Henry Parkes

“ If the hand of death is withheld from their heads, I dare prophesy a combination of Cobden, Gladstone, and Stanley. The present state of public feeling is not natural to England; its levity and capriciousness will pass away and give place to a more healthy fruition of the general growing intelligence. The name of Cobden will yet be the most honoured in the land. No man has more of that inspiring simplicity of manner, and that calm, almost spiritual earnestness of purpose, which, combined with comprehensive thought and the patient power of labour, are sure to gain the moral mastery. ”

“ But there were so many conflicting interests to be torn and trampled in the threatened strife between England and America, and so much danger of being precipitated upon ground foreign to all the national sympathies—so much that, while it damped all chivalry of spirit, would madden the worst passions of war—that the suspense in which the English people passed from the old to the new year was perfectly awful. The great emotion of the popular mind cannot be gathered from the jarring utterances of the public Press. ”

“ There is a man now passing before my eyes well worth describing.
Imagine yourself standing by me on the deck of a small schooner lying in Sydney harbour. There is a miserable-looking old man paddling an old canoe from the Sydney side to the opposite shore. The face is unshorn, and his beard and hair are as white as snow. As his vessel glides over the sunny waters he casts his haggard countenance towards the bright blue sky above, and you hear him speaking vehemently in a jargon between French and English. Listen! You now hear him fiercely cursing God Almighty, and calling upon the devil. ”

“ The railways do no more than run their fine lines through the rural landscape, making sunny banks for the flowers and shrubs most loved by the English people. Though places which have a name in history are undoubtedly visited by a larger number of strangers than formerly, I am inclined to think there are many nooks and corners of rural England which are more secluded from the world now than when the world's travellers had to journey by the common road. ”

“ Poor Clarinda spends a very solitary life, as my situation requires me to be absent from her the greater part of my time; still, the thought that our native land could not yield us bread reconciles her to the absence of friends, and our dear little girl, who can now just totter about from chair to chair, and repeat many little words very sweetly—our dear little blue-eyed ocean child is ever with her, to soothe her in her lonely hours. You ask me for the child's name. It is 'Clarinda Sarah.' She is now a year and ten months old, and, excepting a slight cold, is in a happy state of health. ”

“ Throughout the provinces people generally became aware of the nation's loss as they assembled at the house of God, and from one end of England to the other the effect was one of universal visible grief, as if death had come to the doors of every family in the land. The signs of mourning have continued everywhere until today, when the body of the Prince has been consigned to the grave. Never in English history has any death, been so visibly felt by all ranks of the English people. ”

“ There is a very kingliness in the true type of the English mechanic. What can be more kingly than a sense of sovereignty over material nature? And this sense of innate power—the cunning of his own right hand—when subordinated to a higher sense of moral duty, gives to him a nobleness of life which many in the favoured walks of society can never approach. Thousands of such men—the flower of modern England—are scattered through England's manufactories ”

“ Tell her and my dear father and my sisters and brothers, and my beloved wife's friends also, that, though every other feeling may be blunted by continual contact with the world, our love for them will receive new vigour from trouble and privation, from strife and sorrow. Long before you can read this I trust we shall receive a happier account from you—of health banishing all traces of sickness, and of suffering and anxiety giving place to domestic comfort and peace. ”

“ On no account suffer him to neglect arithmetic. Drawing is very well in its place—a very beautiful acquisition, but it must not become a mere childish passion, to the subversion of that which may make him a gentleman, an intelligent and useful member of society. Drawing will be of no use to him in the merchant's counting house, and I do not think Birmingham the place for his future existence. What is his age? Does he read much, and what kind of books? Give my love to him, and tell him to be a good fellow—to begin to be a man!
I have little more to say at present, and as little time. ”

“ The very name of Birmingham will no longer meet my eye, except when I unconsciously write it on some part of the ship that bears me over the beaming waters, or on some gloomy tree in the wilderness of Australia. I shall hear no more of Birmingham except from my own tongue, or from my weeping wife's, when we think of those dear friends who live there, and of those angel-infants of our own, who sleep there in their little graves. ”

