TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE TOPIC OF TOPICS.

" To believe practically tint the poor and luckless are here only as a nuisance to be abraded and abated, and in some permissible manner made away with, and swept out uf sight, is not an amiable thith.'*--Chartisat, by ThAnus Carlyle.

THERE are no natural immutable laws whereby one may discrimi- nate the objects of political speculation into practical and visionary, but the thing once visionary becomes practical, and the thing once practical becomes visionary. The whole story of the world is full of this conversion ot' dreams into realities, and reconversion of realities into dreams. Let us therefore concede that which such a reflection threes on us, that the list of things which are true for ever is small indeed, (precious no doubt in proportion ) and that no age can acquire a right to dictate to its posterity either what laws or what opinions it shall have, these taking all their shape and justification from Time alone.

A universal reading public is one of those objects of speculation than which—nothing once more visionary—nothing is now more practical. What was practical when this was visionary ? The practical fitmiliar thing then was Feudalism, DOW gone its way to the land of dreams again—Feudalism, become an old romance, im- possible as Utopia, maid as the Arabian Nights—this, we say, was the common-sense, practical thing. Such reflections are worth resting on. Let those in particular who have been so long " standing on the ancient ways" sit down a little here, for God's sake—we feel for the fatiguing nature of their occupation : those " ancient ways," so rough and worn, must be hard patrolling, and it grieves one to see so many fine fellows exhausting themselves in it service that nobody requires them to be burdened with—es- pecially as we may be allowed to remark, there is a growing indis- position to pay watch-rates Oil that beat. Then let them " come. out of that " with all speed, " standing " no longer on " ways" that everybody but themselves perceives to be blocked up at the other end; let them at length take a chair, and while resting chew, at our pressing invitation, this cud.

Have there not been pastoral ages, heroic ages, golden ages, iron ages, chivalric ages, dark ages, and all other sorts of ages ? How

would any of these ages have respectively stared incredulous at the image of all the rest, holding them absurd and visionary—it-

self alone possible and rational ! Conceive the amazement of the King of Men, some one in the Assembly of the Greeks getting up and contending that the affliction of the people was more political

than physical, that for Apollo's bow it was an old fable, and con- cluding with a proposal for Parliamentary representation and a ten-pound franchise! Or, to reverse the anachronism,—hostilities, Sit y with Russia, being detertnined on, then fancy my Lord PAL- MERSTON bursting into the apartments of Mr. BAMSGTON MAC-. Au LA; and exclaiming, as he thrusts something into his hands, " Now, Bab, here's the fiddle—look sharp—the House is waiting— in good voice, eh ?—tip them plenty of your enharmonic genus, you know—let them hear your net.° hyperbolmon ;" and limey BAR screwing the pegs up and humming his part, and then away to St. Stephen's fiddle in hand, there, like another Solon, to plant a soul of patriotism even under the ribs of Radicalism by force of a hundred strophes in the Phrygian mode, (for SOLON too was occasional War Minister, and, what is more considerable in the parallel, he also, in his humble way, presented a nation with a code of laws); and a warlike spirit seizes the whole House—even PEASE becoming un- manageable, and JOSEPH llesm, at the fiftieth stanza, is willing to vote away any sum of money to the United Service.* Such things are anachronisms, that is all. There is nothing im- possible in a ten-pound franchise, till we get to debating it with Agamemnon—nothing ridiculous in SOLON'S lyre, till we put it into- the hands of Mr. BABINGTON MACAULAY. It is time and cir- cumstances therefore, it seems, which make most things possible or impossible, reasonable or absurd, and not any inherent gift of being or doom of not being. Such are the revolutions which systems and principles pertbrm—according (is it not just to infer ?) to some harmonious scheme of human progression. Such are the ever- shifting appearances of the political and social hemisphere, in which, while that small but precious list of enduring truths remains, like a polar constellation, ever visible above the horizon, all the rest run round, and rise and set in a circle ; these only to be sworn by for a time, the others for all time. We blame not the men who swore by Feudalism, when Feudalism was a visible in- fluential sign flaming in the ascendant—much that is not true now was true then ; but we blame—no, we laugh only at those, who, when this or any other their " bright particular star" is clearly gone to the antipodes, actually—in order to remain as relative to it as possible—innert themselves, by a sort of practical bull, going about on their heads—a living contradiction to their age, a laugh- ingstock and wonderment to the whole earth, and all who walk it, at one side or the other.

