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Aug. 10, 1850.] «&* &ta*tt. 469
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EXCESSIVE TOIL OF WORKING- MEN. Among th...
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"festivities at goodwood." Whatever amou...
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IDLE ABLE-BODIED PAUPERISM. We learn fro...
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SOCIAL REFORM. EPISTOL2E OBSCURORUM VIRO...
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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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The Conflict. The Progress Of Events Is ...
possible that any member of the conference can retain the least respect for any People : —even for that of his own country ? It is not possible . Lord Palmerston is a clever and pleasant man ; he falls into the fashion of the day in the most goodhumoured way imaginable , and talks as if he were one of the heartiest Liberals in the world ; but , when it comes to deeds , he betrays the Sicilians to
their perjured King , and joins the despotic Monarchs of the North to dispose of nations like serfs . This is conduct which explains the " Whig delay to perform an urgent duty in improving the condition of the People by readjusting the poor-law , or in neglecting the practicable extension of the franchise both in England and Ireland : the People is ignored , except as a bore .
The Whigs have had possession of power , but neglect the duty of governing ; and the consequence is , that power is slipping from them with the opportunity . Their negation , and tbeir exclusion of the People , jointly , may serve for fine weather ; but the season of storm will come , more certainly for the stagnation of this calm . We are now accumulating the ugly elements of a hard year . When the pressure of poverty and hunger comes , the People then remembers that it has been put off and slighted . It was that feeling of slight , more than the hardships of poverty , which provoked the Swing fires of 1830-1 , throughout many
of the agricultural counties ; it was the hunger of political advancement which provoked the plot to seize the Bank and public offices in 1834 . It was less the instigation of Edwards the Bloodman which created the Cato-street Conspiracy , than the arbitrary conduct of a profligate and contemptible court , and sympathy with public writers and speakers who then dared to say things which we now deem commonplaces . For the year ending January 5 , 1817 , the revenue showed a decline of more than £ 9 , 000 , 000 ; and in the following February the Courier copied from the wall between Kew and Richmond this classic placard : —
ENGLISHMEN , THE BEGENT Must be put aside for the advancement of the general good . Had you rather that Caesar were living and die all Slaves , Than Caisar were dead , to live all Freemen 1 Hardship the People will bear , but hardship lends fierceness to the rage excited by slight ; hardship and slight preceded by a negation of Government—that state is sheer anarchy . Such a state would be exhibited in a season of difficulty preceded by a Russell regime : Russellism leads to a Jacquerie .
Aug. 10, 1850.] «&* &Ta*Tt. 469
Aug . 10 , 1850 . ] «&* & ta * tt . 469
Excessive Toil Of Working- Men. Among Th...
EXCESSIVE TOIL OF WORKING- MEN . Among the most common subjects of complaint with the joiners and carpenters of London , whose evidence is given in the Morning Chronicle , is the excessive toil to which they are subjected . One man , in describing the state of things in the shop where he is employed , says : — " the quantity of work that one is forced to get through is positively awful . " This witness is of opinion that one man does four times the work which he would have
done when he first knew the trade . He is so tired at night that he cannot sleep for several hours after he goes to bed . He is often more tired in the morning than when he lay down to rest . But , however tired they may be , the workmen must all look lively at their work , or they are turned off : — " Bless you , they make no words with the men , they sack them if they ' re not strong enough to do all they want ; and they can pretty soon tell , the very first shaving a man strikes in the shop , what a chap is made of . Some men are done up at such work—quite old men and grey , with spectacles on , by the time they are forty . I have seen fine strong men , of six-and-thirty , come in there and be bent double in two or three years . They
are almost all countrymen at the ' strapping' shops . If they see a great strapping fellow who they think has some stuff about him that will come out , they will give him a job directly . We are used for all the world like cab or omnibus horses . Directly they ' ve had all the work out of us we are turned off , and I ana sure , after my day ' s work is over , my feelings must be very much the same as one of the London cab horses . As for Sunday , it is literally a day of rest with us , for the greater part of us lays a-bed all day , and even that will hardly take the aches and pains out of our bones and muscles . When I ' m done and flung by , of course I must starve . "
This is certainly a very melancholy picture , but it is not a new one . Nearly a century ago Adam Smith speaks of the same class of workmen in the metropolis as very apt to overwork themselves , to the ruin of their health and constitution , when paid by the piece . " A carpenter in London , and in some other places , " he remarks , " is not supposed to last in his utmost vigour above eight years . " lhe evil is much the same as that of which men
are complaining now , but with this essential difference , that , at the time to which Adam Smith refers , this excessive working was induced by the high wages : in our own days it is caused by desperate competition among the workmen , not under the inspiring stimulus of hope , but under the conconstant dread of being turned out of employment , a catastrophe which a good workman seldom needed to fear at the former period .
