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thing so that it he paid handsomely . Its object is traffic , and spiritual powers and temporal possessions its stock in trade . But the spirit of persecution is dead , while , that spirit lives , and is active wherever the Tiara has power . We need hardly give instances to prove the truth of that . Rome , Florence , Naples Tuscany , all conspire to attest its correctness . Itis truethattheEoman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland is not allied to the state , hut it is almost the only branch of that church which is not , and we fear the isolation rests upon
inability to make its own terms , rather than m a love for the people , an attachment to liberty , or reluctance to assume temporal dignitaries and enjoy state-conferred wealth . In Ireland the Roman Catholic church has been placed in an anomolous and singular position . There it is opposed to the governing power , but where else does that happen ? In its very nature it is an aristocratic church , with a despotic monarch for its head , and in all catholic countries it seeks to
ally itself with the state . Wherever it does so , its proves that Religious Equality is not its object , for Religious Liberty becomes but a name . Throughout the whole of the Continental struggles foT Freedom , the priests have been among the worst enemies of the people . Mazzini and Louis Blanc—Kossuth and Proudhon are equally the objects of their detestation . In Paris they besanctified the slaughter of June and the massacre of December—and the ecclesiastics who bowed
to the Republic while it was a power—kissed it , Judas like , in order to betray it—are now ready to consecrate as Emperor , the butcher who emulates the indifference to life , without being able to imitate the ability of Napoleon . In Rome it broke a constitution having the semblance of right—fled to the worst monarch in the Italian peninsula for protection , procured the butchery of its people , and re-entered "the holy
city amid the mourning of its inhabitants , and the priest blessed bayonets of French mercenaries . In Austria it pronounced benedictions on the bandits who shed the noblest blood of Hungary . Everywhere but in Ireland , where its partizanship of the poor is accidental , it is the advocate of tyranny and the justifier of spoliation and murder . This is all accounted for when we remember that the mainspring of that church is , submission to authority .
The overthrow of the Established Church is only one of the objects of the Roman heirarchy . They look upon its possessions as their own , and they seek to recover them . The priests wish to gratify their revenge and their cupidity at one blow . Let Dissenters , English and Irish remember this , and act upon it . If they do help , it should be with their eyes open . They ought to know exactly what they are to expect . It should be understood once for all , what is to become of the
temporalities . We would as soon see them the property of the Protestant as the Catholic preacher—possibly thoy are less dangerous in the hands of the former . It is not worth while to struggle to pull down one evil merely to setup another . John of Tuam is just the man to say , let us do our work now , and leave what may be , to the future . He should be plainly asked , and forced to give an answer to the question , how is the church properly to be disposed of after its present possessors are ousted from it ? If he gives in his
adhesion to the principle of voluntaryism ( setting aside mental reservation ) well and good—that would be an admission worth having—a blow at one of the worst features of both churches . If he daes not , then it will be for Dissenters to determine , whether or not , after the battle has been fought , they toU be able to prevent the Roman Dragon from putting its foot upon the spoil . That would be a great calamity not only to England but to Europe , which conferred upon Romish priests pelf out of national property and enduring power over the people .
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THE DIGGINGS AT HOME AND ABROAD . * It would be an idle task to set about proving that society as atpresent constituted labours under serious defects . All economists , of whatever school , would he ready , we presume , to grant this point . The rush of emigration and the gold fever proves at once that there is a screw loose somewhere . As doctors , however , are well known to disagree , so economists in like manner—our social doctors—differ as to the remedies for the evils that afflict society .
Malthus says , " Be prudent , do not marry in a hurry— all mischief comes from over-population . " Godwin shakes his head at him . A third says , " Emigrate ; " and a fourth says , " Associate . " They have all much to say for their nostrums , and m all probability much that is good , with something that is foolish . All , however , probably labour under the defect of taking partial views of the subject . For our part we are ready to confess that the two last schemes seem the only permanent rational cures that have been hitherto suggested—that they each work well separately , and still better when combined .
