LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE.

 Previously we took occasion to demonstrate, on the basis of documents collected by Mr. Bancroft, in his History of the United States, that modern British colonists have been deprived of their just rights, and that the present system of Colonial Government and legislation is essentially unconstitutional.

At this crisis it may be useful to recapitulate the principal facts and results of our former demonstration. The precedents and principles established in the older British colonies apply now in full force to the free colonies of Australia. A knowledge of them may save much unprofitable argument, and may lead to a more speedy settlement of the great questions now under discussion.

The grand principle established by Bancroft is, that the subjects of the British Crown who planted America carried with them the whole rights and liberties to which they were entitled by the English constitution, as fully and unreservedly as if they had remained in England; and they were consequently entitled to a representative assembly, self-government, and independent legislation.

The first colony of Great Britain was that of Virginia, established in 1606, under a charter by James I. The body of adventurers on whom the charter was conferred was composed of every rank and class in the community. They comprehended twenty-one peers, ninety-eight knights, and a multitude of esquires, gentlemen, merchants, and citizens. It was declared in the charter that all persons voyaging to and settling in the colony, and the children born within its precincts, should have and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the realm of England. Twelve years after its settlement, when the colony possessed only six hundred inhabitants, it acquired a constitution which became the model for the subsequent settlements in North America.

Its terms (says Bancroft) are few and simple. A governor, to be appointed by the company; a permanent council, likewise to be appointed by the company ; a general assembly, to be convened yearly, and to consist of the members of the council, and of two burgesses to be chosen from each of the several plantations by their respective inhabitants. The assembly might exercise full legislative authority, a negative voice being reserved to the governor, but no law or ordinance would be valid unless ratified by the company in England. With singular Justice, and a liberality without example, it was further ordered that after the government of the colony shall have been framed, no orders of the court in London shall bind the colony, unless they be in like manner ratified by the General Assembly.

Henceforward might the historian well say, "the supreme power was held to reside in the hands of the Colonial Parliament, and of the King, as King of Virginia.''

Precisely the same system was adopted in Maryland in the year 1638. The third Assembly of that colony published a declaration of rights, which was therefore established to the following effect :—

Acknowledging the duty of allegiance to the English Monarch, and securing to Lord Baltimore his prerogatives, it likewise confirmed to the inhabitants of Maryland all the liberties which an Englishman can enjoy at home, established a system of representative government, and asserted for the general assemblies in the province all such powers as may be exercised by the Commons of England.

It should be observed that these early constitutions were recognised by James I. and Charles I., the most arbitrary of English monarchs. The latter even went so far as to recognise the Virginian Legislature as an independent body, by applying to it for a monopoly of tobacco, the staple produce of the colony.

By these monarchs, and by Charles II., similar and even greater privileges were granted to the New England States, which latter, under Charles II. and the wise Lord Clarendon, became more like friendly in-dependent states than subject provinces. The charter of Connecticut, framed in 1662 by Lord Clarendon,

Conferred on the colonists unqualified power to govern themselves. They were allowed to elect all their own officers, to enact their own laws, to administer justice without appeals to England, to inflict punishments, to confer pardons, and in a word to exercise every power deliberative and active. The King, far from reserving a negative on the acts of the colony, did not even require that the laws should be transmitted for his inspection, and no provision was made for the interference of the English government in any event whatever. Connecticut was independent except in name.

To Rhode Island even greater liberality was displayed.

The supreme power was committed—the rule continues to-day—to a governor, deputy - governor, ten assistants, now called senators, and deputies from the town. It marks a singular moderation that the scruples of the inhabitants were so respected that no oath of allegiance was required of them. The laws were to be agreeable to those of England, yet with kind reference to the constitution of the place and the nature of the people."

No wonder that the thanks of the colony were voted to, "King Charles of England for his high and inestimable, yea, incomparable favor," and to Clarendon the historian, the statesman, the prime minister, who had shewn " to the colony exceeding great care and love ;" and no wonder that the Rhode Islanders continued the most loyal and the best ordered community in the British dominions.

The last proof we shall adduce of the rights of British colonists is from " A state of the Case " proposed by James Otis, of Boston, in 1764, about a hundred years after the date of the Rhode Island Charter, at a time when the British Government and Parliament are commencing usurpations which are only now in course of partial abandonment.

By the laws of nature and of nations, the voice of universal reason and of God, by statute law, and the common law, this memorial claimed for the colonists the absolute rights of Englishmen personal security, and liberty, the rights of property, the power of local legislation, subject only to the king's negative, as in Ireland, and the sole power of taxing themselves. "The authority of the Parliament of Great Britain," such were the words of this paper, "is circumscribed by bounds, which, if exceeded, their acts becomes mere power without right, and consequently void. Acts of Parliament against natural equity are void. Acts against the fundamental principles of the British institutions are void." "The wild wastes of America have been turned into pleasant habitations ; little villages in Great Britain into manufacturing towns and opulent cities ; and London itself bids fair to become the metropolis of the world. These are the fruits or commerce and liberty. The British Empire, to be perpetuated, must be built on the principles of justice." Such were the views of Otis, sent by Massachusetts to its agent in London " to be improved as he might judge proper."

The series of precedents thus laid before our readers are at the present juncture of the deepest importance. It was mainly during the period from 1606 to 1764 that all the great principles of the British Constitution were agitated, debated, and settled. The rights and liberties of the people, the privileges of parliament, and the extent of the prerogative, were all in turns discussed and contested in the cabinet, in the houses of legislation, and on the battlefield. Yet in all these struggles there was no debate as to the claims of the colonists. Even the most despotic of monarchs recognised their right to self-government and independent legislation, and refrained from exercising an obnoxious and unconstitutional prerogative. It was not till one hundred and fifty years after the establishment of British colonies that the British Parliament and Government put forward a claim of despotic authority; and the enforcement of that illegal and unconstitutional claim cost the country the loss of an empire.

It is painful to think that in regard to all the weaker colonies that remained in possession of Britain, the new usurpation was continued. In North America, in South America, in the West Indies, at the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, the incubus of Downing-street despotism was retained. For a long time it is true Britain kept her colonies under this yoke, by tempting monopolies. Discriminating duties in favor of timber, corn, sugar, wine, &c, were the bribes that kept the colonies quiet; but no sooner had the system of free trade put an end to these sugarplums than the colonies discovered that they lived under a virtual tyranny. Those that were sufficiently powerful immediately asserted and vindicated their rights. The Canadian and the Cape provinces already possess constitutions framed by themselves; the British Ministry have extended a similar privilege to the Australian colonists and our Constitution Bill is now before Parliament.

In our present circumstances it is of the greatest importance that our rights and our position should be precisely ascertained. Last year, in consequence of the liberal declarations of the British Ministry, we suspended the elaborate demonstration of these rights ; but the postponement of the Constitution Bill, and the arbitrary conduct of the Government in now enforcing unjust measures with the strong hand, compel us to enter again upon the controversy. The importance of the demonstration will be appreciated, when it is remembered that if the privileges for which we contend are birthrights never forfeited, and not favors to be conferred by a British Parliament, then the circumstance that the Constitution Bill is postponed can have no effect in justifying the arbitrary proceedings of the British Government.

We hold that our Legislature, imperfect as it is, occupies in this colony, and so far as the colonial interests are concerned, the position of the British Parliament with reference to Her Majesty. In this view it is entitled to act as the restrainer of the prerogative. The writer whom we quoted lately on this subject states that " when the King claims rights as falling within the scope of any part of his prerogative which are opposed to the common good, there are remedial powers which bring things right, and it is one of the most important functions of the two Houses of Parliament."

The conclusion, we trust, is now plain to the meanest capacity. Unless the people of this colony have forfeited their birthright, they are entitled to free and independent legislation, and their Legislature is entitled to restrain the exercise of the Queen's prerogative, when it is opposed to the common good. How much more are they entitled and bound so to act, when the exercise of that prerogative stultifies their own acts, sets at nought the decisions of our courts, tends to bring law and justice into contempt, increases the insecurity of life and property, and is destructive of the best interests of the community at large.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic.), 17 October 1854 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4799072

CARLYLE'S LATTER DAY PAMPHLETS.

 We publish below several extracts from a work intituled ' Latter Day Pamphlets,' edited by Thomas Carlyle of London, along with certain remarks of the London Times of 26th December.

