TOPICS OF THE DAY.
1853.
TODAY closes a year which has been prolific in events of immediate interest, has afforded unfailing topics of discussion to journalists and politicians, and leaves for future historians of the British em- pire facts of political and social significance which will mark it as a year memorable in our annals. It has been said, happy is the see of which history has little or nothing to tell ; and doubtless when historians found themselves unable, or thought it beneath their dignity, to trace any records of national life but the conflicts of armies and the intrigues of courts, the undistinguished suffer- ing of the humble or the striking crimes of the lofty, there was a kind of truth in the saying. But now that the function of history is better comprehended—now that peace has her glories, and civic ap- plause•waits on those who promote the moral greatness and the mate- rial prosperity of nations—the age of which history has nothing to tell is an inactive, an unprogressive age, an age which refuses to do its work, and leaves accumulated embarrassment and danger for that which succeeds it And as it is with ages so it is with years. Each year must clear away obstructions, mend institutions, wind up its accounts with the past, provide for the future ; or it is not only a wasted year, but one that lays up misery and difficulty for those that follow. On the last day of 1853, the English nation may look back on a series of important national acts, in which, while they do not fail to recognize and adore an overruling wisdom and beneficence, neither will they fail to discern the fruits of that good sense and love of country which are the choicest gifts Providence can be- stow on a people. If some things that needed to be done have been left undone—if but one step has been taken in some direc- tions where it would have been well to take two—if prudence and forbearance may seem to some to have degenerated into vacillation and weakness,—yet upon the whole a good year's work has been accomplished ; the state has been served with ability and zeal ; and we may enter upon the new year with the consciousness of having solved for a time questions that last year were pressing for settlement, of having in our service the best ability and character we can get, and of having proved that we deserved them by dis- cerning them and trusting them. Fresh and it may be heavier work remains for the coming year; but we go to it under leaders that now have learned to understand each other and to act to- gether; we go to it with a certain momentum of success, with an augury of good hope and well-based expectation, that a year's ex- perience has developed out of vague wishes and uncertain con- jectures. Unquestionably, the great political fact which will characterize the past year is the fusion of parties. Long it waited for accomplish- ment, often it eluded expectation ; but it was matured at last by an imperative ordinance of events. Public opinion at once ratified what had been long desired. But it was still felt to be an experi- ment—necessary indeed, but attended with difficulties. Time alone and action could test whether those difficulties were suscept- ible-id being overcome ; whether the task itself was possible, and the men to whom it belonged equal to the occasion. How tho- roughly the experiment has succeeded—how thoroughly, the diffi- culties, whatever they really were in substance, have been con- quered—is shown, not half so strikingly by the feeble and purely negative character of the Opposition, or by the triumph of any particular measure carried,—though both are striking indications, when the strength of Lord Derby in the Commons at the com- mencement of the session is remembered,—as by the great variety and wide scope of the measures of the Government during the past year viewed as a whole. It will be seen that in those mea- sures. almost every political principle called into action of late years is more or less involved. It is this that gives so emphatic an importance to the session and the year. Statesmen of various opinions might, on an emergency such as arose last December, agree to act together for a time, and to keep in abeyance their dif- ferences. In that case we should find them carefully abstaining from those spheres of action to which their differences of opinion related, observing on them a marked silence, and devoting them- selves to practical measures on which they could agree. Nothing of the sort is observable in the conduct of the present Government. They have, like all other Governments, known differences ; but how comparatively slight those differences must be, a brief enu- meration of the leading legislative measures will at once demon- strate.
