CHRISTMAS IN AUSTRALIA. YES! This is the happy Christmas-time, and yet how strange it seems! The crimson flush on the flowering brush, the flame on the splendid streams; The sun's bold glance the mirage-dance of the bright Australian noon As the warm-breath'd breeze just stirs the trees that girdle the broad lagoon. Still as I gaze on the blooms that fringe the wild creek's sunny flow, I think of faces far away where the fields are white with snow! - And wonder and weep "Will their memories keep, 'Mid the mirth of this gladsome day, A sacred place for an absent face Five thousand leagues away?" Again I see the old elm-tree, with its branches bleak and bare, And the rustic seat where lovers meet - Yes! lovers and seat are there; And I fancy I know that arch bright smile, the turn of the glittering curl That hangs (like the spray of the fruitful vine) on the neck of a lovely girl! And the sterner face, above her bent, is lit with a softer light, As her voice falls low like a wavelet's song when sunset fades to night. And they list to the merry Christmas And laugh. Ah! well-a-day! The snow may rest in last year's nest that hangs on the hazel copse: But the birds will flit through the boughs, and sit again in the rocking tops: Tho' the cottage eaves are lone, and miss the flash of a welcome wing, We know the swallows will come again with the sunshine and the spring. And so, returned, an old, old love in each true bosom swells, HE sweeps the strings: the children dance; He sweeps the strings, and hopeful youth The careful mother's wasted cheek; And bids awhile her sorrows cease. And hopeful waits the coming Lord. And, 'mazed, the dear old music hears. AN AUGUST TWILIGHT. Now, while the evening mists above the ground Rise shoulder-high, and spread with swift in crease, How stealthily the twilight steals around, And one above the bar of silvery gray With the faint pulsing airs that only beat, Chambers' Journal. 1 From Macmillan's Magazine. THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE BY PROFESSER SEELEY. II. are they caused by an increasing severity I HAVE endeavoured to describe the last great movement in English politics by bringing out those great characteristics of it which are easily overlooked by those who are concerned in the movement itself, because their attention is pre-occupied by details, but which immediately come into conspicuous prominence when the movement is over and has passed into history. I have endeavoured to look at contemporary history as the next generation will look at it, at least in one respect; that is, in giving attention rather to the results produced, and to the changes actually wrought in the institutions of the country, than to the striking incidents or characters that may mark the period. I have delineated a revolution, transacted not without great excitement at times, yet without anarchy or bloodshed, limited in its range, leaving entirely untouched the foundations and framework of the Constitution, and very slightly affecting those great institutes of civiliza- be remarked. It was not because monopotion which modern governments have learned the wise modesty of leaving to - themselves, yet still a revolution deserving to be so called. I have endeavoured to analyse the character of this revolution; I have found that it has had a uniform tendency throughout, and may be described in one word as a movement to abolish monopolies. It is impossible to consider such a movement without raising the question of the causes which have produced it. When a nation makes a persevering effort to snap some chain, some cramping restriction under which it suffers, we may be sure that one of two things has taken place,—either the chain has been drawn tighter, and the suffering of the nation has goaded it to resistance; or, oppression remaining the same, or even growing lighter, the spirit of the nation has risen so as to burst through the restraint. We are apt hastily to attribute revolutions to the former cause, whereas history shows that they are generally due to the latter. Revolutions are not generally convulsions of despair, nor lies had become more oppressive and invidious forty years ago that the rebellion against them began: they had, in .fact, become milder. In the preceding age a great many minor disabilities of the Catholics had been removed, and Cobden had his precursor in Huskisson. The excluded classes were not roused by new provocation, but by a new feeling of strength and hope. The first taste of freedom had made them wish for the full enjoyment of it. They saw before them a new chance, which lay in the growth of a new power in the State - the power of public opinion. Few principles are better settled in the politics of the present day than the absolute sovereignty of public opinion. If the nation demands a thing, there is no politician or party of politicians that will now undertake to refuse it. Discussion may be raised on the question, What constitutes a demand on the part of the nation? It may be argued, and those who are averse to change will argue, that what pretends to be a national demand is not really so, but merely the demand of a section arrogating to itself the name of the nation; or that it | Brougham in 1822; and ten years later the is not a deliberate and serious demand, but a fancy or whim on the part of the public that will not hold. This the opposite party will make a point of denying, and they will spend rather more rhetoric upon proving that the people desire the change in question than they will bestow upon proving it to be beneficial. To prove it beneficial, if the change proposed were of any magnitude, would advance it a very little way. The important question is, Is it wanted? Laws now are like commodities; the supply of them is regulated by the demand. Politicians hold it almost as disrespectful to the nation to outrun its wishes as to thwart them. In former times they had the same feeling towards Parliament. To catch the spirit of Parliament, to jump with its humours, not to be behind it nor too much before it, was the study of many politicians of the last century. Now it is public opinion that has to be watched and studied, and it is wonderful how large a part of our parliamentary debates is now devoted to the question, What do the people want, and how much do they want it, and do they want it now, or will they wait? Aristotle told us, long