' In the days that are now passing over us even fools are arrested to ask the meaning of them ; few of the generations of men have seen more impressive days. Days of endless calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded ; if they are not days of endless hope too, then they are days of utter despair. For it is not a small hope that will suffice, the ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. There must be a new world if there is to be any world at all ! That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there— this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final. It is a time to make the dullest man consider and ask himself,— Whence he came ? Whither he is bound ?— a veritable ' New Era,' to the foolish as well as to the wise.'

 What Mr. Carlyle had in his mind when he wrote thus, presently appears. It was the outbreak of Republicanism in 1848. Well might any but a very cool observer of that astonishing movement imagine that ' Doomsday was come ; ' that ' since the irruption of the northern barbarians there had been nothing like it ; ' and that ' the state everywhere throughout Europe had coughed its last in street musketry.' But we now see the breadth and depth of the movement, and perceive that it was immeasurably inferior in importance and significance to several which have occurred since the overthrow of the Roman Empire — far below the first French Revolution, further still below the Reformation. The fact was that Europe had been vaccinated by the Jacobins, and would not take Sansculottism again. A second advent of ' the Mountain ' was a thing morally impossible. And now that the smoke of the barricades has cleared away we see clearly that the movement was confined to the capitals or great cities, and that even there it was a revolt rather than a revolution. No great political, much less any great social change, has been produced. 

There has been no overthrow of a privileged class or substitution of a free for an arbitrary government, such as resulted from the first French revolution. Of the monarchs that were temporarily expelled, the majority have either returned to their seats of government in person, or devolved their power, diminished only in name, to a younger and more vigorous successor. One monarchy alone has been completely overthrown ; and in this instance a constitutional King has been followed by an unconstitutional and even absolute President. The ' State ' has not 'coughed its last,' and Doomsday is indefinitely adjourned.

 So again, far from its being impossible that ' things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine,' there is but too much reason to apprehend that by a natural though lamentable reaction they will re turn into an an older and sorrier routine than ever. The first effect of the insurrection has been a great increase in the force of standing armies— an element which certainly is not favourable to political progress. The next effect may, perhaps, be a European war, which, whatever may be its result, is sure to suspend all liberal movements, to exalt the power of the sword, and to impoverish and crush the people. And what is more important still, absolutism both civil and religious, is everywhere deriving dangerous strength from the natural fears of the peaceable and the rich. France is an evident instance. Germany is equally so. In Italy a winking Madonna consecrates the victory of a reinstated Pope. Even in England men who have windows and tills to guard begin to talk too lightly of their liberty ; and the greatest theological movement of the day, which Mr. Carlyle, seeing only from a distance, takes for the smallest, is radically absolutist in civil matters as well as in spiritual. Every where the tide is running against freedom.

 Of the social evils of England Mr. Carlyle takes a view no less exaggerated than his view of the political situation of Europe : —

 ' Between our black West Indies and our white Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it with our fierce Mammon worships and our benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply and demand — Leave it alone; — Voluntary principle,— Time will mend it: — 'till British industrial existence seems fast becoming one huge prison swamp of reeking pestilence physical and moral ; a  hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive ; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating with the  nether deeps, as the sun never saw till now.' Those scenes, which the Morning Chronicle is bringing home to all minds of men — thanks to it for service such as newspapers have seldom done — ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death ; three million paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said needlewomen to die ; these are but items in the sad ledger of despair.'

 We do not wish the prophet to prophesy smooth things to us; but we wish him to prophesy true things ; otherwise he will produce either incredulity, despair, or a vague impression that something extraordinary must be done— which is very fatal to all practical reform. To write so wildly on the subject is just the way to relax real effort and increase the amount of indolent sentimentalism and ineffectual rhetoric. And surely, for a social philosopher, who is bound to base his conclusions upon facts, Mr. Carlyle has the strangest mode of obtaining his information. His notions of the industrial classes, generally, seem to be derived from certain highly seasoned pictures of the very worst class of a metropolis ; that is, the very cesspool of civilized society. Is this sensible ? And might it not be well to look a little into ' Mac-Crowdy's ' statistics and the ' Dismal Science'? Of the existence of the ' thirty thousand outcast needle women ' we yet seek proof. Pauperism is a terrible evil— one which deserves and is receiving the best attention of our best men. If Mr. Carlyle has anything practical to say upon the subject, he will be gladly heard ; but before he can say anything practical he must learn the cause of the evil which is to he cured. It does not arise from 'benevolent philanderings, and idle godless nonsenses,' nor from 'mammon-worship' either; but from certain causes naturally incident to society in an old and overpeopled country, which it is the province of the ' Dismal Science ' to investigate and correct. And as to the Morning Chronicle reports, and the 30,000 needlewomen, Mr. Carlyle would here be nearer the mark if he directed the sword of his satire against luxury, which draws all this vice and misery in its train. But luxury is a disease of the body social, and Mr. Carlyle's fixed faith and fixed idea is that, all our evils result from want of intellect in the head.

 The two offices upon which Mr. Carlyle especially fixes are the Foreign and the Colonial. And he is right here. But the reasons which he gives are wrong. The reason why these offices are in worse odour than the rest, is not that they are particularly deep in 'owl-droppings,' or that the clerks in them are not men of genius and ' brothers of the radiances and the lightnings,' or that the Colonial-office does not leave the colonies alone and turn its undivided attention to the Irish, or that the Foreign-office does not take up the potato rot and cease to 'protocol' and mix itself in the affairs of Europe. The Colonial-office is in bad odour, partly owing to the spirit which at present rules it, partly from the inherent difficulty of governing distant dependencies, especially when the Government is representative and the dependencies are not represented. And the Foreign-office is in bad odour, partly and principally because Lord Palmerston is Foreign Minister, and partly because just now there is a great call for economy, and people are very anxious to find good reasons for putting down ambassadors.

 The Colonial-office Mr. Carlyle proposes to reform by turning it to its proper function of organizing Irish labour. Under the Foreign-office he proposes, with some witty politicians, to ' put a live coal.' We have had no continental interests worth caring for since the time of Oliver Cromwell. As we have certain cottons and hardwares to sell, and Portugal oranges to buy, we may need ' some kind of consul.' Ambassadors are to be 'sent on great occasions ; otherwise we may correspond with foreign Potentates through the cheap medium of the penny post. This scheme for reforming the Foreign-office is not original ; but the scheme for reforming the Colonial-office quite makes amends.

 The task of reforming Downing-street in general was destined by Mr. Carlyle for our lost Sir Robert Peel. But who that ever studied the character of that lamented statesman can hear without a smile of his 'privately resolving to go one day into that stable of King Augis (Augeas) which appals human hearts, so rich is it high piled with the droppings of 200 years, and, Hercules-like, to load 1000 night waggons from it, and turn running water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till the antique pavement and the real basis of the matter show itself clear again ;' or of his asking himself, in the character of 'the reforming Hercules, what work is now necessary, not in form and by traditionary use and wont, but in very fact, for the vital interests of the British nation, to be done here,'

 But of course the great remedy is Hero worship,— to choose ourselves a Lama, or from six to a dozen of them after the example of the people of Thibet, who have ' seen into the heart of the matter ;' to get the divinest men into Downing-street in place of the present Parvuluses and Zeros; who might just as well be elected without so much cost and trouble by throwing an orange skin into St. James'-street and taking the man it hit ; and generally to increase ' the reverence for Human Intellect or God's Light and the detestation of Human Stupidity or the Devil's Darkness.' As a practical suggestion to set us going in this scheme of universal reform— which otherwise, now that Sir Robert Peel is gone, would be rather vague— Mr. Carlyle proposes that the Crown should be empowered to nominate part of the Ministry to seats in the House of Commons, without constituencies, of which he speaks in the most disparaging and anti-democratic terms. This again is not original. But it is original to imagine that such an arrangement would open the Cabinet to ' the whole British nation, learned, unlearned, professional, practical, speculative, and miscellaneous,' and that if it had been in force 50 years ago, instead of having ' meagre Pitt' for First Minister, we might have had ' the thundergod,' Robert Burns.

Britannia and Trades' Advocate (Hobart Town, Tas. ), May 1851 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article225557511

DISRAELI AND DICKENS.

