THE AMERICANS ON THE GREAT EXHIBITION.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 656, 15 November 1851, Page 4

THE AMERICANS ON THE GREAT EXHIBITION.

[From the Times.] “ Perhaps, you can tell me, Sir,” said the editor of the Rowdy Journal to Martin Chuzzlewit, “ perhaps, you can tell me, Sir, which of Mr. Jefferson Biick’s war articles produced the most amazin’ sensation among them people at Windsor—which of ’em sent the Prime Minister n fizzlin down stairs, and chawed up that rotten old country most particular?” What Martin Chuzzlewit could not communicate, we are happy to say we can. The article which has produced the greatest effect on the world since the declarations of Luther is that published in the New York Herald, some six weeks ago, respecting the Great Exhibition, and which, withits “very natural speculations” upon Socialist mobs, sackings of the Tuileries, partitions of England, new Federal Republics, and Charleston and Liverpool unions, we transferred to our own columns. What it was the reader can perhaps recollect; what it did he may now learn from the announcement of the journal itself;—

“As soon as the New York Herald reached London it appears to have excited extraordinary apprehensions. The Prime Minister sent “note instant er for the Duke of Wellington, lhe Ministers tendered their resignations. Lord tried to form a new Cabinet in vain, and the politicians, so self-confident in the yeomanry and in the business population, did not even dare to venture on a general election. Lngland trembles from top to toe ; and even the Queen, who has considerable nerve, was 8 ° mu , ch frightened that Prince Albert regretted that an American newspaper, containing such alarming suggestions, should have reached the shores of happy Albion. With tbe speed an emergency only can create 30,000 brilliant-bayonets bristled in the neighbourhood ot Hyde Park, besides countless parks of artillery ready at a moment’s call. The Times treated the menacing intelligence with a terrible anxiety to be cool, affecting to laugh, and appearing very much like a traveller in some great dark forest whistling to keep his courage up, while looking backward and forward to see some frightful spectre at every turn.” Such, according to the Information received in New York, was the state of England and of our own office on the 10th of April 1851. F ’

These things,” as the Herald correctly observes, “are in a certain point of view very amusing,” but the American journalist, with a true sense of his functions, passes

from the merely entertaining features of the occurrence to the graver opportunity of instructive moral : —

“Trifles, in such cases, have a more importantsignificance than greater actions, or greater events. There must be something rotten in the Government of England, or never could such alarm be raised by a paragraph in an American newspaper. There must be some good ground for apprehension when a slight missile, sent from a playful hand, can so shake and terrify a whole people and cause 30,000 full armed soldiers to be hurried up to London from Chatham and other rural barracks; when, in the Cabinet and Horse Guards, in the Palace and Printing-house square, such awful consternation can make the whole of London vibrate as old St. Paul’s did when the ruins of the ancient edifice were blown up with the gunpowder of Sir Christopher Wren to obtain a foundation for the present structure.”

As the earthquake has passed, and as such like phenomena are not avertible by human forethought, we see no duly left for us but thanksgiving. We certainly, at any rate, have not been enguiphed, and both Queen and people appear to have pretty well recoverd from their consternation. In point of fact, however, it seems there was no peril at all, for the Herald now considerately informs us that it never believed a syllable of its own “ rather interesting speculations — “We can assure our contemporaries,” say s the editor, “ that though we gave them the information that has acted like yeast in setting the population and Government into a ferment, and though we threw out the suggestion that the Red Republicans and white-livered Republicans going from here might be troublesome, we ourselves had no real fears on the subject. We know very well that they will never oe caugnt in anytnmg where it would be possible to question their courage —for we cannot call in question what does not exist, and these deciaimers about liberty are perfectly harmless. We only hope that Colonel Mayne and his police will catch some of them, brush their white hats and dust their coats —not forgetting to apply a little water to their faces—and we shall Be much obliged for the favour.”

We do not doubt the correctness of these second thoughts. The Herald, we dare say, is well informed on the matter, but wasn’t it rather too bad to frighten us with a story, and to launch such a “ playful missile ” at our new glass house ?

