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attained , though not social freedom .: men stand unfettered as to their own opinions , though they do not avow them ; and there is not a denomination even of Christians among whom you can pronounce of any man , unless you know his heart to the core , that he is in the plain common-sense of the word a Christian at all . It is among this class that the leading minds of the country are to be found ; and this is the class whom Mr . Stowell proposes with others to exclude from a national system of education .
He avowed himself " the working man ' s friend , " and appealed with effect to what he had done in " supporting the poor man when oppressed in wages : " so now he would defend him when " oppressed in family "—threatened with secular education . " You must make the training for the working-man moral and religious , " he said , " well as intellectual . " But you cannot . You cannot agree upon what is moral and religious in Mr .
StowelFs sense of the words ; and if you say that there shall be no training , but that which is thus moral and religious , you simply declare that there shall be no training at all , secular or even religious ; for , while the numberless sects will never unite , you will keep the flower of the educated classes back from any participation in the movement , and you will force the abandoned classes , whom ignorance closes against all religious ideas , to remain in their savage state—the wild English of our towns and fields .
Mr . StowelPs strongest position was that which he took in standing by the Bible , unmutilated and unaltered ; and he challenged the advocates of the Lancashire system to take the suffrages of the people on the point . " If you were to poll the inhabitants of Manchester , " he said , " will find , of the Protestant population of the city , there are not one-tenth who would say they would not send their children to school because the Bible is read
there . " Few , indeed , might venture to say so , still fewer might like to throw out the challenge . It is this last lurking fear that weakens the movement . The time is not yet come when men will soy to the full that which is in their mind ; but it is coming fast , and this Manchester meeting , by showing the strength which lies in perfect frankness , will go further than any public demonstration that we remember in the encouragement of outspeaking .
Indeed the whole philosophy , not only of the educational movement , but of free conscience , is in IVIr . Tucker ' s admirable speech . After the chairman , he was the first speaker : he saw before him a meeting prepared to be rough and conflicting ; and he manifestly cast about in his mind for the sources of the greatest strength in the contest . He performed his task manfully , with that completeness and courage that include perfect selfcommand and clear-headed discretion . But he
spoke out . " I see no reason , " he said , " though we may differ from one another , why we may not all speak what we believe to be the truth in this matter , and speak the truth in love . " That is the right spirit . " Under the Lancashire system , nothing will be taught in the schools but what all men must acknowledge to be true . " The true distinction . Collectively , we can and we ought
only to teach what we know to be true : individually , we should all of us strive to disseminate what we believe . But if once we agree in teaching what we all of us know to be true , unquestionably we effect the finest preparation of the national mind to judge and receive those doctrines which are best tested by the fullest light of human intelligence . Those who oppose such a preparative proclaim their own dogma to be a doctrine for fools .
To any religious doctrine which can bear the light of day , neither the Lancashire system nor any other system , of perfectly unfettered tuition , can be unfavourable . Religion is nothing , or it is a primary truth essential to man ' s nature—inborn , and the more fully developed in proportion as he is awakened to a knowledge of his own nature and a sense of his relation to the universe . It is the actual operation of dogma which has hitherto impeded the action of religion , and we see
the consequence in the weakness of religion ; unable to contend against the many social diseases which it might counteract , but which it hands over to the gaoler and the physician for llic repair of its own laches . No humanly-devised system of " practical benevolence , " " material enlightenment , " " philosophical duty , " can effectively urge men to work for the welfare of their species through the changing interests of passing generations . He cares not for the dead , neither for the unborn ; The only inducement which has
proved effectual is the sense not only that he is part and parcel of something which endures longer than himself , but that there is a living relation with that enduring universe , —a personal relation as to himself , present in his time , but living also in times past with his forefathers and to live also in times future . This is a relation not subject to the death which visits him alone , but he feels
that under it his instinct compels to love and serve . So that man shall stand in a nearer relation to God than he will do to the remote members of his own species . This doctrine is common to all faiths ; it existed before Christianity ; it is not threatened by those signs of decay which are now visible in the conflicts of men about the doctrines essential to
particular churches . Thus it is that missionary efforts of sectarian narrowness obstruct and nullify the natural function of religion itself . Thus it is that this great community , too large to be governed by the smaller influence of human contrivances , hesitates , vacillates , and errs in its own action , throughout every department of national or social activity , unsustained and unstimulated by the full force" of the religious influence—unguided by the lights which combine , as in the Kosmos of Humboldt , the full effulgence of cultivated philosophy and inborn religion . The conflict around the standard of dogma forbids the peaceful reign of religion .