 Disraeli, long known as a brilliant satirist and romance writer, before he was elevated to the lead of the House of Commons, is an author different from either Mr. James or Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, but with merits of a very high description. He is not feudal and pictorial, like the first, nor profound and tender, like the last ; he is more political and discursive than either. He has great powers of description, an admirable talent for dialogue, and remarkable force, as well as truth, in the delineation of character. His novels are constructed, so far as the story goes, on the two dramatic principles, and the interest sustained with true dramatic effect. His mind is essentially of a reflective character; his novels are, in a great degree, pictures of public men or parties in political life. He has many strong opinions —perhaps some singular prepossessions —and his imaginative works are, in a great degree, the vehicle for their transmission. To any one who studies them with attention, it will not appear surprising, that he should be even more eminent in public life than in the realms of imagination; that the brilliant author of " Coningsby" should be the dreaded debater in the House of Commons—of "Vivian Grey," the able and lucid Chancellor of the Exchequer. His career affords a striking example of the truth of Dr. Johnson's observation, that what is usually called particular genius is nothing but strong natural parts accidentally turned into one direction and that when nature has conferred powers of the highest description, chance or supreme direction alone determines what course their possessor is to follow. The strong turn which romance and novel writing, in the first half of the nineteenth century, took to the delineation of high life, which its charms, its vices, and its follies, naturally led to a reaction, and a school arose, the leaders of which, discarding all attempts at patrician painting,aimed at the representation of the manners, customs, ideas, and habits of middle and low life. The field thus opened was immense, and great abilities were eagerly turned to its cultivation. At the very head of this school, both in point of time and talents, must be placed Mr. Dickens, whose works early rose into great, it may be said unexampled, celebrity. That they possess very high merits is obvious, from this circumstance : no one ever commands, even for a time, the suffrages of the multitude, without the possession, in some respects at least, of remarkable powers. Nor is it difficult to see what, in Mr. Dickens's case, these powers are. To extraordinary talent for the delineation of the manners and ideas of middle life, and a thorough acquaintance with them in all their stages below the highest, he unites a feeling and sensitive heart, a warm interest in social happiness and improvement, and most remarkable powers for the pathetic. To this must be added, that he is free from the principal defects of the writers who have preceded him in the same line, and which have now banished their works from our drawing-rooms. Though treating of the same subjects and grades in society, he has none of the indelicacy of our older novelists. We see in him the talent of Fielding, without his indecency ; the humour of Smollett, without his grossness. These brilliant qualities, joined to the novelty and extent of the field on which he entered, early secured for him a vast circulation and widespread reputation. It was founded on more than the merit, great as it was, of the author— selfish feelings in the readers combined with genius in the writer in working out his success The great and the affluent rejoiced in secret at beholding the manners of the middle class so graphically drawn. To them it was a new world ; it had the charm of foreign travelling. They said in their inmost hearts, "How different they are from us !'' The middle class were equally charmed with the portrait ; every one recognised in it the picture of his neighbour, none of himself —Alison's Europe.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12948077

THE FRONTIER LANDS OF THE CHRISTIAN AND TURK:

 comprising Travels in the Regions of the Lower Danube, in 1850-51. By a British Resident of Twenty Years in the East. 3 Vols. 8vo. London: Bentley. 1853.

IT is not, perhaps, a matter of abstract necessity that every form of civilization should, in its turn, pass through the phases of stagnation, decay, and decomposition. We can imagine the possibility of some favored race so lending itself to the purposes of Providence, as to keep up with the march of humanity, and undergo its successive transformations without violence. Hitherto, however, no such goodly sight has presented itself in real history. One form of civilization after another has risen, thriven for a season, failed in appropriating some essential element of conservation or development, and disappeared, to make way for others ; so that human progress can be characterised as a long conflict, marked at intervals by ‘ nations dying with their gods.’

 The lessons to be drawn from this chequered history were long comparatively disregarded ; but the world is growing older and more thoughtful, and the present generation, among Christian nations at least, is more disposed than any of the preceding to look back upon the road over which mankind has toiled, treasuring up its remembrances, rendering long-forgotten scenes and persons once more familiar, and discovering and deciphering the records of extinct civilization. We have learned to interpret great changes with reference to their moral causes, and no longer look upon conquests as exclusively results of physical force or military skill. All earnest thinkers, even those who are themselves little influenced by any religious principle, have come to see that the religion which is at the foundation of any given people’s social life and political institutions, is the secret of that people’s strength, or of its weakness. It is for this reason that we can prepare to behold the last moments of the once mighty Ottoman Empire with more intelligent interest than other generations can have felt upon witnessing similar spectacles.

 The evils which are hurrying Turkey to dissolution are not such as, taken in themselves severally, of even all together, would be incurable, were there not at the bottom the radical principle from which they have originated, and which obliges us to pronounce those symptoms fatal, that would otherwise only be dangerous. In the European half of the Empire, for instance, the Moslems have to maintain in subjection a population three or four times more numerous than themselves. In other countries this danger and disadvantage could be remedied, by making friends and equals of the subject people, as has been done in Ireland under similar circumstances, and with races in about the same proportion ; but this is impossible here. Unless the Turk renounce the fundamental maxims of the creed that sent him forth on the world with a scimitar in his right hand, the Christian must be treated as an inferior, who can only be allowed to exist by sufferance. There can be no amalgamation between the conqueror and the subject; the Koran has put an impassable barrier between them ; they are, and must remain, aliens to each other. Nay, that true believers cannot enter into the same civil organization with Christians ; they cannot be authorities in the same village ; so that, wherever the Turks did not exterminate the Christians, they were obliged to leave these last a sort of subordinate municipal order of their own, the Commune choosing its own Judges, and distributing among its members their several portions of the burdens imposed upon the whole. The system has, in a high degree, contributed to maintain the distinct nationality of the Rayahs, as the Christians are called ; it has facilitated the independence of those who have shaken off the yoke, and will do so on a larger scale. Thus the emancipation of the Greek, and of the wild borderer of the Danube, was partially prepared by the very extreme of disdain and aversion with which they were regarded.

 The oppressions of the administration, the corruption of public functionaries, the neglect of the vast mineral and agricultural resources of the country, the squalid poverty of the people, the uncertain tenure of property, the financial embarassments, menacing national bankruptcy,—these are evils with which, in other countries, enlightened energy could grapple ; but here, they are the result of the theocratic character which has made the Turkish people what they are, and is the base of all their institutions. For the Mahometan, despotism is the law of the universe : his God is a despot, stern and terrible, almighty Will without any bowels of tenderness or compassion, who seeks not for children, but for subjects, and has intrusted a military hierarchy with the apostleship of the sword. Hence, every attempt to introduce an element of liberty into Turkish institutions is found to clash with the very spirit of their civilization. The arbitrary power of the meanest Aga in his sphere is representative of that which the Sultan wields in his ; and to limit either is to violate divine order. The Turk cannot cultivate the arts of peace with the same settled purpose that others do ; for his mission is one of war and conquest; he is like a military colonist, encamped, rather than established, in Europe. Or if, yielding to circumstances and to the instinct of the real calling of man, he do turn artisan, agriculturist, miner, he cannot condescend to borrow the profane science of the infidels ; for his own superiority is, in his mind, one great evidence of the truth of his religion. He cannot so much as entertain the idea of human progress ; for Mahomet did but attempt to restore the abstract monotheism, which he conceived had been the starting-point of the Jewish faith twenty-six centuries before ; so that the world began its history over again, without anything new to learn or to do. Strange connexion between the general tendencies of a national character and the most minute details ! The haughty gravity with which the Turk retains the costume of his predecessors, and smiles at our frivolous changes of fashion, is just one of the harmless exhibitions of an incurable, inflexible conservatism. 

Turkey has to guard against the encroachments of one of the first military powers in the world mistress of her frontiers, and bent upon her conquest with an ardent ambition, that has been bequeathed from generation to generation. But, sustained as she is by the political interests of the rest of Europe, Turkey need not fear even Russia, if she could be sure of her own population. This she is not, and cannot be : the interests and affections of just that half of the empire which is most exposed to danger, go with the enemy ; and, while the Græco-Sclavonians are increasing in numbers, in wealth, and in intelligence, the Moslem population is being gradually diminished, partly by the misery produced through the operation of causes above mentioned, partly by immorality and polygamy. But this latter element of decay cannot be corrected any more than the others :—it is consecrated by the Koran.