M-e cannot tell which of tbe intelligentlooking strangers who cluster about the Greek slave may be discharging the duties of correspondent for the New York Herald, but he will be able by the next mail to correct the somewhat confused perceptions of his friends across the Atlantic. The article in question did certainly receive a kind of notice at the hands of the English public, but its appearance was not exactly the signal for all the convulsions enumerated. Ministers have not resigned, to the best of our belief, since the middle of February, though rather pointedly invited so to do. The Duke of Wellington has not been a second time called in, neither has Lord Stanley’s appetite for office been perceptibly sharper since the arrival of bis American grindstone. As to the "30,000 brilliant bayonets,” it is a fact—either satisfactory or not as people may think, but nevertheless a fact—that there are not so many by 5000 in the whole of Great Britain, guards included ; nor could we muster such a force if we called out all the general officers on half-pay, and armed them with revolvers from the American stall. The “ countless parks of artillery,” too, were an unlucky conjecture, for we probably could not get 30 pieces together even if we borrowed the beautiful steel gun exhibited by the Zollverein. If our American friends wish to see a renresentation of the actual “conspirators and assassins” of Ist May, they will find a true picture in that week’s Punch.

The American journal is evidently ill at ease on the subject of the World’s Fair, and brother Jonathan’s attitude altogether very much resembles that lately ascribed to the hippo] ctamus on the arrival of the young elephant calf. He doesn’t like the look of the Exhibition, or its attractions, er its wonders, or its profits. On the last point especially he is lamentably restless and fretful, telling up the receipts and outgoings perpetually, ~and always arriving, at a larger balance than before in favour of ourselves, and consequently against our visitors. The Herald sets down £690,000 as sure to be taken al the doors and, after deducting £196,000 for the cost of tbe a gain of £494 000 to begin with. Then there will be half a million of foreigners at the least, who will spend on an average “over 100 dollars each,” giving an “ aggregate of 50,000,000 dollars to be distributed in a few months among the of the English metropolis.” . ibis, adds the good-natured critic “isno trifling amount to be added to the wealth of a single city by foreigners, and will, of course, as was expected, make the shopkeepers of London more loyal than ever they were,” In the next place we shall gain the desired opportunity of “ pirating the inventions of foreign countries,” though to be sure America has not multiplied our chances in this resnect by the display of her own productions. But our grand object is “ peace—peace with all

the world ’’—and y et are we spirit as to deserve the smallest no»nel. have ”no feeling of nhibnik pansive affections, no e <- peace literally in self-defence, > no means of going to war. «« As q W * h *’e len of Ohio, remarked in ConX. J?" A could not be kicked into a war whk’ on any question whatever ’• o. 0 an * Bht« J making for the bare life,’ and “m, ’? peic ‘’ association is a veritable Commit.;. Safety—nothing less. The Am nalisl does not, it is true, absolute? 0 our proffered hand, but his greetinl 7 ,ej ' ct the least, is not civil. “ The Brit'L *’l their supremacy is gone—that tb” 8 Ichabod is departed, and the cowed comes tne abject sycophant. R n |7 that her destiny is under our .control ’’ This is an unpromising kind of n we must hope for the best, and op. Ce ’ our Exhibition in the meantime’ point the New York characteristically true. The thin ’ , are does pay, and our own alarmists bau no match in their prognostications K® mnre practised speculators of the Slate, r is admitted that we shall make mon e ! piomote peace; and as these are muf agreeable results, we can put up with i J' or two on the occasion. But as it isslw instructive to listen to lhe comments of otS we recommend visitors at the Exhibition thh morning to walk to the eastern end of .k building, and there, taking their stand fi " J . t n ° A d i ffic . u!: y in doing, u’n t..e wmgs of the American eagle, to moral, ize on the following character of tha scene before them :— “ Our opinion, then, of this great show k that it originated in selfishness; that it wiD tend to advance peace throughout the worH as was intended it should; that it is a Yanka, trick to make the rest of the world to England’s wealth; that as far as arts a«A manufactures are concerned, it will be a failure* and that, on the whole, it looks like a gigantic’ humbug." . .