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    of showing that pauperism has decreased eight or nine per cent ., he would only require to ask Messrs . Tennant , of Glasgow , or Mr . Musprat , of Liverpool , and a few other large manufacturers of the commodity , what demand there is for oil of vitriol compared with former years . The answer would show , among other things , what demand there has been for soap ; for , as Liebig elsewhere remarks , " The quantity of soap consumed by a nation would form no inaccurate measure whereby to measure its wealth and civilization ; " we must warn the Chancellor of the Exchequer , however , not to rely too much upon the soap test as a criterion of national prosperity . On consulting the revenue returns we find that the average consumption per head—thanks to our absurd and oppressive Excise regulations—has not increased a single ounce during the last ten years .

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    AN ANTIDOTE FOR SPIES . The Society of the Friends of Italy have issued No . 1 of a Monthly Record , intended , as its name implies , to record , not only the progress of the society , but the progress of the Italian question . Additional evidence of the immense usefulness of the society-is furnished by the address of the Sardinian workmen , published elsewhere , from the Times . No Englishman who values liberty and

    justice , who sees even the material importance of Italian Independence should stand aloof from this society . At the present time it is of especial moment that the people should aid in foreign movements , and sustain foreign refugees , since there is good reason to believe that there are Austrian spies in British pay , and a duplex Minister in the Foreign-office . The best way to oppose him and them is to support the frank and open action of societies like this of the Friends of Italy .

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    A FLATTERING XIKENESS . M . A . de la Guebonniebe , the rose-water optimist ditto of his friend Lamartine , and a thorough adept in Lamartinism , has lately indulged his pen and his readers with a fancy portrait of that great man , Louis Napoleon Bonaparte . His way of painting a flattering likeness does not require the subject to give any sittings to the artist . He forms a beau ideal in his own warm imagination of a noble , profound , mysterious , self sacrificing Prince-President : he adorns it with the finest touches ,

    and lends it the grandest features . Having finished his portrait , he calls it — Louis Napoleon Bonaparte . One unfailing method of establishing the good qualities of M . Bonaparte is , after arraying a catalogue of graces and virtues in all the colours of a prismatic diction , to say—and , what is singular , M . Bonaparte is bo reserved that his nearest intimates do not recognize these fine qualities ! A French wit wrote to compliment the artist on his portrait , in which he could find but one fault . 11 ne Itti manque que le nez ! \

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    SOCIAL 11 E FORM . " NOTES OK A SOCIAL . { ECONOMIST . " THE COOPERATIVE AH 8 OC 1 ATIONS OK ENGLAND . " QUI LABOKAT OKAT . " I . The evident improvement which has recently taken placein themoral , physical , and social condition of the operatives in the populous and wealthy counties of York and Lancaster , is a practical and indisputable proof of the increasing intelligence , and , consequently , increasing political power of the

    unprivileged and disfranchi 8 ed classes in England . The present qualification for the privilege of voting for national representatives (?) being the morally degrading test of money-worth , not moral or social worth . This increased political power has been already exercised in the most useful manner for the purpose of carrying out two very- important measures of Social and Economical llefonn—The totul repeal of the corn-laws and the diminution in the hours of factory labour .

    The enormous advantages obtained for England by the repeal , f ^ VV *!^ ^ * —* nc net product of war and inoufina ^—lt ^ e'pu . tv . nt to the world , which also ' sharfes in , (| ieJBftl 0 ft certain extent ; and the repeal of thj » ta ? r is iji $ oih 0 $ j Art a » acknowledgment of the right . ' pi Wt ^ JnUtf m&hle and willing to work , tp tiji xloireMd&Mi Jy ^ j MWiSpe minimum price , of that foot ! jcitffca ^ ^ tW ^ & ^ t § 7 M " ' " which is raised from thitc ^^ o > Ue iM ^^ Pwb ^ nited skill and industry of iimnWn (\/^ Tn ^ CWfe « rative facilities thus acquired for tlfekiie ^ cluufeefcf the products of labour- ~ a

