TOPICS OF THE DAY.
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO. THE year has been one of those which try the fortitude of nations, a year of strained exertion without its com- pensating fruit, of guffering without the sense of expiation, of war without the intellectual stimulus which half repays its otherwise irreparable cost. Throughout its course the volcano on the other side of the Atlantic has ceaselessly scattered ashes over Europe, and the energies of the human race have been taxed to the uttermost by the mere effort to avoid submergence. Progress has been impossible, for strength and farsightedness are equally powerless amidst smoke. Even Britain, the armed athlete, with all his magnificent strength, has stood powerless and quiescent, con- scious only of suffering and of a longing, dully intense, for more air and a clearer horizon. By an exertion of match- less strength and self-sacrifice he has saved his children from being crushed by the falling &brie; but the effort has ex- hausted all power not needed for self-defence. Never, during the century, has a year displayed less of political or social advance. The voting aristocracy who, in the last resort, govern England, weary with the sight of suffering, disgusted with false democracy, exhausted by the necessity of sleepless watchfulness against external attack, have remained in their unnatural attitude of half-content quiescence. Not one poli- tical effort has been made. Not one new statesman of the first class has been summoned to the front, not one young hand has been tried. The party whose policy is inertia has been gaining in popularity ; and even the party which believes in progress has willingly accepted a chief whose idea is that all the world should advance, except the country he himself ad- ministers. Beyond a futile effort to restrict the right of sporting a little more closely to landowners, Parliament has attempted nothing; and its only proof of vitality has been a determined repression of every suggestion involving imme- diate action. Proposals to mediate in America, twice formally made, once in Parliament and once to the Foreign Office, have been not so much rejected, as stifled before they could assume consistence. The expedition to Mexico, which in February looked as if England had there at least a purpose, was in April happily abandoned. In India, the tradi- tional field for English energy, the Government has con- tented itself with rejecting every proposal for great change, while in China it only appears to have acted because it has half willingly suffered the vessel to drift on a new course, into a new position. At home, even projects for defence have been rather criticized than carried out. Lord Palmerston's theory of fortifications has been neither accepted nor laid aside, but only languidly postponed. The Volunteer movement remains where it did, the only changes being a slight decrease of enthusiasm, and an intimation issued officially in the last month of the year, that the force has reached its con- venient limit. Crime has increased, and assumed new shapes, without developing either new energy or new plans for its suppression; and a languid conflict carriei on through the year as to whether Christianity is based upon Christ, or upon the verbal inspiration of Scripture, has ended in a decision that partial inspiration is the belief of the Church ; but that niinisters who avow that view do so, unless they are bishops, under peril of legal suspension. Only in one department of life has the English character manifested itself in its habitual energy, and to the historian the redeeming feature of the year will be the distress which observers of the day regard as its special calamity. The trade which partially supports one- fifteenth of our population has suddenly come to an end, and 400,000 people have found themselvel without food. Through- out the year the low wail of suffering has been audible, rising as summer passed into autumn and autumn deepened into winter, into almost a sluiek of mingled pain and fear. This, and this alone, has roused England into strenuous thought and exertion. The rich have stirred themselves to purpose. Without an appeal to Parliament, without a threat of com- pulsion, all men with a surplus have stretched out full hands, and the nation has of its own free will kept the sufferers alive, and in good heart for the brighter times which they by their charity, and the sufferers by their Christian patience, have so well deserved.