ago, that the question in deliberative oratory is not of right or wrong, but of expediency. With us even expediency has begun to seem too abstract a consideration; the question now is rather of opportuneness. It is not, Will the measure be useful, and will it work? but, Do people want it, and are they calling out for it? The House of Commons, which we are accustomed to call supreme in the State, has in fact always been under one master or another. In the last century it never talked of the influence that ruled it. The debates are silent of that which was always uppermost in the minds of the Members. Parliament was devoured by a secret passion: it never told its love. But as soon as it escaped from this spell, from the dominion of the great pension-giver or placegiver of the day (the Minister in the first half of the century, the King himself in the last), it fell under the influence of public opinion an influence which it was not so much ashamed to acknowledge. The last Resolution directed against the overpowering influence of the Crown was moved by new Monarch Public Opinion was installed with the passing of the Reform Bill. Now where was public opinion in the last century? Had it no power, no existence ? From the time that it was aroused by Wilkes and Junins, i.e. from about 1770, it had certainly a power, though a power indefinite and seldom exercised. That was the beginning of the new time, though the dial was afterwards put back many degrees in the panic of the French Revolution. But, before that, what traces do we find of the influence of public opinion? There are one or two. Walpole's Excise was defeated by a popular clamour in 1733. The indignation gradually excited in the public mind by the pertinacious invective of the Patriots principally contributed to the fall of Walpole in 1741. But these isolated efforts rather served to make the general insignificance of public opinion more striking. They were irresistible movements, but blind and irrational ones. They were dreaded by Ministers, and turned to account by the Opposition, as Shaftesbury turned to account the hurricane raised by Oates; but they could impress neither party with any respect for the opinion out of doors. How strongly contrasted the wild clamour, to which Walpole, with secret contempt, yielded his Excise, and the popular agitation to which another great Minister, a hundred years later, convinced and candidly confessing his economical error, yielded up the Corn Law! England has never been absolutely without a public opinion. There never perhaps was a time when an obnoxious tax threatening men's pockets, or some keen sense of public disgrace, would not excite a formidable clamour. As much public opinion as this, but scarcely more, there was in the first half of the eighteenth century. The most striking proof of its general powerlessness is to be found in the fact that, whereas legislation now in all great matters invariably takes the direction indicated by public opinion, in the eighteenth century it took, on the whole, the opposite direction. The constitutional development of that age was accomplished, for the most part, in defiance of the wishes of the majority. The Toleration Act and the Act of Settlement were passed, the Brunswick family introduced may think, if we will, that public opinion and supported, at a time when, as Lord now does not rule wisely, and that there Macaulay acknowledges, the effect of a might be a much better ruler; but the popReform Bill would certainly have been a ulace that ran after Sacheverell, and clampersecution of the Dissenters, and probably oured against excise, were evidently incaa restoration of the Stuarts. The Whig able of ruling at all. It is manifest that a party of that age won their cause. They great change must have passed over the wished to limit the influence of the Crown character of public opinion. Such a change and of the Church. These objects they at- it is not difficult to discover, and it may be attained. The Crown and the Church have expressed in one word, by saying that in been controlled not less, and probably the interval between 1770 and 1829 the more, than they wished. And yet through- public opinion of the country gained organout that century the nation was Tory. Pub-ization. lie opinion, such as it was - if we may give Public opinion, as I have said, is not that name to a mere sum of individual merely the sum of the opinions of the individopinions was uniformly on the losing side. uals composing the public. The individThe present sovereignty of public opinion is uals must be brought into relation with each evidenced, as I have said, by the tone of other, and be formed into some sort of orparliamentary debate. Its insignificance in ganic whole, before anything worthy to be the last century may be shown by the same called a public opinion can spring up among test. Instead of deference, the House of them. It is by discussion and communicaCommons in that age adopted a peremptory tion that men arrive at a common underand despotic style in their dealings with the standing. But supposing such a common people. If now their temptation is to sink understanding created, it could not become into delegates, then they rather assumed a commanding force in politics except in the airs of the fathers of the people. There certain conditions. It would require, first, was indeed a time when it seemed possible some means of obtaining a constant supply that there might be a revolutionary collision of information upon public affairs, and, between the nation and its representative secondly, some means of making its conassembly. Parliament seemed entering clusions known. Public opinion is organupon the career of the Stuarts, and might ized when it has three things have suffered a fate like theirs, had it been information, means of discussion, organs of possible for the perversity of an assembly to expression. These three things are enough -be as desperate as that of a wrong-headed for organization. Wanting them, public individual. opinion is powerless: possessing them, it becomes a power, and is in a condition to govern. Perhaps something more is required to make it wise as well as powerful Now, what is the change which has passed over the country to raise public opinion from insignificance to actual omnipotence? To speak of the spread of democratic sentiments is not to solve the problem, but