Since the courageous action of Lamartine gave a first stamp to the character of the revolution, by putting down a dangerous sentiment in its bloody symbol, the violent party has in vain again endeavoured, as yet, to assume its lost supremacy. The horizon is dark with its menace, it is true, and its thunder growls, its lightnings flash, from time to time: the storm may be dispersed, or it may break forth, and then pass away. This is for the future. But whatever men may rule the destinies of France, they should, like Lamartine, be well aware that if the French people must be amused with constant displays of symbols, those symbols must be chosen with care, as the direct, and leading, and active instigators of their sentiments.
AMERICAN FEELING TOWARDS ENGLAND.
We believe it to be impossible to overrate the importance of the triumph of order on the 10th of April in London, either as to its effects on Great Britain or on the world. The complete and signal success, and at the same time the calm working of the machinery by which the end was accomplished,—the impression of a vast power felt throughout, though purposely kept in the background, ready to act if necessary, but only in the case of necessity; the proof which it afforded of the perfect soundness of the English mind, extending even to the masses of the capital amidst the revolutionary contagion; and the contrast which it exhibited between the well-balanced and elastic strength of the English constitution, and the unsubstantial systems or crumbling governments of the Continent, formed a spectacle which no one could witness without pride, or remember without a feeling of gratitude and of increased security. It has tranquillised for many a year the fears of those who had begun to doubt whether even the strong anchor of our constitution could continue to hold fast against the strain of the revolutionary current. It has proved, if that indeed were doubtful, how essentially different are the elements of the British character from those of the fickle populations of Southern Europe, among whom revolution had found its adherents; and how deep-seated in that character is the love of order, respect for property, deference to established authority, calm and practical good sense, and that solid groundwork of moral and religious feeling, on which alone any stable form of government can ever be reared. If, since that memorable 10th of April, the Continent has begun to obtain a little truce and breathing time; and even in France the possessors of property and the friends of order are beginning to be alive at once to their own danger, and their own strength, and to the necessity of exerting the forces, moral and physical, which are at their disposal to put down the approach of anarchy in its most undisguised and hideous form—it is to the peaceful and majestic triumph of order in England that these results are to be ascribed.
It cannot but be matter of deep interest to us to learn with what feelings the danger and the escape of Great Britain were contemplated in America; a country where the experiment of a republic had been tried, and where—if the same spirit of propagandism existed which appears to be the curse of France—it might have been supposed that the chance of a democratic constitution being established in England, would have been a subject of congratulation and anticipated triumph. In Paris, upon the morning of the 12th April, nothing, we are told, but disappointment was experienced, when the peaceful, and, as they deemed it, ignominous termination of the proceedings at Kennington Common was made known. How were the news received by our Transatlantic brethren? A short extract from the letter of a valued friend in New York, and one or two from the American papers, will be interesting, we think, to our readers, as illustrating the state of feeling on the subject in America.
The tone of the American press on this question has on the whole been most creditable to the periodical literature of that country. It proves that, though many points of difference may and must exist between the two countries,—though the elder may not always have borne her faculties in the meekest way, and the younger may have often announced her pretensions with more of petulance than discretion,—nations sprung of the same lineage, speaking the same language, cherishing the same literature, cannot be so alienated from each other by difference of political institutions, or opposition of commercial interests, as not to feel a warm and cordial interest in each other's welfare; and to lament, not from mere selfish considerations of interest, but from higher and more generous sympathies, every calamity which threatens a kindred nation, with which it feels itself united by the ties of moral and intellectual relationship.
Our correspondent thus writes:—
... "The arrival of the steam-ship America at this port on Saturday last, bringing the good news of the complete triumph of law, liberty, and order in our Fatherland, was hailed with a degree of joy that well became true-born descendants of British ancestors. That arrival terminated a week which, to myself as well as to thousands of others, had been one of intense and painful anxiety; for although I never dreamed of the probability of a revolution, and never doubted the power of government to quell the threatened insurrection of the Chartists, I did greatly fear that a conflict was inevitable; and I trembled at the possible results that might follow, were only a single man in the procession to parliament to fall before the bayonets of the soldiery. How universal was this fear the newspapers which I send you clearly tell; and you will smile at hearing that even bets were made that the revolution was complete, and England a republic.
"The course pursued by government, in trusting to a voluntary police rather than to the military, exhibited their usual wisdom, and has greatly added to the moral dignity of their triumph. And the result has fully verified the remark in your letter to me in March, that 'the upper and middle classes, as also the respectable operatives, are most determined to maintain order and the law, irrespective of all political differences;' and proves beyond a doubt the truth of the proud declaration, in the last number of your Magazine, that 'the unbought loyalty of men—the cheap defence of nations—still, thank God, subsists among you.'
"Notwithstanding all the extreme excitement aroused throughout our land by the Revolution in France, and its astounding progress on the Continent, and the confident predictions of many that England could not unshaken meet the shock of Chartist rebellion,—the instant it was known that she had met it and was unmoved—that it had passed harmlessly by as a summer cloud, without awakening from its slumbers the giant strength it had threatened to overcome,—a sensation of relief, a thrill of gladness, a feeling of thankfulness, of security, and of admiration, seemed to be almost universal, and men greeted each other in the streets as those might who had together feared and together escaped a great personal calamity.
"That much of this rejoicing arose from selfishness is very true, for so closely connected are the social and commercial relations of the two countries, that no blow struck at the prosperity of England could be long unfelt in these United States. But the fact is scarcely on that account the less striking, nor will it, I venture to hope, deprive it of its intense significance with those who, like yourselves, exercise so great an influence upon the opinions and the sympathies of two great nations."
The effect produced upon the commercial affairs of America by the apprehension of a revolutionary movement in Great Britain, and the restoration of confidence when the news of the peaceful termination of the demonstration of the 10th arrived, are thus given in the Weekly Herald of New York:—