 Bitter experience has, indeed, taught the ranks to feel their inferiority, and that their national existence depends upon assimilation to European civilization. Of course, if this conviction carried them far enough, it would become a means of social and political regeneration ; but no people can either do without a religious system, or avoid undergoing the influences of this religious system, so long as it is looked upon as true. Nothing short of embracing Christianity could thoroughly emancipate the Turks from the consequences of their past training; and of this there is not, apparently, the slightest immediate prospect. Hence, the consciousness of inferiority in the arts of both peace and war only leads those who feel it to despondency, or to an apathetic acquiescence in the decrees of inexorable fate. The follower of the Prophet, unable to conquer and yet unwilling to renounce his mission as a delusion, still grasps his broken sword, instead of turning it into a ploughshare. The fever has been followed by collapse ; and the faith that once made him the terror of the world, is his weakness now. Under these circumstances, the attempts that have been made at improvement in various ways, at administrative and financial reform in particular, have proved to be but half measures, condemned to inevitable failure : new pieces sewn upon the old garment, making the rent worse, and demonstrating the impossibility of patching up a worn-out order of things with fragments borrowed from a society that had been created by a principle essentially different. The same experiment of superficial Europeanization was made in Turkey Proper, and in Egypt; and it has failed, even in the latter, though Mehemet Ali had to contend with no ambitious Christian neighbours and with no indigenous Christian population of any importance, there being but a hundred thousand Copts remaining in the Valley of the Nile. —London Quarterly Review.

Banner 1854 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article179811753

THE DRUSES AND MARONITES.

 ONE of the most interesting portions of the earth is at the present time the scene of a religious and civil war, and subjected to all the horrors of the worst calamity that can afflict any people. Syria and the Holy Land must always be regarded with a lively interest by all Christian nations ; and it is almost impossible the " Powers" of Europe can permit the cruelties and ravages of war to ruin and depopulate this region without some endeavour to put a stop to it. They interfered in 1812 to settle with the Porte the form of the government of Syria ; they are not less called on now to interpose to put a period to that state of anarchy which there is some reason to fear has been partly caused by their own former arrangements.

The war is carried on between the Druses and the Maronites ; but as these names do not convey any notion of the differences between them or their relative position, a short explanation of the state of the Syrian population is necessary to render the facts contained in our recent foreign intelligence clear to the comprehension of a great body of readers.

It should be borne in mind that the  population of Syria are of many creeds ; the land, indeed, seems to be the very centre and focus in which religious differences, sects, and schisms contend with the fiercest intensity. It was the home of the Jewish people ; it was the cradle of the Christian faith ; it has been conquered by the Turk, invaded by the Crusader, and is now governed by the ruler of Egypt. The people are of many religions, and those subdivided into sects, which seem to hate each other but the more deeply the nearer they agree.

An idea of the extent of these dissensions may be gathered from the following extract from a writer who long resided among them. " The Jew loathes the Samaritan, though of his own lineage, and has no sympathy in common with any other class. The Greeks and Maronites, and Syrian, Latin, and Schismatic churches, though of one origin in Christianity, and equally oppressed, hate their rulers less than they do each other. The Metowali and the Sonnite alike acknowledge the mission of Mohammed, but are reciprocally regarded as heretics and infidels ; and, with the Druse and Anzary, the Arab, Turk, and European (constituting the masses of that country's population,) all seem to vie in perpetuating the respective virulence and antipathies of their ancestral schisms, and each class lives in distinct and recognised habits of separation from all others."

The acts which are committed by one portion of the people alone, the Christians, from this deadly sectarian hatred, are atrocious. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is annually a scene of conflict, in which the exertions of a guard of Mahommedan soldiery are often insufficient to prevent bloodshed. It is manifest that a slight cause would suffice to set these passions in a flame, either against each other or the Mahomedan population among whom they live ; and the flame has been lighted, and is now raging with terrible fury. The causes of this war of the Druses and Maronites have been in active operation since 1842.

According to De Lamartine, the Maronites take their name from a hermit, named Marron, who lived about the year 400 : he resided in the desert ; and his disciples having spread themselves over the different regions of Syria, built several monasteries, the chief of which stood in the vicinity of Apamea, on the fertile banks of the Orontes. All the Syrian Christians who were not then infected with the heresy of the Monothelites, took refuge in these monasteries, and from this circumstance received the name of Maronites. Volney, who lived several months amongst them, has collected the best information as to their origin ; it is nearly similar to what I myself drew from local traditions. Whatever it may have been, the Maronites form at present a tribe governed by the purest theocracy which has resisted the effects of time—a theocracy which, perpetually menaced by the tyranny of the Mahomedans, has been forced into moderation, and served to propagate principles of civil liberty, which are ripe for development amongst this people. The tribe, which, according to Volney, was in 1784 composed of 120,000 souls, at present reckons more than 200,000, and is increasing every day. Its territory comprehends 150 square leagues ; but it has no certain limits, for it extends over the sides of Lebanon, or into the valleys and plains which surround it, in proportion as the increased population found new villages. The town of Ziukla, at the mouth of the valley of Bkaa, towards Balbek, which twenty years ago had not above 1000 or 1200 inhabitants, contains now 10,000 or 12,000, and is likely to augment."

As a people, they are highly spoken of by travellers for their industrious habits and skill in cultivation, by which, aided by a fine soil and beautiful climate, they have made much of the district they inhabit a paradise on earth. Their clergy is composed of a Patriarch and Bishops: the Patriarch is elected by the Bishops, subject to the confirmation of the Roman Pontiff; and a Legate of the Pope resides in the country. In some points of discipline, however, they differ from the rules which the Church enforces in Europe; the secular clergy marry ; celibacy is practised only by the Monks, who live in communities, and the Bishops.

The origin of the Druses is more difficult to discover; their tenets are more difficult to define ; opinions are divided as to whether they are Idolaters or Mahomedans : some speculators have traced their descent from the Jews who lapsed to idolatry. The difficulty arises from the fact, that they adopt outwardly the faith of Christian or Mahomedan indifferently, as circumstances may require, practising still a secret worship which they permit no one to observe. It was among this tribe that the celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope lived for so many years, and gained so much influence ; yet she assured De Lamartine, that even to her the belief of the Druses was a mystery. The following is the account given of them by this traveller himself:—

"The Druses, who with the Metualis and Maronites form the principal population of Lebanon, have long passed for a European colony, left in the East by the Crusaders. Nothing is more absurd. Religion and language are the things which are longest preserved amongst people. The Druses are idolaters, and speak Arabic ; they are therefore not descended from a Frank and Christian parentage. What is more probable is, that they are, like the Maronites, an Arab tribe of the desert, who, having refused to adopt the religion of the Prophet, and being persecuted by the new believers, took refuge in the inaccessible solitudes of the high Lebanon, in order to defend their gods and liberty. They have prospered ; they have frequently had predominance over the tribes inhabiting Syria."

" The greatest number of travellers who have written upon them, allege that their creed is but a Mahomedan schism. I am perfectly convinced that they are egregiously deceived. There is one thing certain, that the religion of the Druses permits them to assume the creeds of all persons with whom they are in communication, and from this circumstance has sprung the idea that they were schismatic Mahomedans. The only fact that is ascertained with certainty upon the subject is that they worship the calf. Their institutions are in some respects similar to those of the people of antiquity. They are divided into two castes, the Akkals, or those who know, and the Dghaels, or those who do not know ; and, according to his caste, a Druse practises such or such a form of religion. Moses, Mahomet, Jesus, are names which they hold in veneration. They assemble one day in the week, each in the place assigned to the degree of initiation to which he has advanced, and fulfil their rites. Guards are stationed during the ceremonies, to watch that no profane person may approach the initiated. Death is instantly dealt out to any rash invader of the sanctity. Women are admitted to these ceremonies. The priests, or Akkals, are married, and form a hierarchy."

" In my opinion, the Druses are one of these tribes whose origin is lost in the darkness of time, mounting to an antiquity extremely remote. In physical appearance they have a considerable resemblance to the Jews, and the worship of the calf leads me to believe that they are descended from those tribes of Arabia Petræa, who led the Jews to that species of idolatry, or that they have a Samaritan parentage. At present accustomed to a sort of fraternity with Christian Maronites, and abhorring the yoke of the Mahomedans, and being numerous, rich, capable of discipline, and attached to agriculture and commerce, they would easily form a united body with the Maronite tribe, and progress with equal rapidity in civilization, provided their religious ceremonies were respected."

