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j^«k THE LEADER. [No, 296, Satubday
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LlN TIMS DKr>UTMFNT, KB AM. OPINIONS, no...
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Thoro is no learned man but will confeaa...
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WHAT SHALL WE LOSE AND WHAT SHALL WE GAI...
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A rural police foroe for Berkshire has b...
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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Transcript
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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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Reformatories And Deformatories. Dn. Boo...
says Dr . Booth * is not much worse than it has been at the best of times ; and he ascribes i & s stubbornness of virtue in the kdl-theiro-wn-niutton order to the virtue of the British mother in that superior rank . This is a ne-w light , or , if not exactly new , it is an old light with the extinguisher taken off We have new forms of prison discipline , in order , first , to abstract the criminal population from the non-criminal—to weed the healthier part of the population , and to reform the condemned part , if possible . "We have reformatory schools established by the
exertions of men like M . D . Hiix , Lloyd Baeek , Bengough , Ellis , and Miss Cakpenter . The rationale of training for the " Arabs" of civilised life has now been reduced to a very simple form . De Metzism is rising in England j and although a trimming government and an inert people still linger about the work , which is nearly the most distinct before us in this world , some beginning has been made . Bedhill flourishes ; the school at Kingswood , which has already educated fifty children , will now be extended to accommodate 120 ;
Suffolk will provide for one or two hundred of the young population ; Sussex is agitated even to its downs ; and if Somersetshire , with its three adjacent counties , cannot yet muster for the duty , we have at least an assurance that a few hundreds will be redeemed out of the thousands of children that are annually trained to perdition . For that is the plain fact . In savage lands all men are savages . " The stoic of the woods" commits his irregular heroisms , and mistakes them for services untainted by any
depravity which follows upon the conscious committal of a bad act . In this country we separate men into three classes . We have the purely virtuous , of which the statistics remain unknown to us ; we have those who trim between vice and virtue , observing virtue on the surface and compromising "with any convenient amount of vice under the surface ; and we have our thousands annually produced who are finally condemned as vicious , outcast ,
depraved . The reformatory idea is beginning to ' , make some progress amongst us , but we have not yet arrived to a stage in which any kind of proportion—even-the proportion of one to ten- —is established between the process of reformation and the process of deformation . Our deformatories turn out their professors and graduates at the rate of tens of thousands Annually ; our reformatories are content with their hundreds . A man like M . D . Hill shall
exhaust his very body in reiterating to us all , iu our habitual indifference , the very plain truth that you should train up a child in the way he should go , and you continue to train up millions in the way they should not go ; consigning some tens of thousands annually to the black hole which is at the termination of that way . Such is civilisation ! Now , for our own parts , being enthusiastic , unpractical , visionary , scarcely orthodox , although clinging to the fundamental proofs of orthodoxy , we do , hopelessly , as the confession would betray us to Dr . Haslam , hold that this
annual sacrifice of thousands is not essentiall y necessary to civilisation . We have a sympathy with Dr . Booth , although we are quite aware of the consequences of the confession . We partly agree with Lord Ashburton—a safer avowal—that it would , in this year , 1855 , be a very desirable reform , if we were to commence teaching " common things . " The whole moral of Dr . Booth teaches , in conjunction with Lord Ashburton , that that education is the best which is most direct to the essential business of life . What hoots it to know the parallax of the stars , the population of Mesopotamia , the manners and customs of the
ancient Egyptians , or the chemical composition of hydrochloric acid , if we do not know how to get a dinner , to cook it , to make the clothes that cover us , or to' make our house tidy . Considering that we live principally at home , that education appears to be foremost , perhaps the best commencement is to know how to produce our food , which consists usually of substances . drawn from the ground ; and the art by which tc learn how to pi'oduce it
is generally called agriculture . It happens that this science of agriculture in its practice is one of the most healthy disciplines for the muscular body , the natural senses , and the common understanding of man by a new idea . Sir Edwakd Kerrison proposes to introduce this science into the reformatory system as a punishment ; only he intends to limit the agriculture to spade husbandry , and to make it " severe , " as a mode of rendering boys virtuous and tractable . For Sir Edward Kerrison partakes a common prejudice : although he could explain the training of which these little children are victims , yet he retains a grudge against them , and wants to inflict vengeance , to satisfy his virtue , by punching them in the ribs with a " severe" form of agricultural training . It is a confusion of Triptoljemus and Medusa . But there are difficulties in the teaching of " common things , " hindrance in the teaching of the commonest . Nothing should be more " common" for a mother than to know how to suckle her child , yet civilisation steps in , and we have a beautiful specimen of our modern wisdom . We have developed , of late years , a complex and wonderful machinery , which combines metal and human hands , for the making of cotton fabrics . So greatly do we rest our national greatness upon calico , that we demand the most intense application of a large and' closely packed concourse at the duty . The British mother , whose function Dr . Booth so well understands , is called from her duties to pore with steadfast eye , but restless hand and foot , over the development of calico ; the development of character in the baby which she has happened to have being consigned to the mercenary care of an old woman who takes babies by the gross . For the manufacture of character , out of the raw material of babies , you may earn half-a-crown a week ; for the manufacture of calico out of cotton , four or five times that sum . Our calicoes " beat Creation "; our babies rather shame Creation . These babies grow up , and become , as the case may be , men or women . If men , they will not pass muster before the recruiting sergeant ; if women , they become the matrix , to use the scientific phrase , for more irrecruitable Britons and more mothers
of irrecruitable Britons . In this view the Deformatory beats the Reformatory , not by thousands , but by hundreds of thousands ; and our " system" renders us rather hopeless of promoting Dr . Booth from the office of lecturer at Wandsworth to that of Director for the regeneration of the species in the Cotton Empire .
