SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1008, 23 September 1882, Page 3

SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO.

Taking advantage of the fact that Sunday, 18tli June, was the sixty-seventh anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, the Standard draws a comparison between the position of England as it was then and what it is now. and remarks; “In June, 1815, all Europe, as we have said, was b'kiig to England for instance. L, J in t ) 1 £&r, Eng land is looking for as-

sistanco to all Europe. In June, 181 r, not the greatest Power in the world dated loive ventured (lie slightest insult to the British flag, or In i any power been mad enough to offer one, without instant ropamiion being exacted. In June, 1882, we see British seamen murdered within gunshot of the British fleet, and their bodies buried out at sea ‘ for prudential reasons’ without anything being done to show that wo are sensible of the injury ! Would (he England of 1815 have borne for one moment what the England of 1882 seems expected to endure with resignation ? If not, why not ? We decline to echo the cuckoo cry that England’s power is on the wane, or that the English race has lost its ancient self-respect ; yet there must be something to account for the difference between our position in Europe at the present day and what it was sixty years ago. The explanation seems to bo that in their anxiety to avoid one extreme the Liberal party in this country have run into the other ; that in their eagerness to avoid quarrels they have taken the surest way of provoking them, by encouraging the belief that we have lost the courage either to protect our own interests or vindicate our own honour. Whatever rnciy have been the motive, the icsult has been disastrous,and we may well look back with regret to the days of Grenville and Castloreagh, to what Mr Matthew Arnold so well calls 1 the calm pride of aristocracy ’ which brought ns with safety through the severest and most prolonged trial which this country has ever known, and gave ns after the Battle of Waterloo a leading voice in the Councils of Europe.”