With the actual occupation of the Danubian Principalities and 
the drawing near of the long-predicted crisis, the English Press has 
remarkably lowered its warlike language, and little opposition is 
made to the advice tendered in two consecutive leaders of The 
Times* that, “as the Russians could not master their propensity 
for civilizing barbarian provinces, England had better let them 
do as they desired, and avoid a disturbance of the peace by 
vain obstinacy.” 

The anxiety of the Government to withhold all information on 
the pending Turkish question betrayed itself in a most ridiculous 
farce, acted at the same time in both Houses of Parliament. In the 
House of Commons Mr. Layard, the celebrated restorer of ancient 
Nineveh,'* had given notice that he would move this evening that 
the fullest information with regard to Turkey and Russia should 
be laid before the House. On this notice having been given, the 
following scene occurred in the lower House”: 

Mr. Layard—The notice of my motion was given for to-morrow. I received a 
note yesterday afternoon asking me to put off the motion to Monday, 11th inst. I 
was not able to return an answer yesterday afternoon—in fact, not till this 
morning. To my surprise, I find that, without my knowledge, I was in the House 
yesterday; for I find from the notices of motions printed with the votes, that Mr. 
Layard postponed his motion from Friday the 8th to Monday 11th! [...] It seems 
scarcely fair that independent members should be treated in this way. 

Mr. Gladstone—I1 do not know by whose direction or authority the notice of 

postponement was placed on the notes of the House. Of one thing I can assure the 
hon. member, that whatever was done, was done in perfect bona fides. 

* The Times, No. 21475, July 8, 1853.— Ed. 
to the report in The Times,No. 21475, July 8, 1853.— Ed. 

Mr. Layard—I should like to know who put that notice of postponement in the 
paper. What reason have you for deferring the motion to Monday? 

Mr. Gladstone—An indisposition of Lord J. Russell. 

Mr. Layard then withdrew his motion until Monday. 

Mr. Disraeli—This appears to me an arrangement of business which requires 
explanation on the part of the Government—the more so as the India Bill, too, 
contrary to agreement, is placed on the notes for to-morrow. 

After a pause, 

Sir C. Wood humbly confesses to have been the double sinner, 
but, availing himself of Mr. Gladstone’s suggestion, declared that 
he had acted with regard to Mr. Layard with the best intentions in 
the world. 

The opposite side of the medal was exhibited in the House of 
Lords, where, at all events, the bodily disposition of poor little 
Russell had nothing to do with the motion of the Marquis of 
Clanricarde, similar to that of Mr. Layard, and likewise announced 
for Friday, after it had already several times been adjourned on the 
request of Ministers. 

Lord Brougham rose, with the assurance that he had not communicated with any 
member of the Ministry, but that he found the motion of Lord Clanricarde, 
announced for to-morrow, most inconvenient in the present state of affairs. For 
this he would refer to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. 

Lord Clarendon could certainly not say that there would be neither mischief nor 
inconvenience in a full discussion of the subject at present. Negotiations were going 
on; but after the various postponements, he felt that he ought not to ask again his 
noble friend to withdraw his motion. Yet he reserved to himself, in reply to him, to 
say nothing more than that which his sense of public duty allowed. Nevertheless, he 
would ask his noble friend whether he would object to at least postponing the 
motion until Monday next, it being convenient to have this discussion in both 
Houses at the same time, and Lord J. Russell being extremely unwell? 

Earl of Ellenborough—The noble Marquis opposite would only exercise a sound 
discretion if he deferred not only to Monday, but generally, without fixing at 
present any day for the motion of which he has given notice for to-morrow. 

Lord Derby—-He had been taken by surprise on finding the noble Marquis 
bringing the question under consideration, and he concurred entirely with the 
views of the noble Earl (Ellenborough). 

Earl Grey—After the declaration of Lord Clarendon the propriety of 
postponing discussion must be obvious to every one. 

The Marquis of Clanricarde then withdrew his motion. 

Earl Fitzwilliam—He would ask whether the Russian manifesto, the declaration 
of a holy war against Turkey, dated June 26, was authentic? 

Earl Clarendon— He had received that document from Her Majesty’s Minister at 
St. Petersburg. 

Earl of Malmesbury—It was due to the dignity of their Lordships that they 
should be assured by Government of its intention to prevent, as far as it could, a 
similar discussion taking place on Monday in the other House. 

Earl of Aberdeen—He and his colleagues would exercise any influence they 
possessed to do their utmost for preventing that discussion. 

To resume: The House of Commons is first made to adjourn 
discussion by a fraud. Then, under the pretense that the House of 
Commons had adjourned discussion, the House of Lords is made 
to do the same. Then the “noble” Lords resolve to postpone the 
motion ad infinitum; and lastly, the dignity of the “noblest 
assembly on the face of the earth” requires that the Commons too 
should postpone the motion ad infinitum. 

