"Where it has done this without destroying municipal organization it is clearly good in its result--as in Great Britain, Sweden, Germany; ... but having served this function, it seems to me that Royalty (unless it could again become elective) has done its work, and ought not to be regretted.... On doctrinaire grounds, either to unsettle it where it works well, or to desire to enforce it where it has violated its pledges and forfeited all claims to love and devotion, seems to me a mistake similar in kind.
"Must not a time of weakness come when Austria is bankrupt--when an Emperor of Russia is a dotard or a child, when provinces of Russia become disaffected, or an army mutinies; or again, when France and Austria seriously fall out?... You see I am dosing you with some of my most pungent stuff, in proof that I trust your strength of stomach ...
In the letter which follows, Newman touches on two well-known personalities of his day--Frederica Bremer and Charles Kingsley. He mentions the fact of his having been engaged to meet Kossuth as the reason why the first attempt to meet Miss Bremer was unsuccessful. It will be remembered that Miss Bremer came to England in order to collect material for her _Life in the Old World_. (This year was also the date of Kossuth's first visit to our shores.) Miss Bremer was Swedish by descent, but Finnish by birth, for she was born in Finland in the year 1801.
As regards Kingsley, in 1850 he had published tracts on "Christian Socialism." _Alton Locke_ had already come out and met with scorn on the part of the Press, though working men--who recognized Kingsley as their truest friend--welcomed it gladly. In 1851--a year of great trouble and distress all over England--he thought out plans to drain parts of Eversley (his parish), for there had been many cases of fever there, and Kingsley was pre-eminently a _practical_ Christian. He was also far ahead of his time (as all great men invariably are), and he saw clearly how inseparably close in this present world is the connection between physical matters and spiritual. He recognized that if a man is _living_ in unsanitary conditions, it affects in a very real though inexplicable way his spiritual life. He could trace the connection in a parishioner's life history between bad drainage and drunkenness: later on--though it might perhaps be very much later on--a "bee-in-the-bonnet" of his child: and he saw in this unhappy, unfortunate Little Result the outcome of someone's sinful failure in his duty to his neighbour in years gone by, when the first insanitary conditions were allowed to live and be mighty.