Nearly the whole of the complaints of the joiners and carpenters , like those of the other trades of the metropolis , spring from one source—the number of workmen in almost every branch of industry is much greater than can be profitably employed . How is this to be remedied ? A joiner , whose letter we have inserted elsewhere , says , " the easiest and most practicable remedy would be by the estaKitetimp . nt of associations in new buildings upon
the land . " That , however , is mucn more easuy said than done . Where is . the land and where are the men prepared to change a town life for a rural one , with much inferior money wages ? Our correspondent ' s average earnings amount to 25 s . 4 $ d . a-week ; which is moderate enough , certainly , for a married man : but the men who are employed upon the land at present do not earn the half of that , and many of them do not average more than one-third of the joiner ' s wages . What prospect , then , is there that any large number of artisans who make comparatively good wages , when employed , will abandon the trades they have learned at much cost , in order to . acquire a knowledge of the new trade of cultivating the ground ? Were it possible for them to unite together for mutual support it would , no doubt , be a much easier task to make arrangements for employing the surplus hands in the cultivation of the soil , under an extensive system of associated labour . But before this can be done the working men must have more faith in each other , and must be more thoroughly acquainted with the real cause of the evils under which they complain . The whole question of what is to be done for the cause of industry lies in two brief sentences , with which many of them are familiar : " Union is Strength " — " Knowledge is Power . " When the full force of these two axioms has been fully realized by the working men of Great
Britain ; when they have become strong by their perfect union , and powerful by their familiar knowledge of the laws which govern the creation and distribution of wealth , they will very soon discover a remedy for all the evils which spring from ' " surplus labour . " The direction in which they must seek is in the doctrine of association , but they must acquire a thorough knowledge of that doctrine .
"Festivities At Goodwood." Whatever Amou...
" festivities at goodwood . " Whatever amount of suffering or privation may fall to the lot of the farmers , under the operation of free trade , it is clear that the landlords are quite as well able to enjoy themselves as ever . The Morning Post , in chronicling the * ' Festivities at Goodwood" during the race week informs its agricultural readers that " the magnificent hospitalities of this beautiful mansion have been dispensed during the last two days with unexampled liberality by the Duke and Duchess of Richmond . The house company has exceeded in number that of any previous meeting for some years past , and everything has
gone off with the greatest e ' clat . " Here is consolation for the poor struggling farmers , -who have always been told by the hospitable duke that " landlords and farmers both swim in the same boat . " The Protectionist orators demonstrate that farmers have been paying the whole of their rents out of capital for the last twelve months . Surely this cannot have been the case with the tenants of the Duke of Richmond . So staunch a" farmer ' s friend" as he has always been , at public meetings , would never think of extorting rack rents from his suffering tenantry to defray " the magnificent hospitalities of his beautiful mansion . "
We learn from the Post , that " the victory achieved by Lord Stanley ' s mare , Canezou , gave high satisfaction to the Duke of Richmond . " When will it be able to say that the Duke had so far achieved a victory over himself as to make him reduce the rents of his tenantry , in correspondence with the fall in the price of farm produce , even if such a sacrifice should force him to exercise a more stinted hospitality at Goodwood for the next two or three years ?
Idle Able-Bodied Pauperism. We Learn Fro...