With this single and splendid exception, the sterility of effort which has been the feature of 1862 has extended itself throughout Europe. In France, nothing has been accom- plished, for the Ca3sar who unites all French capacities in his single grasp has wasted his marvellous power in a vain attempt to subjugate Mexico, and to prevent his own work in Italy from attaining its perfection. Throughout the year all energies in France have been expended in a barren struggle between ancient systems and new ideas, be- tween the impulses of the Revolution and the fanaticism of Ultramontanes. Neither has triumphed, or even succeeded in indicating which will triumph, and the Emperor, still the visible arbiter, has throughout the year given but one de- cision—that neither shall triumph yet. French troops, there- fore, are still in Rome, and bishops' charges still taxed as pamphlets; and, while the Emperor suspends professors at the bidding of priests, he stretches his authority to open theatres to bitter attacks upon the priestly power. Through- out the year, too, he has embarrassed France by mighty pre- parations against Mexico; but the force which in March was at Orizaba had in December, though multiplied eightfold, advanced Only a hundred miles, the Mexicans who were to have welcomed them display a powerless, but bitter hos- tility, the plan with which he began the work has been avowedly abandoned, his principal agent has been discredited, and, in short, nothing has been accomplished except the ex- penditure of four millions, and a partial absorption of the moveable strength of France. The invasion has been sterile of the result at first avowed, the reparation of injuries ; of the result next predicted, the construction of an orderly monarchy in Mexico ; and of the result secretly desired, the cession to France of provinces which may leave her, like England and the United States, a power upon the Pacific. Italy has been involved in the internal struggle of France. Throughout the year the whole energy of the Peninsula the craft of her rulers, the calm wisdom of her governing Class, the enthusiasm of her people, have been employed and ex- hausted in the single attempt to realize and perfect her unity. The policy of Ricasoli, the wisest yet suggested, failed; for it demanded years, and Victor Emanuel's foibles left his Minister only months. His successor, after five months of in- trigue, found that intrigue was sterile against a brain subtler and stronger than his own. In August the people took up the game, and Garibaldi, after conquering Sicily, marched at the head of the party of action to recover Rome. The heroic but most unwise attempt proved useless, and the hero, baffled and wounded, retired in December to Caprera, carrying with him the conviction that he had wasted his nation's re- serve—the enthusiasm of all the young—in a feeble attempt to obtain a momentarily impossible end. In the interior also, effort often grand, and always able, has been almost equally sterile. The Pope has shown no sign of change either in purpose or position. The war against the brigands has pro- duced nothing save an acknowledgment that the war against brigands has still to begin succeeding. The difficulties of Italian finance have not yielded to Rattazzi's financiers, and the primary question of internal organization, the dispute between central and municipal power, has remained open and undecided. It had been ended under Rieasoli, but Rattazzi left his decision unexecuted, and now once more Farini, who thinks of" provinces," and Minglietti, who talks of " regions," are holding the reins of power. The year for Italy has been sterile of all bat one result, the conviction of Europe that Italians above all men save Englishmen possess the strength and the moderation which can maintain a true parliamentary rule. That conviction is useful, but it is one which can operate only in the future, and for the present twenty mil- lions of men, rich in creative brains and observant eyes, richer still in the unbroken civilization of three thousand years, richest of all in a purpose which, while it stirs all ambitions, makes every virtue active—are wasting that wealth of power in the struggle to mould the will of a single, silent man. In Italy, as in France, national life has, during 1862, been simply sterile.
The scene in Central Europe has been but little more pleasing ; for though Catholic Germany has advanced, Pro- testant Germany has receded, and the total result is the neutralization of all beneficial power. The Emperor of Austria, schooled by Magenta and Solferino, has endeavoured, honestly or otherwise, to summon his people into council. A representative body, invested with some real power, and not without capacity for its exercise, has been allowed to exist a year, and dismissed in December with a cordial expres- sion of the Emperor's hearty friendship. A law has been passed and signed which guards Austrians from arrest .without a written warrant, or a reason producible to a judge within two days, and officials have been rendered responsible for the misuse of authority. Austrian finance, though still wretched, has been improved by an unhesitating use of that taxing power which seems to reside only in old communities, and the' Austrian army, though still second in Europe, has been
slightly and cautiously reduced. But this advance, per- ceptible though trifling, has been neutralized to the world by the continued quarrel with Hungary, and the terrible retro- gression visible in Berlin. The struggle between the people of Prussia and their King commenced in Auguet. The people had sent up a Chamber unanimous in favour of a pro- gressive course, and consequently determined to break up the aristocratic constitution of the army. As a means they attacked its cost, and resolved to reduce it nearly one-fifth. The King, fanatically devoted to the military idea, remonstrated, resisted, appointed a reactionary Cabinet, and finally declared that the Constitution left to the Chamber only a consultative power. The Chamber was silenced by a proro- gation, the taxes were levied without a representative vote, press prosecutions were recommenced, and the bureaucracy regained at a stroke its anti-popular sway. The reaction was complete, and Prussia paralyad for good. The North Ger- mans, gravitating rapidly towards unity, drew back alarmed and indignant; the South Germans turned towards Austria, the Diet recommenced its wordy disputes, and Germany throughout the year did not advance one step. January finds it where January left it, hungering for unity, freedom, and order, with a possibility of all in one small section, but with- out national hope, or purpose, or accepted leader.
