TOPICS OF THE DAY.
1858 AND 1859.
POLITICALLY 1858 was a disappointing and vexatious year ; com- mercially it was one of suspense and transition. But larger causes are constantly: at work than those with which we more particularly and anxiously busy ourselves as "the measures of the day " ; and in turning back to review our progress since the 1st of last January, we have no reason to be discontented with the amount of the work done,—for us if not by us. If, indeed, we were to judge of 1858 by our own calculations, we might re- peat the hackneyed maxim, Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shalknot be disappointed." On the other hand, some.of the most remarkable events of 1858 had occupied no part in our own programme for that year, but were vouchsafed to us unexpectedly ; not exactly those upon which we reckoned. It is' however, a fact which is full of lessons for us that upon the whole the amount of progress in 1858 belonged to the series of en- deavours in which this country has persevered for more than a quarter of a century. Although our public men had become per- plexed in their intentions, imagined that comparatively little re- mained for them to do, hampered themselves with promises that they took up simply for the show of having business to do, and suffered themselves to be baffled by difficulties that were still more superfluous, yet upon the whole the purpose that had ani- mated the people throughout the quarter of the century, and the thoughts which had gained a complete and enduring ascendency in the public mind still went on as if the machine were too vast for the artists that had constructed it and pursued its great move- ment independently of their vacillating and bewildered. handling. This grand truth may remind us how little of the machine is really constructed by ourselves, how much of it we must trace to a higher origin; and therefore how any faithful and sincere ser- vice continues to avail even after the servants themselves have passed away or have for a time forgotten their duty.
The Prussian marriage was set down for 1858 and it was duly performed. It has had no magical effect upon the relations of Great Britain or of Central Europe, given no sudden access to the influence of Prussia on Germany or constitutional principles. We began with " peace " in Europe, more or less sincere ; revolt going on in India ; and our commerce entangled in dangerous and discreditable alliances which had compelled the Government of the Bank of England to adopt the protective discount of 8 per cent. The year opened indeed with some officially cheering idea that, in the ensuing sessing of Parliament, Lord Palmerston, commanding a majority of Two Hundred, perfectly at his ease, and inclining to be openhanded out of the magnanimity of success, might vouchsafe a Reform Bill. Almost evelry month since has been a rebuke to expectation. We have had no Reform Bill from Lord Palmerston; and the great Majority of Two Hundred broke down beneath his feet, less through the occurrence of startling events than through a trivial blunder of his own. Nobody, on the 1st of January last year, expected Felice Orsini to attain so near the assassination of the French Cmsar ; still less could any one either in Paris or London expect that outburst of the Colonels who charged the crime against England ; while Napoleon, as if his breast were not invulnerable to the indiscreet passion of fear, suffered his Foreign Minister to address outrageous demands upon this country respecting her treatment of Aliens and her law of arrest. Lord Palmerston is a bold man, cheerfully disposed, clever, and quick witted ; but he made the frightful mistake of endeavouring to obviate so inconvenient a result as a dispute be- tween France and England by acquiescing in the claims of fear, by compromising our independence and by offering to tamper with our laws under dictation ; with the result that the majority in Parliament not pledged to his following scouted his measure and compelled him to retire from office in something like public disgrace. At the commencement of the year certainly no one of us expected to have a Tory Government enter office, still less to see it do so for the purpose of continuing a Liberal policy ; while taking out of Lord Palmerston's hands the vindication of our national dignity towards France and accomplishing the rescue of Watt and Park from the feeble grasp of Naples. We began the year with the East India Company in possession of the East Indian Sovereignty—the Act of Parliament calling upon the Queen to assume the direct government of the Eastern Empire was an "net, of energy" entirely unexpected at the hands of Lord Palmerston ; but when he introduced the measure to Parliament, he certainly as little expected to see Lord John Russell interpose, as if he had entirely forgotten the relations of party; still less could the Master of the Two Hundred majority have expected to see the Royal Government of India completed by Lord Stanley, and the "act of energy" carried to the credit of Lord Derby's Government. We had but a vague hope that the mutiny would be put down ; little were we able to calculate that before the end of the year Lord Clyde would have made such de- cisive progress in compressing the very last traces of the war ; still less that the Royal Proclamation would have had so much positive success.
