages, which will not allow htiman nature to rest contented with an imperfect attainment of the ideal ends of existence, but prompts it ever at each recurring epooh to cast be- hind it its failures and seek in the present and future the means of retrieving error, of repairing folly, and attaining more and more perfectly the true conditions of its wellbeing. And so the renewed hope with which, by instinct and usage we regard the opening of another year, becomes identified with the sublimest grounds of hu- man action, and with faith in the unlimited capacity of the race for happiness and goodness. While, however, we concede to fancy and to practical utility any marking of anniversaries which will help us to throw off the dis- couragements of experience, the sense of failure and shortcoming, and are only too glad to recognize in the human will an element which controls and modifies the otherwise inevitable sequence of events, we cannot but remember that the future is conditioned by the past, and that all wise future action must be shaped ta meet the needs generated by past action. We must not forget that the only fresh element in our future is the will, and that it must draw its guidance from experience. Thus every epoch of hope and prospect becomes most naturally an epoch also of reflection and retrospect. As we glance back through the series of events to which our wills have given rise in the year that is passing away, one event long foreshadowed, long foretold, long anxiously looked for, looms so vastly from zenith to horizon that we see nothing else ; and as we glance forward to the years that are coming, its mighty shadow colours the dim future. Now that nine -months' experience has reduced vague hopes and vague fears to the sober reality of accom- plished facts, can we look back upon the voluntary acts which one by one gradually led on to that great issue and calmly approve, not each detail of the process but that general line of conduct on our part as a nation which has finally launched us into a contest with the great military power of the North F With the most vivid consciousness of the vast interests put to hazard by that con- test—of the fierce passions roused—of the destruction of precious human life rendered certain by it—of the industry of the European nations indefinitely mortgaged for its expenses—we for our indivi- dual part cannot for a moment regret that things have come to this issue. We know perfectly well, and we admit without hesitation, that wars have been popular before, that mili- tary glory has been achieved before, in wars which have origi- nated in folly and mistake, and have closed in ignominious political blunders, leaving nothing behind them but a seed- crop of misery, confusion' and revolution. But we cannot allow our own action to be paralyzed by the remembrance that human action has constantly been ill-directed, and has brought results disastrous in the eyes of those who planned the action. We can but act up to the beat knowledge that we possess, and leave the result to a higher Pewer. We did not declare war against Russia till united Europe had come to the conclusion that a great crime had been committed; till every facility had been offered to the Sovereign of Russia for confessing his crime and expiating it at the smallest possible amount of humiliation; till our own people were convinced that the independence of Europe was seriously menaced, and that nothing short of armed resistance could save Europe from a domination fatal to its liberties and its happiness. Nor was that all. It was the conviction of the people of England that but one step was wanting to place the power of Russia beyond attack, and that she was preparing that step by seizing Turkish provinces, and either dethroning the Sultan or rendering him for the future an obedient vassal. Either the whole theory about Russian policy is a baselesii vision of a dream, or the period chosen for declaring war with Russia was the critical moment, which if allowed to pass could never return. 'Under the conviction that facts irresistibly justified the conclusion of the public, our Govern- ment having exhausted all 'diplomatic means of diverting the Emperor of Russia from his settled purpose of dismembering Turkey or rendering her a pliant instrument of his will, proceeded to embark their country in the great war whose issue is yet pending. The purpose of the war is beyond all dispute, however difficult it may be to frame the terms which should reduce that purpose to a practical solution. We have not, as Mr. Cobden and the Times newspaper asserted, begun a war of which no man can give an intelligible account, but one man states one object and one another. The only difference is as to the particular facts which would mark the realization of the purpose. The diminution of the aggressive power of Russia within such limits as are consistent with the safety of Europe is the purpose. How many fortresses, how many ships; how many armies' must be destroyed to effect the object in view, men may dispute. We should say, go on destroying till Russia give in ; 'but that may for the present be left for the embarked in the contest with deep convictions o settlement of forest sonnewhat mtire influential than opinion. All grounds of our proceeding, and with a firm purpo we at present 'contend for, as a basis' for our conviction that the , ing till we have gained security for ourselves and
founded on this principle are valid or lasting. But in allying our- selves with Louis Napoleon, we are really allying ourselves not 1 RUSSIAN ALLIES IN ENGLAND.
