Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 87, 4 September 1863, Page 3

Queen Elizabeth. — After what has been said, there can be no doubt that the judgement I have formed of Elizabeth is favourable. Throughout I have dealt with her as a statesman of a high order. I have ! dealt with her as a ruler and statesman, who, from the combined action of circumstances and character, was the most successful, and that for,the longest period of all thesovereigns of England. Elizabeth passes for despotic and arbitrary, bub in any accurate sense she was neither the one nor the other. She ruled for her people's good, with their full assent, and wiih a more fixed and deliberate policy than any subsequent sovereign. The epithets in her case are expressions of more or less value for a fact — that she was really Queen, and fora feeling — that a real Government in one hand is unfavourable to liberty. Any argument in favour of such government is adroitly enough put aside as sympathy with despotism. I make light of such charges. As a Republican by every social and political coviction — as a Republican of twenty years:' standing — I can estimate them at their true value. lam well aware that the question for us in England has been betweentheruleof one and the rule of a few- — the rule of one, and the rule, in the widest extent, of one seventh; and that the best interests nnd the real liberty of the remaining six sevenths have been safer in the hands of one than of the few. Never did the English nation, in the largest sense of the term, feel itself more in possession of its liberty than under the Government of Queen Elizabeth. Indifference to the merits of the illustrious dead is the last feeling I should wish to see general — far better would be an occasional misdirection of our enthusiatic veneration. — Extract from a Lecture hy Richard Congrcvc,