The Canada Clergy Reserves did indeed only involve a question of Colonial policy, a question of the relation of the Mother-country to a dependency; yet mixed up as it was with the general ques- tion of the relations of Church and State, how significant was the prominence assigned to it in the Government programme ; how bold the defiance thereby given to the tactics of an Opposition not too scrupulous to avail itself, by fair and unfair means, of the religious element in the question. And if we go on with the Colonial policy of the Government, we see it touching on one side the diffi- cult question of secondary punishments, on another dealing with the franchise under a new constitution, on a third soothing the ex- asperation and rousing the self-reliance and good feeling of the most unfortunate of "fortunate isles." So that, in urging the agreement of Government on the single branch of Colonial policy, we do in reality demonstrate its agreement in sundry moat im- portant political principles, and thereby show the ground why the union of its component members promises to be lasting and fruit- ful. And again, while we point to the Budget as the most bril- liant exploit of the session, whether we look to the important questions of finance it settled, or to the ability, industry, and gene- ral Parliamentary faculty evinced by Mr. Gladstone in its passage through the House, we regard it particularly as a Budget of prin- ciple, and deduce from it that financial differences can scarcely henceforth operate as a dissolvent of the present alliance. The Legacy-duty especially marks a step in financial justice that strongly tested the radical agreement among the members of the Go- vernment. Then, taking the department of Education, and coupling together Lord John Bissell's bill that stands over for improvement, with the bill for exempting all but Theological Professors in the Scotch Universities from subscription to artieles,—remembering the Commission that has been appointed to investigate education chari- ties, and not forgetting that within the last few weeks our Uni- versities of Oxford and Cambridge have received intimations from the Home Secretary that Government is resolved to accomplish University Reform, with their aid if they will, but otherwise in spite of them,—we cannot help seeing in these facts an indication of harmony exactly in that region to which our worst fears and anxieties were originally directed. If we say nothing of the India Bill—of the measures connected with the defence of the country— of the Commission to inquire into London Corporation—of the brilliant exploits of Lord Palmerston at the Home Office, tending to displace dirt from that wrong position in which its dirtiness consists,—it is not because these are not valuable steps in them- selves, but because they do not particularly illustrate that rap- prochement of Ministers upon which it is our pleasant task this last morning of the year to discourse. It was presumed that they could act together, and vigorously, in such matters ; the main fear was that speculative differences might find issue in practical diver- gence upon questions that affected or seemed to afled the Church and institutions connected with it.
Parties will no doubt arise again, when great questions divide men's minds. That is how parties have risen at important epochs of our history—at the despotism of Charles the First, at the Revo- lution, at the reaction against the oligarchy of the great families, at the growing desire for a more real representation, at the as- saults of the Whigs on Church abuses after the Reform Bill, at the agitation against the Corn-laws. So when some other change affecting some great interest, involving some disputed prin- ciple, comes again to be a want among us, we shall have parties again, and they will have a meaning. After the Free-trade mea- sures, old distinctions had become obsolete ; to keep them up was a meaningless absurdity, and practically injured the country by keeping a large supply of second-rate men in office when first-rate men were to be had. That is over for a time ; and the year 1853 will be remembered hereafter, above all its special measures, for having conducted us through the experiment of a Coalition Minis- try successfully. Had we been writing last Saturday, wo might have had to lament that the experiment, though thoroughly suc- cessful as far as it had gone, yet threatened a coming failure by the secession of one of the most able and popular members of the Government, on an assigned cause wholly inadequate to account for such a step at the present crisis. Happily, that breach is healed, and Lord Palmerston is himself again ; which he can scarcely be held to be when he surprises himself out of office. Whatever the cause of his temporary retirement, his return cannot fail to make the Ministry even stronger than before, not only be- cause the circumstances imply cordiality and a readiness to come to an understanding, but still more because so clever a man as Lord Palmerston would not be likely to withdraw a resignation once tendered unless he saw good reason for supposing that his re- union with his colleagues would be firm and lasting. So, whether the difference was of substantial policy, or mere irritated personal feeling, we must regard Lord Palmerston as more than ever bound to the Government, and the Government as