Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 22nd March 1851, Edition Town of 1, Page 272, Untitled Article

Page 272
Page 12
12 of 24

On this page

  • Departments (1)
    • Citcrnfttrr.
  • Text (12)
  • 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

      function , we find , is to overlook . They are to " comprehend all vagrom men , " but when they do catch a culprit , they are—to let him go ; and thank God for it ! Thus , the Bishop of the English Church is promoted to be a sort of spiritual Verges ; his Archbishop , a sacred Dogberry .

      Untitled Article

      SECONDARY PUNISHMENTS . The magnitude of a subject ought to be no barrier to improvement . When mighty interests are engaged and mighty evils inflicted , it seems but child ' s play to attempt a cure with small botching quackeries that only amuse the patient and employ the time . Yet the earnest reformer , when he would institute a searching inquiry and apply a comprehensive remedy , is for ever met with the objection of the largeness of an evil—of its wide ramifications and complicated interests;—and the

      very causes which should operate as stimulants to action are made excuses for inaction . This may be careful bureaucratism , but it is bad morality and short-sighted policy , to say the least of it . We do not want the outside of the sepulchre whited . A thorough radical reform—beginning honestly from the very heart ' s root of the matter—is the only thing that can satisfy our needs , or perfect our affairs . Yet modern statecraft gives this to the people as little as the lits de justice , or the councils of the Star Chamber of old .

      To no subject do these remarks apply with more force than to the question of Secondary Punishments . It would be endless to enumerate the various specifics which have been tried for the due prevention and punishment of crime . Transportation under every conceivable form of arrangement , prisons under every most contradictory system of discipline , solitary cells , labour in gangs , unproductive and oppressive work , spiritual intoxication and religious frenzy , luxurious pampering , harsh brutalization , the degradation of the forcat , the freedom of the passholders , all

      have come within the range of coercion , and all have failed both for the prevention and the reformation of guilt . In spite of the new machinery now in vogue , by which a degraded felon is ground out into a high-minded citizen , our convicts gain less and less in favour with our colonies . The Cape repudiates our benefaction of picked criminality , and the Tasmanians petition unceasingly against the convictism which threatens to swamp their whole country . Turn where we will ,

      among colonies experienced in the matter , we find Lord Grey ' s pet belief in the value of convict labour indignantly contravened . In Tasmania especially , what with the rapid decrease of the free settlers , and the alarming rise of convict immigration—what with ad valorem duties and protection to the manufactures of the mother country—there seems every chance that any Colonial Minister who shall follow Lord Grey's course will become not only a martyr to his own views , but an uncomprising inflicter of martyrdom on others .

      True it in , the question of secondary punishments is fraught with every kind of difficulty and contradiction . A writer in the Times complains of the accumulation in our prisons , of convicts under sentence of transportation , and advises an instant disgorging of them on to" foreign shores . Respectable citizens from our colonies weary Parliament with their unanswered prayers , and prophesy ruin to their countries from the influx of home-made crime . English humanity revolts at the prospect of men in chains working in our public ways and on our public buildings . English purses collapse at the prospect of lazy felony guarded in careful prisons , and delicately supported by the industry

      of the virtuous . On all hands it is a question beset with pitfalls for the Reformer , with misery for the supine ; and , do what we will , nothing but wrong seems to be the result . Yet our modern measures deserve to fail , for they are begun without true faith in man , and founded on no one right view of human nature . Prisons , instead of schools , breed felons in place of citizens ; and pun ' iHlunents after , instead of educational und social improvement before crime , only swell the county rates and degrade the national character . Had laws manufacture paupers , poachers , thieves , and . all the forms of outlawry , and then we get rid of the surplua by transportation !

