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. 866 THIS LEA B E R. [yp. 285^ &&Tsraa>...
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THE ENGLISH MANUFACTURERS AND THE PARIS ...
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WHY EXAMINE PUBLIC SERVANTS? lip the civ...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Justice In The Counties. The " Very Hard...
wifchrft wink . In « hort , there are as many codes m there are Benches , and ^ as many sentences as there are sitting Justices , or rather magistrates' clerks . Wecan state , without fear of contradiction , that ithe existing system of appointing magistrates in the counties is regarded with conteropfc and indignation by the more enlightened professional classes who constitute the worth and intellect of the nation . ' So long as it is permitted to last , ' they say , ' the law cannot be held in due respect , nor even life and property be safe , nor the rights
of the uneducated and defenceless poor be protected . It has not even the merit of cheapness ; for though the magistrates are unpaid , they are uncommonly dear at the price , and the stipendiary system which has been found to answer so unexceptionably in large towns , would , in addition to its other and obvious advantages , such as freedom from local influences , legal experience , regularity and despatch , be in every respect an economy of justice , " " We are heartily disposed to concur in this protest : we believe that the system which has so unaccountably survived the wreck of feudalism cries out for
fundamental change , and we trust that the absorbing anxieties of the war will not long arrest a speedy and decisive movement to obtain the " Reform of Justice in the Counties .
. 866 This Lea B E R. [Yp. 285^ &&Tsraa>...
. THIS LEA B E R . [ yp . 285 ^ && Tsraa > AY ,
The English Manufacturers And The Paris ...
THE ENGLISH MANUFACTURERS AND THE PARIS EXHIBITION . Tttbi superiority of the great industrial Exposition now in the Champs Elysees over any of its predecessors—not even excepting our Great Exhibition of 1851—is a fact now so generally recognised that it seems scarcely necessary to adduce any proof of it . Perhaps we may be allowed to refer to the unanimity of opinion upon this point with some degree of satisfaction , when we remember that it was in these columns that it was
originally asserted , and that at a time when it was not only doubted but denied by other and presumably very competent authorities . At that time the design was pronounced to be most incomplete , the execution to be meagre , the whole affair to be an utter and unmitigated failure ; and that by the organ which now triumphantly announces that " when the vast mass of objects here gathered together is closely examined , their superiority , as compared with things of the same class shown in 1851 , becomes manifest . "
Our readers will remember that this opinion wg , s **> expressed in our columns shortly after icfie opening on the 15 th of May last . In this great march of improvement one laggard only seems to halt most conspicuously , and that laggard is Great Britain . Palliate , explain , or ignore the fact as we may , it cannot be doubted that the most important branches of British industry are represented in a manner utterly unworthy of us as a great manufacturing nation . The fact has been recognised and commented upon in a variety of ways . Lord Bbqugham has spoken of the poverty of our display of philosophical instruments , —articles for which we have
hitherto enjoyed some celebrity : the English jurors themselves publicly declared that the Paris Exhibition is decidedly superior to that of 1851 , and invited the English manufacturers to examine the causes of that superiority : more lately , the Board of Trade ( by way of turning the event to some national good ) has invited the various Chambers of Commerce throughout the country to appoint deputations for the purpose of examining the Paris Exhibition and of exchanging reports with the French manufacturers . It seems almost needless . to explain that both of these latter movements would have been quite unnooeBiaary if the English manufacturers had
already co-operated to an extent worthy of their character aud position . The proceeding of the Board of Trade has been met by the bodies to whom it was directed with very different degrees of cordiality . Ten Chambers of Commerce have already definitely refused to co-operate , and the only favourable replies received have been from Belfast , Birmingham , Bristol , Hull , Stoke-upon-Trent , Worcester , and Bradford . The last-named town did not give in its adhesion without some discussion , and as the arguments used by the non-contents were of a general rather than of a specific nature , it
is probable that they may supply a fair sample of the mode of reasoning pursued by the recusant towns . On the letter of the Board of Trade being read to the Chamber of Commerce , we are informed that Mr . Titus Salt made a remark to the effect that " the question was , whether it was desirable that each individual should look after his own interests , or leave the subject in the hands _ of the Government . " Happily for the credit of Bradford the majority of the Chamber was not of that opinion , and the suggestion offered by the Board of Trade has been by this time doubtless carried out .
The Government never proposed to interfere with Mr . Salt ' s or with any other man's business . Government has already too much upon its hands to be able to intermeddle with purely industrial affairs . All that Government pretended to do was to offer a little sound advice to Mr . Salt and his fellows to lay aside their noli me tangere spirit , to condescend to learn from their neighbours , and to acknowledge the full meaning of their own favourite free-trade principles by establishing a free commerce of ideas as well as of material objects . Until this is established , Free Trade must be a phantom , if not Protection in disguise .
