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ever they are in a pinch , he will be as faithful to them as was the coalheaver ' s little wife against all other opponents . Perhaps it is to this good feeling towards him that we may ascribe the fact that , within no great space of time , two Humes and a Hume Burnley have been remembered in the distribution of Whig patronage . " But revenons d nos moutons . In Sir Joshua "Walmsley we have full faith . But can he pledge himself for his troops ? Can he promise that the agitation of this year shall be a mere dose out of the same bottle , a simple ' ditto repeated' to that of the
last ? What security can we offer that the wild hurricane of indignation which is now again being so well acted may not once more subside into a dead calm of apathy as soon as Parliament assembles ? Let us be certain , before we commit ourselves to any thingi that we are not looking at a mere ghost dance , a conclave of phantoms , a gathering of shadows . Ixion rushed forward in ecstacy to clasp his Juno in his arms , and only grasped a cloud . We would eschew his fate . "We are quite willing to cooperate in the good work of reform . But we have strong objections to help in the manufacture of political capital , on the strength of which certain Radical members of Parliament will fetch a good price in the market , and be thought worth transmuting into Whig lackeys . * ' But , whether the Parliamentary Reformers are traders or patriots , it is high time that earnest men should be banding together to force upon the judgment the conviction that something should be done to gratify the yearning desires of the people for a greater voice in the management of the affairs of the countrv . We are prosperous just now . Trade
flourisnes . me masses are employed . x » no man be deceived thereby ! there is an under current beneath this smooth surface . Political education is going on among the millions . Men are reading much ; men are thinking much ; and , whenever the periodical season for their suffering much comes round , the fruits of all this training will speedily be made manifest . In the meantime , their self-elected leaders will probably continue to toy , and trifle , and
coquette , and flirt with the great questions of the day . And be it so . Let the motes dance in the sunbeams as long as it is fine ; but , whenever the people are in earnest , and show that they are in earnest , their wants and wishes will be conceded by whatever party may happen to be in power . If we have small faith in Parliamentary Leaders , we have boundless confidence in Public Opinion . Its fiat is the great reformer of the day . "
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THE WICKED SUNDAY TRAINS . Sunday excursion trains are a boon to the People , but a bugbear to the clergy and publicans . These two centres of social influence feel themselves aggrieved . The clergy complain of empty churches , the publicans of empty parlours $ to the one Sunday trains are ungodly , to the other unspiritual . Our readers will appreciate the sympathy we feel for these wrongs , and how deeply we deplore the thoughtlessness of those workmen , who snatch atremulous joy on the one day open to relaxation , by mounting their fiery steed , the Hippogiiff of modern romance , and sweeping out of this London atmosphere of floating coal and nameless stinks into the fresh air of the country ; how we deplore that the " good old English" conviviality of the tavern and the " social glass" should be given up for trips to the seaside , visits to country relations , or to great towns ; how little we should think of comparing the sermons of running brooks to the sermons bought at a bookstall , and read in the impassioned manner taught by Mr . John Cooper , of Drury-lane Theatre , or by some other professor of elocution ; they know this , they know that we are prepared to stand by the " institutions" of our
ment for the People is odious—as if man were sent into this serious universe for " amusement !" Specious journalists may draw pictures of the general improvement of the People corresponding with the improvement in their amusements , may tell us that in proportion as the amusement takes a more refined aspect the morality of the People improves , may tell us that fresh air and new scenes will be more healthy than the public-house
atmosphere or suburban gardens , may tell us that men will take their wives for a country trip , and that the presence of the wife is a restraint on excess ; but we—true publicans and patriots—laugh at Utopias and stick to facts . Now , the facts are that the English People has always been a good tavernkeeping People—despising the frivolous amusements of the Continent—and maintaining its superiority overall the world . Ergo , Beer , Bitter Sunday Observance , and Greatness , are inseparable .
country ! Beer is an institution . By beer we have become great . By beer our flag has been floated over every sea . In the tavern men are social ; they meet and exchange ideas ; they read the papers and discuss political movements ; and all the while they " encourage trade , " and stimulate the native industry of hops . Now we ask—in the character of an excited patriot and publican—what will become of the nation if its beerdrinkers be diminished ? The agriculture of England will be ruined ; the Government will be impoverished by deficient duties : the able-bodiedness of our population will
fall away into French frog-eating flabbiness . Very well . Sunday trains by ruining taverns—depriving them of their best customers—those of Saturday night and Sunday—will produce these stupendous evils . Directors , pause ! Look how much the greatness of a country depends upon its consumption of good liquor . Piety and drink go together : witness the Scotch ! Success in life ever attends on copious drunkenness : witness the Scotch , again ! The present cant about amuse-
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THE PEASANT PROPRIETORS OF PRANCE . All . persons who have travelled in France unite in describing the condition of the peasantry as much superior to that of the agricultural labourers in this country . Notwithstanding all that Mr . Macculloch and his fellow-political economists have said about the evils arising from the minute subdivision of property , it is clear that those evils have not been felt by the small farmers of France , and it is equally plain that the boasted advantages of the laws of entail and primogeniture in Great Britain have never reached the men who cultivate the
soil . One of the most striking illustrations of the healthy working of the small property-system in France is given by the French correspondent of the Morning Chronicle , in his report of a conversation on the subject with an Irishman whom lie found settled as a thriving shopkeeper in a small French town . The naturalized Hibernian spoke in high terms of the habits of forethought and saving manifested by the working class around him . After stating that he had occasionally lost money by
English customers of the better class who dealt with him , but never by the poor French people : he points out one of the causes which enabled the latter to pay their way so punctually : — " The small-property system is a great help to them . There are very few folks hereabout who have not got little patches of freeholds . If one member of a family has not , the other has . The money they get out of them is no fortune to be sure , but it always helps , and it is a great matter for a working man to have something , however small , over and above his daily toil , to fall back upon . It ' s very easy to invest a good lump of money in England , but it is not so easy to invest a small one . The
