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[ — 178 1Rffe gLeatteV* Saturday,
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THE ROYAL BRITISH BANK. Since the establ...
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PRISON DISCIPLINE. The various fallacies...
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SOCIALIST TENDENCIES. We are glad to cal...
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THE LABOUR MARKET. The reply of Sir Char...
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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 Tenant-Right Movement. Justick To Ir...
which will pave the way for still greater reforms than those which are openly demanded . The landlords have maintained a large army in Ireland , supported by English taxes , chiefly for the purpose of enabling them to extort more exorbitant rents from their starving tenantry than they would have dared to demand but for that army . Every writer on Ireland has pointed this out as the radical cause of Irish misery and crime , but no one was able to propose a practical remedy which would not disturb the " rights of property . " The potato failure and the repeal of the Corn-law , coupled with the Irish Poor-law , however , have effected what no special legislative enactment could have done . Judging from the sales of land which have already taken place under the Encumbered Estates Act , it seems pretty evident that rents must come down to little more than one half of what they were previously to the famine . Should this be the case , the greater number of Irish landlords will be swept away . After having witnessed so much misery from the application of the clearance system to the wretched tenantry of Tipperary , and other counties , we shall now have the satisfaction of seeing a wholesale retributive eviction of the landlords , who must make room for men who will grant justice to Ireland by securing to the farmer the fruits of his industry .
[ — 178 1rffe Gleattev* Saturday,
178 1 Rffe gLeatteV * [ Saturday ,
The Royal British Bank. Since The Establ...
THE ROYAL BRITISH BANK . Since the establishment of the first savings' bank at Tottenham in 1804 , by Mrs . Priscilla Wakefield , these institutions must have made wonderful pro * gress , seeing that the aggregate amount of money invested in them is now upwards of £ 30 , 000 , 000 . Whether they will continue to increase at the same rate during the next ten years , —indeed , whether they are likely to increase at all under the new
system by which they are to be regulated , seems very questionable . The reduction of the rate of interest , and the restriction of the amount of deposit to £ 100 , will tend very much to divert the small savings of the middle and working classes into other directions ; and will , no doubt , enable such institutions as the Royal British Bank to extend their operations much more rapidly than they would otherwise have done . This bank has been
recently established in the metropolis , on the system which has been so successful in Scotland ; the directors receive deposits at interest , discount bills , make advances on approved securities , grant cash accounts to tradesmen of good standing and respectability , and transact every other description of banking business on the Scottish system . In proportion as these features of the new bank become known we feel assured that thousands of thriving tradesmen , who find much difficulty in obtaining such banking accommodation as they are fairly entitled to , will
gladly avail themselves of the facilities granted by this establishment . The great excellence of any banking system is to combine the utmost possible freedom with the greatest possible security ; and these conditions have evidently been possessed by the Scottish banks , if we judge from the fact that , notwithstanding the very liberal accommodation they afford to customers , not a single bank failure took place in Scotland in 1814-15-16 , or again in 1825 , when so many hundreds of English banks became insolvent .
Prison Discipline. The Various Fallacies...
