THE TROUBLES OF HELIGOLAND.

West Coast Times, Issue 596, 22 August 1867, Page 4

THE TROUBLES OF HELIGOLAND.

(feom the daily telegbaph.) Heligoland is in trouble. Somehow that unhappy little plot of ground, which lies dropped in the midst of the great German Ocean, is always in trouble. At one time us ' constitutional liberties are about to be destroyed by the military measures of a despotic governor, whose myrmidons of tyranny consist of an old man and two small boys ; then its very foundations are on the eve of being undermined by the burrowing of rabbits surreptitiously introduced into the sacred soil of the island ; and again innovation recklessly threatens the time-honoured institution of wrecking, on which the Heligolanders have so long lived and thriven. But all these tribulations vanish into nothing in comparison with the misfortune which threatens to descend upon the luckless islet. Maxse the Dictator, as the local patriots style the gentleman who hasthe misfortune to reign over the petty colony, has issued an ukase fraught with dire distress and ruin. " Delenda est"

appearsto bethemottowliichthedespot has adopted as determining his policy towards the unhappy islanders subject to his rule. The record of his iniquity'is wellnigh full to overflowing : he built a bathing- shed for his own use and pleasure ; he misappropriated six planks of wood in order to erect a booth for strolling 'players, having himself a depraved passion for the stage ; he kept two rabbits in a hutch ; he did away with the quartermen and the ancients ; he abrogated the wholesome law by which no larger amount of the public money than thirty shillings could be expended without an appeal to the island ; he inaugurated a new constitution and a double chamber packed with ministerial hirelings ; he even ventured to meddle with the safeguards which protected the nationality of Heligoland against extinction. All this he had done ; but there was still one sin left for him to commit. Throughout the long winter months Major Maxse has, it seems, been meditating on a new stroke of despotism. Early in October the last freight of belated visitors sailed from tho island. Next month the steamer will begin plying again between Hamburg, Bremen, and Heligoland; but throughout the dreary bleak winter time the governor and his subjects have been almost^ much isolated from the world as if they had been shipwrecked mariners floating on a raft in the Arctic Ocean. In the outer world there has been no lack of events and changes during the last nine months ; but in Heligoland the sole topic of the time has been the great constitutional issue between the governor and the islanders. How the war has waged, with what fluctuations of success, with what viscissitudes of fortune, we do not pretend to say. Such things, in the language of popular fiction, are more easily imagined than described.

With a refinement of cruelty worthy of Nero or Caligula, Governor Maxse has waited till the single shrub in Heligoland is beginning to get green, till the shopkeepers are taking down their shutters, till the first preparations are making for the summer season, and the boatmen who ply between the bathing island and the river are looking out their tackle, to strike a death-blow at the prosperity of the illfated sand-bank. Henceforth hells are to exist no longer in Heligoland ; the roulette table is to disappear, and " rien ne va plus" is to be inscribed above the doorway of the Kursaal. If Mr Hardy were to issue a decree to-morrow*, announcing that anybody making a bet upon the Derby should be led of to immediate execution, he could hardly create more general consternation throuorhoufc England than Major Maxse has produced in the smallest of our dependencies. The plain, honest truth is, that hitherto the roulette tables have been the strong support and maintenance of the Holy Island. Bremen and Hamburg are both speculative cities, and Saturday after Saturdj'y, during the season, the steamers used to bring over hundreds of clerks, brokers, shopboys, anxious to try their luck at the green baize tables. Like all men who expect to make a mint of money in a minute, these visitors lived luxuriously and sjtent lavishly. TWiat is a shilling more or less when a single spin of the ball may or may not put a hundred sovereigns into your pockets ? At any rate the Heligoland lodging -house keepers much preferred their guests to the steady Gei'mans, who brought their families with them, and. grumbled about every sixpence that they spent. Besides, it is by no means certain that even the steady folk were not attracted by the tables. So long as human nature remains what it is, the very people who do not play will like to look on while the money passes from hand to hand ; and the sedatest of burghers have been seen slyly dropping a thaler upon the board when they thought that nobody was looking. After all, people do want some sort of inducement to go to Heligoland. It is not a bad place when once you get there; but getting there is a wearisome and^long process, and Germans have no partiality for sea voyages. If you live in Hamburg, and simply want fresh air and sea bathing, you can go by rail to a score of watering places along the Elbe, on the Schleswig coast, or on the Baltic, where you will be as well off as at Heligoland or Altona. The great claim which our English Bad possessed above its fellows was, that it did not permit you to ruin yourself at roulette. Moths will always fly by preference into a room where there are lighted candles, and holiday goers will, if they can, select a place where they can get their pockets filler! or emptied— as the case may be. We are not surprised to learn that the Heligolanders arc up in wrath and fury at the proposed suppression of the tables. Mass meetings— if we can apply such a term to a gathering of all the people in the little island — have been held to protest against the iniquitous interference with the freedom of the inhabitants to prey upon the strangers who visit their hospitable shores. Moi'eovcr, the residents, besides being called on to forego their anticipated profits, are asked to pay for