The periods of human experience above compared, though they contrast violently, do not proceed with violence, but, like all great operations in nature, by slow, =toted stages. Move, however, they do, and move they will—even as grows the grass—continually: and still the inquiry " Now a stage ?" and "Now a stage?" has to be put and answered, however unwillingly—else can no fit pro- vision be made for a journey which lies, not, as some appear to think, all over one and the same sort of road—not all on highways,

* Plat. in yin Solonis.

nor all on byways, nor yet—oh, volunteer "standing " police force— all on " ancient ways," but on each and every kind of way in suc- cession. Make no changes—no new arrangements in the course of such a journey ? ask no questions on the road? take no notice of stages ?—Safe travelling this ! May we not say of such travelling once for all—the world may thank it for whatever of fatal concus- sion and sprawling overthrow it has at any time experienced ? The rule appears to be—to anticipate nothing, not even the inevitable, but to let all changes work themselves out in violence, you, mean- while, standing by with your hands in your pocket, or, if doing aught, then resisting the inevitable ; or, again, if "religion "—that is, if "your doxy "—happens to be your fixed idea, then, fbr the sum of all your propitiatory concessions to a starving raging people, giving simply more church,— like those priests of Vesuvius who when they would stay the rushing lava advanced befbre it with holy relics. If however, by an unfortunate arrangement, the grass will grow, the new teeth will supplant the old teeth,--if there is no helping it but in the womb of Time new periods must be born, reqtdring due childbed preparations to make them come forth happily and not cala- mitously,—then, whether is it better to use foresight and precaution, or blindness, pretended ignorance, and lying repudiation? And what, 0 ye gay-deceiving Retbrm-orators, what if the child be your own child ? are there no responsibilities for Whig fathers of' Chartist offspring ? or do you carry out, in that matter, the princi- ple of your Bastardy-clauses, and leave the weaker consenting party to hear all the penalties ? Alas, to the unprepared every- thing comes too soon—children to those who caunot provide tbr them, and the giant births of Time that we call " ;eras " to the Minister who will not mark them coming nor knows how to meet them. if foresight and preparation, however, are better than being taken unawares, and the very air is full of signs and tokens for those who can mark and understand, then it seems that a Minister, wanting skill in political augury, is not only no conjurer, but even no statesman, and those " signs of the times," long since voted part of the cant of Liberalism, are after all no cant, but real por- tentous things, which all " pilots " who hope to " weather storms" must both profoundly comprehend and vigilantly observe. Ours know all the rocks in the sea—but then, it is in the striking sense in winch the Irish pilot knew them : "To he sure and I do," says Fat, [whack goes the boat]—" there's cue !" It might be thought to require no great research, above or below the waters, to discern for "signs of the tunics" the events that are now passing tinder our view. The man who secs no sign in Chart- ism would pass the " Black Bull " without seeing it—would not recognize the " Saracen's Head : " fbr such a man " signs " are hung out in vain, whether in Skinner Street or in Monmouthshire, and no matter how colossal ; the man is blind. To eyes, however, of clearer sight, what, and of what nature, are those great human crises Obr Chartism, after all, is but one phase of (urs) which in- dicate with certainty the point of a new epoch, distinguishing real national neivements from temporary fermentations ? The answer is easy. Whatever thing serves to introduce some new general element of power amongst a people, whereby their energies are called into new fields of' action, new interests are awakened, new prospectil are Opened, beyond a doubt that thing operates a wide- spread nailed and physical change in the condition of the country, -tvhiclt in its ramifications must implicate the whole social ma- chinery, nere.mitoliPp—as the only means of' giving it a safe and beneficial direetion—eorresponiiing polllical changes. The invention of laugunge and its symbols, the invention of the meail arts, the invent iii of' money, the invention of' ships, the invention of print- ing--tluse have been so many such elements, so many terminators of old and institutors of new periods. You may curse, ii' von like, (though it is not genteel,) but you cannot vado such events, nor even steal any of' their consequences from them ; and when they have happened, it is better, perhaps, to know them irreversible, and spare an idle struggle with the gods. No doubt, if a Bishop of Exeter, with his horror of knowledge and fixed belief of his power to reverse it, could have been in die garden of Paradiai when Eve had eaten of the fruit, the Amu/eh-pump would have seemed to him the one thing good and practical. Bieber wisdom left the apple to digest. We who, in our time, see in knowledge nothing hurtful in the end—except to Bishops of Exeter--are so flir from thinking the people of England have plucked their apple too soon, that we only lament they could not devour it long ago. The apple has long been ripe—whatever " the pear" may be. And are no such phamomena, as have heretotbre heralded new periods now visible in our hemisphere ? no steam-power—no rail- roads—no newspapers—no universal-influencing literature? Vast as were the results of printing, even it must yield the palm of power when weighed against the combined inventions of modern genius, swelled by its own brood. Reflect then : the lesser power gave us the Refi.rmation—gavc us the Revolution : the 4.rcalcr, ripening now in the bosom of society more than a quarter of a cen- tury, hare had no political opera/en yd.* We say again, such re- flections, be they agreeable or be they not agreeable, mvst be en- tertained. We see amongst us at this moment, mixing themselves up in all affairs, several strange faces of doubtful-looking AGENTS; and on consideration we perceive, by all generic circumstances of feature, tendencies, and capacities, that they are referable to that * The Reform Act, having proved inoperative itself, must be excluded from such a reckoning. Practically an abortion, (for it has not added one fraction to the real advantages of the people, and has failed, through the conspiracy of its encodes, to realize even its formal objects,) its only merit -bow in the eyes of a sincere Reformer is that it established the principle of reform.