In Russia nothing more hopeful has occurred. The great decree which in 1861 gave liberty to twenty millions of serfs, remains unwithdrawn, but also unfulfilled. The delay in the main project was expected and provided for, but of the thousand side projects which were to have been based upon emancipation not one has been carried out, and only one, the reform of the legal system, finally prepared for execution. The year has passed in a useless struggle between the students and the bureaucracy for freedom of education, between the Czar and the nobles for political privileges, between the nobles and the peasants for a working com- promise upon tenures. The students are still mocked with regulation instruction, the nobles still asking for position in vain, the peasants still awaiting in dull determination the hour when, enfranchised by decree, they will give up their lands only to military force. Russia has raised a loan with- out redeeming her finances, threatened a conscription without regaining her army, and crushed down Poland without advancing one step towards Slavonic unity. North and south, in Russia as in France, in Italy, where an eineute has produced only a bullet wound, and in Greece, where a revolu- tion, which deposed Otho, has elicited only a hope, the effort of a long year has been to all human seeming sterile.
It is not, however, in Europe that human energy has been most conspicuous, or human effort most futile. Throughout the year the American Union has been involved in a war without precedent for its extent, its possible issues, or the magnitude of the means employed. During that period the contending sections have fought at least six grand battles, Corinth, Pittsburg, Fredericksburg, Antietam, and the two contests of the Chickahominy, have twice summoned all pro- curable fighting men into the field, have contended in at least forty minor but bloody engagements, have tested the use of iron-clad steamers, and have suffered to the full the miseries which attend all war, as well as those which specially wait on a great war of kindred. At least three hundred thousand men must have been prostrated on both sides, from three to four hun- dred millions of money have been expended, and the seeds of a permanent hate have been planted between nations who, enfranchised by the same rebellion, for eighty years have obeyed a common government. And it is scarcely too much to say that all this suffering and exertion, this waste of blood and treasure and energy, these blows to human hopes, and falsifications of most human theories, have been devoid of apparent political or measurable ir sult. Invisible effect they must have, for no act can be without consequence, and American acts are laying the seeds of a revolution which will be felt while the world exists, but to all outward seeming the contest draws no nearer to its close. In the spring General M'Clellan, at the head of 150,000 men, was recovering previous defeats, pre- paring his resources to attempt the capture of Richmond, and in June he was driven back discomfited. In December his successor, with nearly the same resources, attempted the same enterprise, only to fail a little more rapidly than his rival. During all that time the position of the combatants has been but little changed. No state not previously engaged has since joined either North or South, no new man of the first class has appeared on either side, no foreign power has attempted to intervene by force. The quarrel with England which, beginning in 1861, ended in January, 1862, produced no interference ; a proposal by the Emperor of the French to mediate, made in November, ended only in a European adherence to the policy of non-interven- tion. Neither South nor North is perceptibly stronger or weaker for all it has done and endured. Each is a little more exhausted, a little more embarrassed with debt, a little more embittered, but leaders and people alike seem no nearer even to the mental consideration of possible terms of peace. Even the great cause which, repudiated on both sides, is on both the origin of the war, has scarcely advanced in a degree adequate to the energies exhausted. In September, indeed, the President, pressed at once by defeat and principle, issued a proclamation which, on the 1st of January, may have com- menced the extinction of the last relic of human bondage. But up to the close of the year the proclamation remained, of necessity, sterile of all but invectives against its author and the rights of human freedom. On the 1st of December another proposal offered all loyal slaveowners compensation for the loss if they would but emancipate their slaves, but the proposal has been been barely discussed, and introduced in the legislature of only one Border State. Efforts have been made to educate slaves, to drill slaves, and to organize slave., but though many of them promise well for the future, they have, during the year, produced but small result. In November the entire North was agitated by the result of the elections, which produced a working majority for the party now out of power ; but the "will of the people" was still expressed in vain. The executive went on its course, the old Legislature met once more, the war continued unabated, the tendency towards abolition went on increasing, and for any result patent to ordinary observers the Republican party might still have remained in power. Never was there in the history of the world a year more full of beginnings than 1862 in the Republic ; but of results, of consequences visible and measurable, of efforts brought to a close, and exertions whose reward has arrived, America, like Europe, has for twelve months been almost entirely sterile.
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