“ A question of vast moment, but of no distinctive shape, must often intrude from the mists of the future upon the minds of political thinkers—Who is to govern England half-a-dozen years hence? The old statesmen are dying off. The next six years will make terrible havoc with the names that have been most familiar to the ears of the last two generations. As they descend into the valley of shadows, where are the men of calm strength and vigour coming up the other side of the hill, bearing the standard of either party? ”

“ Give my love to my brothers. If we never meet again may their years be many and their share of happiness large. That they may go down to the grave in honour and peace will ever be his prayer who is far away.
I thank you sincerely for the sweet words of consolation and advice which you send me over the wide, wide sea. You also have my thanks for the news you send me about old Brummagen. You have a poet and a poetess, have you? You do not seem to be aware that the greatest poetical personage of Birmingham is now living with us at the Antipodes. ”

“ Until of late I had lived under the impression that the Americans had a deal to answer for in cherishing a bad feeling towards England, which was entirely unjustified by the disposition of the English people towards them; but a worse spirit than anything I have ever read of in America is constantly displaying itself among the factory squires and shopocrats of England, while the sympathies of the aristocracy are undisguisedly offered to the rebellious Southerners. ”

“ In the hovels of the indigent poor, O, what a soul-sickening world is there! "The misery of the English poor," at this moment, is no hollow cry raised by a morbid humanity. It meets you in palpable shape at every turn, grinding stout earnest men and comely women in the dust. Pass through Lancashire—you see crowds of men with hunger as plain as winter daylight in every countenance—and often poor pallid creatures tottering under the rapid ravages of consumption—the ghastly messenger of relief which comes from want and a damp dwelling. ”

“ Every second morning a tone of misgiving seems to soften the reckless bravery even of the Times. It will not do; people cannot satisfy their consciences, though goaded on by the sense of insult, that it is a high Christian thing to burden the nation with debt, and to spill the nation's blood on the wrong side of the American civil broils. At first the sense of wrong sent every man's hand to the sword-hilt. ”

“ Has not my father's wife been kind, never to send me the least thing in the world, and yet she thinks she is entitled to the name of 'mother,' but I think she does not act 'mother-like!'
I have seen the fine park and the Queen's palace and the Queen's carriage, but they are not, all of them, worth a fig to see. The park, crowded with people like a fair, the palace, guarded everywhere with soldiers with their bayonets fixed; I would rather walk in a rural lane than in such places, where you can go so far and no farther, without being stopped by a soldier with a bayonet in his hand. ”

“ Who may say what giants shall arise from the ranks of those favoured sons of fortune who are there trying their strength of soul in the consecrated fields of science! It was with some such feeling as this that I visited Oxford on the 2nd of this month, to see what could be seen of the bearing of the aristocratic youth of England at the Commemoration, Perhaps I was attracted, too, by knowing that the occasion was to be rendered remarkable by the bestowal of the honour of D.C.L. on the veteran Premier of England. ”

“ Of Australasia's land,—
A home, which man has here denied,
I seek at God's own hand.
I have a mother, ill and poor,
A father, too, in years,
And have no parting gift for them,
No! nothing save my tears. ”

“ The services of Prince Albert were of a kind which the intelligent mechanics of England thoroughly appreciate. Those only who have seen the stalwart workman, with a delicate sensibility mantling his toil-stained face, when men of a condition superior to his own manifest an intelligent interest in his handiwork, will be able to comprehend the fulness of the English artisan's affection for a Prince who was not only acquainted with every branch of manufacturing art, but was himself the successful improver of several of the most beautiful productions of the English workshop. ”

“ The singular position which the eloquent member for Birmingham himself occupies, affords the most forcible illustration of all of the political scepticism that has grown up. By his wonderful power of oratory, John Bright can, at any time, collect an audience of thousands which he can work into a transitory enthusiasm; but there is no man, occupying the same space in the public mind, of whom you hear so many persons speaking slightingly. ”

“ We fare very well, considering all things, on board the Strathfieldsaye, but the steerage of an emigrant ship is of necessity a most miserably uncomfortable place to me. I am more solitary and companionless than I ever was in all my life in this stagnant crowd of human beings. ”

