Fifty Years Ago.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3767, 24 January 1881, Page 2

Fifty Years Ago.

The following very,interesting article appears in the Herald :— ' Fifty years ago! There are but few of those who played leading parts on the sta^e of pubhc life fif.y years a? 0 now alive. The year 1830, and about that time, was one of the most eventful ptrioda in 1 English history during tins centui*- in constitutional changes. A brief referencolo that period and some of its leading characters may be of interest to your readers. To begin wi h, the colony of New Zealand did. not exist. New South Walei .Tasmania, and Western Australia were penal settlements. The oldest of these had. no doubt, a good many settlers, but it was a crown colony of the severest type, with Sir Edward Parry filling a high office. There had been fiftees years of almost profound peace in Europe, except the struggle for independence by the Greeks, ending with Wavanno. It appeared as if there was to be no more war, and that sword* might be | turned into pruning hooks. But the elements of discord w re fermenting beneath the surface. T/ie Catholic Relief Bill had just been piloted through Parliament by Robert Peel, and Ireland, which had been on the eve of an explosion, waa for a little while pacified. This Bill passed oa the Ist of April, 1829, All Fools' Day, and the 26th June, 1830, the year following, (*eorge IV., the whilom "first gentleman of Europe," received his quietus. It is said that th« signing of this—what seems to us a measure of tardy justice—embittered his latter end. Sailor William was King, a constitutional King in every sense. A few months after witnessed the opening of the first locomoti • railway al which Huskisson was accidentally j killed. Jusr fifty years ago—and now it would require one of Babbage's machines to CHlculaie the number of railways mfc >c world Even New Zealand, almost a terra incognita then, has her thousand miles or so. lv twenty years from this time £325,000;000 were expended in railway construction in the, United Kingdom. The great guns of Parliament were then the Iron Duke, Peel (Tories), Earl Grey, Brougham, Palmerston, Russell, Ac. A strong deaire had for some time been evinced for electoral roform, a project which had for some time been looming ever since Chatham's time, but which tho American and Frengh wars had postponed. Two months after the ope.ing of the fi st English railway a Whig Government; took office (15th September, 1830), with Peace, Retrenchment and Reform inscribed on their political banner, Thomas Babington Macauley took his first Beat in Parliitnent this year. One of the first acts of the Whig Ministry was to restorei Lord Cochrane, afterwards Earl Dundonald, the '• last of the admirals," to his naval rank. The contest was very close on Lord John Russell's Reform Bill, public opinion ran very high, the Ministry were defeated, and a dis* solution was granted by the King on the 22nd April, 1831, Never before or since bar;there been an election contest equal to that; btteT A people fighting for liberty, not witfcl fttni and bayonets, but with arguments. It wm about this time, in the mpnthr of July; that Cobbett was tried for . " libel ; "v anef,;^selfdefended, secured an acquittal.. ,Se yrasl the most emphatic and out spoken of the people's friends. He became a member for Qjdham. two years later. The new Reform Bill passed the Commons by a small majority of nine, aud was afterwards thrown.out by.the Lbr,cli^ Then the long pent-up feeling, of the people' burst forth with terrific force. Riots of a most violent description,occurred in Derby, Nottingham, and especially at A civil war or anarchy seemed eminent. When Parliament next met, a new Bill wa» brought in by Russell, which passed the Commons' this time by a majority of 116. In the Lords, the bishops almost in a body, changed front, and on the second reading the Bill passed with a majority of nine, after a debate of five nights. This was the period of petitions, the Cobbetts, JBurdetH, Sydney .Smith} and a host of others, inundated the Press, and made it lively for the: Tories. Then, too, fjr the first time, was heard audibly, and with erer-increasing loudneas, "I'he Thunderer," who was Captain. .Sterling, John Stirling's father,, the jßoaaerges of political writ3rs. And behindtaU.thVre.was a phalanx of intellectual giants'j, whose influence was 1' destined to be felt long after the hurly-burly was over, whose influence governs still { who founded a philosophy, which tift jr fifty years etid extends its influence. For some years previous, in-the Westminister Review, there appeared the thoughts of Jeremy Beetham, James Mill, and those of his stilt great w son John Stua-fc, the two Au«irfn*,!-John and Charles Groce, and Buller; while Jeffrey, Brougham, Maoaulay, and many others, tore' the arguments of. the anti-R^farmers to rags and tattors in* the Edinburgh. Never was there before in the history of England such a concentration of talent on the same and kindred subjects.