merely to state it again in other words. Nor will it do to say that public opinion, having been invoked by the Whigs in the first Reform Bill against their enemies, the Tories, has refused to give up the position it was allowed momentarily to assume. Public opinion must have changed very much since the last century to be able to hold so high a tone. The popular opinion to which Shaftesbury appealed, or that which Pulteney inflamed against Walpole, was not capable of being dangerous to the statesmen that had taken it into their alliance. Had it tried to govern, it must have failed. We sources of to make it govern well, as well as govern. All these three conditions of power public opinion in the eighteenth century may be said practically to have wanted, though it did not want any of them absolutely. It acquired them in the period between 1770 and 1829, through the extension of the newspaper system, through the rise of the practice of association and public meeting for political purposes, and through the extension of the old practice of petitioning. That period may be called the period of the organization of public opinion. The newspaper supplies to public opinion all the three requisites at once, though in very unequal degrees. It furnishes the with information. Without constant and good information about what is going on, we cannot conceive a ruler. In past times public opinion was only in any sense a ruler in communities that were collected in single towns, like Athens or Florence-com people with the means of discussion. Controversies are carried on in it; facts are marshalled on one side and the other; eloquence is displayed in the examination and application of the facts. Every paper by itself is equivalent to a parliament; all the newspapers taken together constitute a par-munities, that is, that were always within liament, which, for the mere purpose of discussion, is far more efficient than any Parliament that ever sat at Westminster. It is far more efficient, because the newspaper discussion is always going on; at every minute of the day it is occupying some minds; whereas the parliamentary discussion ceases during half the year, and half the day. The parliamentary discussion is localized, but the newspaper discussion is ubiquitous no corner of the kingdom that it does not penetrate; and every man may take as much or as little of it as he pleases, and at the time when he finds it most convenient. This Parliament, in fact, is always sitting, and its strangers' gallery seats conveniently the whole nation. Much more of the same kind might be added, if it were necessary to show at length, what in fact, is obvious, that considered merely as a machinery for the investigation and discussion of political questions, the press far surpasses the Parliament. Parliamentary debates have, in fact, become little more than brief extracts or recapitulations of the debates of the press. Parliament has a province of its own, and does for us much that the press could not do; but its special province is no longer that of discussion. Besides being a machinery for that discussion out of which public opinion springs, the press is also a machinery for giving public opinion, when it is formed, that expression which makes it a power. Administrators directing special departments with specia! knowledge may despise the Press even while they fear it, and may count its interference merely mischievous and unreasonable; but where no special knowledge is required, and the question is not of general scope and tendency of measures, the Press speaks the word which, under the present régime, is authoritative. I am afraid of wearying my readers by repeating what is so well known. What is more to the point here is to remark how recently public opinion has gained the use of this speaking-trumpet, and how helpless it was in the last century, with its dumb Toryism in the presence of its Whig rulers. But as a machinery for discussion, and as an organ of expression, the Press is not the only nor always the most efficient instrument of public opinion. The characteristic function of the Press is to furnish it 66 reach of the latest information, and that were actual eye-witnesses of most public proceedings. In the first French Revolution public opinion could not have exerted the power it did, had it not been concentrated in Paris, gained its information in Paris, formed its determinations in Paris, and from Paris dictated to France. As accessibility of information is the common characteristic of all popular governments, so in despotisms there is always a profound general ignorance of public affairs. Inscitia reipublicæ tanquam aliena" is the token by which a despotically ruled community may be known. Now, this mark was to be found upon England in the last century, and the consequence was that in the midst of free institutions public opinion was powerless. It was powerless from its ignorance, and that arose from the mere want of the machinery necessary for conveying knowledge to it. Except in London, there could be no prompt intelligence of public affairs. News except it were such news as the Pretender's march to Derby — travelled so slowly, that had public opinion been then accustomed to express itself, it would have been constantly too late. And what is more important, the kind of news which for this purpose is most necessary was not accessible at all. It is by the habit of reading the parliamentary debates that the English public acquire a control over Parliament. If the publicity of these debates were taken away, the newspapers remaining in all other respects the same, it is probable that the empire of public opinion would be at an end. In the times, then, when the debates were not yet regularly reported, or were imperfectly reported, so that you did not know whether you were reading the words of Pulteney or those of the reporter, Samuel Johnson, or so that they were kept back till the end of the session in order that the editor or printer might escape the vengeance of the House, in such times what control could public opinion have over statesmen ? Now, the leading politicians are to every one among us like intimate acquaintances; we know the course they have taken in a multitude of cases; we can quote what they said on this occasion and on that; and therefore, in speaking, they too learn to consider the nation as listening, and cannot |