Let us , however , fearlessly face the subject and see what is the matter , and the best remedy that offers . The following points appear especially knotty , and require our special notice -. I . Idleness , the result of painful and distasteful occupations . I . Poverty , the result of idleness , competition , and inadequate remuneration . 3 . The problem of uniting order and social liberty . 4 . The problem of remunerating according to merit o . The problem of reconciling individual capital with an associative system . 6 . The question of over-population and emigration . »
These points cover most of the questions that are embraced by political economy in all its ramnifications , and to them we propose to devote the following series of articles . Before we proceed to grapple with the points in question , we may be permitted a word on political economy as it has hitherto appeared lolitical economy has hitherto confined itself to a partial and superficial statement of facts , to the statistics of proletarian misery , and to pointing out as the sole cure the greatest curse ot social
our machinery , the " live and let live » system To make short work of it , it is a science that destrovs itself , as its gr and prmciple is the most uneconomical possible . A hard individualism and a selfish competition are the eveitastine parents of starvation and beggaiy . A gain , it is a most ti politic science , since it is eternally preaching up as an unremedi able , and necessary evil , the misery of the mlsl stocSobw ' forestalling , social and individual bankruptcy Si ™ 3 death ; coupled with a glut in ^' m ^ S ^ iSS 2 Hence political economy may b e justly styled a pathological
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catalogue , but certainly not a science . Social economy is a juster and truer term for the science that we seek , and we shall henceforth employ the term to denote our speculations . We shall now attend to the first evil included in the catalogue above enumerated . An adage says , " Idleness is the mother of all the vices . " True enough ; but if we look a little farther back we shall find that- Idleness hath a step-mother ,
yclept " Painful Labour . " To remove idleness , then , we must make labour pleasurable ; such is the first problem of social economy . ^ The whole life of the people is passed in labour ; the workshop is their world , while therefore their labour is monotonous , exhausting , ill-paid , and disgusting ; and while their world is unhealthy , fetid , and odious , their life is a burthen and idleness a blessing , and at a premium .
But here another view of the case presents itself to help us out of our dilemma . What is the aim of man ?—to live happy m a proper exercise of his faculties ; in other words , labour , but attractive , and not repugnant labour . Labour is necessary for hapj ) iness , but pleasurable not painful labour . The diggings settle this question at once . A man works hard at the diggings with pleasure , up to his waist in water , because he expects a ton of gold , and works of his own choice . If , then , labour is made attractive , nobody will be idle ; and we are thus led directly to the first problem of socjial economy—idleness and its cure .
The first aim of social economy must be to make labour so attractive that men women , and children , will be drawn to it instinctively , without the compulsion of morality and the sting of hunger . b Charles Fourier , * whatever may have been his defects , grasped the true basis of the science " in perpetually . reverting to this point . It is of no use for moralists and legislators to insist on men working patiently , making the best of a bad business , without grumblings or giving way to idleness , drunkenness , or riot . If
they go into the high-ways and bye-ways they will soon find a host of starving and ruined brothers , the outcasts from our Christian charities , the victims of our false economy . They will meet crowds of victims sacrificed to the reign of a cruel individualism and a heartless competition , men -willing to work even for the merest crumb , yet unable to obtain it , or if provided with it , soon worn out and carted to the dead-house , after a life of sickening drudgery . Thus labour as at present exercised is , in most cases , painful , and offers a premium to idleness , and hence to the gaols and hospitals .
Three cures present themselves for this disorder : 1 . Tne Gold Fields . 2 . Emigration in general . 3 . Association . The first remedy is transitory , imperfect , and in part illusory . The two last are practicable and valuable , and all three are capable of being combined with the greatest advantage . Gold fields are limited in time and space , and do not admit of being held an universal pursuit . Emigration is valuable , but limited in time , and its value is quintupled by coupling it with association . Finally , associa tion at home or abroad in gold diggings , and all other diggings , is the great instrument of . industrial attraction . It shall be our
purpose to prove m a future number that labour can be rendered attractive and pleasant to all , with or without gold diggings and emigration , by means of a new system of industrial association , forming a new social economy . A PIONEER . * See his Treatise on the Passions of the Human Soul , collected ana trans lated by J . R . Morell . 1 vol . Svo . 12 s . W . Lea , Warwick-lane , and R Theobald , Paternoster-row , London .
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THE PEACE SOCIETY & THE FRENCH PRESIDENT . The Times publishes another letter from " An Englishman , " in which the writer eloquently and indignantly repudiates the shameful and cowardly doctrines of the , Peace Society ;—"Of late we had heard little of the Peace Society . Those who have faith in common sense imagined that it had achieved its highest triumph , and reached even that sanctuary of
philanthropical absurdity . They were mistaken . The towns of Great Britain find , to their astonishment , that they are " exploited" by the society ' s sections , each of which appropriates its own . This quasi resurrection of " the three tailors of Tooleystreet" is led by Elihu Burritt , who , as one of " the great Anglo-Saxon race , " represents the people of England . He is now in Paris , the plenipotentiary , it would seem , of the society and us . .
