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criticism on all hands . For us , however , both the lecture and the occasion , have a meaning anything but painful or ridiculous . On the surface , indeed , the Cardinal was not happy . The assertion that he undertook to maintain , and the facts of history , taken together , constitute a paradox of that startling kind , which is more amusing to the auditor than creditable to the orator .
Immediately occurs the instance of Galileo ; but Cardinal Wiseman undertook to meet that difficulty in the teeth . Galileo , he said , was tolerated while he only taught the astronomical doctrine of Copernicus ; but " when he insisted that his theory was true" when he " drew it into collision with theology , " and " would have the words of Scripture bent to his theory , rather than his theory bent to Scripture , " the Church properly seized upon and punished him ; and that , says the Cardinal , " was not until he was seventy years of age . " So that when a man grows somewhat positive % l the latest years of a brilliant scientific life , the supreme church , in its magnanimity , will come down upon him , and
condemn him ! It is quite true that science has nourished in Italy , because the Italians are an energetic , inquiring , and intellectual race ; but there is no necessity to correct the Cardinal , and to inform the English reader that science has flourished in Italy in spite of the Papal Church and the Inquisition . Cardinal Wiseman confounds the Italians who have promoted science , with the Bomish Church which has suppressed it . If the Italians have been more scientific under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church , it has been as nightingales sing more sweetly because they are blinded . According to the Cardinal , the wielder of a red-hot knittingneedle is the true patron of nightingales .
If history confutes the Cardinal , what is the state of facts at the present day ? Not long since there was , and perhaps still is , a publication in Home which denied the Copernican or Galilean system , and maintained that of Ptolemy . A contributor to that publication , Dr . Cullen , was appointed by the Pope to the chief episcopal command in Ireland . Throughout the schools of Italy—ancient institutions descended to the people from the times when Italy was herself , but now in possession of Emperor or Pope—the whole aim of the tutor is to train the child to servility , spiritual and social . In the Lombard schools ,
for example , the children are taught that they must render to the Emperor "the same obedience as to God . " In the upper schools the students are taught science according to the books which subserve imperial or papal views ; and so little is inquiry encouraged , that the student is required to answer the professor in the very terms of the question . In some schools political economy is taught according to the Austrian system of administration . In others , there is a course of public law , which occupies the student exactly three days ! Such is tho state of science in that favoured country , where the human intellect has so luxuriantly flourished .
The proposition practically involved in Cardinal Wiseman's lesson , so far as he indicates it , is of a curious kind ; but it is not limited to tho Church of which the Cardinal is so distinguished an ornament . It is this , that you should be taught to believe in matters of geology , astronomy , and physical science generally , as they aro taught by the authors of Genesis and of the History of Joshua . You may learn to know according to Galileo , Lyell , Humbol ^ fc , and other modern inquirers ; but you mtiHt use tho language of tho writers who lived ages before- Moses . You may know according to Kichard Owen , but you must declare that tho truth is with tho much nioro
ancient philosophers : the- adult intellect must uho tho language of tho infant ; and its philosophy must lisp in tho early monosyllabic lessons of " Charles , who is a good boy , " and "likes to have a bun . " JNfow this is impracticable . Records of tho most sacred subjects are perpetuated in what is , after all , human language ; and the Cardinal ' s , proposition confounds the subject ol" that t
language with the language itself . . I ,-presumes that the knowledge of the works of tho creation , an it extends , is derogatory to the reverence for that creation . Dr . . Huckland fell into the saino mistake , though he endeavoured to disguise it , when he tried to reconcile with modern science the lanquaqe of thoso early records , which set forth eternal truths in tho crude dialect of tho times , and when ho endeavoured to show that
the words meant different things from their plain sense—that " days" meant countless ages , and so forth . But the lesson taught by the Leeds assemblage , and even by the unconscious part of Dr . Wiseman s own oration , tells a much more instructive lesson . In declaring that the Papal Government fosters the development of science , the Cardinal uttered a ' gigantic confession of what even he , the thoroughgoing servant of that Government , recognised as that which ought to be . In claiming for the Papal Government that it keeps
science fostered and free , he puts in a claim which admits that science ought to be fostered and free . Of the facts we can judge for ourselves ; the duty we find confessed in the language of Wiseman ; and we agree with him . A right conception of religious truth does require a developed intellect and an extended knowledge of the works of creation . We have examples of that principle , both by converse and by the direct process . In Italy , where , as Cardinal Wiseman admits , science ought to be free and widely developed , it has been kept down by the operation of the
spiritual government ; and the result is seen m the ignorance of the population , the backward state of science amongst its authorized professors , and also in the universal decline of religious feeling . The great body of the population is sunk in ignorance , which cannot comprehend the dogmas paraded before it ; or else when it rises to thought , it rises also to atheism . Such a result is natural when the Godhead itself is declared to be represented by that fallible mortal who has made such fatal political mistakes , who is affected with
epileptic fits , and who is now maintained on his ricketty seat by alien bayonets . When a people is told that that is a vice-Godhead , the people is naturally embued with religious disrespect . The Pope ' s own Government has declared , in a memorial to the representative of Austria , that if he were abandoned by his foreign allies , he would not for an instant be safe against the fury of his own subjects . The practical effects in Italy , therefore , of keeping down science and knowledge , are ignorance , atheism , and anarchy .