On the 7ib of May, 1832, the Lordg threw the Bill out in Committee. ■ A new Ministry was attempted to be formed, ia rain, under Wellington, who assembled the troops, ready t " to stile the daily expected outbreak. It was' a perilous time. The people ware exasperated 'to the utmost. , The slightest indiscretion might have been fatal, for it was afterwards ascertained that the soldiers'could not hare been depended upon^to fire upon the .people. It waß then Tseen.where the true strength of' the Reformers' lay/ '^he bold iron-porkers of Brumagem assembled'2oo,ooo strong, well armed with weapons of their ewn manufacture, with many trained soldiers among theui/ and swore a solemn oatti that thoy would not pay any taxes until reform was granted. The King came to the*rescue, for the throne' was in daagar, dismissed Wellington, reoalled Grey, appealed to the Peers, who only gave : #ay when it was intimated to them that the ' King would exercise his prerogative, and create as many new Peers as would secure «"■ majority. -The Beform Bill became law on the 7th of June, 1832. The Lords fought for political power, irrespective of the good of the nation, even at the risk of insurrection and civil war. Nob only had they thei* vote - as hereditary legislators, but through Afciea » boroughs and landed interest * they could - t return more than one-third the whole House Commons. By this Bill 56 of these oughs were abolished, and altogether' 143 seals were left vacant, which for the most part were divided among tliose towns in the north, which had recently increased so muoa • in population. *^" t * ' . The great triumph acliieved by the Liberals (not Wigs any longer) led them'to;,demand others. The first and most important—all important in a moral point of view—Was 1 the abolit on of slavery, a victory " worth a thousand Agincourts." The struggle" 5 hid been going oa for Bfty years: Grmnrille Sharpe, the indefatigible negroes friend had! long gone to his final rest; his mantle had fallen upon Wilberforce, who, borne s down by infirmities, had. now been' out of Parlia ment eight years, but the cause finally triumphed in the hands of Fowell Buxtoff- 1 supported by the sympithy of a Eeform Parliament. It is gratifying to reflect that the first us* this' Parliament made of their power, after their great victory, was to- win* ■ off for ever the stain of slavery from fchV British name. Wilborforce died the same year, Buxton twelve years .afterwards,' theirnames, are . enshrined in .Englub, -Ifistorr at two .of her most distinguished, philauthM. pifltß. ■ «".. !"•*»««#,„ Ah ; me J what a host of woaUectioat i-H evoked at the magic name of Scott ihl' Wi«rd of the North !• B; e wus hSffwn His centenary was celebrated ail over th« . civilised world. At Grahamstown, at tni! Thames, the day was celebrated by the iosfci tution of a Masonic Lodge, which bear, hi name, bir Walter was for a time an « nt h£

iiastic Mason. Southey was at the time poet "laureate, Wordsworth"" was still publishing, Coleridge died in 1834, Shelley and Byron were gone, although the spell which their fteniuis had cast upon poetical readers had not yet snbsi.Tecl. Byron's life, by the author of Lalla Rookh, was publi«hedinJs3o*—-' There also died in 1831'1rS}aT)whoge name is not widely known, but who in his time played an important part, and to whom Germany, in a great measure, owes her present position. This was Baron Yon Stein, who, "when Finance Minister of Prussia, conceived and carried out a great social revolution, the chief feature of which was tho abolition of the semi-feudal tenure of land, and substituting for it that which now exists in Prussia, ft system analogous to the peasant proprietory system. The United Kingdom still waits for its Stein. Humboldt, the founder of tbe Educational System of Prussia,. was. on his travels about the Caspian Sea, and SirJo:m Bos*, who died four y,ears Inter, was away trying to discover the north-went passage. Robert Owen was then busy with his schemes for the regeneration of humanity. Auguste Comte, theaulhor ot the PositivePhiloeopby, and the founder of a new ' religion, published his fi:st work in 1830 Thomas Carlyle was publishing his Eesays in the Edinburgh Review, and Hugh Miller had begun. to contribute to the Inverness Courier. John Stuart Mill published his Spirit of the Age the same year, and had comneeaced writing his I ogic. A . revolution placed Louis Philippe