On this page
-
Text (6)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
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.
Untitled Article
resource . The disclosure , which we copy from the Times , respecting the military school at Woolwich and its preparatory branch at Carshalton , is a tale to make every sustainer of our public school system hang his head with shame . The objects and the very nature of human life are overlooked , in the presumption that they ought to be something different from what they are ; and in the attempt to make the young human being what he " ought" to be , the mode of making him what he might be is overlooked . The causes of the wrong are to be traced with tolerable distinctness through the results .
It is assumed that so-called " religious" teaching ought to suffice for moral culture and guidance , ana teachers of all Christian persuasions in this country rely more or less on that book which , containing as it does so many sublime truths and lessons , also contains actual suggestions of vice . The continued failure of this moral training—and wonderful is the fact—does not weaken the faith in it ; but the failure of the system is madly imputed to the innate turpitude of those who are subjected to it . It is presumed that " religion " ought alone to train the youthful mind and heart ;
it fails , and the teachers charge their constant failure , not upon themselves and their system , but upon their pupils ! Ask them , then , if the system fails even by reason of such presumed turpitude , to try another system suited to the erring youth with whom it is their business to deal , and you are assailed as an " infidel" : the system is more sacred than the scholars : it is more pious to rear devils by a system that " ought" to make them angels , than to rear up honest , healthy , manly men by a system of less pretension , and devised more strictly according to the thing trained .
Again , the " gentleman" is distinguished by a superior education , which the professors have attained by very hard study : it is presumed that hard study is absolutely good , that it makes men learned , unless they are perverse ; and that to be learned , in some fashion , is the grand object of tuition . Now , the bent towards erudition is a special bent , not natural to the majority of minds , which are placed in that school Procrustes ' bed . They cannot acquire the sort of instruction imparted ; the instruction of which they are capable is neglected . The essential branches of knowledge need never be difficult : but enormous time is
wasted , by the majority of scholars , in attempting to acquire what nature denies the faculty of retaining or using . Hence much ignorance of those things which might be learned and used ; much need for learning after school days are over . Also , and most lamentable is the wide-spread social fact , much unhealthy cerebral excitement , leading to waste of bodily strength , even ot ; menml strength , and to morbid derangements of the natural instincts and feelings—premature developments , fantastical perversions , and degeneracy . The average boy , wearied with uncongenial teaching , stimulated to
the highest point in his brain , familiar with wicked suggestions in authors " sacred" and classic , is left to himself , in all his amusements , without guide ; and thus , even where healthy exercises might restore the balance of nature , there , precisely there , he , over-excited , guideless , unadvised , untaught in this , is exposed to the most active temptations . And , because he goes wrong under such a system , we do not turn round with indignation upon that system , but exclaim at the proof of original sin ! It is shocking , this yearly , daily sacrifice of the young—this sacrifice of the faculties of the next generation to the . Tuggernat of bigotry .
But we do far worse . In our training we confound good and bad , and we deliberately withhold from youth counsel where it is most needed . If by chance we detect the impulses innate in humanity , sacred in the eye of true religion , as to the creature all the laws by which the Creator works must beif we detect the inevitable , nay , the anxiously wished-for germ of those irnpulses , we treat them as something bad , not be discussed : —
" Speak we not of them , but look and pass . " Youth , cast back to its unguided impulses , confused , positively taught not to discriminate between what is natural , straightforward , good , and what unnatural , pprvortod , had—deprived thus even of his natural instinctive guide—weakened by luxury , imhardeued , unstrongthened by the manly training which we associate with more barbarous , because more , warlike , limes—confused thus , over-excited , softened , perverted in sense and mind , —thus is it that youth is left , to stray among the artificial temptations of eivili / . ed liie . ^ And the teacher , to be more impressive , makes
himself stern , unsympathizing . He to whom youth might go for advice , repels adviceless youth by his rigour—is absent from the sports of youth , or enters into them so ill that they are constrained and altered in his view . Or if by chance youth does seek support and counsel , then is it repelled by austerity and shame-provoking censure . Youth is furnished with no companions but the guideless and the profligate . Such , on the whole , is our system : its history is illustrated this week by the disclosures of the Times , as it might at any week , in other disastrous forms of illustration , from many
another public school where the professors are alien to the pupils . Nor is the error apparent only in schools , so called . It pervades all society . We boast our refinements , our peace , our polished condition , and we detect degeneracy in the very flower of society . And then , with a folly and wickedness as inconceivable as they are familiar , we declare in the name of religion that it is not our system which is
refuted , but that it is a blasphemous dogma which is proved . We presume to train the tree by virtue of a culture dictated by some occult mystery , not by the laws of botany and physiology drawn from the nature of plants and their bent ; and when the tree twists and sickens , we cry out that it ever comes so from the hands of its Creator . We treat its very flowering as wickedness— " original sin "and when it flowers ill , we curse it .
And whole generations pay for this obstinate perversity ! That is the pity of it . Are these frightful lessons , then—these real " judgments " on those who break the laws of God , visited on the flower of the nation—ever to befall in vain ?
Untitled Article
IRON AND COTTON—A FULL STOP . Two great branches of English industry are at present in an unsatisfactory condition . Judging from what has taken place during the last five years , it appears very evident that the cotton trade , instead of doubling itself every ten years , as it did from 1820 up to 1840 , has begun to decline . The weekly consumption for 1850 is now nearly 2000 bales less than that of 1846 , while the population depending on the cotton trade for subsistence has been rapidly increasing .
