4 JANUARY 1930, Page 17

A Hundred Years Ago

THE " SPECTATOR," JANUARY 2ND, 1830.

1829.

We had a sincere respect for 1829, and we love the recollection of its great deeds. Abroad and at home, tho cause of liberty and humanity and true wisdom has been successful. The Turk, who had acquired as it were an imperscriptible right to ignorance and oppression, has partly by the movings of a niaster spirit within, and more by salutary violence from without, been forced to enter on the path of political and moral regeneration. The Greeks, whose doubtful struggle against their tyrants had for years attracted the sympathy of every enlightened spirit in the Old World and the New, have at length been enabled to lay the top-stone of their freedom with joy. Nor will the repression and punishment of Mohamedan insolence, and the raising of Greece to independence, be without its salutary influence on the mighty power of the North,

which has been the instrument of both. No man ligliteth a lamp for his neighbour and receiveth not himself some benefit from its rays." Th3 Western parts of Europe are full of consolation. In Prussia, political improvement is proceeding slowly, surely, and cantina- ously. The foes to improvement in Europe have essayed their last to arrest its advances in America.

We hear of much and extended suffering throughout England—

of falling rents, diminishing profits, masters without business, labourers without employment. Thereis a good deal of exaggeration in these accounts, and a good deal of truth. We hear much of the prosperity of former years, to which" the same remark equally applies. We sympathize honestly and truly with the evils of the present time—with the prosperity of the past we sympathize very little. We have a faint memory of those high and prosperous days.