The Druses occupy all the Gebel Sannin, or Southern China of the Lebanon, including the maritime district Kesrouan, as far south as Deir el Kammar. The anticipations of the writer we have quoted as to the ease with which an union between them and the Maronites might be effected, have proved sadly delusive ; they are the two tribes who are now murdering each other and burning villages and crops. But we must confess, whatever the Druses may be—Idolaters or Mahomedans, or both—they show to the most advantage throughout the troubles that have led to this catastrophe. We doubt if the Maronite clergy deserves the high character the French traveller gives them ; they incited their flocks to violence on their neighbours, the Druses, who had no wish for fighting or violence at all. The Maronites commenced hostilities, by a series of assassinations, which were, of course, retaliated, till an open war broke out, in which the Druses obtained at last the assistance of the Turks, and have overpowered the Christian aggressors, inflicting cruelties and atrocities which are too common to civil war anywhere, but especially among the Easterns, those

Sons of fire and children of the sun,

 With whom revenge is virtue.

The political causes of the disturbance seem to have been shortly these : in 1842 the Five powers acceded to the deposition of the powerful house of Shehab from the Government of the Lebanons, where it had had great influence for a recorded period of 720 years—a time reaching as far back as our oldest aristocracies. Instead of their Government, the European Powers recommended the appointment of two Caimakans, or rulers—one chosen from each sect. The proposal was carried into effect by the Porte. During the three years that have since elapsed, the Shehabs have resorted to every artifice and intrigue to make the new form of Government a failure; and their chief allies in this plot against the peace of the country were the Maronite priests and clergy, who thought the division of the Lebanons into two Governments had diminished their influence. This was the result they produced—

The Christians declared that they never would tolerate, in any shape, or with any modifications, the rule of the Druses ; they or the Druses were to be driven from the Lebanon or exterminated. The organization of this war had been long going forward, and Bishops, with the language of religion on their lips, ordered the inhabitants to provide themselves with muskets, and powder and shot ; and the member of the Christian flock who would not arm himself for war against his neighbours, was denounced by his Bishop. The leader of the first attempt to surprise the Druses was the Maronite Bishop, Joseph, of Bait Shehab. The burning of numerous Druse villages marked his way, but the Christians were soon overcome by their more warlike enemies, and Bishop Joseph, the first to lead in success, was the last to turn his hack in reverse. He fled from Gezeyer to Yaleh and Beyrout, taking with him the flower of the garrison of Gezeyer, his late headquarters. This devoted town, thus abandoned, was then taken and sacked by a mixed body of Druses and Mussulmans, and such cruelties were committed as might be expected only from infuriated savages.

Those who first raised the sword have thus perished by the sword ; but it is impossible but that much suffering has been indicted on many ignorantly led astray by those who, from position and knowledge, ought to have been their guides—but not to destruction. It is satisfactory to know that, as far as the efforts of the British Consuls and Agents could go, they were used to prevent the war, and, failing in that, they have done their utmost to relieve the distress that has followed it.

Observer (Hobart) 1845 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article62136402

TURKISH BARBARISM.

 (From the Atlas, September 30.)

THE incorrigible barbarism of our Turkish proteges has lately been showing itself in the most revolting excesses. About two or three years ago the attention of the religious and scientific world was called to the existence of a very remarkable tribe of Nestorian Christians who had maintained their independence, amidst the general subjugation of Asia to the Mahomedan power, among the fastnesses of the Kurdish mountains which separate Turkey from Persia. Protected by the rugged precipices of this alpine chain, and by their native valour, an interesting community of these Nestorian tribes had preserved from a remote period their nationality and religion, and amidst the revolutions which convulsed and desolated the neighbouring places of Asia, had remained unchanged in their allegiance to the ancient faith and manners. An intelligent and enterprising American missionary, Dr. Grant, was the first, little more than two years ago, to penetrate into the recesses of the immense chain of mountains which lie at the source of the Tigris, and form the eastern wall of the upper valley of Mesopotamia, and to give to the world an account of the independent Christian communities whose existence had hitherto been looked upon as doubtful or fabulous. He describes them in the most pleasing colours, as frank, hospitable mountaineers, being in a state of almost patriarchal simplicity, retaining their ancient Christian faith in a state of purity which contrasts most favourably with the superstitions of the Eastern Greek and Catholic churches, and possessing a degree of intelligence and industry which raise them far above the scale of the surrounding Kurdish and Turkish population. Their institutions were perfectly free, resembling those of other independent mountaineers, such as the Swiss or Circassians, and tempered only by the moral authority of the patriarch, who is represented by Dr. Grant, as a man of very superior character and education.

Such is the account which, about two years ago, was received by the public of Christian Europe of the existence of this interesting community. Since then the crumbling fabric of Turkish despotism has received a reprieve from certain destruction by the interposition of that same Christian Europe, or at least of its so-styled Christian rulers ; and what has been the first use made of the breathing time thus afforded? To attack this unoffending Nestorian community, and exterminate them by fire and sword. In the last letter of the correspondent of the Times from Constantinople we find the following passage—"The news from the Nestorian districts of Kurdistan is disastrous; the Pacha of Mosul has commenced a war of extermination against them, has killed the Nestorian Patriarch, cut his sister in two, and committed all sorts of horrors."

Surely, the governments of Europe, which persist in patronising these ferocious Turks, and in arresting the natural progress of events which would long ago have relieved the Christian population which languishes under the oppressive and desolating incubus of Mahomedan sway, are responsible for restraining the excesses of their barbarian allies. We do not wish to return to the days of the Crusaders and propagate Christianity by the sword, but surely it is too bad that Christian nations should put power into the hands of a set of Mahomedan ruffians to be used for the persecution of Christianity.

That this attack upon the unoffending Nestorians is part of a regular and systematic attempt of the Turkish rulers to revive the old feelings of religious fanaticism among the Mahomedan population, is proved by occurences no less revolting which have taken place simultaneously under the very eye of the Government at Constantinople. Within the last few weeks an obsolete law has been revived, condemning to death all individuals who having once embraced Islamism afterwards recant, and has been carried into execution under circumstances of the most atrocious cruelty and injustice. The following graphic account given by the same correspondent who describes the extirpation of the Nestorian tribes, will give our readers an idea what sort of scenes are actually going on in the year 1843 at Constantinople, and what is the worth of all Lords Ponsonby and Palmerston's fine talk about the march of civilization in Turkey:—

A year and a half ago a young Armenian named Arakim, son of a Yakia, lived at Top Cupusi, and pursued the occupation of a shoe-maker. A drunken brawl brought him within the clutches of the cavasses at the Porte of the Seraskier, at which police tribunal he was sentenced to receive 500 blows. The prospect of punishment having filled him with fear, and the fumes of the wine having lulled his conscience, he offered to turn Turk; the complaint was dissmissed, his declaration was accepted at the Mekkemeh, and he was called Mahommed ; but several important formalities were omitted. But when morning dawned as the poet says, rahet el sikr ejat el fikr, "the wine went and reflection came." Stung by remorse, he disguised himself in Frank clothes, and went on board a vessel bound for Syria, where he remained until a few months ago, when, thinking the affair forgotten, he returned here. One day he went to his sisters house in Top Kupusi, and in returning with a bag under his arm he was met by Mustapha Aga, the officer of the guard of that quarter, who took him to the Seraskier's Porte, where he was identified as a backslider from Islamism. Several days' imprisonment, and frequently beaten, failed to compel him to return to Islamism. The relations of the poor wretch besieged and importuned the embassies to interest themselves in his favour ; but in defiance of the opinion of the whole of the moderate Turkish party, Riza Pasha, to propitiate the Sheikh-el-Islam and the fanatical party, consented that he should be decapitated as a Morted on renegade.

At the place of execution he was exhorted to recant Christianity, the first stroke was delayed, and the naked sword was shown him, but he persisted in his refusal. Twenty or thirty cavasses were requested to strike the blow, but they refused ; at last a man named Ali, of Taook Beynor, one of the cavasses of the Porte of the Seraskier, came and struck him four times without being able to sever the head from the body ; at last he was thrown down in the most brutal manner, and his head sliced or sawn off. For three days was the body of this poor creature laid out on the pavement of the Baluk Bazaar. I never saw a more ghastly spectacle. He lay flat on his breast with the head stuck between his legs at the furca, and looking, as it were, out between his thighs. He appeared to be a good looking young man, of 21 years of age, and but for the loathsome swarms of flies that covered his lips and eyes, one might have supposed the head asleep. The Armenian Patriarch presented a petition to the Porte for the corpse, but it was torn up, and the body, after three days' exposure, towed out to the middle of the Bosphorus, and abandoned to the current. The poor mother of the man sat for some time by the corpse, without shedding a tear ; the idiotcy of grief depicted on her countenance is described by those that saw her, to have been soul harrowing.