If the Great Exhibitipn of 1851 had any real use , its effects ought now to be felt in the extension of enterprise among our manufacturers , as well as in the general improvement of the industrial arts . We cannot see that it has operated to any important extent in either of these directions . So far as the collections in the Paris Exhibition may be taken as fair evidence of the present condition of manufactures in England , they seem to have been at a standstill since 1851 . While the French have eagerly caught at and adopted ideas , in machinery , in
cotton-spinning , in the cloth manufacture , and in a hundred other branches of art , we seem to have learnt little or nothing from the magnificent collections with which they graced our industrial fete . Is it because there was nothing to learn ? To assert this would be absurd . Surely Spitalfields and Macclesfield had something to learn from Lyons ; Nottingham something to pick up from Annecy and Valenciennes ; Bradford itself something that might with profit have been adopted from Kheims . But no , Lyons may
continue to take the lead in silks ; the French merinos may still surpass ours in lustre and softness ; the cotton fabrics of the Khine may be fast catching up the boasted products of Lancashire ; Sedan may produce broadcloth which Yorkshire and the West of England might envy ; the British manufacturer cares not a single pin , nor will he take one solitary step towards informing himself why this should be so , but he will go on in the old humdrum manner as contentedly as possible , if Government will only leave each individual to take care of what he is pleased to consider " his own interests . "
Why Examine Public Servants? Lip The Civ...
WHY EXAMINE PUBLIC SERVANTS ? lip the civil servants of India were to be schoolmasters , or persons competing wimply for honorary positions , the course taken by
the public iexaminers would be exactly the correct line . Sir James Stephen takes pains to ascertain that the candidates are up in every conceivable branch of history ihy takin g them unawares in very unusual by-ways of inquiry , —the views of Bttbniet , for instance , on the restoration ; or the imaginary views of a Jacobite on the possible success of the Pbetendeb before his failure was known . Mr . Temple ascertains that they are up in the literature of essays , their decline and fall ; in the fiction of the country ; and , in short , beside the
severe studies of mathematics , the classic and foreign languages , there are expectations that the civil servants of India shall be masters also of the philosophy of Hume , Pai / et , and Kant ; with the biography of history in its minutest ramifications , and the Addisonian class of literature . Our readers know the grand controversy , whether this jninute and voluminous literary knowledge is requisite , or whether if it be not mischievous , it might exclude the best men from the r ight places in order to let in pedants , or convert youths
with the proper qualities into professors , with their practical abilities stunted in the process of training them to be pedants . Our readers also know the secondary controversy , whether the examination should be written or oral , whether the candidates for civil service should be called upon to write impromptu , historical , literary , biographical , mathematical , and philosophical essays , or to enter into colloquies on those subjects face to face with the examining professors . Perhaps all this controversy might be brought
much sooner to a close by Locke ' s process of bottoming—that is , brmging ^ the question at once to its very foundation . What are the qualities requisite for governing India or any other country ? If we define what those qualities are , we shall ascertain the nature of the examination ; but in order to find the p roper qualities of the governors , we must determine how men are governed ; not how they ought to be governed under imaginary circumstances , but how they are governed ,
and always have been governed in the history of the world . They are governed , we conceive , in all cases , by conviction , affection , and force . They may be reasoned into obedience , conciliated into tractability , or compelled . The administrators of Government , therefore , must be men who know how to employ the arts of reasoning , the arts of conciliation , and the arts of compulsion ; and who , after having executed these arts in their subordinate branches , can superintend the employment of the same arts on an extensive scale . Every
statesman who is at all worthy of the name , should possess some of the knowledge in the wide curriculum indicated in these examinations . He should be master of more languages than his own ; he should have at command the history of his own country , and of some others , in order that he may correct , by enduring experience , his own more transitory observation . But he should also be a man of the world , and a soldier ; or at least know so much of the soldier ' s profession as to be able to employ the soldier upon occasion . From the account , it appears that the Indian
examination ran entirely upon the first branch—the literary or scholastic ; omitting the worldly knowledge and the military ; as if men in this world were governed entiroly by conviction , and by nothing else . T . t is this mistake which in some cases has rendered Government totally feoblo before inferior races ; it is this mistake which has divided the intellect of the world from the statesmanship , and has presented us with so extraordinary a spectacle as learned and accomplished Germany governed by bo many foolish if not ignorant princes and aoldiors , agents for brutally ignorant Russia . It is
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 8, 1855, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08091855/page/14/
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