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tUttatnn.
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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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monopoly of land in England is so close that such an arrangement can hardly ever be effected . There are other signs besides the fearful extension of pauperism . Two criminals have been hanged this week at Chelmsford . One was a participator in those Essex poisonings which have disclosed the thoroughly diseased state of mind in wide classes of the poor—those classes that are confronted with the temptations and with the difficulties of civilization , not strengthened by its
education ot its facilities ; but neither of the two criminals exemplified the worst depravities increasing amongst our crowded and squalid populations , of country or town . The hideous story which we told last week , of the girl who buried her child alive , stamped upon the earth which was stifling its cries , and then sat down upon the spot—even that does not exemplify the depravity which ignorance , squalor , moral desolation , and artificial excitements are extending among the hordes exiled from the fields to crowd the slums and " bad
neighbourhoods of our towns . Every now and then the police reports open a glimpse into this hellish chasm beneath our feet—social ravines into which genteel religion seldom penetrates ; abandoned abodes where the most sacred distinctions of blood and age are forgotten . It is the joint working of our repellent Poor Law , our settlement , our prejudice against organization of labour , and trust
in the " higgling of the market , " that is draining the abandoned fields to crowd our towns , where labour is idle , life is diseased , and existence itself becomes identified with depravity . " Let alone " has had its day , and here are the fruits : no wonder that intelligent men , like those at Sheffield , at Bradford and the Thanet Union , at Galway and Cork , are beginning to think that it is time to try other courses .
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A COtfNTKY WITHOUT A BISHOP . The Bishop of Oxford , in great alarm at the increasing commotion in the Church , exhorts all parties—clergy and people—to mutual forbearance . He tries to frighten Lord Ashley and his evangelical friends , by assuring them that , if they succeed in making the Tractarians leave the Church , " the Church will not long survive their expulsion , and then must come—first the war of all sects , and then the end of all religion . " But is the Bishop quite sure that this will be the result of a separation of Church and State ? If he look around him he
might find countries without anything which he would call a church , and yet where , what he would call religion , seems much more active than it is in England . Take , for example , the folio wins ; picture of Scotland , as drawn by Henry Brougham , in 1822 . He had been employed to defend a man named Williams for a libel on the clergy of Durham , and in the course of his speech he made this allusion to the destitute condition of Scotland : — " 8 trange as it may seem , and to many who hear me incredible , from one end of the kingdom to the older , a traveller will Bee no such thing aa a bit-hop—not such a thing- is to be found from the Tweed to John-o-Groat ' s—not n mitre , no , nor so much as a
minor canon , or even a rural dean—and in all the laud not a single curate—bo entirely rude and barbarous are they in Scotland—in such utter darkness do they git , that they support no cathedrals , maintain no pluralists , suffer no non-rcHidence ; nay , the poor benighted creatures are ignorant even of tithes I Not a sheaf , or a lamb , or a pig-, or the value of a plough-penny , do the hvlpless mortals render from year ' s end to year ' s end ! Piteous as their lot is , what renders it infinitely more touching is to -witness the return of good for evil in the demeanour of thi » wretched race . Under all this cruel neglect of their spiritual concerns , they are actually the most loyal , contented , moral , and religious people anywhere , perhaps , to he found in the world . "
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ItBLiaiOUS IjIHKIU'Y 6 OMETIMK 8 riiltSONAI . KKSTIIAINT . The Globe " hdB reason to believe that Miss Talbot will be placed under the care of a Roman Catholic peeress of high rank . In deference to the wish expressed by the Lord Chancellor , we forbear mentioning the name . ' Miss Talbot seems to have been residing where she felt inclined to reside ; but Protestant strangers get an idea into their heads that her liberty is infringed , and so she must go and reside where her choice had not inclined .