    principle of capital importance and of universal application—have given a healthy impetus to our foreign trade and home manufacture , and introduced a degree of comfort hitherto unknown into the homes and families of our manufacturing population . The diminution iu the hours of factory labour has been most beneficial . It has not only increased the number of hands necessarily employed ( at a slight reduction of wages , perhaps ) , but has also given a powerful impulse to improvement in the application of machinery ; the control of mental organization over inert matter . The moral and physical health of the operative has perceptibly

    improved—a great national economy—and the " schooling" of the children during certain hours of the day ( which is enforced bylaw ) , has been found a profitable speculation to the employer and to the employed . By this humane and concerted limitation of work , the feeble and defenceless are now protected from the tyranny of the strong or unprincipled ; but until pregnant women , and those who have children , be removed from the factory to their natural domestic sphere of activity , no effectual remedy can he applied by the Legislature to the social gangrene of juvenile depravity and corruption , originating in the neglect or ignorance of parents and Guardians .

    The first check to our present commercial prosperity must again lead to a renewal of % s clamour for diminished hours of toil , and the time will soon come when it shall be universally acknowledged that eight hours of constant and well directed labour are amply sufficient for every purpose of useful production , that some kind of agricultural or horticultural employment during tlie twentyfour hours is indispensable to the health of the operative , and that every practical health of towns bill must ultimately take for its motto the proverbial " rus in urbe "—pure air and water , space , light , warmth , dryness , and exercise being conditions necessary to health .

    The rapid evolution of mental power , the increase of capital , and the improvements gradually introduced into the present imperfect system of cultivation , into the machinery applied to agriculture as well as to manufactures , must all tend to diminish the existing amount of pauperism , and to promote the happiness of all . But if the manufacturing districts ( except the mining population , now working twelve or fourteen hours a day for an average wages of from two to two shillings and sixpence ) be in such a thriving condition , the reverse of the picture

    may be seen in the purely agricultural counties . Land has been a monopoly of the privileged classes , perpetuated by the law of primogeniture ( the only one fool in the family principle ) , by the law of entail , and by the uncertainty and expense attendant upon conveyance and title to real property . Jf land were as easily purchased as cotton , or as Three per Cents ., not only would it be more valuable as a marketable commodity , but it would also become indefinitely more productive and profitable . The

    land , in fact , has been starved , and frequently converted into mere pastures or shooting grounds , and thus partially depopulated—to which the atrocious law of parish settlement has materially contributed . Mr . Ringsley accuses the land monopolists of being mere " land traders . " Would that they were mere " land traders " ! Does any reasonable being suppose that , if the wool , flax , and cotton trade had been an hereditary monopoly , England could now have boasted of a six hundred million man-machine

    power , as Dr . John Watts , the powerful advocate of secular education , called it , or have employed so large a population , originally drawn from the land , at highly remunerative wages . The full extent of the productive power of land is unknown , or only guessed at ; yet capital still remains unemployed , and , therefore , unproductive , and labourers pauperized or idle : while the soil lies comparatively waste and untilled . Neither must

    we overlook the fact that hostile competition between traders or employers ia not an unmixed evil ; for the employer must then compete for the employed in the labour market , being compelled to do so by the remorseless ) law , which , as profits diminish , renders increased production necessary . For pauperism—the modern incarnation of evil—will " overtake the hindmost . " Communism , in its most exaggerated form , may be considered « ia the natural result of pauperism , and a reaction consequent on the neglect and violation of the laws of nature . The Scotch oeconomists have proclaimed , from the stump tops , that pauperism , in the dinfiunchiHed victims of monopoly and taxation , was a crime ; that pauperism had no right

    to indulge in the passions and affections of human nature ; they separated the wife from her husband the child from its mother ; and in their model * workless workhouses the sacred bonds of family union were irreverently torn asunder . The gaol instead of the school , became the means of Social Reformation , and a lasting monument of bureaucratic folly and of failure ; the criminal , in order to escape transportation , now shams conversion a conversion supposed to have been ac complishe d by maudlin religious tracts—a rose-water cure for

    a deadly moral sickness . As the natural result of such a monstrous system of legislation , a doctrine sprung up that women and children were destined by the law of nature , to be the common property of man : and that the wife and companion of his youth and manhood , who is destined to be the comfort and solace of his old age , shall no longer look to him alone for love and protection . But the gentle and vibrating voice of retributive nature shall yet make itself heard amidst this Babel-like confusion of tongues , and vindicate the Divine and eternal truth of her immutable laws . But I am

    wandering from my theme—the English Associations . Your readers , however , must bear in mind that the history of the various attempts to form agricultural communities carries us back to an epoch long antecedent to Christianity . The Jews were divided into three sects , the Pharisees , the Sadducees , and lastly the Essenes , established on the western shores of the Dead Sea . The Essenes were again divided into two sects , the

