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Leader (1850-1860), 29th June 1850, Edition Town of 1, Page 324

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      Untitled Article

      and the public will soon limit its correspondence to the amount really needful . We should then attain to a knowledge of that respectable but unknown quantity , and be able to judge how far it was worth while to keep the machinery going for that nett necessity , which at present lends its influence to the whole mass of optional correspondence . The imposition of such a tax presupposes every reasonable arrangement to expedite the delivery of letters and papers by Saturday night . The service rendered by private labour is chiefly enforced by competition or less worthy motives ,

      and the mere propensity to grasp a few hours more of trade does not merit much respect . The object is to protect labour from its own competition and the exactions of " customers ; " but to leave the attendance on necessity or recreation as free as before . Now , this is quite practicable . Let all debts for services rendered on Sunday , or goods delivered , cease to be recoverable at law , and you at once limit trade for the sake of necessity to such grave occasions as would find their own guarantees for the tradesman : while the attendance on

      recreation would be paid entirely , as it is at present mostly , by fees . By this mode you would easily supply the consentaneous action of the public , to wnich it is already inclined , in sparing needless or inopportune labour on the seventh day ; while you would leave all necessary and specially opportune works perfectly free .

      Untitled Article

      A JOINT-STOCK CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY . In England where the labourer has no investment for his savings but the savings bank , and no position to which he can rise by any exercise of economy , except , perhaps , that of a petty shopkeeper , with its chances of bankruptcy , there is nothing at all resembling the intense spirit of thrift which takes possession of one who , being a day-labourer , can raise himself , by saving , to the condition of a landed proprietor . "—J . S . Mill . Hard-hearted political economists of the ultra-Malthusian order are greatly at a loss for some scheme which will teach the labouring classes to be

      thrifty and provident , believing that it is from a lack of these virtues that one half of the pauperism of England proceeds . Mr . Malthus himself broached the doctrine that this improvidence of the poor is chiefly owing to the poor-laws , and , therefore , he came to the comfortable conclusion that the surest way to make the working class independent would be to abolish the poor laws altogether , and thus throw them entirely upon their own resources .

      This bold application of the laissez-faire doctrine was at one time very fashionable among Whig politicians and Edinburgh Reviewers , but it has rather fallen into disrepute of late years . The prevailing tendency now runs strongly in the opposite direction . Societies without number have been established to improve the condition of the working classes , but almost all of them proceed upon the principle that tho working man can do very little for himself , and must , therefore , receive continual assistance from his more fortunate neighbours .

      Does it never occur to any of these " well-meaning but weak " philanthropists , that the prevailing improvidence and want of economy among the labouring classes may possibly be owing to some great defect in our industrial system ? Since the world began there never was a harder working nation than the people of England , yet nowhere do we find the great body of the poor in a much more wretched condition , notwithstanding the expenditure of £ 6 , 000 , 000 a-year in the maintenance of paupers . Can nothing be done to lessen the

      amount of that wretchedness , and to elevate the condition of the labouring poor ? Is it not possible to devise some scheme by which ^ the daylabourer or the artisan may hope , by dint of industry and economy , to become a small landed proprietor ? Could that be done on an extensive Hcale , we might reasonably anticipate a great and permanent improvement in the condition of the poor ; indeed , there is no single measure from which greater things might reasonably be expected than the one we have named . And even if we

      should not be able to make an experiment on an extensive scale , there is nothing to hinder any philanthropist , or any small number who may associate together , from giving Mr . John Stuart Mill ' s theory a fair trial . In our " Open Council" of to-day will be found a letter suggesting a simple and easy method whereby a Joint-Stock Cooperative Society may be formed , on a basis which would enable many an industrious unmarried working man to become the possessor of a small freehold farm before his marriage . Our correspondent says , " It is not so much good plans we want , as good and prudent

      capitalists to carry them out / ' This is certainly the great desideratum . After having been so frequently deluded by quacks of every kind , the working class will not readily invest their savings in any new scheme , unless they see some " good and prudent capitalist" taking the lead . The question then is , are there any such men to be found ? and would they require to sustain any large amount of pecuniary risk ? So far as we can perceive , we think the risk would be very small were the society formed upon the same sound commercial Drinciules as most of our building societies

      are . JNothmg would De easier man e » » of rules and a table of payments which would enable such a society to go on safely and prosperously . In most of our large towns there would be little difficulty in establishing one or more of these societies , because the working class possesses more intelligence , more business-knowledge , than the rural population , and because the wages of the former class are so large , in many instances , that a single man could easily save as much as he would

      require to pay on his shares . But it is in the country that such a movement is most wanted , and it is just there that the greatest obstacles present themselves . For the last century the great object of landowners and farmers has been to degrade the labourer into a mere pauper-serf , and their efforts have . been crowned with signal success . In England , . the wealthiest nation in the world , the great mass of thfe hard-working population is in a more hopeless , degraded condition , than that of the

      peasantry of any other country in Europe . This is clearly tne main source of many of the worst evils which afflict society , and it is , therefore , in this direction that all philanthropic efforts should be made . We have indicated one method by which the condition of that class may be improved , and we would recommend its prompt adoption by all who believe , as we do , that the improvement of the condition of the labouring class is the first duty of all who can in any way promote that object .