      All the arrangements in favour of convictisin—all the delusive theories that a man transported from his old haunts loacs half his temptation to future villainy—may be of weight in individual cases . But , surely , the prosperity and moral purity of a whole country are not to be sacrificed to the chance of a few individual reformations ! ( f we are

      polluted with crime , we ought to suffer for that pollution . We ought not to shuffle off the burden of our misdeeds on to innocent shoulders . Let the colonies support their own felonry , and only their own ; while we smart under the inflictions which bad government , bad laws , neglect , political nullity , and social depravity have brought on us . And this could well be done if prisons were made selfsupporting . In them each man ought to work for the bread that he eats , for the clothes that he wears , for the rent of the cell where he lives . A prison life ought to be one of hard but productive toil , whereby a man shall work out his atonement as

      well as live free of cost to the county . A prison ought to be a place of poor fare and rough living , of self-denial and self-discipline . The solitary cell breeds bilious fancies but no practical energy . Its pampering delicacies are ill-fitted for men whose lives ought to be made up of toil and physical endurance ; its spiritual teachings but unsuited food for minds wanting in the first principles of the common virtues . It is a Government theory truly , but not a popular remedy ; as little so as the various quackeries of the Colonial-office , which , changes denominations while it retains facts ; stultifying itself .

      Untitled Article

      BAINES TO THE RESCUE . The honourable member fcr Hull ought to lose no time in pressing his Servants and Apprentices Protection Bill through Parliament . Another case like that of Jane Wilbred may not soon occur again , but there are many poor victims pining under masters and mistresses who would imitate Mrs . Brownrigg if they dared . We have elsewhere given an account of a poor lad who has been nearly starved and cuffed to death by a pair of tyrants in domestic life . Who knows how many thousands there may be in as bad a predicament ?

      Untitled Article

      THE IRISH IN AMERICA . One virtue the people of Ireland possess in an eminent degree , and it is one of no ordinary value . No people in the world are in the habit of making greater sacrifices to assist their relatives . Look , for example , at the large sums they send home from America to pay for the passage of those friends they have left behind . Through one office in Dublin alone , drafts to the amount of £ 25 , 000 in small sums , were remitted last year to take out the relatives of those who had previously emigrated . The drafts upon the Royal Bank , for a similar purpose , amounted to £ 100 , 000 last year . When do we ever hear of English emigrants sending home money to assist their poor relatives ? The instances are very rare .

      Untitled Article

      HOW TO GET AN INCOME TAX . Ask the consent of the People to a tax for some " emergency : " you can then keep the tax for general use . If you have no emergency ready you can make one ; as by threatening to cut your own throat , or to resign .

      Untitled Article

      Emvloymknt ov tjik Pooii . —The profitable employment of th <; poor , once felt to be aH stern a necessity as the creation of a railroad , ten thoiinaiid busy intellects will devote themselves to surmount all diilieuliics in the former as in the latter case . It in the bugbear of " failure" which does ho much mischief ; for with faith only can men move mduntnim . Social experiment must fail before they can tuioceed , just as much a « the child iiuiHt often fall before he can walk well . Failure supplies the iiHlus out . of which the glorious lMiojuix . of ¦ Success must ari . se . — Hole ' s Social Science . Tiik Ykah 18 / il . — PrcMimiiift that of these two millions one-half may be expected in coiiHtunt transit it , jh no easy achievement for the imagination to f ; ranr ' > the train of iiioiihIiouh image * suggested by the realized fact of three millions and ahull" of people careering in full Hwing of KtrangeneHH find bewilderment through the streets of London . It in literally a kingdom poured into a town—Belgium or Holland , forhmtnnee ; or , returning to our figures , the whole of the united population )* of Baden , Westphalia , Greece , and Nim « au . Contemplate it . in whatever aspect we may , it w more like a vision of a distempered bruin , or the amplification of an Oriental allegory , than an actual occurrence taking place under our eyen in sober Kngland in the nineteenth century . There ban never been such a gathering before ninee tho world begun . The fabulous hordca that ravage the Celestial Empire in the pages of its hyperbolic . il history wink into insignificance in coinparinon , —Jk ' rom Fraser for February

      Untitled Article

      Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them—Edinburgh Review .