mighty class of natural powers, the more than Titans of time old moral world, that were at once the destroyers and inconstructors 0 her fortunes. With them,

0 Be they spirits of health, or goblins damned, Bring with them airs from heaven or blasts from hell," we must speak. To deny their presence or discredit their power, is a childish folly—a mere indulgence of temper, like the Persian King's killing the messenger that brought news of defeat. We know that these AGENTS (angels or devils) have already ful- filled the socia/ part of their mission—that is, they have, as has been said, " worked a wide-spread moral and physical change hi the condition of the country." lye have seen, hoe ever, that great social changes " necessitate corresponding political " Ones, without which their operation, consistently with the nature of' all enormous practical contradictions, must be violent and disastrous. The political part of their mission, it seems, renmins behind—has vot been fulfilled, but is now, in this fortieth year of' our century, at length labouring to fulfil itself. Ilow ? In the old way— blindly, as without guidance vouchsafed, and though mightily, miserably; with a Samson's strength to pull down the temple of the Philistines, and a Szunson's resolution to perish, if need be, in the universal ruin ; but with the plea of a Samson, the plea of' oppression ap- pealed against in vain, of wretchedness not relieved, the plea of injustice—not indeed even so, but also unhappily in no ethcr man- ner, to be redressed.

Yet observe our Philistine rulers ! Though the hair uf their Samson has visibly grown again (Judges, clump. xvi. V. to an adequacy with any feat of destruction, they dream not of repara- tion—hardly refrain from fresh iojuries ; and when they are pleased to "call hint," (v. .2.5,) it is still only " that he may make us sport." Ilow admirably descriptive of' the annual " calls" to popular con- fidence and expectation, with the usual result in mockery and despair ! Indeed, wlmt other motive can be supposed at any dine to have animated these popularity-huntino., palavering traders in "Refbrin ?" Was it that ;folio Bull, with fowl in pot, might bless the name of patriots ? No, but only " that he may /mike us sport." Such sport may well cause us to tremble at the thought of' what practical counter-jest might come to be played off some day on the " pillars of the state."

