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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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These clogs upon him , improved by our laws for the public convenience , confer upon him correlative rights . A State prisoner , the State is bound to support him . Disabled for ordinary life by State regulations , the State must always provide for him his gilded cage . England is republican in the sense of being quite satisfied with the republic as it actually exists in England , under the Presidency of an Imperial Doge ; . and , we believe we are right in saying that the Republicans of the Continent count the English
Sovereign among the very few sovereigns whom they do not desire to displace . We feel , here , that there are certain public conveniences in the united Ministerial functions entrusted to the Monarch , and if any of us are Republicans , our opinion on that head is a sort of deferred stock , not yet available . But it may be a question whether all the circumstances of royalty are beneficial . The condition of Europe , the manifest incapacity of the whole royal class to know its place , its destiny , or
its dangers , and the impossibility of establishing a mutual and complete understanding between Princes and Peoples , anywhere , prove that the training of the Princes in their business is not what it ought to be . Biographies , and living countenances , teach the fact that the lives of Princes are not happy—except in the case of a few goodnatured commonplace individuals , to whom bodily comfort
is all in all . The results suggest the expediency of an improved training for our Princes . State pomp may have its uses and its sesthetical influences , but it ought not to distort the learning of the infant , nor completely surround him so that he shall not know the world he is to govern ; unless Oxenstiern ' s sarcasm is to be taken as a grave maxim of government—and it is desirable to govern the world with as little understanding as possible .
But the fault does not lie with the royal classes wholly , nor chiefly . The segregation of classes is not limited to the highest orders . Catch any austere Republican , catechize him about his domestic troubles , and ten to one he will tell you that " servants are the greatest plagues in the world . " In England we cultivate this species of caste more rigorously than many others . Class scarcely knows class ; and if some adventurous Haroun al Raschid of a philanthropist makes enquiring inroads upon Bethnal Green or St . Giles , it is still as an alien visitant . It is possible—these things seldom come out except posthumously—that in our own royal
circle a reasonable relaxation of state ceremonial may bring the royal infants nearer to the actual world , and if so our future Princes may be able to keep pace with the age in preparing for the great political changes in store ; but pageants like those of Saturday , in which the winking baby is the object of an imperial procession , in which the little brothers and sisters of the infant see the nursery elevated to a political institution , and note the divided attention bestowed on religion , power , and dress , cannot afford any wholesome discipline to the youthful mind . In the days of tumult and revolt we ought to remember these early disadvantages of royalty .
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THE RUINED LANDOWNERS . Considering that the agricultural interest has been going headlong to perdition for the last twelvemonths , it is astonishing to -witness the pains taken by the impoverished landowners to conceal their sufferings from public gaze . Instead of reducing their expenditure to a level with the reduction which—so they say—has taken place in their incomes , they have launched out into a more extravagant rate of living than ever . Day after day the Court Circular is filled with reports of the brilliant manner in which the forlorn landlords , with their heartbroken wives and daughters , have been out * dazzling all former drawing-rooms and state balls . At the drawing-room , on
Thursday week , the court chronicler says " the costumes ( which seemed to combine the picturesque richness of the Court of Anne with the chaste elegance of that of Victoria ) were of surpassing splendour . " "What a contrast to turn from these courtly doings of the landlords and their families , to Mr . Ferrand ' s latest bulletin of the progress he is making among the exasperated farmers , with his Flannel Shirt League , and his recommendation of sackcloth as preferable to satin ! Alas for the poor deluded farmers ! Sackcloth and flannel are all that Mr . Ferrand can offer them , while their landlordsalthough they cannot afford to reduce their rents—are figuring in court costumes of " surpassing splendour , " at St . James ' s , just as if wheat were still at 70 s . a quarter .
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POETICAL OJCONOMY . Pursuing : through Trafalgar-square , not long since , our matutinal path—brushing with hasty steps the dust away . —we noticed that the fountains were enshrouded
in a resplendent halo of mist ! What could that mean ? "Was it that our Northern sun , even so early in the day , had power to make the sparkling water evaporate , and snatch the passing fountain to the clouds ? Such at first seemed the solution ; yet it was not enough . Let us track the cloudy stream to its rise : whence flows it ? Truly from the waterworks behind the barracks , sharing their pure Artesian source with the public offices , and also with the parish baths and washhouses of St . Martin ' s . What Triton Turncock is making game of the cockney ?
Is it supposed that your Londoner is so effeminate that he needs , not only warm water : for his morning shave , but also warm water for his noon refreshment , lest the stream be too dangerously cool ? Perhaps it was thought that the pure element , untempered to the Londoner , might occasion a draught in the square—a draught being the English bugbear—and give cold to the passenger . Or is it oeconomy that dictates the tepid flood ? Probably some thrifty Egeria has been suggesting a saving application of waste water .
Anyhow , the boiled Arethusa is traceable to the Tudor building behind the National Gallery . Pursue the stream to its source , and you find there , as its presiding nymph , a laundress !
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There is no learned man "but will confess he hath much profited by reading controversies , his senses awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him to read , why should , it not , at least , be " tolerable for his adversary to write . —Milton .
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MARRTAGE . June 24 , 1850 . Sir , —While the sacredness of marriage rites was impugned in your paper , I was merely grieved , but not alarmed ; but when the only correspondent who at length vindicates the right cause rests it on bare Authority , this does seem to me alarming . On the strictest Christian grounds 1 would repudiate such a defence , which is opposed to the entire spirit of the New Dispensation . Jesus in John says to his disciples , " I call you not servants , but friends ; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth : but now , all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father , I have showed unto you . " So , too , Paul again and again renounces the law of the letter , and declares that the true disciple lives according to the law of the Spirit , and hereby is set free from the bondage of commandments written with ink . Yet those who now mean to teach . Christianity ( it seems ) inculcate a slavish contented submission to the law of a letter , hereby leaving the conscience in a puerile state , and bringing back ( through Bibliolatry ) the bondage and weakness of the Law . The moral precepts of Christianity are not arbitrary : they rest on the deepest foundations in the moral nature of man .
