Suppressing a Rebellion with a Carpet Bag.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 273, 19 November 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

Suppressing a Rebellion with a Carpet Bag.

King Leopold's life was indeed " a history in itself." He was almost ostentatiously indifferent to his position—ever impressing on his subjects that he resigned in their interests rather than in his own. It has been said that he could always bring them to reason by threatening to abdicate. The sagacity and tact with which he prevented the Catholics and the Liberals in Belgium from coming to blows gave him greau influence in Europe. But that influence was enhanced by hie capacity for diplomatic intrigue, and tho opportunities for exercising it which his curious family connections gave him. Though he began life as one of the obscurest of the petty Princes of Germany, he had married in succession the heiress of England and the daughter of the King of the French. By a double marriage, his children were allied to the Imperial House of Hapsburg. He was the uncle and mentor of the Queen and Prince Consort—indeed, he and Baron Stockmar had brought about tfyeir marriage. His position was supposed to be unassailable from the day when, on being threatened with a revolution, he calmly began to pack a carpet bag in presence of the popular leaders, who thereupon, in a paroxysm of fear, implored him not to leave the country. Yet, according to Lord Malmesbury, "the last years of his life were spent in perpetual terror of Louis Napoleon, and he was constantly alarming our Ministers and everybody on the subject."

A preacher was complaining of thelietlessness and inattention of his congregation, when an old' deacon spoke up and said: " Hungry sheep will look up to the rack if there is hay in it."