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TAXKS ON KNOWIiEDOB . SiNOic the great meeting at St . Martin ' H-hall the movement has made steady progress . The request which we published as the last act of the Newspaper Stamp Abolition Committee wan complied with on Saturday , March the 8 th , when a number of Members of Parliament , beaded by Mr . Hume , had an interview with Lord John ltusticll , and ur |< ed him to repeal all the Taxes on Knowledge , and particularly the Penny Stamp . At the end of the interview , Mr . Hume left with Lord John upwards of forty unstamped publications containing JHegul matter . Wo have already recorded the deputation of nownpiiper proprietors on the subject of the advertisement duty ; by no means , however , the moat pressing of the Knowledge Tuxes . The Irish deputation were at
once more generous and more politic -when they stated that the abolition of the paper duty would not be enough to Batisfy them . In another part of our paper we publish the address of the Association for Promoting the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge . Our readers , whether in town or country , should now follow the advice to get up petitions ; those friends of the cause who are willing to do so , or merely to allow petitions to lie in their shops , would do well to write to Essex-street , whence they may be supplied with written petitions . Last year the petitions for total repeal were twenty-one thousand ; if they do not reach one hundred thousand this year it will be a proof that the people are not doing their share of the work required in their own cause .
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sham ; groceries . The encouragement given to the sham grocery trade by the Treasury licence regarding coffee is producing its legitimate effect in regard to all articles of general consumption . Of forty-two samples of muBtard procured from wholesale and retail dealers in the metropolis , the Lancet states that not one was found pure ; all were more or less adulterated , and in every case the adulteration was of the same kind , wheaten flour coloured with turmeric . We see that the merchants , planters , and inhabitants of Ceylon have petitioned Parliament for relief
on account of the injury done to the coffee trade by the open encouragement given to the sale of chicory , under the name of coffee . They justly complain that while the genuine article is made to pay a duty of about 100 per cent ., the home-grown substitute is subjected to no duty at all . They ask for a reduction of the present duty on coffee , and for some measure to prevent the sale of chicory as coffee . By the present system , as they remark , Government is " giving a premium to fraud , punishing the fair trader , and treating the colonist worse than the inhabitant of the mother country . "
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PETITION SIGNATURES . Smithfield Market is in agitation , to be removed or not to be removed ; the City is torn with conflicting opinions on the subject ; counter-petitions and counterdeputations are arrayed against each other ; and at the Court of Aldermen , on Tuesday , Alderman Sidney was obliged to protect the petition in favour oi the Corporation scheme . The signatures , he says , amount to 70 , 000 and will soon amount to 100 , 000—all the signers
residents , and not some of them pickpockets , as Alderman Wilson had insinuated . Alderman Wilson calls for inquiry into the signatures . The Corporation , it seems , though it has comparatively but a trifle of numbers to deal with , is in the position of the Chartists in 1848 ; a few doubtful signatures are to vitiate the whole " monster petition . " Perhaps civic gentlemen can now sympathize with the difficulties of not only testing , but authenticating every signature .
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OPINION AT WESTON . The soire ' e of the Mechanics' Institution at Westonsuper-Mare , is truly the sig-n of a great progress going on quietly throughout society . It was the fifth anniversary ; among the upholders of the institution , were the High Sheriff of the county , Mr . Thomas Tufton Knyfton , an old and tried friend of liberty in the full sense of the word—he presided ; there were also two Dissenting clergymen , and the Vicar of the large parish of liamwell . The Vicar , Mr . W . II . Turner , set a fine example of
generous piety , when he called for unacctarian education as the means of enabling youth to pass through a period of life most dangerous to the ignorant , and of . enabling all to appreciate the religious instruction which falls dead upon the uneducated . Mr . Mears , of Taunton , painted the baneful effects of excessive competition on the working classes , and pointed their attention to cooperation . A company not only intelligent but " respectable , " listened to these truths , and with favour !
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In the proof sheets of a recent article for the Quarterly Review the word progress was invariably spelled proggress , and printed in italics . Upon hearing this a wit maliciously remarked , " The printer thought it was some foreign word—never having printed it before . " Indeed it is a word to startle the pages of the Quarterly : a word of evil omen , which must feel in those pages like a workingman in ruffles , or a parvenu in May Fair !