That political retrroution in some shape must come ahout, is

hardly any longer a question : when things can not, it requires no great cunning to gather that they will not, remain as they are. That the object will be brought about by those to whom alone without infraction of' peace and order its accomplishment is pos- sible, may be doubted or believed. That tlw present Rouse of Commons will bring it about, or that, after fifteen hundred hours of desperate Babelism, it will have any thing to show fit' the fruit of the sessif,n beyond its ONVI1 ever-deepening shame and the pro- longed echoes of' the public scorn—this at least believe not, for it is not credible.

We have been led into insisting in this paper more nrgently than

usual on several political considerations which have been impressed on the readers of the Spectator before at different times, from the satisthetion we have experienced in reading a pamphlet by Air. TitoN us CAm,y1.1:, entitled "C'hurasm," from which we have taken our inotto,—a pamphlet which institutes such a searching, un- sparing investiation into the question of popular rights, uemasks with such ease some of' die most flourishing lies of' the time, prac- tical and logical, and eontsins so many (le( p-sighted oleervations on the general course of' politics, tied it should, and it will, we are sure, find its way into the hands of every reader who desires either to get at the heart of the great question of the day, or to strengthen the foundations of' his genend convictions. As we shall return to the subject of' Chaeti,imi next week, WC ECSCEVC till then any discussion on Imints more immediately suggested by this masterly pamphlet. 1mm he mean time, we offer, without comment, a few choice extracts that will speak for themselves,—some of them, We are led to thinli, with a bluntness of allusion more IsItzla(iLtling than pleasant to " the best Ministry this country ever

MERE STATISTICS OF WAGES, &C. INSUFFICIENT TO AVIESI"E1131 PRESENCE OE COMFORT.

" What constitutes the ivellbeing an man ? Many things; of which the wages be gets and the bread he bays with them, are but one prclindnary item. G rant, ho'wever, that the wages were the whole; that once 'knowing the wages and. the price dr bread, we know all ; then what are the wages? Statistic inquiry, in its prt sent vnguided condition, cannot tell. The average rate of (in \ wages is not correctly ast•ertnined for any portion of this comity.). • not only not -lily half et 'dories, it is net even ascertained anywhere for decades or years ; ibr from instit tit log comparisons with the past, the present itself is no- known to us. And then, given the average of wages, what is the constancy of employment ? what is the difficulty of finding employmt•nt ? the fluctuation from season to season, from year to year ? Is it constant, calculable wages ; or fluctuating, incaleulaltle—more or less of the nature of gambling? This secondary ciretuastence, oh qtrility• in wages, is perhaps even noire important I han the rrintary one of quantity. Further Sc ask, (7:111 the labourer, by thrift and industry, hope to rise to mastership? or is such hope cut off from him? how is he related to his employer ? by bonds of friendliness and mutual help, er by lioStility, UppOsilion, and aisles of mutual necessity alone? In a iron!, what degree of contentment can a human ereatm•e be supposed to enjoy in that position ? With hunger via' hug on hint, his contentment is likely to be small. But even with al•undam•e, his discontent, his real misery may be great. The labourer's feelings, his notimi of being justly droll with or unjustly; his wholesome composure, frugality, prosperity in the one ca,c ; his acrid unrest, ITCMCSSIIC6S, gin-drinking, and gradual ruin in the other—how shall figures of arithmetic represent all this? fiti much is still to be asevrtained ; much of it by no means easy to ascertain. Till among the ' Bill Cooly ' and 'Dog-cart questions, there arise in Parliament and extensively out of it, a ' Condition-of- England question,' and quite a 1112W set of inquirers and methods, little of it is likely to he ascertained.'

REFORM CABINET'S MIME GLORY.

II That this Poor-Law Amendment Act meanwhile should be, as we-sometimes hear it named, the 'chief glory of a Reform Cabinet, betokens, one would itnagMe, rather a scarcity of glory there. To say to the poor, Ye shall eat the bread of affliction and drink the water of affliction, and be very miserable while here, required not so much a stretch of heroic faculty in any sense, as due toughness of bowels. If paupers are made miserable, paupers 1611 JILT& decline in multitude. R. is a secret known to all ratcatchers: stop up the

afflict with continual mewing, alarm, and going-off of traps, mnary-creviees, 'chargeable labourers disappear, and cease from the establishment. A rur

still I,rhlrinet110d is that of arsenic ; perhaps even a milder, where otherwise permissible. Rats and paupers can be abolished : the human faculty was from of old :tdequate to grind them down, slowly or at once, and needed uo ghost or Reform IS I Misty). to teach it.