In the iron trade the prospect is much more disastrous . Through that vicious system of over production , which our " surplus labour and capital " render so easy , whenever a brisk demand arises , the iron market has been completely glutted ; and now the masters , with a view to prevent prices from falling , talk of lessening the production one-third . Should they succeed in carrying this proposal into effect , there will be a reduction of one-third in the amount of wages paid to the population
employed in this branch of industry . After toiling hard for a year or two , and learning to live in an expensive and wasteful manner—for want of education and uncertainty of livelihood prevent their acquiring habits of economy and thrift—the ironworkers will suddenly find themselves thrown back into comparative poverty by the operation of a system over which they have no control . As Carlyle remarks of another class of workmen exposed to similar vicissitudes : —
" Economy does not exist among them ; their trade now in plethoric prosperity , anon extenuated into inanition and ' short time , ' is of the nature of gambling ; they live by it like gamblers , now in luxurious superfluity , now in starvation . Black mutinous discontent devours them ; simply the miserablest feeling that can inhabit the heart of man . English commerce , with its world-wide convulsive fluctuations , with its immeasurable Proteus steam-demon , makes all paths uncertain for them , all life a bewilderment ; sobriety , steadfastness , peaceable continuance , the first blessings of man , are not theirs . "
In the cotton trade , upon which a population nearly equal to that of all London , with its multitudinous suburbs , entirely depends for subsistence , these " convulsive , fluctuations" are of frequent occurrence . It is only three years since the consumption of cotton , and along with that the amount of wages paid , was reduced , nearly for a whole
in the Southern States would cut off the supply of cotton at once , and no one can say how soon that may happen . And mere free trade would have us rely on the chapter of accidents !
twelvemonth , one-third below what it had been during the previous two years . Under the laisscs faire system the cotton trade has become the largest branch of British industry . It supplies nearly one-half of our exports , and gives food to about one-tenth of the population of Great Britain . But fluctuation is not the worst calamity to which it is liable : what if the whole were
stopped ? Our main supply of the raw material is from the United States ; and one not improbable accident might arrest all our spindles und looms without a clay ' s warning : a servile war
Untitled Article
GARDEN HTJ 8 BANDBY . After stating that the advantage derivable from spade husbandry , both as to employment and produce , can scarcely be questioned , a correspondent of the Daily News gives the result of an experiment he lately made in the planting of wheat . 3 Tor several seasons he planted in his garden single grains of wheat , in holes six inches apart , with twelve inches between the rows . Each grain
thus planted produced from thirty-five to forty ears , containing altogether from 1200 to 1600 grains . Now , here is a specimen of what might be done by any industrious man upon a small piece of fertile land . Suppose an acre of wheat to be cultivated at this rate , the produce would be , on the most moderate calculation , six or eight times greater than what most farmers obtain from the soil , under their present barbarous , costly , and imperfect system of cultivation .
Untitled Article
PLOUGHING TOO MUCH . At the annual dinner of the Cumberland and Westmorland Agricultural Society , last week , Sir James Graham , in the course of some remarks on the prospects of agriculture , said , " he was decidedly of opinion that , hitherto , our fault had been , ploughing too much . " We quite agree with him , though not precisely in the same sense as he spoke . He wishes to encourage grazing and the laying down a greater portion of land in grass , which would lessen the number of persons employed in the cultivation of the soil . We wish to see the spade or the
fork superseding the plough , with a view to obtain a larger amount of produce from the soil , and , at the same time , to provide remunerative and healthy employment for tens of thousands who cannot find work in towns , and who now waste their days in degrading idleness . As for laying down a greater portion of land in grass throughout England , that is what the country cannot afford . To do so would , no doubt , enable the landlord to obtain a larger share of the produce in the shape of rent ; but it would furnish much less employment for labour , and yield a much smaller quantity of food .
Untitled Article
JUSTICE TO IRELAND . From a Parliamentary return relating to Irish agriculture , it appears that the aggregate value of all the live stock in Ireland is only £ 20 , 671 , 668 , which is equal to about 30 s . per acre for the whole of the 14 , 000 , 000 of acres under cultivation . This single fact shows what an increase of capital is wanted before the soil can be properly cultivated . In England an enterprising , intelligent farmer has seldom less than iilO worth of live stock for every acre he holds ; so that , if justice were done to Irish agriculture , the aggregate value of live stock in the four
provinces , instead of being little more than £ 20 , 000 , 000 , ought to be six times that amount , or upwards of £ 120 , 000 , 000 . How many years it will take to place Ireland in that prosperous condition will depend chiefly on the system of land-tenure which can be established . We are glad to see that the Tenant-Hight movement is going briskly forward . With the exception of Mr . Cobden , our English politicians are not yet taking much notice of it . We thought Mr . Bright would have been the great champion of the Land question , especially after his visit to Ireland ; but he has been very silent on the subject for the last twelve months .
Untitled Article
SOCIAL REFORM . BPISTOLJB OBSCURORUM TIROBUM . XI . —Industry : its Bondage . To Erasmus . October 1 , 1850 . My dear Erasmus , —The working classes labour under evils which need not exist : they might share plenty , comfort , and all the refinements of art : they are oppressed with curses , by laws continued from day to day at the will of our lawmakers .
You and I agree on this point , that we may do our best towards retrieving the condition of our countrymen , of whom the vast proportion are sunk in a bad way of life . We speak of them in the cumulative and abstract form , as " the working classes , " and so dull our perception to the fact that they arc men and women ; otherwise we could not suffer things to go on
as they do . I have no wish to quibble : I do not like to hear the working classes call themselves " slaves , " they are not individually in bondage to individual will , which is the sting in slavery . They may , indeed , be subjected to a sort of temporary shivery under the master of a workhouse ; but proportionately few enter into that detestable abode . Still , the class is in bondage to
Untitled Article
658 ® l ) e 1 Lt&&tX + [ Saturday ,
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 5, 1850, page 658, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1855/page/10/
-