PRISON DISCIPLINE . The various fallacies afloat concerning punishment for crime would be ludicrous were they not mischievous . Here we have a political economist who measures all men by the same fixed rules , there a philosopher who preaches individual necessity till license becomes law . Duty , which looks neither within nor without , which regards no temptation of circumstance , and laughs at all physiological pleas for pardon ; and materialism , which takes the callipers ami vapours about organization if a lad picks a pocket or a man murders a family , divide the world between them in a sorry fashion enough :
for while the controversy continues crime increases , and every puny attempt to suppress it necessarily fails . Yet both theories arc true . The spiritualist is right when he speaks of duty ( which the will may represent to the materialist ) as the only will of action , and the materialist when he makes organization at once the cause of crime anil its apology . The law itself recognises the result of this last theory , in the distinction which it makes between various motives . Yet the more suhtle shades of the same impulses , which are acknowledged in their broader markings , are overlooked altogether . Our legal philosophy has coarse hands as well as
bandaged eyes , and knows nothing finer than a hempen rope , unless it be a cat-o ' -nine tails . The saddest experiment in Prison Discipline hitherto made is the Pentonville , or separate system . The most rational is the hitherto undeveloped theory put forth by Captain Maconochie , though partially practised , with signal success , on Norfolk Island . That industry and general good conduct together should be able to obtain freedom ; in other words , that a proved reformation should gain a man ' s reconciliation with an
offended society , seems to us to contain more philosophy , sound morality , and essential Christianity , than any other system which has yet been propounded . The law of punishment , as punishment alone , does nothing . It may keep men in subjection where the penalties are severe and the police are vigilant , as brutes are kept in order by the lash and the chain ; but it degrades while it awes them . They crouch , they do not rise ; they
tremble , they do not work . Punishment , without some ulterior object , some agency of reformation , some prospect of restoration to society , is a powerful engine of brutalization : while it ignores the moral feelings it destroys them , and while it treats humanity as a free agent in crime yet denies it the opportunity of voluntary restitution and of selforiginating reformation—it encourages crime by this very repression of hope and this annihilation of moral freedom .
The Commissioners of the Pentonville Prison have published their eighth report . It is specious enough at first sight , but unsatisfactory to any man who judges for himself undeterred by Parliamentary adoption . The past year gives three cases attempted , one of successful , suicide j a large proportion of nervous , heart , and mental affections ; a crowded infirmary , and a despondent medical report . On the other hand , the chaplain speaks enthusiastically of the good which must
result from so perfect a theory . But the Christianity of the Church is sometimes strangely at variance with the truths of science , and of practical results . The separate system does not work well . It is expensive to the ratepaying supporters and ruinous to the subjects . Instead of reforming the criminal it crushes out all the energy of the man . It assumes a certain amount of moral guilt in every legal crime , which we boldly assert is not universal , and it acts more foolishly in assuming a certain amount of mental cultivation , from which
reflection , remorse , and reformation are successively to spring , which mental cultivation and the consequent possibility of this sequence we deny to ninety-nine out of a hundred criminals . It treats the psychologically blameless man , whose brain has some hidden organic defect , or whose passions were roused to temporary madness by a sudden accident , as it treats the crafty villain whose acquirements have been so many more criminal engines , and whose whole character is vitiated from the core outwards . Nay , if the actions are legally
unequal , and the injury inflicted by the innocent be statutorily the worse of the two , the real facts are not considered in the judge ' s summing up , and the defective brain must bear the penalty of wilful criminality . The gross clodhopper , who sleeps and eats and never thinks , because he has not the material wherewith to think , and who speedily sinks into imbecility and ill-health , for want of some stimulant to his sluggish energies , and for
want of the hard work necessary to his powerful frame , and the irritable , nervous being trembling on the verge of insanity , and whose mind preys on itself for want of employment and distraction , are alike placed in solitary confinement , and then the chaplain thanks God for his gracious mercy , and congratulates society on this admirable system , while the surgeon attends the suicide , and the prison van carts oft' a hopeless moping lunatic .
This separate system wars against every true principle of punishment . Instead of giving the criminal an interest in his own reformation , it gives him an interest in his own bestiality ; his only relief is in feeding , and thinking of his feeding , till he sleeps , and in getting himself into the infirmary as soon as possible . At any rate he has there an
improvement even on the ample dietary of his solitary cell . And a prisoner , with no books but a few religious tracts and the Bible , with no light for fifteen or sixteen hours together in the winter , and nothing to look forward to but his dinner and his bed , will probably do his best in making himself as comfortable as such elements of comfort allow .