    Practici , who lived in community , and the Theorici , in solitude , the original founders of the eremitic and coenobitic mode of life afterwards adopted by the early followers of John and of Jesus . The Essenes devoted themselves entirely to the pursuit of agriculture , and they despised r iches , commerce , and navigation . All their goods were held in common , and a system of perfect equality prevailed among them . They had neither wives nor slaves , and performed all menial services for each other . The

    most able and skilful were elected as managers , and their food was prepared by their priests . They recruited their numbers ( upwards of 4000 ) by the adoption of children ; Pliny , therefore , calls them an eternal nation , in which no one is born . It is also related by Philo , the learned Alexandrian Jew , and by Josephus , that the Essenes devoted themselves to the worship of God , not by the sacrifice of animals , but by preserving the spotless purity of their souls ; and they avoided cities because they entertained the opinion that , as physical maladies are generated by putrid exhalations , so , by analogy , the soul-stain of social contagion was ineffaceable .

    Could we but rise to the true nobleness and unity of our work , as Social Reformers , and all zealously cooperate like these poor ignorant enthusiasts , how vast might be the result ! The round earth , and its inhabitants , is our seed-field , the indefinite perfectibility of man our quickening faith , and the principle of universal brotherhood the unity of the human race— a worthy motive for action . William Coningham .

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    In a report made to the Secretary-at- War by Lieutenant-Colonel Jebb , the Inspector-General ol Military Prisons , which has just been printed in a Parliamentary paper , the subject of flogging in the army is brought forward . It seems that imprisonment in lieu of corporal punishment has been beneficial in its operation , notwithstanding the contrary opinion of a number of military officers . Colonel Jebb states : —• ' If the views of the most experienced

    officers in her Majesty's service us to the deterring influence of corporal punishment were correct , a great increase of crime in the army might have been anticipated us the necessary consequence of limiting 11 power of courts martial , and materially diminishing a mode of punishment deemed to be the most eiheaciouH for the maintenance of discipline . It is , ' 3 ° ^" ever , satisfactory to pee that the result has not been unfavourable ; and though it may partly be attribute to the- encouragement given to good conduct , ui better class of men who have entered the- seivict . WJK * . % . If * - * *> IUUU \ SM , «< IVjlt VV «* - »^ mm ¦• t -w * -r m - — « worst ciitt

    and the partial discharge of come of the - ructers , yet taking all thin into account , I think tin experience has sufficiently shown that imprisonment for military offences has answered the expectation that were formed of it . " In 1846 , the your P ^ ious to the establishment of prisons , the number ot co - victions by courts martial was 91 ) 64 , and <> 62 C W ™' punishments were inflicted . In I 860 , the * onvicUoM were 9306 , and the corporal punishments , *<> »¦ * . effective force was about tho same in each year , 1845 , 126 , 262 , and in I 860 , 126 , 119 . '' "V „;„«¦ were 495 lashes inflicted by the visitors for » or o offences , and the number of prisoners admitted mi military prisons w « b 3666 .

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    896 Sfttfttalltf * . [ Saturday ,

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    A SUBVERSIVE FACT . Thbke is a person living in one of the streets of Kensington , who evidently possesses the loftiest genius in house decoration , and no mean capacity for advertising himself . Contagious example of Alexis Soyer ! Upon a blue and pink check ground , which covers the whole front of the house , the Kensington marine-store dealer lias actually had his name and occupation painted with the letters turned upside dtnen ! The force of Robins could no further go !

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 20, 1851, page 896, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1901/page/12/