      Untitled Article

      THE CLERGY AND THE BURIAL SERVICE . The anomalous and peculiar position of the Church of England , fettered as she is by the terms of her union with the State , and powerless to exercise any consistent jurisdiction over her ministers and people , is continually recalled by the untoward events within her pale . Here we have an example of deadly feud between a Bishop and an Incumbent on a point of doctrine upon which no reconciliation seems possible , and on which the Church is powerless to decide . Here , again , is a clergyman cited before the legal tribunals for a refusal . to solemnize matrimony between two persons disqualified , according to his judgment , on ecclesiastical grounds , unrecognized by the civil authorities . And here is another clergyman , whose case is noticed elsewhere in our columns , suspended from the exercise of his sacred functions during three months , for his refusal to read the Burial Service of the Church over a person whom he considered to have died under circumstances not justifying the use of that service without involving a public scandal . There are other instances that might be cited , but these will suffice to show the opposition that exists between the convictions of the clergy and their obligations , and the coercion to which , as the price of state protection , they are forced to submit . We need not pry into the subtleties of the Gorham controversy , nor weary our readers with disquisitions on " prevenient grace . " The interest of the second difficulty has passed away with the occasion , or we might enquire into the expediency of denying on grounds of formal omissions the religious sanction , held as indispensable by the denier , to a union which was in any case inevitable . The third is of more recent occurrence , or , at all events , has given birth to more recent legal proceedings . When the minister now under sentence of suspension learned the circumstances of the sudden death which had befallen his parishioner , he seems at once to have rushed to the conclusion that the immoralities of the deceased and his death through those immoralities , had rendered him unfit for Christian burial , in the service for which a hope would be expressed of the salvation of his soul ; the minister probably judging that there was no such hope . He , a fallible and finite creature , thus constituted himself a judge of the dispositions of

      the Infinite and a discerner of the spiritual state of the departed . How could he predicate with certainty on the actual state of the spirit when it left the flesh ? What knowledge had he of what passed in the terrible struggle between life and death , or of what thoughts and words of penitence had been then wrung from the victim , or now those thoughts and words would be regarded by the Supreme , who being All Wise , we , in our human sense , infer to be All Merciful ? On his own principles he should have let his heart be swayed by the charity which " hopeth all things , " and not by that dogmatism which will hope nothing favourable , but dares to pronounce the sentence .

      Granting that the case was a difficult one , the minister had the rubrical regulation of his own church to guide him , in which it is expressly provided that the burial service " is not to be used for any that die unbaptized or excommunicate , or have laid violent hands upon themselves . " Under this prohibition the case of his parishioner did not come the clergyman supplied the deficiency by setting up a prohibition of his own , and has reaped the fruits of his hasty judgment in his own suspension . More important to the Church and the country

      is the step which has been taken by several clergymen of the Establishment in consequence of their brother ' s condemnation . They have memoralized the Episcopate to devise means for the relief of the clergy from the necessity which now lies upon them to use almost indiscriminately " the Order for the Burial of the Dead . " Do they not see that Episcopal origin carries but little weight with it , when a measure has to be submitted to civil discussion , and that legislative sanction to the arbitrary decisions of individuals is not to be looked for

      under the present relation of Church and State ? The opening up of such questions , by this and similar memorials , must show the most obtuse Churchman the vanity of his hopes to obtain freedom of conscience or of action until a hitherto unheard-of amount of liberality and comprehensiveness is infused into the Church , or until she takes her stand on a level with the other religious bodies , alike free from the blandishments of the State ' s protection , and from the embarrassments of its control .

      Untitled Article

      THE BAPTISM OF PRINCE ARTHUR . There is a divinity doth hedge a King—and it shuts him out from a knowledge of the world as it is . Strange ignorances custom upholds ! We of Western Europe laugh at the Eastern practice which keeps bride and bridegroom in ignorance of each other before the wedding ; but we keep ruler and ruled mutually ignorant , even after the wedding . A royal infant is educated to be ignorant of the world as it is . One is added to our census

      of baptized infants this week , and the conditions of his life are such as to exclude him from an insight into what surrounds him . The world is prepared with a special facade ever presented to him . He is borne to the font in procession : his atmosphere is redolent of royalty and luxury ; his baby eyes have heralds for their toys ; obsequious servants are busied to alter the real world into a golden world as it approaches him ; he is constituted ex-officio a Christian of the Protestant Church as by law Established .

      What , then , can he know of religious doubts or developments ? for he is pledged , by every hope of a throne , to the creed set down for him . What will he know of " want of money "—except want of certain large sums to pay the surplus expenses of sowing his wild oats . What of want of food , of competition in trade , of the difficulty of getting work , of the reasons for delaying his marriage lest he cannot support a family ? All these things are clean shut out from the royal mind , except as matters of didactic information ; and to most minds that is a very faint hint of knowledge

      indeed . Not that royalty is without its troubles . Death reaches Saladin as well as the meanest . And English royalty has its special vexations j but on the whole they are not of a kind to train the generous emotions . The Prince must not marry without consent of the Sovereign—that is , probably , of his mother or his eldest brother ; a permanent nonage

      in its most vexatious and tyrannical form . Queen Victoria ' s uncle of Sussex could have given some evidence on that point . He will never know the delight of working for his wife and children . He is cut off in a great measure from vicissitude and its healthy influences . The sweets of life are cloyingly prepared to his palled appetites . The ceremony which protects also restrains him .

      Untitled Article

      324 4 ff f > e QLealiet . [ Saturday ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), June 29, 1850, page 324, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1844/page/12/