If there is an improvement , we see it far away on the borders of this spiritual domain . We see in Ireland the members of the same Church , confessing , by their patronage of the Queen ' s colleges , that religious conviction is not incompatible with the search after the best science of the day . In Germany , the " Free Church" has escaped from the trammels of Romanist bigotry , and the sublimest of religious feeling is seen associated in a Huniboldt with the subUmest form of modern science . Under the shadow of
his cardinal ' s hat , Dr . Wiseman declares that which ought to be : we find it not in Rome or Italy ; but we find it far away on the borders of the Catholic territory , where a truly Catholic religion is escaping from the thraldom of Rome .
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Mil . COB DEN AND THE PRESS . Mit . Cobden claims to bo in his own person the " leading article . " " The public at large , " lie says , " resort to news-rooms only for the news in the journals . Nineteen twentieths of a journal consists of news , and that is what the people look for . Facts and intelligence are tho tilings sought . As to the leading articles , so far as guidance and direction are concerned , they arc the least useful and interesting parts of the papers . "
It is curious that Mr . Cobden with such striking command of Raxon , is not able to use language that is unequivocal . What the people seeks , ho says , is " facts and it / tellu / cnce . " Now , what does he mean by intelligence P Does he mean understanding in the readers ; as that indeed iH an important qualification for the reception of facts . The exhibition of facts without intelligence in tho readers is a very useless operation ; and undoubtedly if readers were thoroughly informed on all facts simply stated , then there would ho no necessity for comment or explanation . . Hut is it
ho ? Mr . Cobden seems to supposo that nil readers are in that respect on a par with Editors ; which id a very strong supposition tor a gentleman who ought , ho well to understand the advantages derivable from division of employments . In early lili * , it was Mr . (' obden ' s business to understand the nature ; of supply and dcinami in Home particular trade ; and he ho well understood the advantage of having men devoted to the particular business of sale and purchase , without reference to making or using , that , he attained , it issaid , a signal success in that particular branch of employment ,
There does not appear to be any very wonderful amount of intellect required for collecting the woolly portion of particular seeds , bringing it over to this country , and subjecting it to a process of conversion into thread , and then to cotton , cloth ; and yet human understandings of a high order are devoted to different portions of that Drocess . Many minds very respectable are
engaged in rearing the plant , others unshipping the down , others in selling the thing shipped , others in unpacking it and twisting it into ' thread , others in weaving the threads to make clotfc . Nay , we have understood that in certain remote regions of this country there have been masterly intellects devoted to the sing le process of putting colours , not of the very highest quality , on the tissue thus realized . Now , when once the process is
established by rule , it does not require a very profound understanding to raise cotton-down of a white staple on a proper soil . After a Watt and an Arkwright have shown us how to make steammachinery , it is comparatively easy to convert the cotton-down , first , into threads with few breaks in them , and then into cotton-cloth without many " ends-out . " And having the cotton-cloth , it does not need a mind of gigantic power , or
enormous insight—a mind " which can pick pins up , yet can possess the vigour of trimming well the " jacket of a tiger , "—to print upon that even cotton-cloth with patent rollers the impress of those indifferent pigments . Yet not one of those processes can be so well performed without a special devotion of the understanding . It occurs to us that the treatment of the raw material of news falls within the same description . Take
any given rustic , put him before you in circumstances most conducive to attention , and expound to him in the plainest language any given number of facts , from twenty to one thousand , and then state the result . Nay , select a more intelligent individual , a barber for example , or a calico-printer , and pour into his ear any given number of " facts ;" , and tell us how many of those facts will fructify in his mind ? We have an idea that the larger proportion of them would
pass unassimilated ; and that they might become much more capable of digestion by that particular recipient , if they were a little , as it were , subjected to a process of mastication in political comment ; if they were explained , their bearing shown , and their relative importance duly set in order . On the lowest mechanical ground , therefore , the political commentator becomes amanufacturer of raw material ; and on the lowest ground of dividing employment , he is as much better able to do that for the reader , as the manufacturer is able to make better cloth than the homespun of
the farmer . But that is only a small portion of the journalist ' s business ; a higher portion consists in collecting information very different from that attainable by " gentlemen connected with tho press , " casual reporters , or foreign correspondents . The real lulitor mixes in political society ;
he knows what is going on much more than he is at liberty to state in his columns—more , perhaps , than may reach the ear of Mr . Cobden himself . By these lights , bringing the raw material of news into unity , be is able , in point of fact , to supply to the reader a totally new species of information—information , namely , as to the causes , the relations , and the consequences of tho " facts " which M r . Cobden desiderates . In some eases
Mr . Cobden and other readers may infer this information for themselves , though they may not always have the leisure or the abilities to do so ; but in other eases , the true information lies beyond the scope of inference ; . There is no doubt , for example , as the Times says , that the most important news which , with all its unparalleled machinery , it can communicate to the public , is to be found in its leading articles ; where the raw material is collected , sifted , analyzed , combined , mid illustrated , by special information derived from quarters as inaccessible to tho ordinary caterers for news as it is to tho general reader .
There is an involuntary bonhomie about Mr . Cobden which almost reconcile us to the maniacal dislike that seizes him at tho sight , of a militia man , or a , newspaper article . " There are , " Jio tells us , with his customary naivete , " far inoro newspapers in America than here with abundance of facts ; but ( bey have less political influence ;" for the simple reason , let us inform Mr . Cobdou , that in America the business of the newspaper consists almost entirely in stating facts through the newH and advertising columns ; and that
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February 12 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER , 159
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 12, 1853, page 159, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1973/page/15/
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