poor man who has saved £ 20 or £ 50 hardly knows what to do with it . There ' your savings banks , to be sureand a nice mess you seem to be making with them—look at my own country—but savings banks give no such inducement to a man to save as land does . When you ' ve got your own little estate your money is safe . The land can ' t run away nor lose its value . You may build your house upon it ; most folks hereabouts do ; and there you are rent-free , and comfortable , with your trade , for the rest of your days . Oh , there ' s an independence in this state of things that the poor of England can never know . And then it makes a mari " somebody , when he can walk
on his own ground and think of his latter days without thinking of the workhouse as well . Besides , the vision of the vineyard or the corn field is before all eyes here . Any industrious sober man in France may become a landowner ; there ' s nothing very difficult about it now , and it ' s that feeling that encourages the people to strive for it . There ' s many a neighbour of mine , working hard and living hard , and laying up his savings to buy land , who would be spending them in England ; and that , just because it seems a common and practicable thing for men in his class to get land here , whereas it ' s a very uncommon and almost impracticable thing in England . "
lawyers' work of conveyances in the matter . The thing is done as fast as you could make a bargain for a horse or a cow , and you can then either set to ^ work with a hoe or a spade , or the cast of a plough , if you have a turn that way yourself , or you can hire somebody else to do the farming , and the produce -will always be something coming pleasantly in on the top of the week ' s wages . " In reply to the argument that small patches of f
land cultivated by ignorant men , with imperect tools , must necessarily be ill cultivated , he contended that the great amount of manual labour , and the constant painstaking care bestowed upon the soil , enable the small holders to produce as large crops , in proportion , as the scientific farmer can possibly obtain from his four or five hundred acres . The correspondent of the Morning Chronicle winds up his report of the conversation by one or two very absurd commonplace generalizations upon the question : —
" The great fallacy , as it strikes me , of the arguers for the infinitesimal distribution of property is their plea that property will not be further subdivided than it is for the interest of the proprietors that it should be ; whereas the practical result is , that the very existence of the system , to a great extent , forces on its operation , without anything like due regard for unfavourable local circumstances—slight and temporary , but immediate , advantages being naturally too often mistaken for ultimate and permanent benefits . "
Before dogmatizing in this style , " Our Commissioner " should have made himself thoroughly master of the subject . Had he done so , he would have learned that the practical result of the French system of land inheritance has not been to force on " an infinitesimal distribution of property , " but that , on the contrary , the number of landholders in France is considerably less in 1850 than it was
thirty years ago . But the great question for the C ommissioner to ascertain is , the actual condition of the French peasantry at the present day . When he has given us a faithful picture of that , we can then compare it with Arthur Young ' s description of the same class sixty years ago ; before the large estates were broken down into small properties , and before the great body of the people knew anything of what freedom or security of property was .
This is worth all that Mr . Macculloch ever wrote in favour of large estates . The Irish-Frenchman ' s description of the effect of the small-property system in improving the habits and condition of the French peasantry , completely corroborates all that Mr . Kay has said upon the subject in his late work On the Social Condition of the People . The correspondent of the Morning Chronicle remarked that the People of England were beginning to turn their attention to the land question ; in proof of which , he referred to the societies formed for the purchase of freeholds . This , however , the Irishman does not look upon with any degree of favour : —
" If it takes societies and companies , and machinery of that kind to put working men in possession of land , the thing won ' t do . To work for good , the System must be a part of the very daily lives and thoughts of the People . Working men don't require societies or companies to buy their dinners or their coats—why should they to buy their land ? Here the soil is constantly being bought and sold , and there is no long
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SOCIAL REFORM . EPISTOL 7 K OBSCURORUM VIROltTJM . XV . —A National Policy . To A A . October 30 , 1850 . Deeds should follow conviction . Would , my beloved friend , that all the world had your courageous and simple mind , which lets act take its pattern from thought . Perhaps as strange a spectacle as any in the dark kaleidoscope of the world ' s troubles is that perversity of national bent by which the most " practical" nation in the world , so called by itself— " downright" John Bull—is made to act on the rule which the most impassioned and reckless of Ovid ' s heroines utters as an agonized cry of self-reproach . To see the better course is left to theory ; to be content in persevering with the worse is the boast of the practical . If you think of obeyinff the instruction of better-seeing theory you earn
the epithet of " visionary . " Installed supreme , mediocrity , jealous of any more vigorous action , fosters the prejudice of the race , and rakes up idle texts from the shaded and misanthropic side of literature , to keep back the natural instinct of progress . " ' Tis better to bear the ills we have , " says modern practical statesmanship , literally adopting the apology of the mad prince whose monomania was irresolution , and erecting it into the maxim of government . This spectacle , as Carlyle reiterates in the giant accents of despair , is " most sad "—did there not appear some hope of change .
I believe that no great change for the benefit of the real nation , the People at large , can be worked out save on the motion of the People . But the People is still , and how to stir it ? By making the People see what it might have if it had but the will ; and compare what it has , its poverty , and the penalties thereof , its discomforts , its miserable resources for enjoyment—if the word can be used except in mockery—compare that wretchedness with what it might have—cheerful
labour , plenty , and real enjoyment of life . If the People in this fertile country has not that fair and full return secured to its labour , the reason is that the public servants have not the will that it shall be so ; and for the short coining , the ignorance , the misery , the poverty of the People , therefore , the public servants are responsible . If measures for the People are proposed , the attempt is made to set them aside , by decrying
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Nov . 2 , 1850 . ] & $ efLe&lret + 757
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 2, 1850, page 757, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1857/page/13/
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