These are felt by every spiritual disciple ; and if the precepts are impugned , the defender ought not to rest on the authority which promulgated them , ( which is to confound Mount Zion with Mount Sinai , if I may use a New Testament metaphor ) , on the contrary , his Christian training ought to have enlightened him to understand the inherent obligation of the precepts . The Marriage controversy divides itself into several heads ; of which the following alone need be here noticed : —
1 . Ought any ceremony , witnessed by other parties , to be essential to marriage ? 2 . Ought Divorce to be allowed , except upon grave misconduct , proved before some competent court ? 3 . What kinds of misconduct will justify a court in pronouncing Divorce ? 4 . Is Separation , without Divorce , in any cases to be regulated by law ? Before making any remark on these points , of
which the second is the really decisive one , I will refer to a striking passage in the historian Gibbon , ch . 44 ( whose tendencies were the reverse of prudery ) , as to the great experiment in Divorce which went on for seven or eight centuries in the Roman empire . The ancient Roman bought his bride of her parents : the union was rigorous and unequal ; the husband exercised over his wife the jurisdiction of life and death ; " so clearly was she defined , not
as a person , but as a thing , that if the original title were deficient , she might be claimed , like other moveables , by the use and possession of an entire year . " Such extreme rigour in the law led to a disuse of legal marriage . Marriage contracts were drawn up between the father and the lover of a lady ; who , without losing her reputation , carefully avoided to become a lawful wife , by absenting herself three days in the year from her husband ' s home . She thus remained " in her father ' s hand , " and her private fortune was
his . When such unions , unrecognized in law , had become almost universal , the result was , that " marriage , like other partnerships , might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates . . . . . Passion , interest , or caprice , suggested daily motives for the dissolution of marriage . A word , a sign , a message , a letter , the mandate of a freeman , declared the separation : the most tender of human connection * was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure . . . . Both sexes alternately felt the disgrace and the injury . ... A specious theory is confuted BY THIS FREE AND PERFECT EXPERIMENT ,
which demonstrates that the liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue . The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence and inflame every trifling dispute : the minute difference between a husband and a stranger , which might so easily be removed , might still more easily be forgotten . " Gibbon does not overlook , that the right of Divorce was not thus abused in the earlier age , in which the Censor's power would have been severely ^ used against any one who was thus guilty . Public opinion , thus enforced , was for a long while a supplement to
the defect of law . But except where some arbitrary power like that of the Roman Censor or the ancient Christian Church interposes , it is impossible to allow divorce at the will of the parties without giving a sanction to the loosest and most temporary connections . There is no relation of human nature which more infallibly becomes degraded than this , if not severely checked . The modern Persians have a mode of marrying for a limited period , which is specified in the marriage contract . This is said to have originated with merchants , who are often detained for a year or more far away from their own homes ; and a marriage
to last for a year is not at all disreputable . But the consequence is , that the priests keep lists of women willing to enter upon short marriages ; and a former friend of mine , who , under Abbas Mirza , was head of the arsenal at Tabreez , and took pains to promote morality among the workmen , assured me that he had seen a marriage contract regularly signed by a priest , in which the parties were pronounced to be " lawfully married for the space of half an hour . " We have to meet the question , will we , or will we not , look with complacency on such extremes ? and if not , where are we to draw the line ?
If the will of the parties is to suffice for divorce , the will of one party must suffice ; for the one who desired it , would easily be able to make the other so unhappy , as to secure that the desire should be mutual . The majority of married persons would not use the power , for children are too great a bond ; but in most of the exceptive cases the liberty would be disastrous . Every married person must know how many petty disagreements are to be expected , and how many temptations must arise to wish to undo the past , how many transient thoughts , that another person would
have been a more suitable partner , if only —! Such thoughts are at present crushed by those who are wise , or mourned over as sins , and a happy union is maintained , and even cemented by tenderer affection than before ; but if divorce , grounded on no judicial sentence for misconduct , were possible , any of these whisperings of dissatisfaction would easily inflame themselves into invincible passions . Nor would the second and third choice often be wiser than the first . Between one man and one woman there can seldom or never be a permanent and very perfect fitness ,
much less an exclusive fitness . New objects of love will always exhibit some point of superiority . Married persons must always count on a large exercise of selfdenial , and must learn to love in spite of felt incongruities . A man or woman who cannot do this , will never be happy in matrimony , not though as many experiments be allowed as Henry the Vlllth made . I unhesitatingly therefore conclude , that it would be most pernicious to allow of Divorce , except upon " grave misconduct , " and "by a sentence of court " based on such misconduct . But I have no doubt
that our ecclesiastical law limits too closely the nature of the offences which shall justify divorce . Nothing but superstition hinders people from , seeing that an attempt of one party on the life of the other is a far grayer misconduct than an act of adultery . On other points I fear to write either hastily or dogmatically ; but all such matters would be settled in
process of time by the experience and good sense of the community , if Divorce were allowed to take its course before competent judges , unembarrased by dogma . The same may be said concerning Separation in certain cases , as of threatened violence , or of habitual drunkenness . That which I emphatically repudiate , is the allowing persons " to take the law into their own hands " in the matter of marriage . Mr . Francis Worsley ' s attack on ceremonial mar *
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June 29 , 1850 . ] ©!>« QtZtttt . 325
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Leader (1850-1860), June 29, 1850, page 325, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1844/page/13/
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