type of democracy. organization of England, because it brings, on
the whole, If Victor Hugo were trying to explain the temper of the breadth of view, culture of imagination, and prudence of meeting on Thursday night, he would say, as he says some- aim, to the top. The working classes care little for.the mere where—we imagine less truly—of the French democrats, that executive administration, much for the sense of equality, the men who composed it had fallen in love with the idea of and the erasure of the sometimes apparently, sometimes a People, and wished to merge the nation in the People, redly, unjust distinctions between man and man; they would be instead of the people in the nation. That, no doubt, sounds better content with an incoherent government on a wide popu- at first like a kind of metaphysical conundrum ; but it might lar basis than with the best that ever ruled, if it had been easily be illustrated in connection with Thursday night's filtered through the various strata of modern English meeting, so as to convey a very simple and intelligible truth. society. The democracy of the meeting, like the democracy of The main conclusion which the meeting forced upon us its eloquent chairman, evidently ignored, disliked, and was this—that unless the higher classes of England take wished to remove all those distinctions of class and class, more pains than they now do to learn the first principles of that natural hierarchy of social strata rising one above liberty from the lower — unless we can see the thinking the other to a single point ; and loved to see in its mind of England coming into truer relations with the popu- place, as they almost do in America, and in many lar heart, the constitution of England will not very long resist of our colonies, men standing all on the same level, with the pressure which such men as these can bring to bear nothing above thembut the invisible God. Society, as it has poli- against it. Truly did Mr. Bright say, in the striking peror- tically grown up in old Europe, is constructed like a cone taper- ation of his democratic speech, "Impartial history will tell lug to a point ; society, so fax as it is as yet politically born that when your statesmen were hostile or coldly neutral,— in America,—or, as we should say, only in embryo, and not when many of your rich men were corrupt,--when yet fully born into political life at all, —is a swaying mass of your press, which ought to have instructed and defended, has people on a vast plain. But there is something in this which been mainly written to betray, the fate of the American touches the imagination of Mr. Bright, and of the Continent and its vast populations being imperilled, you cling English artizans, as far grander than the many mem- to freedom with an unfaltering trust that God, in His mercy, bers linked together by natural laws of subordination will yet make it the heritage of all His children." We do not and co-operation' under one head, which constitute the share his wish, and that of the Trades' Unionists, to see a type of political life in our European nations. Mr. Bright, democracy take the place of our present constitution, because we indeed, probably differs from the artizans in one feeling, and believe that a far truer freedom and higher kind of liberty may in one alone. They would wish to see even wealth as much be secured under it than can ever be secured under any merede- as possible thus equally portioned out. He prefers to see wealth moeracy ; but should that hope be falsified by the coldness of our accumulating—as, when left to itself, it always will accumu- higher classes to the noblest popular instincts, we could even late—in unequal masses, thus giving the to some of the welcome in England such a clumsy and helpless democracy greatest variations in the surface of our society, as the North now presents, rather than put such a powerful The tendency of which we have spoken showed itself in and keen instrument of evil into the hands of oligarchic two ways—a very bitter feeling against class privileges, passion, asis now wielded by the slaveowners of the South. which is not in itself at all unnatural, when cur higher classes show, as they have done recently on the American I' question, that the fire of their love for human free- THE HOPES OF POLAND. dom burns BO very dimly, if it is not extinguished, in, ANTHROPOMORPHISM is not an error confinel to thee- their breasts; and, what was more remarkable, in a posi- logians. Six weeks ago the majority of English poli- tive sympathy with the headless, groping, blundering ticians had not heard the name of General Langiewicx. Even sort of fashion in which the Federal Democracy has now, all they know of him is that he, a light-haired soldier- done its work. One man called Mr. Lincoln a Colossus, physician of thirty, Pole by race and Prussian by legal which certainly can only have had reference to his physical designation, had raised a small army of Poles, defeated the stature. And all of them, from Mr. Bright downwards, not Russian troops in two or three well-managed skirmishes, and simply excused, but we may almost say seemed to admire, the proclaimed himself, or been proclaimed, ad interim Dictator of hesitating tentative fashion in which the Government has Poland. And yet, because this almost unknown man has been "sounded on its dim and perilous way," trying to make defeated, driven across the Austrian border, and compelled to its policy at each moment represent the average level of moral surrender to Austrian hussars, half England believes that the conviction in the people whom it rules. No doubt it was cause to which an entire nation has for a century devoted all felt as representative of that executive supremacy of the it possesses of great, or noble, or patriotic, has been extin- masses which the middle classes of England, on the whole, dread, TOPICS OF TIIE DAY. and the more manly mid intelligent operatives so anxiously wish . . for. We think it was Mr. Cremer, a joiner, and a very clever MR. BRIGHT AND THE TRADES' UNIONISTS. speaker, who in the same speech exhorted the North never to THE" democratic idea," as Mr. Disraeli calls it, is a mere give in till they had conquered, and remarked that, if it was worry, a mystery, a riddle, to many large classes of true, as was said, that the North could never be a great mill- Englishmen,—even to those who clearly understand and love tary power, it was so much the better for the North, since freedom and national independence—but who think a g6od we all knew that standing armies are used to crush the liber- deal more of prompt government, strong government, intelli- ties of the masses. That exactly expresses the temper of the gent government, in a word, good government, than they meeting, which sympathized heartily with what we may call do of mere popular ideas. To such, and they are very the executive incompetence of the North, the helpless numerous, both amongst our middle and higher classes, compromising policy which tries in vain to balance be- nothing could be more instructive than to attend the meet- tween the opposite wishes of opposite popular parties, ing at St. James's Hall on Thursday night, to watch its tern- and yet desired to see it triumph in spite of that incom- per as Mr. Bright, with a master hand, struck the chords petence. There was but one speaker, —and he an Irish mason, to which the warm butjealous imagination of physical labour whose brogue, naiveté, and wit very justly delighted his passionately vibrates, to fellow the thread of the thoughts audience,—who had a clear sense of the enormous advantages of the various working men who best succeeded, sometimes in which an aristocratic executive has over a democratic. He spite of many glaring deficiencies of education, in expressing proclaimed to his fellow labourers that the South had all the the mind of the meeting,—to note the curious kind of tender- elements of vast military success, and that, should it triumph, nese with which the blunders and compromises of principle Lord Russell would soon find reason to fear for the West on the part of the American democracy were softened away. India Islands, and before long for the naval supremacy of —the occasional symptoms of a preference for a basis of pope- England. But in general, while the meeting felt clearly Itu• expediency rather than abstract right in political matters, the compliment to the masses implied in Mr. Lincoln's —the extraordinary enthusiasm with which the mention of groping policy, they had no corresponding sense of the the name of the working man who presides over the Federal efficiency and point given to political principles, whether Government was uniformly received, —the passionate applause evil or good, by that aristocratic form of organization which with which every mention of the merits of a republic, every great differences of social level imply. They so much pre- depreciating expression towards privilege, aristocracy, or ferred a headless democracy, that they could not clearly see monarchy, was greeted. The meeting, in short, expressed its weakness, though they had to excuse its results. This causes more clearly than we have ever seen them expressed, the the great gulf between the middle and the working classes of tnanlyoperatives' political taste and conscience, and shed a very England. The middle classes think most of a good executive, of strong light on the genius of what we may call the artizan clear aims, of prudent counsels, and prefer the aristocratic
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