“ Australia has afforded me a better home than my motherland, and I will love her with a patriot's love. With regard to my own individual prospects I am full of hope. I have had my troubles, as the old ladies say. When you think of my landing on the soil of this country with a wife and child, the one only three days old and the other in the delicate state of health of a mother at that time, and with only a few pence and without a home, you will think I must have had some difficulties to contend with since my arrival in Australia. ”

“ It is comforting, whatever may betide, to feel that right is undeniably on our side in this quarrel. But for that very reason we can afford to be calm, and to forbear so long as there is hope of a peaceable adjustment. It will concert most with the magnanimity of a great nation to be slow to draw the sword against one of kindred origin, however she may err, at the moment when the sword of civil war is already pointed at her breast. ”

“ The landscape, made up of primitive forms of life, would melt away before the iron road and its rude cutting, unsightly embankment, and gloomy tunnel. And, undeniably, the English railways have produced a wondrous change in the life and manners of the English nation.
But in some respects the English railways have been followed by a more charming state of rural quietude and beauty. They have not opened the country to the foot as they have opened it to the eye of the traveller. ”

“ But it is a blessed thing to know there is another and a better world where sorrow never troubleth and the weary are at rest. Could we have been allowed to meet again, for me to have heard her bless my dear little child and listen to her mother's story of her birth, it would have been to me a happiness greater than I can ever more expect. ”

“ Still the one-sided haters of democracy in England, who could see such martial splendour in the first successes of the South, can discover nothing great in the men who, with such noble firmness and such glorious self-sacrifice, are successfully defending the Constitution handed down to them by Washington. ”

“ Insolvency, like some fearful epidemic, is daily discovering itself in some new place, and all kinds of goods (British goods in particular) are being sacrificed every day, at considerably less than their invoice value in England. There are no pawnbrokers in Sydney, but there are auctioneers who serve the necessitous in a similar manner, with this difference, that the man who sends his goods to the pawnbrokers has a hope (which too frequently is never realised) of redeeming them, while he whose goods go to the auction mart knows at once that they are gone from him for ever. ”

“ Give my dear wife's love to her father, and tell him that she weeps at the mention of his name. Tell him that we have now another Clarinda, a little friendless, blue-eyed infant, that looks up in his daughter's face and lisps 'mamma.' She was born amidst the rage of the turbulent sea, where no one smiled upon her birth ”

“ They would not give me a passage at first, because I was a turner, as persons of such a trade as mine must, when they get to Sydney, work on their own account. They take it for granted that persons who are taken out free of expense have not the means to do otherwise. There are crowds of applicants every day at the emigration office for them to choose out of, and they keep them back and put them off from time to time, very vexatiously, it seems to me, to try whether they are really anxious and resolved upon going, lest persons should go out of a mere capricious love of change. ”

“ Men tried to console their minds with lingering doubts in spite of the toll of the great bell of St Paul's. Could it possibly be that the death-bell was tolling for that noble Prince, who had appeared amongst them so lately the picture of health and vigorous life, and whose image had never been associated with death in the thoughts of the most mournful? But the sorrowful truth gradually spread in every home and every heart. ”

“ And Clarinda and I have little to ameliorate the exile's lot; we have neither wealth nor friends, and the very means of comfort afforded us is in itself a source of discomfort, for it separates us, who have none other for the weary heart to lean upon. Still we have much to be thankful for, and I trust we are truly thankful. And, God willing, the time shall come when all who know us at Birmingham shall acknowledge that we are honourable. ”

“ Beloved father and mother, I feel as if they were already in their graves. A father and mother bowed down with years of affliction, and steeped in poverty and wretchedness. The very thought seems to make me unhappy for ever, when I know that half the circumference of the globe will shortly lie between us. ”

“ You have a fearful sense of desolation as you gaze on those enormous factories, with their wildernesses of machinery, all silent as the grave. Ten thousand hands in Manchester wholly thrown out of employment Wigan and Blackburn still more destitute! And yet these sufferers patiently enduring to the death, without a sign of riot, almost without an audible murmur! ”

“ It is curious to note the ill-informed and ill-natured remarks on the civil war in America which are made among the trading classes. If you meet with a manufacturer or a travelling factor in a hotel or railway carriage, he is sure to amuse you with some clumsy and ignorant attempt to ridicule the Americans, and it always turns out that their greatest blunder and greatest crime consists in not sending their cotton to England, and in not taking England's manufactures. ”