As unexpected was all this as the carrying of the two Bills to alter the oaths and admit the Jews, after Parliament had pottered with the question for so many years ; or the triumph of Mr. Locke King's Bill for abolishing Property Qualification for Members of Parliament, under the auspices of a Tory Govern- ment. The assembling of the Conference in Paris to settle about the Danubian Principalities was set down in the programme ; but who expected the Servian revolution ? We had sent Lord Elgin to China, and had become weary of his apparent procrastinations : who counted upon the Peiho Treaty, or on that of Jeddo ? Upon the whole we may fairly say of 1858 that we did not get out of it what we calculated upon accomplishing ; that we were visited with perils that we did not foresee ; and that we have made gains upon which we did not calculate—the balance of results un- doubtedly being greatly in our favour. Expectation is not so much to be rebuked for its excess as for its routine. The most popular party amongst us becomes so ac- customed to the regular course of business, that we reckon upon a sequel of events exactly accordant with our "experiences,' and our arrangements; until we almost persuade ourselves that we dictate, at least negatively, to Providence. "The Liberal party" was no sooner "thrown out of power" than it reassembled in dis- tinguished saloons in order to reconsider its position and to re- habilitate itself, as if the simple resolution to do so, as if the routine dodge of "a long pull and a strong pull," &c., could :re- store "the Liberal party " to its true function—that of represent- ing, developing, and executing the growing opinion of the coun- try. The gentlemen who represent opinions long since run to seed are Liberals only by hereditary titles, without any organic function in the vital business of today. If we often mar our own political industry by expecting too confidently, we are as often chargeable with a still grosser mistake in closing our look-out for events not down in our limited programme. Expectancy is a less offence than this kind of non-expectancy. We preoccupy our vision with favourite ohjects, and close our observation against the coming of events whose causes are as manifest as the working of the elements, if we would only keep our eyes free to see them. A paltry but truly a dan- gerous complication arose out of the nefarious case of the Charles-et-Georges; where an Imperial Government was seen in connivance with a sort of slave-trade smuggling, and where we lacked the courage to vindicate either our own policy or an an- cient ally, and so suffered the independence of Portugal to be in- vaded—" the balance of power" notwithstanding. But that event we might have distinctly foreseen if we had but suffered ourselves to note the overbearing attitude of France towards the Iberian Peninsula and both its kingdoms, the progress of the free black emigration under M. Regis and his official accomplices, and the involved state of our own relations with regard to the slave- trade suppression. We have suffered ourselves to be surprised by the emancipation of the serfs in Russia ; an event as naturally as possible following from the liberal tendencies of Alexander the Second and the endeavours of previous Emperors in the same direction. The Russian occupation of Villafranca was a surprise only because we had chosen to turn our eyes away from the ne- cessary consequences of French intrigue in Italy, of our own vacillation and mean vacillating equivocations, and the market which Russia is making as the possible emancipator of Austro- Italian serfs. The self-same causes have been acting down to the 31st of December 1858, and are breeding new surprises for us, if we choose to be surprised, in 1859.
In a totally different quarter of the world, the disputes between Mexico and the United States—those cavillings over the Clayton- Bulwer Treaty which cannnot be protracted for ever—the auda- cious imprudences which Spain cannot maintain eternally in the West Indies, have been agencies carried on long enough for us to calculate the sequel, if we would but take the pains to do so. Again, turning to a different region, the whole year '58 has been absorbed with lamentation and reflections on the commercial crisis which happened in 1857. Down to the very last, we have had the Court of Bankruptcy, with the assistance of Mr. Windle Cole and Mr. Chapman, analyzing the most cogent causes of some of our commercial troubles ; of which troubles a huge portion has been worked off in the parting year. For, while we began with some- thing like a chronic panic, and the Bank discount at 8 per cent, we have been so industrious and so prudent that, fortified by a compulsory prudence in Germany and France, a very decided re- covery in America, and a good harvest almost all over the world, we end the year with the Bank discount at 2k per cent, and an enormous mass of capital on hand to begin the labours of 1859.
And all this time the measure upon which successful Premiers have forced the public most to concentrate its attention is still the profoundest of mysteries for us. We who have expected a Reform Bill at the hands of an Aberdeen, a Russell, and a Palmerston, hardly know whether to expect it from a Derby or not, and are in the mood to be surprised either way ; while Mr. Bright is left free to wander about the country, asking what it would like to have in the anticipated default alike of Conservatives and Liberals. Our political surprises are the recoil of our own want of purpose. But one effect of the suspended intention that has fretted us in the past year is to clear away many prejudices, break many en- tangling alliances, and leave us free, if we so please, to form new combinations and work new results out of the enlarged oppor- tunity of 1859. Our principles must be, to watch events with a renovated candour and modesty of observation ; to abandon the vain labour of recovering the lost enterprises of the last perplex- ing years ; and to work out such practical improvements as will be the proper stepping-stones from the glorious traditions of our country to a future equally glorious.
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