We are no partizans of Russia, but we must say that when we read an account of scenes like these, we cannot but feel that the expulsion of the Turks from Europe by any civilized and Christian power would be a benefit to humanity. We cannot but feel that the policy is radically false which sacrifices obvious considerations of right and wrong to remote and contingent expediences, and which identifies the interest of England with the support of an unsupportable anomaly. It is morally wrong there cannot be a doubt of it, to go out of our way to patronise and support a Government which by its every act places itself without the pale of civilization and humanity, and whose existence is a daily curse to millions of our fellow-Christians. The Christian powers of Europe ought to lay aside their jealousies and agree upon some plan for ridding the world of the nuisance of this barbarous and precocious despotism. If they fail to do so, if they persist in the preposterous scheme of attempting to bolster up by protocols and diplomatic conventionalities, and independence which is real only for purposes of domestic persecution, the result will eventually be, that at the first moment when England is embarrassed by difficulties at home, or entangled in a dispute with France or America, the whole heritage of the decrepit Turkish empire will drop like a ripe pear into the lap of the powerful neighbour whose fleets and armies stand ready at a moment's notice to pounce upon their prey. In less than half a century, if the present policy is pursued, the wish of Catherine will be accomplished, and Constantinople will be a Russian port.

Sydney Morning Herald 1844 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12407872

FEMALE M.D.'S.

 (FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.)

The English world hardly knows as yet what to think of a feminine doctor—whether to believe or wag its head, to scandalize or to admire. We have had among us for some weeks Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., the representative of a propagand already victorious in America. This lady has been heartily welcomed, and will probably triumph in her enterprise; but she has many difficulties to encounter, of which the most formidable may originate with her own sex. Women are not infrequently nervous to being led by one of themselves; their doubts are ambiguous; their approval is faint. Only the best cultured among them have freely acknowledged that good social service may be performed by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman who ever took a medical degree, and by her sister, Dr. Emily. As for men, their first impulse is to laugh, quote Byron on blue-stockings, hint irreverently at Bloomerism, and anathematise " strong-mindedness." After the novelty has worn away, however, we believe that lady doctors will be much more in fashion than men-milliners ; so we cordially wish all prosperity to one who starts as the pioneer of a very necessary and important reform. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell is English, not American, as the public have been led to suppose ; but it was in the United States that she commenced her medical career. By 12 colleges her claim to admission was rejected; that of Geneva, in the State of New York, at length received her. She listened unflinchingly to the lectures, nor was it long before her diploma was conceded in the midst of a veritable ovation, and Elizabeth Blackwell became a registered Domina. Well, who are not going to write her biography. Suffice it to say, that she has come before us as a qualified female physician for women and children ; that her studies have been thorough ; that she has been met in consultation by men of high eminence in the profession ; and that her example has now begun to be extensively followed. Bigots and boobies, growling dowagers and simpering school-misses, may be shocked, amused, or confounded, as they please ; but such an institution as the New York Women's Hospital refutes the calumnious, and ought to silence the sarcastic.

Now, the conventional notion has hitherto been, that the powers of women are, or ought to be, exhausted by their family and domestic functions, as wives, mothers, and housekeepers. That is to say, half the human race has been pronounced incapable of more than the inspection of servants, the care of furniture, the training of children, the enlivening of drawing-rooms, and the contribution of so much chit-chat to the babble of society. Setting aside the general question, whether all women could not be educated to higher purposes, are there not some who, being neither wives, mothers, nor housekeepers, superior too to the necessity of menial service, yet not independent, gifted with talents, and inspired by ambition, might honorably and profitably imitate the admirable perseverance and courage of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell ? Must every one not born as a doll die as a drudge ? Drudges and dolls there will be, no doubt, so long as humanity continues unchanged ; but society, as if by tacit consent, has raised women above the rank they held when all were spinners, staining the fleece with purple, or tanning the sheepskin, twisting yarn, or grinding corn. We may not, it is true, have an abundance of De Staels or Sevignes ; but we have undoubtedly thousands who might, if the path were open, follow independent and even brilliant careers. If not, there would be little reason on our part for boasting that we are above the level of Sacs, Hottentots, or Esquimaux ; for it would be an humbling confession to insist that every female in a civilised country must either be maintained by her husband or friends, or receive the wages of servitude as a teacher, a governess, a servant, or a factory hand. To be the rare appendage of a household may suit some, but would be slavery to others. The same applies to spinning, weaving, bookbinding, shoe-making, map-coloring, and a hundred other forms of mechanical labor, no less than to trade, from apple-selling at a corner to the keeping of a lustrous shop that seems ready to burst with its opulence of ornament and vanity. But a woman may be rich, and yet need a vocation. "For her," says an American philosopher, " there is no profession left except marriage." Why, however, should she not develop her best capacities, act upon her rights and duties as a human being, pursue happiness in her own way, enjoy liberty in the sense in which she construes it, and compete in the great race of reputation? No one forbids her to be an artist, Rosa Bonheur is a universal favorite. Everybody admires woman as a poet—all nations have loved Sappho. Yet she may not possess literary or artistic genius— she may, in fact, be an Elizabeth Blackwell instead of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning; her capacities may be those of a physician, not of a painter or a lyrist. In that case, neither public opinion nor academic pedantry ought to oppose her wishes.

The hostile argument is, we know, that medical study must profane the purity of a feminine mind. We lay no stress upon reasoning of this character. What Elizabeth Blackwell proposes is to qualify women for treating their own sex and children. In that there can be no indelicacy, and not a tenth part so much inconvenience as attached to Florence Nightingale's Crimean mission. Besides, when a generation of lady medical teachers has sprung up, and when it has become unnecessary that men should lecture before female students, the force of the objection will cease altogether, and it will undoubtedly be a social advantage that young girls and children, instead of being attended in all their ailments by medical men, shall be confided to the care of those whom their parents may implicitly trust. Women, as a quaint author asserts, are by nature half doctors and half nurses ; the profession, he adds, seems to belong to them ; and certainly the wonderful proficiency to which numbers of the sex have attained in America almost justifies the paradox. Certain theorists have gone further, and advocated the practice of law and theology by ladies. We will not now discuss these questions; but there are already reverend ladies in the United States ; and, although no Miss has yet become a lawyer, the famous plea of Lady Alice Lisle, delivered when she could not speak by attorney, has tempted some people to believe in the probability of petticoats invading the Inns and Courts. Undoubtedly, mankind might hear better preaching from many a woman than the Spaniards or Italians hear from a race of superstitious celibate monks. Apart from these speculations, every person can judge independently whether or not in numerous and constantly-recurring instances, the presence of a lady professionally qualified would not be invaluable in a family of girls, or to an invalid, or in those cases which, as instinct told the Roman matron, call naturally for the help of women alone. We need not, in defence of this position, be for ever citing Semiramis or Maria Theresa, Vittoria Colonna or Brynhilda, Mrs. Somerville or Captain Betsey, who commands the Scotch brig Cleotus. The question is not whether a few feminine minds have shot to the zenith, but whether the average has not been depressed by prejudice, by false theories, and whether infinitely too much credit has not been given to satires, representing all female advocates of progress as Amazons, who regard women as a race naturally at enmity with man. Between a harem of the East and a fashionable drawing-room in the West there is not a great deal of difference in point of social philosophy ; but, in order to re-arrange the balance in our own favor, we have to encourage healthier and bolder views; and however lady students of Anatomy or the pharmacopœia may be ridiculed by dolts and jesters, they have but to persevere, and half a century will bring about no unimportant revolution. To say, with a writer who was rather too fond of startling his readers, that "men will not retain their manliness unless women acquire it," is to go far in search of an epigram; the subject may more usefully be discussed in common-sense language. Let women pursue legitimate objects of ambition, take part in social work, heal the sick of their own sex, gain enlightenment, emancipate themselves from the debasing necessity of being married, or forced into menial chains, and they can afford to be lectured on the dangers of contamination; for a true woman, whatever her studies, will no more be polluted by them than a star in the heavens can be blackened by a ground-fog in Bermondsey.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Friday 1 July 1859 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5683730

FEMALE COSTUME AND THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

  (From Willmer and Smith's European Times, August 2.)