" In this imposing capacity Mr . Burritt announces in the Bonapartist Pays that he bears fraternal missives from the cities of Britain to those of France . They pair off in more than forty couples in the country dance . Elihu Burritt is- the " Simpson " for the nonce , and * ' introduces" with a grace worthy of the Petronius of Vauxhall . London " sets" to Paris ; Cheltenham bows to Rouen ; Edinburgh and Glasgow , Dublin and Manchester , " hands round" with their several partners . The grotesque Roger de Coveriey recalls the dream of the bold dragoon in
Washington Irving ' s story . In the dead of night the furniture of the warrior ' s bedroom played the same freak as the towns of France and England . The chest of drawers led out the old arm chair , the tongs curtsied to the shovel , and " a weazen face fellow , " the prototype of Mr . Burritt , made " asthmatical music" with the bellows . Yet there is malice in the drollery While the municipalities of the Peace Society flirt with those of France , , they protest against " the irritating language" of the press , and insinuate that it fans national antipathies , thwarts commercial intercourse , and endangers peace . * *
„ ¦ i , ' 1 . „ % -n " o t }? nguagc of the press is ;' irritating . " To 1 ranee ? Impossible ! It cannot be irritating to a generous nation to deplore her wrongs , to sympathize with the proscription of her most illustrious sons , to execrate the bastard reproduction of an Empire which shed torrents of her blood , banded Europe against her in hate and arms , costlier Waterloo , and quartered the Cossacks upon Paris . Has the press proclaimed a crusade or coalition against her rights or her ? Has it once whispered aggressive Avar ? Has it
counselled more than legitimate defence against too probable ambition ? Is it M . Bonaparte that the press "irritates ? " Eo doubt . But are the coup cV etat , its atrocities and consequences the strangling of liberty , the consummation of a military despotism , the audacity of the Society of Jesus , and the deification of force , . historical realities , or not ? If not , do more than tell the press it lies : convict it . If so , assert at once that the press has no business with either morality or fact * Be consistent . If the press may not denounce ¦ the foi $ . es ¥% iilt abroad , deprive it of the right of exposing political or'moralsm at home .
May it anathemize Castlereagh or Sidmouth , condemn Palmerston , even , hunt down Peel , and must it hold its " bated breath " before M . Bonaparte ? Is the freedom of the press to take no heed of vice m virtue , gooiorevil , but idolize success and the accomplished fact , and proclaim , with Machiavem , Caesar
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Borgia the model of a prince ? Is this the Gospel Peace Society ? It is the cant o f hypocrites and cr i ^ slaves . You concede , perhaps , to the press its right L *? ft mand that it be waved in presence of the interests of En l Was that your language to the West Indian planters ? i . JI ^' your tone to Virginia and New Orleans ? Was it so ' tW \\ r « at berforce pleaded , that Henry Brougham declaimed ? p- " justitia , ruat codum , is the abolitionist motto . Are VOU 1 > at pathies only for another hemisphere , and for soot y skins ^ * England to enforce at any price the libert y of savW cannibals , and may not her press give utterance to an inch " ^ cry at its treacherous massacre in France ? Is this the ?** either of the heart or head ? It is not so certain that s'l ¦ would serve the interests of England . Our greatness has \ ' and will die with our freedom . Personal liberty brin « v ° ? vidual energy , and that makes Britain what she is . £ \ is but an assemblage of units , and in a free State tliat unit man . Individual liberty , pushed even to license , makes y 1 S a America a giant ; individual constraint has reduced the ^ empire of Charles V . to a decrepit dwarf . The history of « ' past and present reads but the same lesson . It is not the ' r tutions , but the spirit o f people that protect its liberty or st . T its greatness . Let Englishmen be taught to excuse trcn ^ perjury , and tyranny abroad , and you educate them to tolcn ?' those crimes at home . No man can say how soon the lo > t liberty may be invoked to defend our hearths and Constitut " * Would you castrate the spirit of independence , and debase v ^' free battalions to a guard of mutes ? * * ' ' J Ul <
The press does not create danger , but contracts by barinn- it The coup d etat was perpetrated , like a burglary , by nMit it is the duty of the press to see that the blow of invasion or f conquest does not smite Europe in its sleep . This duty it ne forms , and for this it is calumniated . It affronts a recklesdespotism , subjects itself to exclusion from France , its cones ' pondents to expulsion , risks its interests , is denounced abroad is abused at home , and from gaiete de cozur , suicidal frenzy V devilish spite , it invites taxation and infamy upon itselt tli * horrors of war upon the world 1 No ! The press is the advanced guard of civilization . It descried the approach of another Attila and , taking counsel only of its courage and its conscience it charged in Liberty ' s name Liberty ' s barbarian foe . * '
, " Peace , then between the " peoples" is possible , perhaps their inevitable future ; kit peace between antagonistic principles is a madman ' s dream . Liberty and tyranny are face to face . The strife has been deadly for more than half a century . Is it ended now ? CredatJudceus . Look on France , Italy , " Germany , Spain to the east and to the west , to the Old World and to the Kew and believe it , believers in the peace of millennium !