with the man of the coup d'etat, but with the French nation. It is A =um is in circulation that Lord Raglan has expelled from their business and not ours to settle who shall be their governor, his camp the reporters of London newspapers. We are more in- who shall represent them in their national unity, who shall be dined to think this report to be untrue than the course to be fin- incarnate France in their connexion with foreign states. If they proper. Publicity has done much to inform and encourage the see in the circumstances of 1851 reason to pass over the violence patriotic interest of the people in all parts of the British empire, and perfidy with which Louis Napoleon seized the supreme power and so to bring not only a great moral support to Ministers, but a —if they have solemnly, by positive acts and passive acquiescence, great force at their back to strengthen them in determination. It sanctioned his proceedings, and ranked his political conduct with may have counterbalanced that useful service, by giving as much that of Csesar, Cromwell, and William of Orange—it is not our information and encouragement to the enemy, arousing us to exer- business to make objections, and to dictate to France what sovereign tions which are equalled by the resistance. The charges of "gross she shall elect. Our protest lasted only so long as there was a mismanagement, incompetency, lethargy, aristocratic hauteur, doubt that he was the choice of the French nation ; and we are stupidity," "reigning, revelling., and rioting in the camp before perfectly ready to acknowledge now, that probably to his wisdom Sebastopol and in the harbourof Balaklava," and of an "invisible" and firmness is due the possibility of any successful resistance commander-in-chief, have been followed up with deliberation. being made to Russian encroachment. It is scarcely to be believed The want of a road, it is said, "has killed nearly all our horses possible that a ruler so wise and firm can long find even his own interest in suppressing free discussion and imposing severe re- ,
sizainta upon the expression of opinion. For this alliance, be it
weighs all the hazards of a Russian war. Turn too to our old ally Austria. Some men of Liberal opinions are very angry that we have taken pains to draw closeagain the ancient amity that united us to her. Here also the " ideas velle ideas none would apply. But, leaving that ground, can any one doubt that the liberties of Austrian subjects, of Hungarians and Italians, are likely to be advanced by the alliance with the Western Powers ? Either she will voluntarily and from a sense of her own interest treat them with humanity, or she will not. In the former case, no one would lament the union of many races in one great empire that is necessary to Europe as a bulwark against Russia. In the latter ease, surely the cause of liberty has better chances When Russian myriads no longer act as an army of reserve for despotism. These two collateral consequences of the war, the French and the Austrian alliance, will go far with mini persons to counterbalance any evil that the war can possibly give rise to.
But, favourable as have been the results hitherto of the war which
and great numbers of men ; brought our army to half-rations, and prevented supplies of all kinds from reaching our camp." It is "a state of things which costs as much death and sickness as a with Louis Napoleon or the French nation, we have to thank the pitched battle." The capture of the place would be a happy re- war—no cause short of this could have so cordially united tradi- lease "at the cost of ten thousand men in killed and wounded." tional and inveterate antagonists. This alone, with its incalculable Hints are thrown out however, that this "confident anticipation" influence on the future progress of the world, far more than out- may be "utterly disappointed"; that the army of the Allies may "dwindle down from 70,000 to the old dead level of 45,000"; and then the public will require the army to be reinforced with "new heart and mind,"—for "it is HEAD, HEAD, HEAD, that is wanted." Such are the reports issued not only to the British public but to the Russian Emperor, and transmitted to the Russian Generals at Sebastopol. The officers in that fortress are said to have actually shaped their plans and pointed their measures by facts ascertained through the London newspapers. Subsequent articles, written to modify such statements with correction, or to compensate them by reports of something fresh that has been done, go very little way to counteract the had effect: they will be regarded as an effort to put a good countenance upon mournful facts, and the desponding exaggerations will be regarded as admissions extorted by the magnitude of the truth. Now, is this so, or is it not ? We have quoted chiefly from one journal, because it is distinguished by the strength and conspicuous- ness of its statements; but others of the English journals have will render 1854 a memorable year, it depends upon our future equally thrown a lurid and appalling light of publicity upon the co.inve whether this year is to be memorable as a glorious or an interior of the English camp. Is the view correct, or not ? The =famous date in English and French annals. We can pass no question is not idle; since the answer, either way, ought to sag- satisfactory judgment upon-action till it is completed. If we have gest some practical remedy for the ascertained evil. f
