JUDGMENT ON THE OLD YEAR.

Colonist, Issue 56, 4 May 1858, Page 2

JUDGMENT ON THE OLD YEAR.

' (Fromilie London Examiner.) Off, off!, as they cry from pit and gallery when an actor has o'erdone Termagant or out-heroded Herod. We question if a tear lias been shed in all England for the departure of 1857; or if there has, we suspect the same eye would melt for Neria Sahib, were he taken.and promoted-to the gibbet. ■ The most flattering thing to be said,of 1857 ;is, that he suggests the hope 6f better years to come, either on the familiar, ground that things grow better when to grow worse is impossible; or the, principle that, if adversity is a toad with a jewel in its head, the size of the reptile measures the splendor arid value of the jewel. Assuredly, by that rule, such an '* ugly and venomous" personage as the world was delivered from last Thursday night, ought to carry -a diamond in his skull huge as Koh>i-noor. When, twelve: months since, we wrote our obituary sketch of his predecessor,; we offered up a prayer that he" might be followed by a year of better morals and conditions ; but our vows seem never to have reached the skies. 1856 was a year of little grace, 1857 was more graceless still; in fact, his father, compared with him, looks like King Log.by the side of King, Stork; a few trumpery homicides and minor murders, half-a-dozen, fraudulent bankruptcies, here and there1 a Paul and,a Palmer, this was, after all, the worst we had to record, whereas nosy there is a story to '■be'told which, if an ancient bard had to sing, he would begin with a petition for lungs of brass, or a throat of hammered iron. The year began with a crash of China that resounded through the globe. A political crash followed; the Parliament was the next place that flew, to atoms. Waking or sleeping the country thought of nothing then but China; Commissioner Yoh looked such a dragon that we sent Out Lord, Elgin riding the waves like another St. Georgo, mutatis mutandis, to encounter him. VVe called it a tremendous struggle, and thought; ourselves the. admiration of the universe •for the resources we 'displayed and the energies we put forth. The East.seemed.doing, its worst, and England doing its best, for nobody then had the slightest' inkling of.what the precocious year had in store, for us. In truth, we knew nothing at all

of what was brewing,' even in the part o£ the orient where we possessed a trifle of property, and were, therefore, almost at home. The/spring had advanced ere a map of Hindostan appeared in our shop windows to acquaint the English people .with the existence of a Delhi and a Luckhow; it was the usual twilight in Cannon-Tow, the wonted fog in Leadenhall 'street; the New House of Commons was cracking jokes with the old Prime Minister ; the world was all at jManchester, taking snuff and talking of Coreggios, when the telegraphic thunderbolt announced that such, a blow had been dealt our Indian- empire as no empire ever before survived. No mroe comparisons with 1856 after the sepoy revolt, the attendant massacres that made the simple rebellion an innocent freak,, the deeds that made the Ganges a more hellish stream than Styx, and the unutterable horrors which in the olden time would have scared the son from'the zodiac, and the chaste moon from heaven. There has, indeed, been no such year of blood and terror, and danger to our empire and its prestige, as the last; nor,' according to the probabilities of human events, is it likely that another century will produce from the loins of time such another monster. If it be true that truth lies in a well, you must peer down into the horrid well of Cawripore for the truth of 1857. It was a year, "take it for all in all," we devoutly .trust "we ne'er shall look upon its like again." We rather shrink from allusion to palliating incidents or compensating results, lest the present orsome future year should be encouraged to behave in the same outrageous fashion. At the expense of a little ingenuity we might pay a few negative compliments even to the mauvais snfct in hand. He certainly did not execute all the wickedness he planned, He ..did not exterminate us; he did. not reconvey our Eastern empire to the Little Mogul; he did not establish; the creed of Mahomet or Siva on the ruins of- Christianity ; he did not drag ; us at the chariot-wheels of the Juggernaut, and disgrace us in the: face of the world. We are still .in England, and we have still our Irid. It was. on the point of slipping from our grasp, and now->we have a faster g'ip of it than,ever. By the fame of our conquered difficulties, by the discovery of the might that slumbered in our arms unsuspected by ourselves, by the proof of, the fiery, ordeal through which we have passed triumphantly, by all the buffeting? of a terrible experience, we are, a greater nation today than we were at the beginning of the struggle. And having paid the prime acknowledgements to Divine Providence, to whom should we give the glory of the contest and the achievement but to the gallant handful of Englishmen who stood next the thunder; "Alone they did it." ■ Leonidas, serenely chatting in the circle of heroic shades, acknowledges, with his characteristic frankness, ttiat his Thermopylae ha 9 been fairly eclipsed. This is the Koh-i-noor of which we have spoken, the "mountain of light" in the lump of poison and deformity. Or we might reserve that brilliant distinction for the approaching,termination of monopoly and misgovernment, for the inevitable political fruits of the Indian convulsion^ for the fall of a system not without its fame and its merits, hut no longer tolerable by "a freeand Christian.State, advancing in our place among civilised' nations. The hurly-burly in India had its parallel at home j in the chaps of the commercial world* Wh'lst; the sepoys were looting the treasuries Hn1 Bengal,, people not better principled in England were equally busy fleecing' their creditors and robbing; the public. Eastern banks and bankers vied with eastern barbarians; Glasgow, city of saints and Sabbatarians, made itself a great name in the annals of financial iniquities. Everything stood on the brink of failure but the crop of rogues "and rogueries, which florished with the vigour of a tropical vegetation. Bankruptcy threatened to become the normal condition of trade. * Commercial! houses that towered to the highest heaysn of speculation proved houses of card, and fell to pieces likethem in a moment. The crisis came first to Fi aace,j then extended to America, whence it arrive I in: England, nation involving nation, and the guilty \ part of the mercantile world dragging down the innocent with it, according to "the usual sequence of things. Bad as 1837 was in> America, and 1847 with ourselves, 1857 was a move disastrous year than either. We were .nearer than ever before to the winding-up of a sort Of commercial day, of judgment. . Autumn, of course^ saw revived the controversy on the merits of the Bank Charter. Restriction or no.restriction split the country intoadverse parties once more. Discounts kept mounting until they reached a culminating 10 per cent.,, when,the timely suspension of the,law averted extreme evils. The necessity 'of obtaining an indemnity for the suspension led to a second meeting of Parliament, one of the political memorabilia of a year surpassed by none in history, and by few equalled, for the magnitude and' gravity of its -events.. We devoutly wish we could add that only rich and roguish bankers, merchants, and money-jobbers were the sufferers by the infatuations and immoralities of 1857, regarded as a year of trade. But it is as true of merchant princes as of other royal personages— -Quicquid nelirant reyes plectuntur Achivi. :Thie great1, commercial crimes are the deeds of, a few;, niagniftcosj while tlieir victims are the needy uncounted niultitude, guiltless of any, speculation beyond their week's wages or their daily, bread. ; To them the vicissitudes of capital, are the; shiftings of the means of life itself; and heavily on this class have fallen the vexations and,.tribulations of. the year. Nor were Science and Art more lucky than empire and credit.' In any other year three such discomfitures as the Transatlantic Telegraph in the Isle of Valentia; the ill-named structure of the Isle of Dogs, if, as holy writ affirms, the Leviathan be indeed a thing of the sea;'- and the great bell of Westminster, would figure notably in a chapter of catastrophes. .As yet only part of the Miltonic description applies to ;.the ; ambitious creation of Messrs, Brunei and Russel. y

