Karl Marx

Neue Oder-Zeitung. Nr. 297, 29. Juni 1855. Mittagblatt

X. London, June 26. (Communications of Various Contents.) In yesterday’s sitting of the House of Commons, Mr Otway rose: “Does Lord Palmerston intend to take any steps to induce Lord Grosvenor to withdraw his Sunday Trading Bill?” (General Cheers.) Lord Palmerston: “If my noble friend (Grosvenor) has heard these general Cheers, I think he will be inclined to conform to them.” (Cheers.) One sees that the mass demonstration in Hyde Park has intimidated the House of Commons. It is dropping the Bill and puts a good face on a bad game. The Times calls the Sunday scene in Hyde Park “a great act of retributive justice,” the Bill a product of “class legislation,” “a measure of organised hypocrisy,” and makes merry over “parliamentary theology.”

With reference to the Hangö massacre, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Charles Wood, announces that he has received new dispatches from Admiral Dundas. According to them, killed by the Russians’ fire were 5 seamen and the Finnish captain, wounded and taken prisoner 4 seamen and 2 Finns, taken prisoner without wounds 3 officers, 4 seamen and 2 Finns. Admiral Dundas had addressed a letter to the Governor of Helsingfors, stated the facts and remonstrated in the most decided manner against the abominable act of firing upon a boat under a flag of truce. He had received an answer in which the Governor excuses the act and to a certain extent justifies it. He declares that, according to their own statement, the officers and soldiers did not see the flag of truce. They were exasperated because on various other occasions ships had hoisted the Russian flag and reports in newspapers stated how English ships elsewhere had used the flag of truce to sound with the lead. The whole justification thus reduces itself to the shortsightedness of the Russian soldiers and officers. At all events, it is a sign of civilisation that Russian soldiers read newspapers and are “exasperated” by newspaper reports.

The Administrative Reformers have announced a new meeting in Drury Lane for tomorrow. As before: meeting with admission tickets and prearranged speakers. Pontius Pilate asked: What is truth? Palmerston asked: What is merit? The Administrative Reformers have answered: Merit is what a man earns annually. Accordingly, these reformers have made a transformation in their internal organisation. Formerly, the members of the General Committee – in fact self-elected – were subjected to a sham election by general vote of the Association. Now, anyone who pays an annual subscription of £50 and more is eo ipso a member of the General Committee. Formerly, the ten-guinea and the one-guinea clause was considered sufficient to protect the “movement” from plebeian intrusiveness. Now, the ten-guinea gentlemen are no longer considered sufficiently “respectable,” and the one-guinea person is regarded entirely as “mob.” The placards announcing the meeting state literally: “Admission only by ticket, which may be obtained from members. Subscribers of £50 and more are members of the General Committee, subscribers of 10 guineas and 1 guinea are members of the Association.” The rights of members within the Association are thus calculated on a sliding scale of guineas. The naked, unvarnished rule of the guinea is brutally proclaimed. The City reformers have blabbed their secret. What agitators! The most recent times have, moreover, not been favourable to them. Drummond openly reproached them in Parliament with “systematic immorality” and “corruption.” And what illustrations of the purity of their class followed blow upon blow, as at the word of command! First, The Lancet (medical journal) provides proof that the adulteration and poisoning of all commodities and provisions is by no means confined to small retailers, but is carried on as a matter of principle by the wholesale trade. Then it is reported that “respectable” City firms have circulated false dock warrants. Finally, the great fraudulent bankruptcy of the private bank of Strahan, Sir John Paul and Bates, involving direct theft of deposited securities. In the latter case, the aristocracy has learned to pay homage to the “administrative” talent of the City gentlemen, for the bank “administered” above all aristocratic guineas. Palmerston is a sufferer, as is the Marquis of Clanricarde, and Admiral Napier has lost almost his entire fortune. The Church too has been bereft of much earthly property, since Messrs Strahan, Paul and Bates stood in a particular odour of sanctity, occasionally presided at meetings for the “conversion of the heathen” in Exeter Hall, figured among the first subscribers to the Society for “the distribution of the Bible,” and served on the board of the “Association for the Reform of Criminals.” Their faith had procured them credit. They were the favourite bank of clerical gentlemen and free endowments. But their “administrative” talent has spared nothing, from widows’ and orphans’ funds down to the pence of sailors’ savings. Why not admit them to the administration of the “public funds,” after which they are now stretching out their hands? “There are now symptoms among us,” plaintively exclaims The Daily News, the organ par excellence of the City reformers, “which prove that no time is to be lost in bringing forward a case of the high immoral tone among the industrial classes.” The crisis of Messrs Strahan & Co. has naturally provoked a “run” by the public on the tills of the City private banks, which until then were regarded as incomparably more respectable than the joint-stock banks. Already the great private bankers find themselves compelled “publicly” to “encourage” one another to a mutual periodic inspection of the stock of securities deposited with them and likewise to invite their customers, through The Times, to a visible examination of the effects entrusted to them. Another circumstance, which is thoroughly inopportune for the reforming City gentlemen, is the following: One of their kings, Rothschild, notoriously stands as their elected representative on the threshold of the House of Commons, without being admitted to the Holy of Holies, because he cannot swear the “oath of a true Christian” and Lord John Russell, his colleague, will not “realise” the Jew Bill. Yesterday Duncombe rose, having ferreted out that, according to an Act of Parliament of 1782, every deputy who has concluded a supply contract with the government after his election forfeits his seat in the House of Commons, that Rothschild has taken over the last loan of £16 million, and therefore gives notice that he will tomorrow evening move for a new City election. Moreover, Malins follows Duncombe on his heels and announces a similar motion against Lindsay, who during the reform debate was openly accused by Sir Charles Wood of having concluded supply contracts for ships with the government while sitting and having sat as a Member of Parliament. The incident is important not only because of the persons compromised, a City magnate and a City reform magnate! It is important because it reminds the public that Pitt, Perceval and Liverpool, who set the Act of 1782 aside, found their mainstay precisely in the bigwigs of the City, the contractors of loans and supplies for the government in and outside Parliament. This financial aristocracy – at that time more corrupt than under Louis Philippe – was the soul of the anti-Jacobin war. While it plucked its golden apples of the Hesperides, it demonstrated to the nation in notorious City meetings that “it must sacrifice money and blood to save the blessed comforts of our holy religion from the altar-desecrating Frenchmen and themselves from the gloomy despair of atheism.” Thus, at the most inopportune time, the nation is reminded that the City, rebelling against the oligarchy, was the hothouse in which that same oligarchy grew up and put forth its most luxuriant blossoms.