J^«K The Leader. [No, 296, Satubday
j ^« k THE LEADER . [ No , 296 , Satubday
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Thoro Is No Learned Man But Will Confeaa...
Thoro is no learned man but will confeaa he hath much profited by roading controvorsteB , hia aonaoa awakened , and hie judgmont eharponed . If . then , it bo profitable ) for him to read , why should it not , at least , bo tolerable for hia adversary to writo . —Milton
What Shall We Lose And What Shall We Gai...
WHAT SHALL WE LOSE AND WHAT SHALL WE GAIN BY THE WAU ? ( To the Editor of the Leader . ) Sir , —The flrat part of the question naked above is not very difficult to answer . We lo » o some
thousands , say twenty thousand per annum , of valuable lives . Some milHons , say fifty millions per annum of money , which might have been turned to account in ways beneficial to the community , and especiall y to the working and suffering part of the community . We lose thousands of lives —each the centre ofalitt !© circle of hopes , kind wishes , and tender affections . We lose millions of money , each handful of which is not so much vulgar , filthy lucre , as hot-headed politicians and maudlin sentimentalists agree in considering it , but is merely representative of so much wages for the working classes unprofitafoly used up , and robbed from those who would have otherwise
fairly earned and profitably expended the same . I state the case broadly , but substantially it is a fact , that the bulk of the money now lavished on the war , to the direct benefit of a mere fraction of the people , would have gone into the pockets of the working classes at large . I need not now occupy your space in proving this point . Any intelligent artisan or mechanic will understand the importance of capital , not merely to masters but to men . It is the great fund out of which labour is paid for . War loans and wartaxes eat up and curtail that fund . We are squandering , then , in this war the wages of the poor . So much for the more evident losses of the war . There
are others . For instance , the enactment of good laws and the repeal of bad laws , must , for the most part , be laid on the shelf till the war is over . Again , for all that the Poet Laureate , speaking appropriately in the character of an incipient lunatic—as the hero in Maud appears to have been—for all that the Poet Laureate may say ; we , that is , Englishmen in general , English men as a body , were gaining ground in the use of our reason , and in the observance of moral law . We were less drunken , less savage , less unjust , less brutally bigoted than we were a hundred years ago . I don't say we had become all of us scrupulously sober , or watchfully humane , or conscientiously just , or generously tolerant , but I maintain we were more so than we used to be . We were making progress . And I
further maintain , though here and there a warlike ecclesiastic , flushed -v ^ ath excitement , till his face rivals the crimson coloured velvet pulpit cushion , argues " that war has a peculiarly wholesome effect on men's minds , " I maintain that the longer the war continues , the more pernicious will be its effects upon all of us . We shall lose ground . Christian and social virtues will languiah . Crime will gain head . Nothing but a cause truly national and thoroughly noble can prevent war having a brutalising and debasing effect upon the majority of men . Fight we must sometimes , but it is bloody and barbarous work . Look at Punch ' s writing inocking verse about the death of Nicholas . The man died bravely enough , and rather like a Christian . He erred during his life , but he ezred in common with
sixty millions of people . He erred , but we war not with the dead . Punch , however , wrote mocking lines , and turned the Czar ' s dying words into very good fun . And no do \ ibt many people Lmghed over it right heartily . A straw shows which way the wind blows , and JP < unc 7 t ,, to some extent , expresses popular sentiment . At more than one theatre in this country the assembled multitude , when they heard that the Czar was dead , gave three enthusiastic cheers . That was a gallant thing to do , was it not ? Again , in the French journal ( Le Pays ) it is laid down with n happy mixture of playfulness and wisdom , that" the best means of defeating Russia is to kill as many Russians as possible , " or words to that effect . I suppose the writer is correct , but it strikea as a little butcherly
when expressed in such a broad , candid , manner . One cannot help having a touch of pity for the poor Russians , who are to be slaughtered so steadily and perseveringly , and perhaps will never know the rights of the quarrel in which they have to take part . Thia touch of pity is a weakness . A few more years of war , and we shall get used to all that . 'Tis like the foolish susceptibity of a young medical student when ho sickens at the first smell of a dissecting room , or the dainty disgust of a favourite ensign , when he first witnesses a soldier ' s naked back streaked red and blue by the eat-o ' -nine-tatts . It will go off . Use is second nature . Old hands ridicule youngsters , who evince thoir
delicate feelings , and quiz them voi'y pleasantly . The feeling won't last . We shall lose It . We shall acquire in good time a comfortable , hard , leathery , well-seasoned habit of mind . Tho moral nature- will got well crusted over with a callous sort of cuticle , and tho war , for thoso who can afford to pay extra taxes ana work short time , will go forward merrily . I have imperfectly sketched , Sir , what we shall lose by tho war . More might bo nddod , but I am fearful of trespassing on your space . Next week I hopo to consider tho second part of tho question , namely—What do we gain by the war ? and , in tho meantime , eubfloribo myself , Youra faithfully , AnTiiun . H . Elton . Clovedon-Court , Nov . 21 .
A Rural Police Foroe For Berkshire Has B...
A rural police foroe for Berkshire has been agreed upon by a miyority of aixtoon , nt an adjourned session * of that county .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 24, 1855, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24111855/page/16/
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