The Lancashire mpvement promises to do sacred work in the emancipation of that divine influence in a two way the mpst potent and direct .
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CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM . Two clergymen coming forward as leaders iri a Socialist movement I ec A great fact" sufficing in itself to mark the immense progress made by the doctrine of common-labour within these last few years ; snd also to rescue that doctrine from i's false position as an anti-religious doctrine . Before us are two small brochures which are exciting great atten-r tion , not less for their surpassing ability than for the characters of the writers . The publication of such works is a political event .
" Cheap Clothes and Nasty , by Parson Lot , " deals with the actua 1 and present results of the ultra-competitive system in trade , as specially illustrated by the tailor ' s trade . It explains the evils of the sweatingsystem , " and the attempts made by the Working Tailors' Association to carry on trade by a plan of associated workmen . Parson Lot is no imaginary person , but an acting clergyman of the Church of England , with a singular faculty of vivi f ying sound principle by the most lively illustration and vigorous language . The first few lines of his pamphlet strike the key-note of the whole : —
" King Ityence , says the legend of Prince Arthur , wore a paletot trimmed with kings' beards . In the first French Revolution ( so Carlyle assures us ) there were at Meudon tanneries of human skins . Mammon , at once tyrant and revolutionary , follows both these noble examples—in a more respectable way , doubtless , for Mammon hates cruelty ; bodily pain is his devil—the worst evil of which he , in his effeminacy , can conceive . So he shrieks benevolently when a drunken soldier is flogged ; but he trims his paletots , and adorns his legs , with the flesh of men and the skins of women , with degradation , pestilence , heathendom and despair ; and then chuckles self-complacently over the smallness of his tailors' bills . "
And the " tailors' bills" are dissected with a merciless mercy—a generous mercy warm wi | fch heart-blood for the sufferings of the helpless workmen ; a merciless anatomy of the movements and practices of the misguided men who carry out slavishly our modeita eleventh commandment , " Buy cheap , but sell dear . " *• You are always calling out for facts , " says Parson Lot , " and have a firm belief in salvation by statistics . Listen to a few : " and then , with an indignant and animated eloquence , plain and direct , he relates how the working man in the tailor ' s trade has been successively subjected to new devices by the capitalists make
and under-capitalists , who contrive to a profit through subtractions from the earnings of industry . Employment is precarious , and the " sweater , " gathering many workmen together , supplies them with a certain security of employment at the cost of subtracting from its fair wage *; taking from each a little insurance money , and Jiving on the price of their scarcely abated anxiety . In like manner the employer forces his workmen to cram themselves into lodgings which he provides , miserable lodgings which he " buys cheap and sells dear" to them who cannot refuse to purchase . The cost of trimmings is transferred from the first employer to the lowest workman . Women arc
sent about to kidnap newly-arrived country hands that they may be dragged intp this resistless system . The workmen must take their very food of these man-merchants , who live by eating into the margin of wages , by clipping the coin of industry . This system increasing yearly , so that it bicls fair to draw to itself the whole tailoring trade . And the same processes are true of other trades : — " It appears that there are two distinct tailor tradesthe * honourable ' trade , now almost confined to the West End , and rapidly dying out there , and the ' dishonourable ' trade of the show-shops and
slop-shopsthe plate-glass palaces , where gents—and , alas ! those who would be indignant at that name—buy their cheapand-nasty clothes . The two names are the tailors' own slang ; slang is true and expressive enough , though , now and then . The honourable shops in the West End number only sixty ; the dishonourable , four hundred and more ; while at the East End the dishonourable trade has it all its own way . The honourable part of the trade is declining at the rate of one hundred and fifty journeymen per year ; the dishonourable increasing at such a rate that , in twenty years , it will have absorbed the whole tailoring trade , which employs upwards of twenty-one thousand journeymen . "