their own ruin. Hitherto the bank has provided nearly all the local expenditure. In return for the concession to keep open gambling rooms, the proprietors have been but too glad to relieve the islanders of any personal expenditure ; and now, if this beneficent institution is to be closed, Heligoland will have to pay for the repair of its single flight of stairs, its halfdozen streets, and its score of bathingmachines. An ignorant impatience of taxation is not confined to the green seas, and the Heligolanders have declared, like one man — or, more correctly speaking, like one boy — that they will not pay a farthing to facilitate the overthrow of their prosperity Even the Parliament, which owed its birth and being to Major Maxse's renovating zeal, has pronounced against the new scheme, and every member of the illustrious body is pledged to resist taxation of every kind. We fear, however, that these Heligoland Hanipdens will succumb to the dead weight of official tryanny. Whatever may have been the exact merit of the Governor's other reforms, we cannot doubt that he is right in the present instance ; and we rejoice to see that he has responded so promptly to an appeal on the subject which appeared in these columns at the close of last session.* It is a shame and disgrace to England that, when every civilised nation has put down public gaming rooms, such an institution as that of Heligoland should be allowed to exist, under the sanction, if not the protection, of the British flag. Prussia is giving the different Rhineland establishments notice to close their doors, and the day is probably not far distant when an open hell in Europe will be as much a thing of the past as a gladiatorial contest. Passibly Heligoland will suffer by the general reform ; but Aye cannot give our support to a disgraceful and pernicious system simply because it is advantageous to about a hundred lodging-house keepers and landlords in an out-of-the-way island. We hope that pure air, pleasant breezes, and a matchless sea view, may be found sufficient to fill the tiny island with summer visitors. But whether or not these temptations prove sufficient, and whoever may be the governor, the days of the gaming house in Heligoland are doomed, and all the tempests that can be raised in a teapot will not hinder the execution of a wise and just resolve.

• O'ConneMi'S Tactics. — The energy of his genius was everywhere perceived, working amongst all classes. Here he breathed gsntly on the still waters of aristocratic reserve till lie strirred a ripple on their suface — there his voice was heard rolling over the heads of mobs, stirring them and warning them like an alarm bell — now hurling defiance at those whom he denounced as oppressors, again whispering comfort and hope into the ears of tho oppressed. A great mistake had beon made by all the former combinations of the Catholics. The people of Ireland had not been directly appealed to, their voice had not yet been raised, their unanimity had not been proved. O'C'onnell saw this error, and determined to avoid it. He resolved that only the ears and eyes of the masses should be appealed to by spoken and written words, but tbafc their hands should actually be touched, that the power of the association should be felt intimately throughout the country. An opportunity of carrying out this project was afforded him by tho peasautry of the county Tipperary. A brave and sturdy race, they had been exposed to great sufferings and, as they thought, • much oppression ; they had formed themselves into various illegal associations j the magistrates had met force with force ; and the people, thinking they could not obtain justice from the local courts, and being too poor and helpless to seek for it elsewhere, took the law into their own hands j arms were carried off, houses were broken iuto, landlords murdered, hayricks and cornstacks fired ; neither property nor life were safe, and a kind of guerilla warfare raged over the country. O'Connell seized the opportunity ; money was subscribed, and fearless counsel engaged to defend the tenantry, free of all expense to them, and to beard the magistrates. The poorest peasant in the heart of the Tipperary mountains believed that the leaders of the association were his champions; that men of whose mimes he had never heard Avcre resolved to see his rights vindicated ; were bound to him by ties of a common oppression ; that neither wealth nor learning nor eloquence would be grudged. This was the personal real sympathy that the Irish heart cannot resist. This was the one touch of nature that mnde the whole Catholic population of Ireland kin. The Tipperary Whitoboy laid down his pike, and threw himself "into the arms of the association, and abandoning the wild justice of revenge, he was for the time led into the paths of peace and quietness us docile as a ohild. Outrage and crime vanished ; the insurrection passed uway. All through the country the example set in Tipperary was followed. With the rapidity of instinct the people recognised their interest. Everywhere the epigram of O'Connell resounded through Ihe country — "The man who violates the law strengthens the enemy" — and whoever heard this teaching absolutely obeyed. What centuries of oppressive policy and penal laws, what the fifteen years of Saurin's iron rule, what the dignified integrity of Wellesley's Government had utterly failed to accomplish, was done in eighteen months by the genius of O'Connell. — The Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord PhinJcet. By his Grandson ihe Hon. David Plunlcel.