 WHATEVER excites attention on the other side of the Atlantic, must necessarily attract interest here, and, in the absence of more striking facts, discussion is now provoked at home about the " Bloomer costume" of the ladies, and the "enfranchisement of women." The subject is highly transatlantic, and involves questions of the deepest political and social gravity. It seems to have been taken up in certain parts of the United States, without any apparent mixture of that serious comicality which forms so peculiar a trait in the American character, and which, in this country, comes under the designation of "bathos."

 With regard to the "Bloomer costume," we occasionally hear of its breaking out, as used to be said of the cholera, in certain parts of our own country. At Harrogate, for instance, several ladies are said to have adopted the short jacket or tunic and the garb for the extremities recognised as the female costume in Turkey. In picturesque effect, we can readily conceive that a fine woman, so arrayed, will be seen to very great advantage, from the full development of her personal charms. But "figure" is an essential element in costume ; and, as nature is not equally bountiful in this respect to all her children, modern taste has contrived appliances to hide, by the art of the tailor and the mantua-maker, the want of physical development under which many persons labour. Little doubt can exist that sadly too little attention is paid by parents to the physical education of their offspring, and, if the new female costume be the means of concentrating attention more closely on this important subject, the invasion of which we hear so much, will bring in its train some unmistakable advantages.

 In dress and in manners, mankind are so much the slaves of habit, that we are too often induced to vote as absurd and ridiculous what might appear on a closer investigation, to be both rational and necessary. The modesty, so much and so deservedly prized in the female character, causes many absurd anomalies in the habits of the sexes which press heavily on the position and even on the health of women. A romping lad, who plays at cricket and other outdoor exercise, inures the system to hardihood, and is developing the physical powers which make him a healthy and a useful member of society. With girls the case is otherwise. Their amusements are, for the most part, sedentary within doors, and they suffer correspondingly. In everything that is not positively vicious, no good reason can be assigned why the outdoor amusements of the sexes, whether in high or in humble life, should not be pretty uniform ; but they never even distantly approximate until the world ceases to dislike what is called, by way of opprobrium, a masculine women. Such a designation would alone sour the affections of the most sentimental lover. We are too prone to associate beauty with a delicate form and a languid expression. Even rustic beauty, which expresses the highest condition of physical existence, is repugnant to the erroneous notions which novelists and poets, for the sake of dramatic effect, have studiously instilled into the national mind. But, without healthy mothers, it is in vain to look for healthy offspring; and the subject can only be comprehended in its vastness by imagining a nation of puny and sick creatures, invaded and overcome by a more stalwart race, of whose matrons it might he said, in the language of the poet, that—

 "Like Grecian mothers, they gave birth to men."

 The physiological is not less important than the moral aspect of the case, and in every point of view, the subject is one of deep and abiding interest. That the race is deteriorating in this country is, we fear, patent, from the fact that the standard of admission into the army has been twice reduced of late years. A crowded population in the towns, constantly recruited from the country districts, and employed late and early in a species of labour very unfavourable to longevity must, in the course of time, work lamentable results, unless counteracting effects are brought out by such discussions as those which have been recently raised in various parts of the United States.

 The "rights of women" form a pendent to the physical aspect of the case. At the first blush, it offends all our notions of propriety and dignity, to hear or think of women possessing the franchise, sitting in congress, making speeches, becoming lawyers, and exercising the functions of political power. Men shrink for the most part instinctively from what is called "a strong minded women," or "a blue stocking." But without pursuing this subject through all the ramifications to which it would lead, it will be admitted, we presume, by the most fastidious in such matters, that superior mental training does not incapacitate women from fulfilling the highest duties to which as wives and mothers they are called. How far the possession of intellect would warrant the extension to them of equal political rights with the ruder vessels of humanity, we are not very likely to be called upon to discuss in this country, at least for some time to come ; but in America, where political power is based exclusively upon numbers, the question stands on altogether different grounds, and the fact that the movement for the "rights of women" has already identified itself with the abolition of slavery, shows that the issue is too vitally important, and has taken too strong hold on the sympathies of our American cousins, to be permitted quietly to drop. The political capital which can be manufactured out of the movement is the best reason for its agitation. One thing, however, is certain that there are many callings and professions for which women are as naturally qualified as men. The professions of medicine is one. It is deeply to be regretted that the sphere for the employment of clever women is so limited. The moral consequences of' this limitation are apparent at a glance. In physic, and more especially in matters affecting their own sex, the employment of women seems much more natural and delicate. For female doctors, the American papers tell us, there is at present an extraordinary demand on the western continent.

 Altogether, the discussions which this question will raise cannot fail to be at least interesting; and, whatever turn it may take, must result in good, by the diffusion of sounder and more rational views than have hitherto existed. As regards the  "Bloomer costume," although it is said to have been seen in the streets of Liverpool we would stake our existence on the fact that the ladies who adopt it are not the least interesting and lovely of her Majesty's liege subjects.

Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer 1852, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article91931062

RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF WOMEN.

 No one denies the fact that women have wrongs ; we wrangle only over the alphabet of amelioration. Some advocate her being unsexed as the best means of doing her justice; others propose her intellectual annihilation, and the further suppression of her individuality, on the homœopathic principle of giving as a cure the cause of the disease.

How few open the golden gates which lead to the middle Sacred Way, whose stillness offends the noisy, and whose retirement disgusts the restless ; the middle path of a noble, unpretending, redeeming, domestic usefulness ; stretching out from Home, like the rays of a beautiful star, all over the world ! Yet here have walked the holy women of all ages; a long line of saints and heroines ; whose virtues have influenced countless generations, and who have done more for the advancement of humanity than all the public functionists together. Not that the comparison bespeaks much, or is worthy of the sacred truth.

A word with ye, O public functionists— ye damagers of a good cause by loading it with ridicule—ye assassins of truth, by burying it beneath exaggeration ! A woman such as ye would make her—teaching, preaching, voting, judging, commanding a man-of-war, and charging at the head of a battalion—would be simply an amorphous monster, not worth the little finger of the wife we would all secure if we could, the tacens et placens uxor, the gentle helpmate of our burdens, the soother of our sorrows, and the enhancer of our joys ! Imagine a follower of a certain Miss Betsy Millar, who for twelve years commanded the Scotch brig, Cloetus—imagine such a one at the head of one's table, with horny hands covered with fiery red scars and blackened with tar, her voice hoarse and cracked, her skin tanned and hardened, her language seasoned with nautical allusions and quarter-deck imagery, and her gait and step the rollicking roll of a bluff Jack tar. She might be very estimable as a human being, honourable, brave, and generous, but she would not be a woman ; she would not fulfil one condition of womanhood, and therefore she would be unfit and imperfect, unsuited to her place and unequal to her functions. What man (moderately sane) would prefer a woman who had been a sea captain for ten or twelve years, to the most ordinary of piano-playing and flower-painting young ladies ? Mindless as the one might be, the rough practicability of the other would be worse ; and helpless as fashionable education makes young ladies. Heaven defend us from the virile energy of a race of Betsy Millars ! Yet one philosopher has actually been found who has had the moral courage to quote this lady's career as a proof that women are fitted by nature for offices which men have always assumed to themselves, and that it would be a wise and healthful, and a natural state of society, which should man brigs with boarding-school girls, and appoint emancipated females as their commanders. We wish Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the heroic champion of Betsy Millar, no worse fate than to marry one of his favourite sea captainesses.

