Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 27th April 1850, Edition Country of 1, Page 10

Page 10
Page 10
10 of 24

On this page

  • Text (4)
  • Transcript

    • 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.

      The New Reformation. The Earl Of Arupdel...

      affairs ; " religion" to this day so called , corroborating the denunciation of the sceptic , just as the Pagan cruel creeds corroborated the sceptic Lucretius , in the day of " the Heathen / ' urging man to oppress , repudiate , and revile his fellow . The divine influence is desecrated not more by perversion than by absolute prostration . To restore religion to its function it must be emancipated , and to achieve that blessed end is the object of the new Reformation which Lord Surrey proclaims .

      106 ®!>E Zltifot T* [Saturday,

      106 ®!> e ZLtifot t * [ Saturday ,

      Position Of The Public Educationists. Su...

      POSITION OF THE PUBLIC EDUCATIONISTS . Success involves responsibilities of its own . The progress made by the Public Education Party , within these few weeks , has been so decided as to prove how easily the party might do much more : to do that much more becomes a duty . Of course the opposition which has been offered will not operate to deter , but rather to encourage the Public Educationists : and the trimming position of the

      Government in like manner invites a vigorous concentration of effort . The events of this year 1850 show that the matter is in the hands of the Educationists , if they only possess in themselves the qualities of judgment and resolution . Not that we would make light of the trouble that they will have to encounter ; but that we wish them thoroughly to understand the nature of the obstruction , in order that they may know how certain their victory is to be caused by " pluck" perseverance .

      The trouble will consist in the difficulties raised by endless efforts of bigotry , in the inertness of the Government , and in the irresolution of sincere but timid friends . In this last lies the great danger . Bigotry may be as many-headed as the Hydra ; but it has lost all its weapons , and is harmless , except to those that fear it . It can invoke no inquisition ; it dares not even invoke any of the petty legal penalties which still disfigure the statute book ; it has ceased to monopolise interest . The inertness of the Government is merely a negative evil—a want , not an active obstruction . Lord J .

      Russell admits that religion may be secular und not irreligious ; but he and Mr . Hawes are struck with a fanatical deference for taxpayers and people , at home and in the colonies . Lord John can't bear the idea of Wesleyans paying an educationrate—although he does not relieve them from church-rates . But his position only amounts to this—that he is governed by the balance of his fears : he is deterred from accepting Public Education , because he is frightened at the thought of old anti-education interests ; if the Public Educationists can only frighten him on the other side , he will jump to their conclusion .

      This real danger , we say , lies m any misgivings on their own part , and any disposition to yield to timid counsel . There will not be wanting friends , sincere , and perhaps not the reverse of intelligent , who will advise a slow , compromising course of action . From such counsel we should appeal to the facts . The Educationists have found that an active and bold course commands respect and adhesion . Half of the oppression which bigotry exercises in this country is " conventional—voluntarily endured by the oppressed . The

      Educationists know that they are not " anti-religious ; they know that the local rate which they propose is not a class-rate , like the church-rate—but one really for the benefit of the whole People ; they know that all their objects are such as may be avowed without shame or misgiving : the best way to attain those objects , therefore , is to go straight towards them , both in speech and action . So we might conclude by mere reasoning j but already the facts arc sufficient to confirm the reasoning . The

      Educationists find that open speaking is not only tolerated , hut that it positively commands the sympathies of the public . They have obtained a great public victory in the commercial capital of Lancashire , and they have repeated that victory in the commercial capital of Yorkshire . Straightforwardness , boldness , and frankness have proved to be safe and profitable ; und we exhort the party not to exchange the excellent spirit in which they have acted for a feebler one .

      Some change , however , may he desirable to meet the resistance which they have encountered in Parliament through Mr . Fox ' s bill , and what that change ought to be is indicated , we think , by the nature of the circumstances . The Educationists should devote all their present energies to consolidating their own forces , and recruiting their front ranks with the men of the ablest heads und boldest hearts . The whole scale of public opinion might

      be beneficially affected by such a course . In a career which is based upon new opinion , and has to face the storm of prejudice from uprooted old opinion—like owls disturbed in an old churchtower falling—in such a contest , above all others , fellowship is strength . The Educationists should form , not only their own local associations , but a general league—unpolitical , simple , practical in its and band recruitsto

      objects ; namely , to multiply , mature the main measure , and to devise the plans from time to time needed for improving opportunity , and furthering it . It is true that leagues have incurred some discredit , by an abuse of the title ; but in the case of the Educationists it would be justified by a twofold reality—the reality of the need for the moral support of men , and the reality of the object . _____

      The County Freehold Movement. " The Chan...

      THE COUNTY FREEHOLD MOVEMENT . " The chance of the present House of Commons remaining much longer as it is , is a very small one . If affairs are allowed to progress as they are doing at present , the change , when it does come , will certainly be in a Democratic sense . No counter-project of any sort has as yet been put forth , and unless some project is devised and taken up by the Country Party , another downward step will assuredly be taken , the difficulty of retrieving which will be almost insuperable . "—Morning Herald , April 23 , 1850 .

