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    THE PEELITES.

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    DEBTORS AND qUEDITORS.

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    Untitled Article

    minds the late great Strike sug-gested dyspeptic dreams of a . servile war between labour and capital . Events have shown our social balance top good to be-easily disturbed , even by so large a body of men being thrown hungry and angry upon the streets of London . But when ¦ we hear of such suflferiogs as those practised in the factories , how -4 ? an we wonder at any efforts , however violent or misjudged , to restrain such inhumanity ? There was a time when just and wise guilds arbitrated on such matters , and redressed every grievance ; but trade has grown too wide for guilds , and mutual forbearance aud rself-restramt are novir pur only safety .

    It should humble our national pride to think that now , in this vaunting age , when eonarnerce teems with invention and life , when our sails are on every sea , and our power and wealth is a proverb all over the g lobe ; now that education is getting universal and religion increasing ; now that our merchants are princes and our traders nobles , that we should have reached that alarming pitch of commercial immorality that it is all but impossible to obtain pure and real the simplest necessaries of life , that new inventions should be liable to be destroyed by ignorant workmen , that thousands of children should be slowly put to death annually in our factories , that that code of lies called " Tricks of trade" should form part of every commercial man ' s education and creed , that unchecked forgeries should be common , that nothing sold should be quite what it seems , —that greediness , fraud , and deception should be still so paramount wherever trade sets up her noisy booths , in a word that CJbeshams should be so few and J > ean Pauls so numerous . ;

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    IT is probable that ere many years the Peelites will be placed at the head of the nation ' s affairs . Well , therefore , is it far . us to know what they are , and what we have to expect from them . They resemble little him from whom they have their name j they are neither so thoroughly English , nor so persistent and practical . Foreign writers have called them the doctrinaires of England . ; but this is scarcely accurate . Gttizot , and other statesmen mi ranee of the same stamp , are cold , pedantic dogmatists ; , and it would be far more correct to designate Whigs of the Lord John Rxtsseli . school doctrinaires than the Peelites . The latter are men of honour and of principle , who are less dominated by ideas than by aspirings . Their distinctive feature is a certain , indolent catholicity . They have not strong sympathy with the people ; , but neither have they the Whig contempt for the people , nor the Whig exclusiveness .

    Their cardinal defect is a want of energy . The Tories are often unscrupulous ; the Whigs are not unscrupulous / but they are factious , intriguing , arrogant , vindictive . The fault of the Peelites is that they are too scrupulous ; that they doubfc and hesitate when they should boldly . act . They have some of the hi g h qualities , some of the noble chivalry of the Girondists , with the same overstrained delicacy and fatal vacillation . With the instinct of exalted right , they have not the courage of justice ; hence , though they will not practise corruption , they will tolerate it . To succeed in politics men must be thorough politicians . The leading Whigs may not be our greatest statesmen , but they are our most thorough politicians . In talent , Lord Palmejiston and Lord John Rtbskuc , do not greatly rise above mediocrity , but they are intensely politicians ; their heart never wanders from the political field , the political arena , Can the same thing , be said of the Tory leaders ? And would it not be a mocketo it of the Peelites ?

    ry say The dream of the Peelites is the revival of niedisevalism through the renewed action of the Church . But they display ho vigour in the realisation of their dream . They assume the infallibility of the Church , yet shrink from asserting- the whole of the Church's authority . B ehind the age in their childish Traoijarianisrn , they are yet before it in tlieir general scheme of a Commonwealth ; indeed , they are the only political party with tlie general scheme of a Commonwealth at all . For every other political party , what are politics , but haphazard , har id-to-mouth empiricism ? To view the Sfcute as a city of CJoDi which every pious , virtuous , and patriotic soul should help in building , this ia familiar enough to the Germain mind ; but the average English mind would reject -it as an absurdity , . Now , the Peelitea have done a signal service in giving us , however