TILE REAL JUST PRINCIPLE OP TUE NEW POOR-LAW PROPOSED rote ADOPTION IN AN INCONVENIENT EXTENT.

t. That this law of no work no recompense should first of all be enforced on the manual worker, and brought stringently home to him and his numerous C1589, while so many other classes and persons still go loose from it, was natural to the ease. Let it be enforced there, and rigidly made good. It behoves to be enfiweed everywhere, ma rightly made yomt ; alas, not by such simple methods RS 'refusal of Out-door relief,' but by Mr her and co.,: bee (11106; vliiclt(;)c,, however, a bountiful Providence is not unfurnished with, nor, in these latter generations, (if we svill understand their convulsions and conflisions,) sparing to apple. Work is the mission of man in this earth. A. day is ever struggling forward., a day tvill arrive in some approximate degree, when he \Ili() has no work to do, by whatever name he may be named, will not find it good to show himself in our quarter of the solar system • but may go and look out else- where, if there be any 1(1/Cplanet discoverable ! Let the honest working man rejoice that suck law, the fast or Nature, has been made good on him and hope that, by and by, all else will be made yowl. It is the beginning or all. swe mole she harsh New Poor-law to be Withal' a ‘prOteetiOn of the thrilly labourer against the thriftless mid dissolute ' • ' a thing inexpressibly important ; hs/f-reSSit, detestable, if you ill, when looked ipon as the whole result ; yet without whieli the whole result is for ever unattainable. Let wastefulness, idleness, drunkenness, improvidence, take the fate I\ hich Cod has appointed them ; that t heir opposite may also have a chance for their fa to. Let the Poor-law administrators be considered as useful lalmurers whom Nature has furnished with a vhole theory of the universe, that they might accomplish nil iniMpensahle fractional practice there, and prosper ill it in spite of much contradiction."

SANSPOTATO.

0 Not all individual Sanspotato human scarecrow lint had a life given him out of heaven, Nvith eternities depending on it • for once and no second time. 'With immensities in him, over him, and rounti him ; with feeliogi which a Shakspere's speech Ismaili not otter ; with tlesiic ilili nit ilile as the ,lutoerites of all the Hussies! Rim VaTiOUS thrice-honoured person,. things and institu- thaw have long been teaching, lung been guiding„,,overbing : and it is to per- petual scarcity of third-rate potatoes, and to %shot depends thereon, that he has been ought and guided. Figure thyself; 0 high-minded, clear-headed, clean- burnished reader, elapt by enchantment into the torn coat and waste hunger- air of that stone root-devouring brother man!"

STRIKING PICTURE OP neTnutuTtoN l'OR 31ISOOVERNMENT; AS USUAL,

110'WEVER, CIIIEFLY FALLING ON TILE DEADS 'rue INNOCENT.

"This soil of Britain—these Saxon men have cleared it, made it arable, fertile, and a home for them ; they and their fathers have done that. Under the sky there exists no force of men who with arms in their hands could drive them out of it ; all force of men with anus these Saxons would seize, in their grim wziy, and fling (Heaven's justice and their own Saxon humour aiding Cites) swittly hi to the sea. But behold, it force of men armed only with rags, ignoninee and nakedness • and. the Saxon owners, paralyzed by invisible mimic of paper formula, have to 'fly far, and hide themselves in Transatlantic trest's.'

IIORSES L17(1.11E11 TnAN MEN.