A man injures society and violates its laws . If he is an unmistakeable lunatic he is punished by a special law - , but between the sane man and the
in-— sane who can count the various grades ? who can define exactly between temporary and organic disease of the brain , between the accident that disorders or the cause that destroys ? Not the law assuredly , and but few even of the faculty . Is not all crime the result of malformation , of disease , or of immaturity of development ? Physiologically it is so ; with the counterbalancing power of the will . In this ability , or inability , from physical causes " of exerting the restraining power of the will , lies the guilt or the excuse for crime . Does the separate system , or the theory of punishment generally to make this distinction
attempt ? No . But , a system which would allow a man to earn his liberation by moral reform , and by the exercise of selfdenial , industry , and good conduct generally , — which would set his liberation at such a distance that those habits must become formed and of easy continuance hereafter—which should make the criminal a responsible agent to himself , and give him the power of his own release by his own reformation—this is the true idr a of effective punishment—the best kind of Prison Discipline . And no man has attempted to bring this out but Captain Maconochie , whose plans were met wi'li the coarse
jeer of ignorance and the wilful repulsion of brutality , —set aside for the maddening , cruel , morally ineffective , and uncivilized system , which burdens our heaviJy-taxed ratepayers , for the support of an expensive crotchet , and which destroys the powers it ought to reform and to restore . Idleness and luxurious fare combined with an unnatural solitude which produces madness or disease , are the panaceas of Pentonville—we would substitute hard work , hard fare , strict supervision and prevention of mutual contamination , a rigid reformatory discipline , and Hope for the distant day which will give the pardon of society , and the permanent restoration to a lost condition of virtue .
Socialist Tendencies. We Are Glad To Cal...
SOCIALIST TENDENCIES . We are glad to call attention to Mr . Newman ' s thoughtful and able letter on the " Initiation of Socialism , " in this week ' s Open Council . Mr . Newman is evidently riot so much at variance with us as he supposes . When he says , "Our existing laws of partnership exceedingly cramp the natural power of uniting , " when he expresses his hopes of " joint property , " greater " permanence of human unions , " and of communities within which " competition may be annihilated , " he is directly discussing that most important labour question , on whose right solution
depend the worth and stability of any social reformation . It is this very discussion which we are most anxious to invite . In so far as Mr . Newman acknowledges the inefficiency of our present social arrangements , pointing to the necessity of thoroughly understanding and exposing the principle of Association , he is as much Socialist as we are . Indeed , for all present purposes , a right understanding of the doctrine ^ and its application to the progressive improvement of existing institutions , are of more importance than the promotion of any special scheme .
The Labour Market. The Reply Of Sir Char...
THE LABOUR MARKET . The reply of Sir Charles Wood to the Protectionists on Tuesday evening was triumphant , so far as they were concerned . He proved beyond all doubt that pauperism has decreased under the operation of free trade , and in doing so he has , no doubt , persuaded most people that we are now in a fair way to see misery abolished , and that those who still complain loudly of the wretched condition of the labouring classes , are the most unreasonable set of men that ever disturbed society . And yet , any one who will carefully study the facts relating to the Labour Market which we have given in to-day ' s Leader , will find ample cause for bitter reflection on the working of a system which exhibits such melancholy results .
Take the great mass of the agricultural labourers , for example , as they form the largest portion of the working class . Their average rate of wages is about 9 s . or 10 s ., and , in many cases , is not more than 7 s . or 8 s . a-week . Now , let any man in comfortable circumstances endeavour to realize to his imagination the condition of a labourer , with a wife and four or five children , whose entire income does not exceed 10 s . a-week . In the union workhouse , the cost of a labourer with a wife and five children , would be 20 s . a-wcek at least . What a sad state of things is it then when the income of the
independent labourer , who happens to have a large family , amounts to only half the sum required for the support of a pauper ' s family ' containing the same number of children ! No one can deny Mr . Cobden ' s siatement that the revenue is flourishing , that our exports are increasing , that crime has diminished , and that the coffers of the Bank of England are overflowing ; and yet , notwithstanding all these outward symptoms of national prosperity , let us not shut our eyes to this startling fact , that the wages of the great mass of unskilled labourers are little more than half of what is deemed requisite for the support of paupers !
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 18, 1850, page 10, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18051850/page/10/
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