But there is a retribution for these things , for truly these judgments of God are not a fiction of priesthoods . Industry beaten down below the level of pauperism taints its own fruit ; and , like the wounded centaur , sends forth a revenge in its own poisoned , garment : — - ft These wretched creatures , when they have pawned their own clothes and bedding , will use as substitutes the very garments they are making . So Lord ' s coat has been seen covering a group of children blotched
with smallpox . The Rev . D finds himself suddenly unpresentable from a cutanepus disease , which it is not polite to mention on the south of Tweed , little dreaming that the shivering dirty beinjg who had made his coat has ¦ been- setting with . his , asms . ¦ j zu .. the ^ steejse ; 8 ^ ipr > ^ 5 « f trnith while he stitched at the tails . The charming Miss C-t——r- » s swept off by typhus or scarlatina , and her parents talk about ( God ' s heavy judgment and visitation '—had they tracked the girl ' s new riding-habit back to the stifling undrained hovel where it served as a blanket to the fever-stricken slopworker , they would have eeen why God had visited them . "
We say the system is resistless , or it appears to be . The workman falls into it , and cannot help himself . The honest tradesman , as we have seen , is losing ground . A customer cannot resist the bait of cheap clothes ; the very State cannot resist the epidemic of a suicidal meanness : " Tlieir lordships , " writes the secretary to the Admiralty in 1847 , " have no controul whatever over the wages paid for making contract clothing "—canno ' t abstain from abetting the development of a system like that which we have seen . Parson Lot has a different idea of possibility ; he is enthusiastic
enough to imagine that " where there is a will there is a way , " and that where there are Christians , men will revolt from " disgracing themselves by entering these slop-shops . " " They are the temples of Moloch : their thresholds are rank with human blood ; God ' s curse is on them . " For the disease of the flesh is in the workshop , and the more terrible disease of hard-heartedntss in the countinghouse . Parson Lot , therefore , exhor ts his readers to transfer their custom—an humble though effectual counteractive , —from these temples of Moloch to the associated workmen .
The writer of the tract on CJiristian Socialism works to the same end , but occupies broader ground . He is a clergyman pf the Church of England , illustrious for the zeal with which he employs his intellectual faculties in the service of his kind , and for the transparent candour with which his own earnest conviction meets the conviction of others . A more successful sjtroke of courage and of active beneficence has never been achieved than in the issue of this little tract . Its direct and unequivocal avowals will strike shame on those who have endeavoured to meet the economical doctrine of common labour with prejudices and dogma . The writer declares , in express terms , that his Socialism , in its main purpose , is " the
same with the Socialism of Owen , Fourrier , and Louis Blanc . " " The watchword of the Socialist is cooperation j the watchword of the anti-Socialist is competition . " He adds an equallv candid explanation why Socialists have opposed Christianity , —because they found the principle of competition which has been carried amongst us to a destructive excess compacted into the existing system of Society with the observance or ' Christianity . Also , because they were encountered by the dogmas of Christianity , and hence they were led to mistake Christianity for one of their enemies . In brushing away these paltry obstacles to the advance of the commonlabour doctrine , the writer also removes the obstacles which prevent Christian Churches from
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April 6 , 1850 . ] fflfje 1 Lt $ btt + 35
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 6, 1850, page 35, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1839/page/11/
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