IDLE ABLE-BODIED PAUPERISM . We learn from the Second Annual Report of the Poorlaw Board , recently published , that the aggregate cost of pauperism last year was £ 5 , 792 , 963 , which is equal to Gs . 6 £ d . from every man , woman , and child in England and Wales . The total number of persons relieved was nearly 1 , 000 , 000 , of whom about one-fifth were able-bodied
adult paupers , while of the remainder one-half were children under sixteen years of age . Now , it is plain that if these 200 , 000 able-bodied adult paupers , and say 150 , 000 of the older children were employed , under proper management , in the cultivation of the soil , they might raise their own food and a considerable portion of surplus produce for the support of those paupers whom age , infancy , or other infirmities disable from working . Rating the labour of the adult paupers at 6 s . per week per head , which they might easily be made to earn under wise management ; this would give upwards of £ 3 , 000 , 000 of the
per annum ; and if we estimate the labour 150 , 000 children at 2 s . a-week each , this would give £ 780 , 000 more , or £ 3 , 780 , 000 towards the reduction of the poor rates , leaving them little more than one-third of what they are at present . But of course no one expects ever to see this enormous army of able-bodied paupers employed in self-supporting labour , under ft Government like the present . To devise and establish , a complete national scheme for that purpose would require a clear head and a resolute will , which is equivalent to saying that Lord John Russell will never undertake such a piece of work .
Social Reform. Epistol2e Obscurorum Viro...
SOCIAL REFORM . EPISTOL 2 E OBSCURORUM VIRORUM . No . II . —To David Masson . My dear Masson , —I have asked Thornton Hunt to postpone opening the subject of Religion in this series , until next week , that I might , if possble , broaden the basis by a rapid indication of the paramount necessity of including Religion in all Social Reform . To thinkers like yourself such an indication is superfluous ; that it is not so to others our daily experience too plainly informs
us . How many grave and energetic men we know taking a passionate part in politics , believing themselves and believed by others to be the leaders capable of effecting great reforms , who say — sometimes impatiently , sometimes with a subdued smile of superiority , " Oh ! I never trouble my head about Religion . " These , my dear Masson , are practical men : emphatic men of action and common sense ; men who scorning dreamers fix their eyes upon " results . " They tell you somewhat ostentatiously that they are " no theorists , * ' and
buttoning their coats with a certain restless energy instantly proceed to act—not indeed upon a theory —but on what is far more respectable , a prejudice or a tradition ! If they are discontented and destructive , shall I tell you what their destruction amounts to ? It amounts to blowing the down from off the thistle they should uproot : they scatter the seed and imagine the plant is destroyed I Let them " trouble their heads about it" or not , Religion is at the root of all social existence , moving the heights and depths of man ' s nature with a
power as mysterious as it is undeniable , and to attempt a cure of social evils while Religion is left out of sight , is to fly to quacks for remedies against pimples , and never ask the physician what impeded vital action throws the pimples to the surface . Not that I attribute to Religion the power of causing or of curing all our evils . Very much the reverse . What I mean is that our evils—those , at least , which we may hope to lessen or destroyresult from our imperfect social arrangements , which again result from our imperfect Social
Science ; and , to carry out the simile just employed , inasmuch as evils are owing to some imperfect or impeded action of the vital force , we cannot hope to restore the vital force to healthy action , so long as there is disease at the heart , and we persist in overlooking the heart . Religion is the heart of politics . My energetic friend , the scorner of theories , will
laugh at this , I know . Religion to him seems so " remote" from ordinary affairs—and he estimates importance by proximity ! Religion , I am afraid , has the disadvantage of being a theory—the theory of our life in its grandest phases , though not perceptibly influencing our parish business . But lest he carry too far his aversion from the " abstract " and the " remote , " let me warn him to meditate on this ancient anecdote .
A Grecian galley sailed with a goodly prize of prisoners towards one of the Italian ports . In the dead of night the captives broke loose , murdered the captain and his crew , and in the tumult of their joy made the air resound with cries . Freedom ! blessed freedom was their own again ! They spared none but the helmsman , an aged man , who sat quietly look * ing at the stars , and when it was suggested that he too might be dangerous , the " practical" men of the party scornfully replied , " He dangerous 1 don't you see that he pays no attention to what is going on around him , the old driveller , his thoughts are
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 10, 1850, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_10081850/page/13/
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