Normanby) wishes for the establishment of a complete kingdom of Italy, provided the Pope’s spiritual dominion and worldly dignity are secured to him,—everybody but the low Irish who know nothing of the question but what they are told on authority, which no reasonable person thinks good.
In the face of such facts there have been enthusiasts who would not be deterred from holding meetings in Hyde Park on Sundays, to say what did not need saying (as most people think) and which could not be said without rousing fierce passion in ignorant and credulous people. The consequence was just what might have been expected. It matters little whether the Hyde Park rioters had their hire in their pockets, or what their priests said, from Cardinal Wiseman (after the occasion) to the lowest bully of the order. The course of bigotry and violence is always the same in these religious rows. The essential point of the case is the unreason on both sides,—at least as flagrant as in those public assemblages of the Middle Ages when the lectures of innovating teachers were broken up by mobs, and half the lifetime of the scholars, orators, and popular politicians of the time were spent in complaining of persecution.
No time was lost, after the Hyde Park affrays; in lapsing still lower. Irish unreason, once brought into full play, broke all bounds. At Birkenhead the occasion was not a public meeting, nor any sort of offensive demonstration. It was a discussion in a school-room; and there was no reason why the members should give up their right of meeting and of speech. The unreason was there all on one side; and it was desperate in proportion to the absence of restraint or opposition. Nobody’s religious or political opinions were attacked till the Irish rioters broke heads and windows, and flung stones previously collected. The language and behaviour of certain priests bewilders us with surprise. It makes us consider whether society has really advanced to anything like the extent we are accustomed to suppose, if a clergy, including such men as Mr. Brundrit, is actually entrusted with the spiritual charge of any class of people.
In the main Christian characteristics, the Protestant Hannas and Catholic Brundrits, may be a fair match: but their influence and operation are not co-extensive; and hence the lapse at Birkenhead into a lower stage of unreason and violence than either at Belfast or in Hyde Park. In several instances there has been prudence and good sense. Several intended Garibaldian meetings have been given up, either because the main point was secured when the hero was amnestied, or because the risk of riot was greater than the occasion could excuse. This is well: but the events of the autumn have reminded us too plainly of the vitality of unreason, which seems as vigorous now as in the worst days of Trades-Union tyranny, or the administration of Brigham Young in the Far West, or the universal notion of Judaism, and the popular behaviour to Jews, as far east as Damascus.
When we look at the way in which the Head of the Woods and Forests has acted in the Hyde Park matter—when we read Sir G. Bowyer’s letter to the “Times,” and note the grounds of Cardinal Wiseman’s injunctions, and Dr. Grant’s suggestions, and look what the Birkenhead magistrates were about during the riots, we may well ask whether the instincts of liberty, and the reverence for law, are really impaired among us to such an extent as this state of things would seem to show. Any great occasion would, I trust, prove that they are not. But it is a grave question whether a great national peril is required to assure us that our best safeguards may be fully relied on. Meantime, the confusion of ideas on the one hand, and the licence of passion on the other, shown by the events of this autumn, fairly justify the doubts of thinkers who ask, whether it is quite certain that men outgrow their unreason,—in other words, whether society is progressive. In proportion as we believe that it is, we must be ashamed and grieved at the unreason which has appeared all round since Garibaldi took the false step which can never be sufficiently lamented.
TURF REMINISCENCES.—No. I.
[Our readers may rely on the authenticity of the following narratives, though for the real names of the actors imaginary names have been substituted.—Ed. O. a W.]
THE OLD DEVIL IN BLUE.
Within these twenty years there lived a celebrated jockey whom we will call Philip Spott, better known as Phil Spott: he was closely related to an equally celebrated trainer in the north of England, in the management of whose very large establishment he was intimately concerned. Though a first-rate performer in the racing saddle, our hero was not considered by the learned in these matters as being quite at the top of the tree in his profession, though in my opinion he was bad to beat, and more especially difficult to defeat was the combined talent of his relative as the trainer and Phil as the jockey.
This firm succeeded in winning the Derby, Oaks, and St. Leger more than once, together with many other races of considerable though minor importance. But it was not merely his success as a rider for which he was remarkable, but his ready wit (of a roughish kind it is true), and his singular qualities as a tactician in his own line, combining no ordinary amount of quickness of perception and knowledge of human nature; for, to the uninitiated, be it observed, there is required an amount of tact and watchfulness beyond what they can conceive, both within and without an establishment representing so much wealth, present, proximate, and in posse, as that with which our Phil was connected, and to which he proved himself so great a support; for not only is it necessary to guard against the commission of absolute overt acts of ill-treatment towards the valuable animals under their care by the people employed about them, but to preserve inviolate and in its entirety that portion of property in which he and others were so greatly interested, and which in effect constitutes the real value of these animals, namely, a knowledge of their merits, demerits, and relative capabilities. Here, of a truth, knowledge is pro-