      Untitled Article

      One dominant characteristic of the literature of the present day is the religious fermentation which manifests itself in light novels and in poems , as in grave deliberate works . A deep unrest and mighty struggle agitate the young minds of this generation , falling away from the old ranks of uninquiring orthodoxy , and passing to the two great opposing camps—Catholicism and Spiritualism . Scepticism is losing its light careless poco curante tone , and deepening its voice with the grave accents of an

      earnest faith—it is ceasing to be mere indifference or denial , and becoming active affirmation , replacing old formulas by new and larger formulas , instead of simply saying that the old are old , worn out , effete . In the Church itself this spirit makes striking progress . Doubt troubles the young neophytes . The conflict of Science with Revelation bewilders them . Taught a sounder

      philosophy than the metaphysics of the middle ages , they begin to see that these metaphysics turned to explain the religious conceptions of a barbarian race , can no longer be the Creed of Christendom ( as Mr . W . R . Greg names his new work ) , and that tins nineteenth century must have a religious philosophy consonant with its knowledge and belief , not the religious philosophy of the middle ages .

      We are touching here upon the chronic disorder of our age , the unrest of earnest men , the Yeastas a remarkable writer aptly designates it—which makes society ferment . Apropos of this book , Yeast—a Problem , which now lies on our table , we are betraying no confidence in ascribing it to the author of Alton Locke ( the fact is sufficiently

      public ); but we mention the authorship for the purpose of indicating the spirit of the book : written in the pages of Eraser ' s Magazine before Alton Locke , it gives utterance to the same energetic protest and voice of warning against religious formalism as Alton Locke does against political formalism ; in the one as in the other attention is called

      to a corrupt state of things , to the dangers of that corruption even to those who now securely batten on it , and to the new spirit which is rising and will either bring anarchy or peace according as we arc heedless or observant of it : anarchy , if it be perpetually opposed by droning of old formulas ; peace , if it be conciliated by the old formulas bein ^ enlarged to give it free scone !

      Untitled Article

      THK UICM <; i () US MOVEMKNT IN ITALY . DcitlhijfK with the Inquisition , or Papal Hume , her Priest * , and In'r Jrxutts . uiil / i Important Ditclosurvx . Hy thu ltuvrreiul Giuritilo AHiilli , n . I ) ., ifc < :. Kail . Virtue , ami Co . It was most probably out of mere pleasantry that Home one suggested , in the heat of the grout " Buttle of the Churches , " as a ready means of retaliating on the Pupal aggression , that England should send forth a hierarchy of her own into Italy—a Dr . Achilli , Bishop of the Vatican , und a Father ( Javazzi , Apostolic Vicar of the TraNtevere . Thoiio dioceses would be no bed of rosen , for a certain ; but England has far reaching arm 8 , and the ik : \ v mitres should be placed under protection of her naval might , tho fangs of the bulldog , or the quills of the porcupine , to screen from harm the pastors und their flock . In sober earnest , whoever has u quarrel to seltlo with the Popo can find nowhere more willing or more efficient auxiliarieH thun among tho Italians themselvcH . Other people love or bate , revere or deopise , the Pope ; but the Italians alone know him . In some , countries men dread the spread of his

      Untitled Article

      272 Mft t 3 L t a & t X * [ Saturda y ,

      Citcrnfttrr.

      Citcrnfttrr .

      Untitled Article

      HOW TO USE A SURPLUS ( KCONOMICAia . Y . Make a feint of " repealing" various taxes , more or less ; then revoke , and tell each claimant that you would have obliged him , but that you are prevented by everybody else . This will make a great outcry of hungry disappointment : then throw your surplus to the loudest clainourer , and leave tho rest to vent their annoyance on him . It makes very good sport : almost as good as letting aquatic birds in St . James ' s-park scramble for biscuit .

      Untitled Article

      In Foreign Literature there seems even less activity than in our own . When we have recorded that Eugenk Sue has given us the two first volumes of a modern story , La Bonne Aventure — not soiled with blood and dirt , as his pages usually are—and that Uknhi Mu kg is it has given us a companion volume to bis Scenes do , la Boheme in the shape of some stories called Scilnes de la Vie de Jc . uncssf ., we believe that our budget is exhausted .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), March 22, 1851, page 272, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1875/page/12/