New Poor-law! Laissez-faire, tai,sez-passce! The master of 110T5eS, When the summer labour is done, has to feed his horses thrimgh the winter. If he said to his horses, quadrupeds, I have no longer work for you, but work exists abundantly over the ivorld; are you ignorant (or must I read you Political Economy Lectures) that the steam-tingine always in the lair-run creates additional {Sod: ? Railways are forming in one quarter of this eii. th, canals in another, much cartage is wanted • somewhere in Europe, -in, frieil, or America, doubt it not, ye will find cartage: go and seek cartage, and imial go trith you!' They, with protrusive upper lip, snort dubious ; si:inifvhig that Europe, Asia, Africa, and America lie somewhat out. of their beat ; that who, cartage may be wanted there is not too well known to them. Tk.y can find Ito eartog.... They gallop distracted alum, highways, all retired in to the rldit and to the left : finally, snider pains citininger, the' take to leaphig fences, eating flweign property, and—we know the rest. Ali, it is llot ft joyilii mirth.

it is sadder than tears, the laugh humanity is forced to, at applied to poor isaisants, ice a world like our Europe of the year 1lS3ff !"

WRY WELL-PAID WORKMEN ARE FOUND GRUMBLINIt PARTICULARLY.

1' Another thing., likeuise ascertainoble on this vast. oliscure matter, excites a superficial surprise, but only a superficial one ; that it is the best-paid work - men who, by strikes, trades unions, Chartism, and the like, tomplaiu the most. No doubt of it lYle ievt-paid workmen arc the:1 alone that cultist) CM/fp/obi ! how' shall he, the hand-loom weaver, Who in the day dint is passing over him has to find foou . for the day, strike work If fie strike work, he starves within the week. Ile is past complaint. Tile fort itself, however, is one which, if we consider it, leads us into still deeper ir,ions of the malady. 'Wages, it would appear, are no index of wellbeing to the work- ing man : withorit proper wages there can be no wellbeing ; but with them also there may be none. '

Tine 11E101131 MINISTRY-11'11AT IT IS LIKE.

" HOW Parliamentary Radicalism has fulfilled this mission, intrusted to its Management these eight years DOW, is knoWil to all 111.211. cX1welatit Millions have sat at a feast of the Barmecide ; been hidden liii thsmselves with the imagination of meat. What thing, has Radicalism at ainvt1 tier thent? what other 111;111 shadows of things has it no much as asked Mr them: C'heap justice, justice to Ireland, lrish Appropriation-clause, ratepaying-clause, poor- rate, church-rate, household suffrage, ballot question open ' or shut,—not things, but shadows of things; Benthanwe formulas ; barren as the east wind! An Ultra udical, not seemingly of the Renthamee species, is forcet to ex- Tories be Ministry if they will; let at least some living reality be Ministry ! A rearing luose that will only run backward, he is not the horse one would choose to travel on; yet ,f all coaceivahle horses, the worst is the dead horse. 31ounted on a rearing horse, you may back him, spur hint, check him, make a little 1...y even backward, ; but seated astride of your dead horse, what chance is there for you in the chapter of possibilities? You sit motionless, hopeless, a spectacle to gods and men.' " tiAlimucine IrEAST CONCLUDED.

n 1101V, ill these cirettinstaaces, shall we blame the unvoting disappointed minions that they turn ioy ay with horror from this Ilallle of a Reform Ministry, name of a Parliamentary Radicalism, and demand a fact and reality thereof? ThA they, too, having still filth hi what so 111:111)- had faith in, still count 'extension of tlu, sitilroge • the emi thing needful ; aml say, in such manner as

It is the

they can, Let the suffrage be still extended, th(u all will. be well?

ancient British Iliith ; prowittgalcti in these ages by prophets unil evangelist*); preached forth from lgtrirt-licatis Icy :al manner or own. Ile who is free and

bkssed has his !,e,,ity-ihotts,,, dor! 0./' 0 alas& r ty'tonyac-jzlic, in National r ; whosoevcr is not I,tit unhappy, the ailment of him is that he

has it Hot. (NOD he not to itai... it tittol: lly the law of God and of men, yeA ; and will have it withal! (*hi el ism, with its live points,' borne aloft on pH:elle:Os and meetings, i, there. Chartism is one of the most na- tural Not that ('fiat that now exists should provoke

wondcr ; but that Ow itty.toti Ittlitgry P' plc shoula have sat eight years at such Lble of the Barnitieiile, patiently exp,eting somewhat front the name of a Re- Ministry, and not till after right years have grown hopeless, this is the

respectable side Me miracle."