The two meetings that form the chief items of political
action with our own public, this week, do not contribute much towards their professed objects. The meeting of the Protestant Alliance, to promote resistance to Papal oppression, ended in the adoption of a memorial inviting Lord Clarendon to withdraw an ambassador from courts sinning against the freedom of Protestant conscience; which certainly does not supply the Foreign Secretary with counsel or support to rescue any aggrieved state or people in struggling towards freedom. The plan suggested would not rescue South Germany, nor sustain any Medial still pent in Italian rigours. The meeting at the Hanover Square Rooms, to promote the emancipation of Europe from Absolutist tyranny, by celebrating the anniversary of the revolution of 1830 in Poland and stimulat- ing the martial ardour of the public, is likely, so far as it has any influence at all, to produce the exactly opposite effect. The lan- guage of one gentleman, the secretary, who cried aloud for univer- sal war and insurrection, has been taken to confess the true mean- ing of Republican movements. In foreigners much must be al- lowed to imperfect use of an alien tongue, or to imperfect reporting ; much also to feelings in which all must sympathize. We cannot forget that hatred of kings is not an abstract idea with the sub- jects of Austria or Naples, but is the inevitable result of the
usage which those subjects undergo. Every people dreads the fami- liar cause of its worst calamities : at New Orleans, they turn pale at the coming of yellow fever ; in the West Indies, the tornado is the devouring terror; in India, the tiger and the jungle snakes are the forms of aeath ; in Naples, it is the Sing and his police that bring calamity to every man's door; and when the flesh is pierced the tongue shrieks. But it is unfortunate that real patriots should so manage as to become the scarecrows of liberty.
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