Seriously , the word is a new word , for it expresses a new idea . Progress in our modern sense is the lever of revolutions . Formerly the golden age was always in the past ; now we look forward to it , and we are to reach it through progress . But no later than the seventeenth century , when Perrault first in levity raided the question of the superiority of the moderns over the ancients , he
was ridiculed from one end of learned Europe to the other . Among the ancients themselves , as Augusts Comte somewhere remarks , the greatest thinkers were unable to emancipate themselves from the prejudice of their having degenerated , because they had not political experience of a sufficiently extensive nature ; and , indeed , only since the first French Revolution has the idea of Progress become generally accepted , although isolated thinkers had
distinctly enough enunciated it—as Bacon , in his famous saying , " Antiquity is the youth of the world ; " and Pascal , in that grand formula : " The whole succession of mankind , during the long course of centuries , must be considered as that of one man for ever existing and for ever learning something new . " And at last Progress has crept new into the pages of the Quarterly ! Where , by the way , we have sometimes seen the modern barbarismrapidly gaining fresh territory in our language —•
" to progress " : a thing " progresses" there with terrible velocity . Apropos of Progress and its Foes , are we never to hear an end to this furious twaddle about the Papal Aggression ? The number of screams in pamphlets and articles , all at the same pitch , and all so senseless ,
" Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man , " makes us regard the Aggression as a pest from the noise it has excited . Calm and sensible men raise their voices in reply , hut vain the hope to smooth those turbulent bawlers ! There is no quos ego , but Time . Among the tolerant and thoughtful protests against this clamour , we may single out George Dawson ' s two Lectures delivered at the Town-ball of Birmingham—the town which has the glory of having completely foiled the Anti-Papal agitators , and refused to petition the Queen . Mr . Dawson takes a firm but temperate view of the question ; one passage we emphatically endorse : —
" For the Pope ' s denial of my Christianity I care not . I am used to such denials . His license to enter the kingdom of heaven I no more value than did Ivingu of old the liberty accorded to them by an eastern potentate , who , when he had dined , caused his herald to proclaim bin gracious permission to hits royal brethren to begin to feed . It may do Ettgluih . bishops and clergy good to be occasionally unchrintiauized . Apt at unchuiching olherH , their indignant cries or whimpering whine when tmbjected to tbe process , do but bring upon them ridicule and contempt . "
Nothing is more piquant in the . successes of research than to stumble upon some modern marvel in aoine forgotten author ; or to discover f . bat the miracle of to-day whh known a century ago . Of all the astounding novelties soliciting our attention , that of painless operation in surgical cases , by the agency of mesmerism or chloroform , i « undoubtedly one of tbe most important . It iw no novelty . Pai'IN , the first who pointed out tbe urn : to which steam might bo applied jih a motive power , left a manuscript entitled Trait v drs operations sa ? is douleur , wherein be exainiuoH tho different ugeneies by which nen « ibility can bo uuapended during opera-
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March 29 , 1851 . ] ^ e Hn 2 r n « 297
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Why dokh this Chi / kcu oitohk hixju / v / noN . — - We remember being told in our youthful days , that dogfanciers succeeded in producing the race of tiny lapdogH by administering gin to them while puppieu , and thus preventing their further growth . We ahull not need to insist upon the correctness of our information . True or false it will to serve to ilhiHtrate our present subject . The main end of the system of education worked by the clergy seems to be , to binder the free development of the youthful mind , and to produce u race of intellectual dwarfs . With the miserable pittance of iiiHtruction , the coarsest rudiments of knowledge imparted in their
schools they mingle slavish maxims usque ad nauseam . ilubits of inquiry constitute ju « t tho one thing which they labour to prevent—independence of mind the cardinal sin which tho youngatem are taught to ahun . To do what , they are bid , to think as they arc taught , to hvlieve what tlu ; y are told by clerical authority , to go to church without knowing why , to submit to government aH it is without asking wherefore , to be reudiug and writing machines to subnervcthc purposes of the powerful and the rich—mere living copies of a primer and a prayerbook—this is what our rising generation are to gain by the generous aid of the l £ atablit ) luncut . —Miall ' t J \ ' oncon-Jarmitt ' a Sketch-Book .
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make 1 aws—they interpret and try to enforce them —Edinburgh Review .
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Leader (1850-1860), March 29, 1851, page 297, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1876/page/13/
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