on the throne of France jafter a life of wandering which eclipses in -jtsfcrest that of the heroes of romance. SsTomcan years later another revolution, caused by a refusal to grant a " little electoral reform," sent him on his travels again. Austria was then governed by Mettemich (nicknamed Midnight). Nicholas I. had ju-t ascended the throne of Ruesio. I'aly was a . chaos of Duchies, for Mazzini had not yet commenced his mission, and Garibaldi, the Bayard of this century (with whom the writer had once the honor of snaking hands), was an unknown youth. Gladstone had not quite finished his studies, and as for T1 Israeli, he was probably dreaming about " Henrietta Temple." Bolivar, the liberator of youth America, died in 1830, and in 1831, Mehemrt Ali, born in the same year as Napoleon and Welliogton, commenced a war against the Sultan, and took Syria. Sir Humphrey Davy performed his last chemical experiment in 1631; John Dal ton had completed his atomic theory, the basis of physical science; Berzeiius, the great organio chemist, was in tbe zenith of his fame; Sir John Herschel was busy exploring the misty depths of the milky-way, and had not yet decided whether or not the sun was a stationary or a moving body ; Douglas Jerrold was not yet editor of Punch, because the now immortal Punch was yet in the future, and Jerrold was writing comic plays, one at least of which (" The Rent Day ") he brought out in 1630; Sydney Herbert, the statesman, scholar, and philanthropist, obtained bis first seat in Parliament in 1832 ; and J. M. W. Turner, the great master of colour, exhibited his "Rembrandt's Daughter " in 1829, bis " Bay of Baia " and his "Vision of Medea" in 1831, living furtively somewhere about the West of London. But to us, and we think to most in literature and science, the principal interest; .at this time centres in that group who used to meet as a sort of debating society in Freemasons' Tavern. For there in debates "which " habitually consisted of the strongest arguments, and most philosophic principles," might have been heard in keen argument Charleß Austin, "Macaulay, Thirlwall (the historian), Wilberforce (afterwards Bishop of Oxford), Roebuck, John Sterling, Maurice, Romilly (Master of Rolls), George Villiers (after Earl of Clarendon;, ai d Jobn Stuart Mill, discussing metaphysics, Owenism, Benthamism, political economy, doctrines Liberal, Radical, and Tory, forming a concentrated representation of tKe movement of the opinion of their generation Of all that galaxy of intellect there is probably not one now living, but many of them' have left for us a noble example and wise teachings. The greatest of them all (Mill) died but a few years ago, and from hie autobiography we have one noble and enduring example of a true man, and of a philosopher who practised as he preached. Jeremy Rentham, the founder of the Utilitarian philosophy, died in 1832, and James Mill, his powerful auxiliary, four years afterwards, and in 1832 also a greater than all*—he whom Carlyle siys belonged to the class called '* immortal," the' greatest soul of th<> eighteenth century, the German Shakespeare, the patriarch of German literature, the author of "Faust," Johann Wolfgang yon Goethe, passed' quietly away in eearch of " more light" in his 83rd year, just about 50 yean ago. Of the men who had made their mark in 1831, perhaps tbe only one now left is Thomas Carlyle, ?' grand old CaTlyle," the Chelsea sage. In New Zealand, or perhaps in Australasia,; the only man now living who can be considered as having, breathed in that intellectual air is Sir George Grey, the exGovernor, ex-Premier of New Zealand. Time has been defined by some phi bsophers as a eontciousnefß of change and nothing more. Supposing this cipeciousness of change to be an objective instead of a subjective feeling, he who. remembers, the events of the past 50 years, bo as to be conscious of the change, moat bave a difficulty in believing' that it is the tame world. Many old nations have been changed, some swept uway, new ones created —we ourselves and the neighboring colonies among other—railroads, steamboats, scarcely knows, and tbe fairy that can " put a girdle round the world in 40 mint tea" not dreamt of, not more than 50 years ago.' And when another 50 years have passed, and most of us bave gone where ' Human power and ftulur* Are equalised for ev»r, who can foretell what a changed world it will beP. "■ 0. A. R.