—Huge of bulk, Wallowing, unwieldly, enormous in its gait, —we pause when we come to " tempests the ocean,' though we must confess that in >" sleeping stretched like a promontory," it comes up admirably to the poet's idea. We have imagined one dialogue of the dead already; what rich' materials for another would these crashes.ofall kinds fur-, nish to a group of departed wits. Imagine, Rabe-v lais and Swift discussing,them together, especially the Leviathan, setting all Elysium in a,roar. Our spite against the departed is too bitter to allow us to dwell upon the few good things that;might be said of it. Besides, .we proposed to chronicle its offences, and we, therefore, leave it to others to record what was not:ill done in the field of legislation, such as the Joint Stock Companies Act, the" fraudulent Trustees Acl;, the Superannuation Act, and especially the too long-desii'ed measures by which testamentary j urisdictian of the E jcle.-:iasti-. cal Courts 'was'sweptaway, and the shameful state of.'the law of divorce reformed.! Parliament cer-., tainly deserved well of the public, and we1 are; forced to say the same of the administration of the army. In fact^itris now-recognised that braiiis, are a proper and necessary furniture of the head of the British officer. The lhilitary improvements of the past year are among its most credible occurrences. These things, however, were in the mischievous humour of the time. Not so the proceedings of the church and churchmen, many ofwhom were.quite up to the mark, though space and time alike confine us to chronicling the names; of the most notorious,_such as the-Bishops of Oxford, §t. .David's, and, St. .Asaph; ,the,,. London^ Rector who made himself famous by exhibiting preaching to the shepherdless sheep in Exeterliall; the Welsh Curate who won a, still greater celebrity by publicly excommunicating a divine ; the Protestant priest, or monk—or: what shall we call him?—whose spiritual rogueries at Lewis were recorded last week, and are forced: again to review in this. Such were the clerical; worthies of the last blessed year of grace! But we must jump to a.conchisiori. OurreadeVs will pardon us if we skip as nimbly as a harlequin over the Manchester Exhibition,'the birth of a fifth princess,: and the grand historical fact (only to be related by a Macau ley) of the Prince of WaW appearance in. a "stand-up collar" and " cutaway coat," at a lecture on electricity, after which his Royal Higliness,i; attired as aforesaid, shook-.'hands with Pro-: fessor Faraday, to the joy and wonder of the coin-, pany. .If this last auspicious event.can? redeem' the character of,dthe year that is gone, let it be so.' To Ms,' however, the most cheering.reflection \ is

that the-sun has commenced-anoll^1 annual jour-. ncy, and that having labored, as we have done, both abroad and at home; through such heavy seas and such foul weather, smoother water.and fairer skies are before us.