In the American Utopia that is to come, women are to be voters, barristers, members of congress, and judges. They are to rush to the polling-booth, and mount the hustings, defiant of brick-bats, and careless of eggs and cabbages. They are to mingle with the passions and violences of men by way of asserting their equality, and to take part of in their vices by way of gaining their rights. They are to be barristers, too, with real blue bags, pleading for murderers and sifting the evidence of divorce cases ; offices, no doubt, highly conducive to their moral advancement and the maintenance of their purity, but such as we, being of the old fashioned and eminently unenlightened school, would rather not see our wives or daughters engaged in. Of doctresses we will say nothing. The care and the cure of the sick belong to women, as do all things gentle and loving. And we can scarcely reconcile it with our present notions of the fitness of things, that a gentlewoman of refinement and delicacy should frequent dissecting-rooms among the crowd of young students, and cut up dead bodies and living ones as her mother cut out baby-clothes, yet the care of the sick is so holy a duty, that if these terrible means are necessary they are sanctified by the end, and God prosper those who undertake them ! But they are not necessary. Women are better as medical assistants than as independent practitioners ; their services are more valuable when obeying than when originating orders ; and as nurses they do more good than as doctors. Besides, it would be rather an inconvenient profession at times. A handsome woman, under forty —or over it—would be a dangerous doctor for most men ; and, as specialities in medicine are quackeries, it would be humbug and affectation to shrink from any cases. For, admitting the principle that woman's mission—at least one of them—is, to doctor, it must be extended in practice to all alike. And we may imagine various circumstances in which a young doctress would be somewhat embarrassing, if not embarrassed ¡ yet what are we to do when all the doctors are driven out of the field, and we have no choice left us ? and if women are to be our doctors, will they be only old women, and ugly ones—will there never be bright eyes or dimpled cheeks among them ? It might be very delightful to be cured by a beautiful young woman, instead of by a crabbed old man, yet for prudence sake we should recommend most wives and mothers to send for the crabbed old man when their sons and husbands are ill, and to be particularly cautious of feminine M.D.'s in general.

One or two points of human nature the Functionists and emancipated women either sink or pervert. The instincts above all. The instinct of protection in man and the instinct of dependence in woman they decline to know anything about ; they see nothing sacred in the fact of maternity, no fulfilment of natural destiny in marriage, and they find no sanctifying power in the grace of self-sacrifice. These are in their eyes the causes of woman's degradation. To be equal with man, she must join in the strife with him, wrestle for the distinctions, and scramble for the good places. She must no longer stand in the shade apart, shedding the blessing of peace and calmness on the combatants, when they return home, heated, and weary, and she must be out in the blazing sun, toiling and fighting too, and marking every victory by the grave-stone of some dear virtue, canonised since the world began. Homes deserted, children—the most solemn responsibility of all—given to a stranger's hand, modesty, unselfishness, patience, obedience, endurance, all that has made angels of humanity must be trampled under foot, while the Emancipated Woman walks proudly forward to the goal of the glittering honours of public life, her true honours lying crushed beneath her, unnoticed. This these noisy gentry think will elevate woman.

Women have grave legal and social wrongs, but will this absurd advocacy of exaggeration remedy them? The laws which deny the individuality of a wife, under the shallow pretence of a legal lie ; which award different punishments for the same vice ; the laws which class women with infants and idiots, and which recognise principles they neither extend nor act on ; these are the real and substantial Wrongs of Women, which will not, however, be amended by making them commanders in the navy or judges on the bench. To fling them into the thick of strife would be but to teach them the egotism and hardness, the grasping selfishness, and vain glory of men, which it has been their mission since the world began, to repress, to elevate, to soften, and to purify. Give woman public functions, and you destroy the very springs of her influence. For her influence is, and must be, moral more than intellectual—intellectual only as filtering through the moral nature, and if you destroy that moral nature, if you weaken its virtues and sully its holiness, what of power or influence remains ? She will gain place and lose power ; she will gain honours and lose virtues ; when she has pushed her father or her son to the wall, and usurped the seats consecrated by nature to them alone. Yes, by nature ; in spite of the denial of the public functionists. Her flaccid muscles, tender skin, highly nervous organisation, and aptitude for internal injury decide the question of offices involving hard bodily labour ; while the predominance of instinct over reason, and of feeling over intellect as a rule, unfits her for judicial or legislative command, Her power is essentially a silent and unseen moral influence ; her functions are those of a wife and mother. The emancipatists rate these functions very lightly, compared with the duty and delight of hauling in main-top-sails or speechifying at an election. They seem to regard the maternal race as a race apart, a kind of necessary cattle, just to keep up the stock ; and even of these natural drudges the most gifted souls may give up their children to the care of others, as queen-bees give their young to the workers. Yet no woman who does her duty faithfully to her husband and children will find her time unemployed, or her life incomplete. The education of her children alone would sufficiently employ any true hearted woman ; for education is not a matter of school-hours, but of that subtle influence of example which makes every moment a seed-time of future good or ill. And the woman who is too gifted, too intellectual, to find scope for her mind and heart more in the education of her child, who pants for a more important work than the training of an immortal soul, who prefers quarter-decks, and pulpits to a still home and a school desk, is not a sea captain, nor a preacher by mission— she is simply not a woman. She is a natural blunder, a mere unfinished sketch ; fit neither for quarter-decks nor for home, able neither to command men nor to educate children.

But the true Woman, for whose ambition a husband's love and her children's adoration are sufficient, who applies her military instincts to the discipline of her household, and whose legislative faculties exercise themselves in making laws for her nursery ; whose intellect has field enough for her in communion with her husband, and whose heart risks no other honours than his love and admiration ; a woman who does not think it a weakness to attend to her toilette, and who does not disdain to be beautiful ; who believes in the virtue of glossy hair and well-fitting gowns, and who eschews rents and ravelled edges, slipshod shoes, and audacious make-ups ; a woman who speaks low, and who does not speak much ; who is patient and gentle, and intellectual and industrious ; who loves more than she reasons, and yet does not love blindly ; who never scolds, and rarely argues, but who rebukes with a caress, and adjusts with a smile ; a woman who is the wife we all will have dreamt of once in our lives, and who is the mother we still worship in the backward distance of the past ; such a woman as this does more for human nature, and more for woman's cause, than all the sea captains, judges, barristers, and members of parliament put together— God-given and God-blessed as she is ! If such a wife as this has leisure which she wishes to employ actively, she will always find occupation, and of a right kind too. There are the poor and the sick round her home ; she will visit them and nurse them, and teach their children, and lecture their drunken husbands ; she will fulfil her duty better thus than by walking the hospitals or preaching on Sundays ! There are meetings to attend also, and school committees, and clothing-clubs and ragged schools to organise ; and her voice will sound more sweet and natural there than when shrieking through a speaking trumpet or echoing in court. And there are books to read, and then to discuss by the fireside with her husband, when he comes home in the evening—though perhaps his attention may sometimes wander from the subject to her little foot, peeping out from under the flounces over the fender, or to the white hands stitching so busily—and is not this better than a public lecture in a bloomer costume ? And then, perhaps, she can help her husband in his profession, write out a clear manuscript for his editor, or copy a deed, find out references and mark them for him, or perhaps correct his sermon to the general advantage of his congregation—which we contend, is a fitter occupation than arguing divorce cases in a wig and blue bag, or floundering in the quagmires of theology in bands and scholar's hood. Our natural woman, too, loves her children, and looks after them ; but the babies of our emancipated woman belong as much to the State as to her, and as much to chance as to either. Our natural woman plays with her children, and lets them pull down her thick hair into a curtain over her face, and ruffle even her clean gown with their tiny hands; but the emancipated woman holds baby playing a degradation, and resigns it to servants and governesses. Give us the loving quiet wife, the good mother, the sweet, unselfish sister ; give us women beautiful and womanly, and we will dispense with their twelve years' service on board a brig, or two or three years' close attendance in a dissecting room. Give us gentlewomen, who believe in milliners, and know the art of needlework ; who can sew on buttons and make baby-clothes; who, while they use their heads, do not leave their hands idle ; who while claiming to be intellectual beings, claim also to be natural and loving beings—nay, even obedient and self-sacrificing beings, two virtues of the Old World which our Transatlantic Utopians count as no virtues at all. Oh, Transatlantic Utopians ! Leave nature's loveliest work alone ! Let women have their rights, in Heaven's name, but do not thrust them into places which they cannot fill, and give them functions they cannot perform—except to their own disadvantage, and the darkening of the brightest side of this world. Reflect (if ye ever do reflect) on the destiny of women, which nature has graven on her soul and body, a wife, a mother, a help-meet and a friend ; but not by mind or by person ever meant to be an inferior man doing his work badly while neglecting her own. The shadow of man darkens the path of woman, and while walking by his side, she yet walks not in the same light with him. Her home is in the shade, and her duties are still and noiseless ; his is in the broad daylight, and his works are stormy and tumultuous ; but the one is the complement of the other, and while he labours for her she watches for him, and energy and love leave nothing incomplete in their lives. Rest in the shade, dear woman ! Find your happiness in love, in quiet, in home activity and in natural duties ; turn as from your ruin from all those glaring images of honour which a weak ambition places before you.—Household Words.

Sydney Morning Herald November 1854,

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