war is no subject of regret, is that it has been entered into on the , end will be more glorious than the beginning. Irft, part of the nation with a distinct purpose and a clear sense of the trary, an impatience of the expense, of the trouble, of the sacrifice, necessity. ; demanded by a great purpose, prove powerful enough to undermine But an object may be clearly conceived and very desirable, and , our convictions, to paralyze our action, and to lead ua to abandon yet to seek it by war may be the height of folly, because it is our own cause, the year that is passing will have been the beginning either in itself unattainable, or beyond the power of the state that of the end. We see no symptoms of such pusillanimity, such weak- seeks to gain it by force. Certainly, if we thought that England ness, in the public. But symptoms are not wanting that among the and France had embarked in a contest above their power, or , recognized advisers of the public a tendency of this kind is can- one which proposed an unattainable object, our retrospect of the , tiously showing itself in wholesale abuse of the management and year would be very cheerless, however we might admire the gal- , managers of the war. But we have now, as heretofore, to lift up our 'entry and spirit of the nations that rose superior to fortune and voice against any form of policy that would under any pretence ad- rushed with blind courage upon their destruction. Better so, vise abandonment of the war without material guarantees of security perhaps, than to succumb and spin cotton for the world. But ex- for the future. History would have no more ludicrous spectacle perienee has only °confirmed the anticipations of science in es- to offer, were it not for the mighty hopes overthrown and the vast tablishing the military superiority of the Western Powers. A human interests compromised, than if England and France were campaign of a few months has issued in expelling the Russians to make a peace with Russia that should leave Sebastopol standing from Turkish territory, and in concentrating the contest round or Russia mistress of the Black Sea. The position of Europe what may be called the very centre of the military power of Rus- I would be inexpressibly worse than if we had never raised sia as an aggressive state. If we have not taken Sebastopol as ! a finger to arrest the course of Russian domination. We quickly as our wishes would have dictated, we have at least proved ' should have tried and have failed ; and this not through incontestably that our men are able to do whatever men have ever want of material, but of moral power — not because we done, and that unless some god has endowed the fortress with were not rich and valiant, but because we were not men, supernatural means of defence, it must fall whenever our generals and our valour was a mere brute impulse, unsustained by choose to sacrifice a sufficient number of lives in an assault. We purpose and idea. Meanwhile, Russian policy would have csumet certainly regret that 1854 has witnessed the outbreak of received not a check, but a warning — would not have war with Russia on any such ground as that no power within our been forced back upon her path, but simply have been en- competence can reduce her to reasonable terms. abled better to measure the obstacles and appreciate her own If in the mere fact of war, its general possibilities and the power for overcoming them. And how long would even caution
hazards it brings with it, we can find no reason for regretting the be necessary after united Europe had failed to arrest the- great event of the year, is there anything in its details on which stride of the despot ? The enthusiasm and the efforts of the West- we can look back with a preponderating feeling of shame and sor- ern Powers having evaporated with no result—their military pres- row ? Do the collateral consequences and incidents of the war, so tige gone—their pretensions the laughingstock of Europe—the far as they have yet been manifested, counterbalance the sense of spirit and confidence of their people lowered,—who would a great duty to ourselves and to the world nobly undertaken, and undertake to lift voice or arm afterwards to gainsay or stop with adequate means of success ? Let Alma Balaklava Inkerman that omnipotent influence ? How long time would elapse be- answer; let the French and English standards wave ;heir united fore Europe would be professedly governed from St. Petersburg„ answer; let the moral sympathies of all Europe give the response. we know not—nor care. All that is humiliating, all that is dis- When have greater battles been won, when has the nation mani- astrous in that result, would have occurred, and the time and hated higher qualities when has individual worth made itself form for the open assumption of universal empire would be for the more conspicuous or been more recognized? The one fact of the Emperor of Russia to fix, and a matter in which the descendants Frendi alliance may weigh against a countless list of evils. Some of freemen could not much interest themselves. The evil could men are scandalized at the eagerness with which this alliance not then be resisted : whatever resistance is to be offered must has been welcomed. They see in it only the selfish caprice of be offered now, and the fall of Sebastopol is the first and indis- a people ready to forget any crimes, and clasp the hand of any ' pensable guarantee that such resistance is and will be successful. criminal, so that his interests and theirs coincide, so that he will With the good wishes of the season, the first thought that will take their side and help them in a common danger. We are far rise spontaneously in the heart of the nation on Monday morning, from saying that the " idem velle ideas nob" is not a very valid will be "Speedy destruction to Sebastopol." May both wishes be ground of state alliance, and we believe that no state alliances not fully realized.
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