On an interpellation from Mr. Liddell, Lord Palmerston 
declared in the same sitting: 

The recent obstruction of the navigation of the Sulina Canal of the Danube, 
had been caused by the accidental circumstance of the waters of the river having 
overflowed and spread over the banks, and so far diminished the force of the 
current as to increase the quantity of mud on the bar. [...] I am bound to say that, 
for many years past, the Government has had reason to complain of the neglect of 
the Government of Russia to perform its duties as the possessor of the territory of 
which the Delta of the Danube is composed, and to maintain the Canal of the 
Sulina [...] in efficient navigable state, although Russia always admitted that it was 
her duty to do so, by virtue of the treaty of Adrianople. [...] While these mouths of 
the Danube formed parts of the Turkish Territory, there was maintained a depth 
of 16 feet on the bar, whereas, by neglect of the Russian authorities the depth had 
diminished to 11 feet, and even these 11 feet were reduced to a small and narrow 
canal from obstructions on the sides, from sand-banks and from vessels wrecked 
and sunk, and allowed to remain there, so that it was difficult for any vessel to pass 
except in calm weather and with a skillful pilot. [...] There was rivalship on the part 
of Odessa, where existed a desire to obstruct the export of produce by the Danube, 
and to divert it, if possible by way of Odessa. 

Probably the English Ministry hope that, in case of the 
Principalities becoming Russian, the mouths of the Danube will 
reopen according as the rivalry of Odessa will be shut. 

A few months ago I took occasion to remark on the progress of 
the Ten Hours’ agitation in the Factory districts.* ~The movement 
has been going on all the while, and has at last found an echo in 
the Legislature. On the 5th inst., Mr. Cobbett, M. P. for Oldham, 
moved for leave to bring in a bill to restrict factory labor to ten 
hours on the first five days of the week, and to seven and a half 
hours on Saturday. Leave was given to bring in the bill. During 
the preliminary debate, Lord Palmerston, in the warmth of 
improvisation, allowed a distinct threat to escape him, that, if no 
other means for protecting the factory women and children 
existed, he would propose a restriction of the moving power. The 
sentence had scarcely fallen from his lips, when a general storm of 
indignation burst forth against the incautious statesman, not only 
from the direct representatives of millocracy, but particularly from 

their and his own Whig friends, such as Sir George Grey, Mr. 
Labouchere, &c. Lord J. Russell having taken Palmerston aside, 
and after half an hour’s private pourparler, had to labor very hard 
to appease the storm, by assuring them that “it appeared to him 
that his honorable friend had been entirely misunderstood, and 
that in expressing himself for a restriction of the moving power, 
his friend had meant to express himself against it.” Such absurd 
compromises are the daily bread of the Coalition. At all events they 
have the right to say one thing and to mean another. As to Lord 
Palmerston himself, be it not forgotten that that old dandy of 
Liberalism expelled a few years ago some hundred Irish families 
from his “estates,” much in the same way as the Duchess of 
Sutherland did with the ancient clansmen.* 

Mr. Cobbett, who moved the bill, is the son of the renowned 
William Cobbett, and represents the same borough his father did. 
His politics, like his seat, are the inheritance of his father, and 
therefore independent indeed, but rather incoherent with the state 
of present parties. William Cobbett was the most able representa- 
tive, or, rather, the creator of old English Radicalism. He was the 
first who revealed the mystery of the hereditary party warfare 
between Tories and Whigs, stripped the parasitic Whig Oligarchy 
of their sham liberalism, opposed landlordism in its every form, 
ridiculed the hypocritical rapacity of the Established Church, and 
attacked the moneyocracy in its two most eminent incarnations— 
the “Old Lady of Threadneedle-st.” (Bank of England) and Mr. 
Muckworm & Co. (the national creditors). He proposed to cancel 
the national debt, to confiscate the Church estates, and to abolish 
all sorts of paper money. He watched step for step the 
encroachments of political centralization on local self-government, 
and denounced it as an infringement on the privileges and liberties 
of the English subject. He did not understand its being the 
necessary result of industrial centralization. He proclaimed all the 
political demands which have afterward been combined in the 
national charter; yet with him they were rather the political 
charter of the petty industrial middle class than of the industrial 
proletarian. A plebeian by instinct and by sympathy, his intellect 
rarely broke through the boundaries of middle-class reform. It 
was not until 1834, shortly before his death, after the establish- 
ment of the new Poor Law,'* that William Cobbett began to 
suspect the existence of a millocracy as hostile.to the mass of the 