      The Herald is generally a prophet of evil to its own friends . Nothing pleases it so much as a piece of intelligence to prove that " the Country Party" is on the point of being ruined . Six or seven years ago it predicted the repeal of the cornlaw , and the event proved the truth of its vaticinations . Now it warns Toryism to prepare for the advent of a new Reform Bill ; a prophecy of no less sure fulfilment than the one foreboding the

      abolition of the food monopoly , and one which Toryism is quite as impotent to retard . The Herald advises the Country Party to bestir itself ; to take prompt and decisive measures to prevent the impending Parliamentary Reform from becoming too Democratic ; and we see that a vigorous attempt is making in Birmingham to get up a counter Freehold Movement , in order to checkmate the dangerous advances which the Radicals have been making in that direction . But the present feud between landlords and tenants—which

      must continue till rents fall to a reasonable ratewill prevent any union of a comprehensive " Country Party" for Conservative purposes . Were the farmers able to act for themselves they might strengthen their position very much by attending to the county register , but they have been so long accustomed to move only under the guidance of the landowners that they are not likely to unite for any common object .

      Meanwhile the Birmingham movement for extending the suffrage by means of the forty-shilling clause of the Reform Bill is rapidly spreading throughout the country . Many of those who disapproved of it at first as a small agitation , tending to divert men from more thorough comprehensive measures of reform , are now eager to show that , under proper guidance , it may become the speediest and most efficient means of obtaining the rights of the people . For that class of Reformers especially who took an active part in the Free Trade

      agitation , the County Freehold Movement seems the one best fitted to draw them together and organize their force in the direction of thorough parliamentary reform . They view the opposition to reform not in the mass , but in detail ; not as a huge oligarchy , but as composed of so many borough and county Members , who are returned by a small number of voters ; and who may , therefore , easily be made to do what the people want , if the number of Radicals on the register can only be judiciously increased to the extent of some forty or fifty thousand . That this

      might be done by the purchase of freeholds is undeniable if the people could be persuaded to save their money for that purpose . The amount of money spent by the labouring classes in debasing indulgences would purchase county freeholds for at least half a million voters in a single year . Now , as the number of persons connected with common building societies is said to be about 500 , 000 , and as the temperance reformation is spreading widely

      among the working class , all that is wanted in order to give the County Freehold Movement the power which it requires is , that the desire for saving , which grows with the increase of sober habits , should be coupled with a strong desire for the possession of the franchise as a means of enforcing national economy . In that case , thousands of persons who might otherwise have joined building or money clubs , will prefer taking shares in one of

      jfchose Freehold Land Societies which are now to b < found in most of our large towns . One great excellence of the County Freeholc Movement is that , even if it should not realise al such sanguine expectations , it cannot fail to effeci much good in the direction of social reform . Ever ] new freehold association is a society of men bandec together by the powerful self-reliant feeling thai " God helps those who help themselves "; by the strong conviction that , although the corn-law has

      been abolished , there are still millions of the population in misery , and that , until many othei gigantic evils have been swept away , the conditior of the People can never become what it ought tc be . If we view it , therefore , simply as promoting the social elevation of the working classes , we musi rejoice in the progress which these societies have already made and are still making . Considered in that light , there is no active project now on fool which is more manifestly entitled to the heartj support of sound philanthropists .

      We have already spoken of its tendency to promote more temperate habits among the mass of the people , and we find ample corroboration of this opinion in the speeches made at the various meetings which have lately taken place . In Birmingham it is said , by those who are best acquainted with the working of the freehold societies there , that " out of £ 19 , 000 spent in the purchase of freeholds in that town , not less than £ 15 , 000 has been saved from the taverns /'

      Another great benefit which is likely to grow out of this movement is the formation of a new class in the community . At present there are hardly any small landed proprietors in Great Britain . Owing to various causes , too numerous and complicated for us to indicate here , the soil has gradually become the absolute possession of a few thousand families . From this cause spring many of the social evils under which society suffers . Fortunately for the people the first result of free trade will be to teach many of the landowners that it is

      better to sell a portion of their estates in order to clear off encumbrances , and enable them to encourage good farming on the part of their tenantry than to go on , like the Duke of Buckingham , purchasing one estate after another with borrowed capital , till they break down under the load of accumulated bonds and mortgages . Hard though the lesson may be , the landlords will soon learn that , with wheat at 38 s . a quarter , they cannot

      prevent rents from , undergoing a fall , whatever the ulterior result may be ; and if rents in general should fall to the extent of twenty or twenty , five per cent ., as they ought to do , it is clear that many estates must come to the hammer . In that case there should be a powerful Freehold Society in every county , ready , by taking advantage of such opportunities , to call into existence a body of Freeholders—a class of owners of the soil working and living among the People .

      Wages In England And America. We Have Re...

      WAGES IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA . We have received a letter from Mr . Samuel Sandars in which he professes to explain why the British farmer cannot compete witK his American rival , although the cost of labour is 150 per cent , higher in the United States than in England ; but it seems to us that he leaves the question more confused than ever . Our position is , that the American labourer receives five bushels of wheat , or an

      equivalent in money , for a single week ' s labour , and that the English labourer does not receive more than two . bushels of wheat , or its equivalent in money , for a week ' s labour . With such facts as these staring him in the face , we cannot understand how any man of Mr . Sandars ' s intelligence and undoubted honesty can talk of our being unable to compete with foreigners on account of the dearncss of labour in England . If the facts we have stated be correct—and we challenge any one to contradict them—it is plain that the English farmer can buy labour for less than one-half of the price which the American farmer requires to pay for it .

      This is the entire gist of the question between Mr . Sandars and us , and we do not see that he has thrown any new light upon it . But there are striking blunders in his tabular view of the elements of cost of production in America . For example , he makes the items of " interest " and " tradesmen ' bills , " only one half what they are in England ; whereas the former is double what it is in England , and the latter at least as high as it is in this country . These , however , are minor points : tlie main question is the one already stated that agricultural wages in America are 150 per cent , higher than in this country j and therefore it will not do

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 27, 1850, page 10, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27041850/page/10/