    imlife with an array of arid philosophical [ propositions ^ cannot forget its historical development . But the historical development should not be compelled to depend on the coarse pressure of material necessity , identifying abstractions with idealisms , the English abhor the latter quite as much as the former , and herein they are guilty of a most deplorable blunder . Hfofcliing- but more transcendent and . triumphant idealism is needed to make the English who are so strong , so laborious , so valiant ; and so truthful * unrivalled among modern nations . Now , if the Peelites were not politicians at all , if they were simply students—and there is a good deal of the scholar ' s refinehient iii them , with , alas ! too much of the scholar ' s feebleness—they would have shown themselves as England's faithful Mends , by preaching , though in antiquated and theologicalfashion , the regeneration of England into a catholic Commonwealth . What they have preached they will strive to incarnate . They may not achieve much , but at least they will render politics broader , richer , deeper , more poetic . In a nation culture cannot be a substitute for heroism , but culture is nearer heroism than that idiotic prose which in England we are so fond of dignifying with the name of common sense ; Revolutions must be accomplished ia England by men who have nothing- of the revolutionary temper ; such revolutions are always the best , and are alone enduring . The Peelites are disposed to be revolutionary from the most conservative feelings . They bother themselves with silly casuistries , with obsolete cereniouialisms , with pitiful puerilities ; it isr however , because they believe that the eternally celestial is enshrined in all this . That they believe in the eternally celestial in some form is enough to make us love them . With those alone must we forswear brotherhood who deny the eternally celestial . The Peelites are not the slaves of formulas , however fervent they may be in their idolatry of ritual . Though , therefore , conscientious and high-minded , they will nevier be Quixotes to the death for a crotchets They will yield at the right time , not from selfishness or fickleness , not from the low calculations of the adventurer , but because , if they have the narrowness of a traditional creed , they have the comprehensiveness of the infinite feeling out of which the creed sprang . There is a dash of dilettaiiteism in all -their sayings anddoings ; but whom in these days , excepfc the cynics , does dilettanteism not infect ? Even the cynics have their dilettante nioods , and TiiACKTSiiAY , the high priest of the cynics , whines and whimpers now and then very much like the blubbering boobies whom he ridicules . The Peelites cannot rule England for any long period ; their weakness of character and their fastidiousness render this impossible . But in the transition from Whiggery to a genuine , national statesmanship , the Peelites have a godlike mission to fulfil . Let us not blame them for being Peelites , and merely Peelites . Providence lias no daintiness in the choice of instruments , and why should we be more dainty than Providence ? The Peelites do not , like the Whigs , claim Downing-street as a perpetual patrimony ; they are human beings , and not odious oligarchs- They proclaim the alliance between monarchy and democracy , but they leave aristocracy to take care of itself . Even if the ' PeeUt . es could do nothing but deliver us from the thraldom to the Whigs , we should owe them everlasting gratitude—it is always so welcome to get rid of a thing which has no heart . Meanwhile , though we would prepare England for Peelism , we would prepare it for what is to succeed it . When Palmeeston , the heartiest of the Whigs , departs from the scene , there is uo one but Gladstone to take his place . We arc convinced that Gladstone will yet be prime minister of England ; we" are convinced that England will grow very tired of him . It will hunger , and pant , and shriek for a man * and Gladstone is a clever though honest Oxford professor . Alter the Oxford professor we iqusti have an Englishman , 'who combines the radiant Apoi ^ o and the robust JtEltouiiES ; we must have the . marriage of the Ideal and the Keal . That the iarce of chattering epileptic parliamentariBrn , of which we have all grown so ; tired , can keep on its legs or wag its tongue much longer is impossible . 'Hansard has' grown a nuisance . Nobody now reads the bes ) t-r « ported speeches , though the Times fiuds them useful to fill its column *? . Constitutionalism is perhaps not in a healthier condition than parliamentarism . Though , therefore , we would be merciful to the reporter ^ we think that enough has been reported till something moreia achieved .

    perfectly , the divine ideal of a Commonwealth . The English confound empiricism with wisdom ; they act exactly like the physician who , having- never studied anatomy or medicine , would treat each fresh case of disease in a rush , rough , experimental way . . The English are fond of calling this habit by very filie names : but , besides rendering their politics immoral , it exposes them continually to disgraces and disasters . Two hundred years ago the Puritans tried to erect a Hebrew theocracy in England . Here , at least , there was the ideal of the State with the Scriptures as ft guide m the embodiment of the ideul . The ' endeavour was laudable , oven it it tragically foiled . Since then we have hod nothing but the Jiorce battles of factions , and in the dust and smoke of the fight no holy vision of the State couW be seen . If they did not receive profound , puissant impulses ftwen their oolossal industrialism , the English people would sink into absolute fatalism . They are roused from their letliartrv bv the thunder of gig-antio stoam hammers , and , halt

    awake , they think that something *» ust really bo dyne erq they go to sleep again , For the most puft , however , they go to aloep agum without doing anything . Wo are not pleading for abstvaeUons , which must ever bo as barren for the State as for the individual . The worship of absfcrnotions has been the curse both of Jfwnoe and of Amerion , and Napowion woa right in his contempt and hatred for those whom he called ideologists . A country cannot nourish \ t »

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    npHE following Statistics relating to the . Debtor ancl UrecUt system Jl will be interesting afc the present time : —We learn by the Judicial Statistics of 1859 , that in that year 1 , 582 petitions ( of which ynly 134 . 2 proceeded up to the " adjudication , " ) were presented to the Ouuyts of . Bankruptcy ; 897 by creditorfi , ' and 44 , 5 by debtors themselves ,. The debtors also presented 240 petitions for private arrangements , widow can be carried out with the consent of three fifths iu number and value of the creditors . The adjudications declared 1 , 84 . 8 persons bankrupts either trading singly or in copartnership . Out of these 1 , 260 passed their , exainimition . The uinount of their debts , as stated by themselves , was £ 8 , 215 , 029 ; airaiiiBt which thev only nroduoed assets value ; &L 785 , 2 b' 8 , Out ot

    this sum had to be provided " special charges nud deductions , ; £ 31 . 8 , 729 , debts-r-isueh as wages and taxes , to be paid iu f « U , £ Z 8 , 27 (> , leaving assete auffieient to pay about three shiUingfl in the pound ; but no less than dB < W ) 9 , 85 a were required for " expenses , so that epeditora only got an , average dividend of little move thim two shillings and uixpenoe . . If we go from bankruptcy to insolvency we fli » d the financial result not duite so good , Out of ^ 387 petitions presented , to the

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    «> y « The header andSaturday ' Analyst . LMAnca 24 , 18 t > 0 .

    The Peelites.

    THE PEELITES .

    Debtors And Queditors.

    DEBTORS AND qUEDITORS .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 24, 1860, page 276, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2339/page/8/