people, as landlords, banklords, public creditors, and the clergy- 
men of the Established Church. If William Cobbett was thus, on 
one hand, an anticipated modern Chartist, he was, on the other 
hand, and much more, an inveterate John Bull. He was at once 
the most conservative and the most destructive man of Great 
Britain—the purest incarnation of Old England and the most 
audacious initiator of Young England. He dated the decline of 
England from the period of the Reformation, and the ulterior 
prostration of the English people from the so-called glorious 
Revolution of 1688. With him, therefore, revolution was not 
innovation, but restoration; not the creation of a new age, but the 
rehabilitation of the “good old times.” What he did not see, was 
that the epoch of the pretended decline of the English people 
coincided exactly with the beginning ascendancy of the middle 
class, with the development of modern commerce and industry, 
and that, at the same pace as the latter grew up, the material 
situation of the people declined, and local self-government 
disappeared before political centralization. The great changes 
attending the decomposition of the old English Society since the 
eighteenth century struck his eyes and made his heart bleed. But 
if he saw the effects, he did not understand the causes; the new 
social agencies at work. He did not see the modern bourgeoisie, but 
only that fraction of the aristocracy which held the hereditary 
monopoly of office, and which sanctioned by law all the changes 
necessitated by the new wants and pretensions of the middle class. 
He saw the machine, but not the hidden motive power. In his 
eyes, therefore, the Whigs were responsible for all the changes 
supervening since 1688. They were the prime motors of the 
decline of England and the degradation, of its people. Hence his 
fanatical hatred against, and his ever recurring denunciation of 
the Whig oligarchy. Hence the curious phenomenon, that William 
Cobbett, who represented by instinct the mass of the people 
against the encroachments of the middle class, passed in the eyes 
of the world and in his own conviction for the representative of 
the industrial middle class against the hereditary aristocracy. As a 
writer he has not been surpassed. 

The present Mr. Cobbett, by continuing under altered cir- 
cumstances the politics of his father, has necessarily sunk into the 
class of liberal Tories. 

The Times, anxious to make good for its humble attitude against 
the Russian Czar* by increased insolence against the English 

workingmen, brings a leader on Mr. Cobbett’s motion that aims to 
be monstrous, but happens to turn out plainly absurd. It cannot 
deny that the restriction of the moving power is the only means 
for enforcing upon the factory lords a submission to the existing 
laws with regard to the hours of factory labor. But it fails to 
understand how any man of common sense who aims at attaining 
an end can propose the only adequate means to it. The existing 
Ten-and-a-half-hours act, like all other factory laws, is but a 
fictitious concession made by the ruling classes to the working- 
people; and the workingmen, not satisfied with the mere 
appearance of a concession, dare insist upon its reality. The Times 
has never heard of a thing more ridiculous or more extravagant. 
If a master should be prevented by Parliament from working his 
hands during 12, 16, or any other number of hours, then, says 
The Times, “England is no longer a place for a freeman to live 
in.”* Thus the South Carolina gentleman who was placed before 
and condemned by a London Magistrate for having publicly 
whipped the Negro he had brought with him from the other side 
of the Atlantic, exclaimed in a most exasperated state of mind, 
“You don’t call this a free country where a man is forbidden to 
whip his own nigger?” If a man becomes a factory hand, and 
enters into contract with a master, in virtue of which he sells 
himself for sixteen or eighteen hours, instead of taking his sleep 
as better-circumstanced mortals can do, you have to explain that, 
says The Times, 

“by that natural impulse which perpetually adjusts the supply to the demand, 
and directs people to the occupation most agreeable and most suited to themselves.” 

Legislation, of course, must not interfere with this travail 
attrayant! If you restrict the moving power of machinery to a 
definite portion of the day, say from 6 o’clock, A.M. to 6 P.M., 
then, says The Times, you might as well suppress machinery 
altogether. If you stop the gas-light in the public thoroughfares as 
soon as the sun rises, you must stop it also during the night. The 
Times forbids legislative interference with private concerns, and 
therefore, perhaps, it defends the duty on paper, on advertise- 
ments, and the newspaper-stamp, in order to keep down the 
private concerns of its competitors, asking the Legislature to 
relieve its own concern of the supplement duty. It professes an 
utter abhorrence of parliamentary interference with the sacred 

July 7, 1853.— Ed. 

interest of mill-lords, where the lives and the morals of whole 
generations are at stake, while it has croaked its most determined 
interference with cabmen and hackney-coach proprietors, where 
nothing was at stake except the conveniences of some fat city-men, 
and perhaps the gentlemen of Printing-house-square.* Till now 
the middle-class economists have told us that the principal use of 
machinery was its shortening and superseding bodily labor and 
drudgery. Now The Times confesses that, under present class- 
arrangements machinery does not shorten but prolong the hours 
of labor—that it firstly bereaves the individual labor of its quality, 
and then forces the laborer to make up for the loss in quality by 
quantity—thus adding hour to hour, night labor to day labor, in a 
process which only stops at the intervals of industrial crises, when 
the man is refused any labor at all—when the factory is shut 
before his nose, and when he may enjoy holidays or hang himself 
if he pleases. 

Written on July 8, 1853