stronger than it was before ; and 1853 closes on the Coalition as firmly united as its best friends could have expected or even wished. Were it possible to bound our view of the past year by the sea that separates us from the rest of Europe and the world, our politi- cal retrospect would supply but little cause for regret, and we could look forward to the opening year with unclouded cheerfulness and hope. Such a limitation is at all times impossible for England, and is especially so now, that the dispute between Russia and Turkey threatens the peace of Europe with the most formidable rupture it has experienced since the battle of Waterloo. But into the prospect opened by this collision between two semi-barbarous powers we have not now to glance, or to conjecture what the close of 1854 may have biought to pass. Even on what has been done by our own Government we have at present but very inadequate means for pronouncing judgment. But we may conclude from Lord Palmerston's return to office, that on this Eastern question, as on those more immediately concerning home politics, the coun- sels of the Coalition Ministry are harmonious. One indiscretion must certainly be debited to the Government, and that is their assent to the first Vienna note. What led them into such an evi- dent error it is yet impossible to know, and idle to anticipate know- ledge by conjecture. But whatever judgment may hereafter be passed upon their ability and firmness in conducting negotiations through more than eight months, we may at least congratulate ourselves that these negotiations have been directed by the ablest statesmen England possesses, and that if after eight-and-thirty years a terrible war is again to break out, at least our Govern- ment has used its utmost efforts to prevent so great a disaster, so that the responsibility of all that may follow rests not upon our heads, but upon the one man whose arrogance, insincerity, and ambition, are opposing themselves to the public law and pub- lic opinion of the civilized world. And we may further eon- Rider that nothing short of the patience exhibited by the Govern- ments of France and England would have sufficed to display in its true light the dangerous and perfidious policy of the Emperor Nicholas, or to call forth in both countries that strong feeling of indignation and resentment, which, if war is to take place, insure to the Governments of both countries hearty support and sym- pathy. It yet remains to be seen whether that patience has not been carried even beyond the limits of national honour and inte- rest. But we are fully alive to the responsibility of a Government, and its laudable dread of being urged by popular feeling into a war, the burdens of which will tend to arrest improvement, and the issues of which are on many accounts uncertain. One thing this otherwise untoward event has brought about, which would compensate for much evil and anxiety—that the French and English nations are acting together with a cordiality which will do more than a century's harangues to blot out the remembrance of ancient enmity. How it reproves rash judgments' to find the man whose accession to the Imperial throne of France was looked upon as fraught with menace to our shores, united to us within a twelvemonth, by ties apparently firmer and more sincere than have ever bound to us those miserable Bourbons, whose gratitude it seems as impossible to awaken as it is to bind their honour or shame them of their selfishness! Louis Napoleon, criminal as we think certain acts of his life to have been, is neither fool nor coward, however the necessities of his situation may urge him into courses that must swell a heavy account, to be one day settled. If principle forbade us to be silent on his crimes—if prin- ciple and prudence combine to warn us against placing an =vigilant reliance upon the man who, for his personal ambition, fomented the civil discords of a great country, and whose hand, red with the slaughter of unresisting citizens in the streets of their capital, has strained its iron nerves in repressing that freedom of speech and movement of intellect we prize as the richest inheritance of modern life—at least he is as well entitled to the courtesy and good-will of the English Sovereign and the English nation, as those other royal personages of Europe whose lives have been passed in crimes worse than his, because without his excuse : for had he succeeded to an hereditary throne, he has too much ca- pacity, too much tact, too much governing faculty, to have found crimes necessary to maintain his position—too much grandeur of imagination to have sunk into a despot when he might have been the leader of a free and gallant people. In our eyes, Russia is to Europe now what Mahometanism was four centuries since—the godless infidel power, the power recognizing neither right nor wrong, incarnate brute force, terrible but hateful. Whoever will help us to resist this, whether it be Mazzini or Louis Napoleon, shall be welcome to our side. We shall so far, at all events, be fighting together for truth and freedom and civilization—for all that makes life desirable and man godlike, against all that makes life a desert and a prison, and man savage, degraded, and miserable. This seems to be the contest that 1854 will see began : what year will see it ended ?
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