“ In the country the Conservatives are cleverly widening the circle of their influence, I think, on the generally accepted condition that their game will be best played out by the contending sections of their opponents, if they themselves are only sufficiently self-restrained and prudent. There are some public favourites in the Conservative ranks—men who are conspicuous for their thorough English qualities, and these men exercise an influence in favour of their party which is essentially personal and non-political. ”

“ I ought to state that the great cause of an overabundance of labour now in Sydney is the objection which men feel to going into the interior, for, seeing that 'life has ample room' in the country, there can be no fear of a general dearth of employment for a hundred years to come, provided the amount of capital be proportionate to that of labour. ”

“ But amidst it all there is a large class of thoughtful public-spirited Englishmen, whose anxiety arises from a full knowledge of the terrible cost of war, and a feeling of national pride that would preserve the honour of their country at any cost. They see nothing of the attempt, for the first time in the history of the world, to create a new empire avowedly on the foundation of slavery. They refuse to consider what direction the new quarrel may give to the old. ”

“ THE state of political feeling in England at the present time is very peculiar, and scarcely admits of definite terms of description. It is not surprising that we hear people talk of a Conservative reaction, for certainly there exists a widespread distrust of extreme Liberalism, and a disposition, more or less manifest among all classes of society, to rest satisfied with the existing order of things. The civil discord in America, to an extent unjust to the Americans, has repelled and partly terrified the public mind ”

“ It is difficult now-a-days to stir the workmen of English towns by a party cry, but their attention is easily caught by a new invention, or a plan for their moral elevation. They have got a taste for public parks, cheap concerts, and Fine Arts exhibitions; and he must be a gifted charmer on public wrongs who could win their ears from Jenny Lind
Not the least important of the efforts for social change is the movement, now rather prominent in England, for extending the field of employment for respectable women. ”

“ In every city and town of England to-day the ordinary pursuits of life have been suspended. But it is not by closed shutters and doors, by habiliments of mourning, by the tolling of Church bells, and by drooping flags wreathed with crape, that the national sorrow is most touchingly expressed. You see it everywhere in the grief-burdened faces of the people. ”

“ What strikes one in England as the most remarkable change in the moral aspect of society is the large amount of self-directed effort on the part of the working classes to improve their own condition. We see this on all hands, in temperance societies, in freehold-land societies, in penny banks, in co-operative shops, in workmen's libraries. Some of the finest public buildings in old historical towns are halls owned and managed chiefly by working men. ”

“ Possibly experience has taught many that political agitation but very inadequately supplies the daily wants of a family, and administers but little to the enjoyment of life. Cheap railway travelling has probably been a powerful agent in moderating political passion, as well as in removing local prejudice; and I dare venture to say that a picnic in Stoneleigh Park would be a most dangerous competitor to a Reform meeting in Birmingham. ”

“ Let sectional politicians say what they may, the welfare of England is so closely interwoven with the peaceful progress of America, that they cannot be separated without doing violence to the laws of nature. All men whose English feeling rises above their political leanings, though from very different points of view, see or feel this. ”

“ In the event of war, Parliament will probably meet on the 14th of January, and we may expect the debates to be fierce and stormy. The friends of peace will muster with a strong array of talent but the Government will have an overwhelming support in the course they have taken, and money and men will be supplied with a lavish hand. It is to be feared that the progress of hostilities will soon engender a bitter and relentless feeling of antagonism on both sides in the quarrel. ”

“ It has been said that England has lost in Prince Albert the most valuable life in all the gifted ranks of her widespread population. Surely that cannot be the true estimate of the nation's loss. But she has lost the one man of rare judgment, rare sagacity, and rare humanity, whose place can never be supplied. ”

“ It is very possible, I think, that your danger is not fully foreseen by the English authorities. You may depend upon it, however, that if England and America plunge into a great naval war, American privateering will exceed everything of the kind known of other countries in former times. There are thousands of men, who sail under the stripes and stars, who possess the adventurous spirit and desperate courage which fit the privateer for his peculiar kind of aggressive operations in a naval war. ”