" You welcome , or , at least , would not repel , the Cossack , the Groat , the Chasseur de Vincennes . It is a libel , you say , on those generous legions to pretend that they could march beneath , their countries' flags , plunder in the van , the knout and the drum-head court-martial in the rear , to assault our innocence and wealth . Be it so . Preach the New Jerusalem , but practise it . What ! You scout the supposition of foreign wrar , and wage a civil one . You ridicule the notion of an enemy , and admit that a countryman—an Anglo-Saxon—dressed ' in a smock-frock , corduroys , and high-lows , crape upon his face , a horse-pistol in his hand , may break into your chamber in the dead of the night , hoarsely demand your plate or life , and , with his grip upon your throat , swear with a ruffian ' s oath if you but
move to blow your brains out . Your cosmopolite benevolence repudiates the possibility of an invader , and you lift or hire the fratricidal hand against your burglarious brother . Do not halt half way in magnanimity . Down with the police , away with the criminal courts and judges , unbar your doors , take the shutters from your windows , throw open the till and the strongbox , unbutton your breeches-pockets , remove the watch from the impracticable fob and let the chain dangle from the confiding coat-tail , suspend your purses from the park trees , and restore the good old days of Alfred , with this trifling difference —he hung the cut-throats ; you invite them .
"It would be ill for England and the world if the spirit of the Peace Society prevailed among the people . Its prophets and its proselytes may kiss the hangman and the rod , but their abject doctrines and their servile instincts are not owned by that Anglo-Saxon race to which they affectedly appeal . The Charivari and the intelligence of France may laugh at Mr . Burritt and his mission . The society ' s fanatics are too ridiculous to be important , though too impertinent to be unnoticed . "
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MISS O'CONNOR . We l ) eg to direct attention to the letter of Mr . Aitken in another column . The friends and admirers of Mr . O'Coxkor should take immediate steps to carry out the suggestion Mr . Aitken has made . As we stated last week , Miss O'Connor is in pressing need of assistance , and as she has heretofore been totally dependant on her brother for support , we think that the subscribers to the O'Connor Fund should apply to the relief of the wants of that lady the money they have subscribed , since it would appear that for the present at least Mr . O'Connor himself is not in need of assistance . Letters for Miss O'Connor may be addressed to the care of Mr . Haeney , 4 , Brunswick-row , Queen-square . Blooinsbury .
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PUBLIC MEETINGS , &c PATRIOTIC BANQUET AT BRUSSELS . A grand banquet took place on the 24 th ult . at the H otel des Brasseurs , under the presidency of Citizen Louis Labarre > on the occasion of the national rejoicings in commemor ation of the Belgian revolution of September , 1830 . The following account of this patriotic gathering we take from La Nationtember
This solemnity brought together combatants of Sep * and icpieseidatives of the communes which 22 years ago sent soldiers of the national cause to Brussels , civic guards , niostJ in uniform , merchants , members of the working associ ations , representatives of the iar and of the press , -&c . . i The fine hall of the Hotel des Brasseurs , formerly occupies by the " Alliance , " was decorated with Belgian flags , among " which was that given by the illustrious chief of the iH " garian revolution , Kossuth , to signify the new social dogro * of the solidarity of the peoples , and with the escutcheons the nine provinces , bearing the words , " Belgique , 183 0 . Towards ei ght o ' clock , when the banquet commence ^ u magnificent . square of the H 6 tel de Ville was lit up with tn ° Airy-lite gleams of the electric light , and the Gnm- ^
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122 THE STAR OF FREEDOM . Octobbk 2 ]*« , _^__ ~ _ ~ ^ 2 __ HrZ- ^ H ~ nr ^^ TZ—__—— - __—^—— - — - ——¦ - — ?¦ -- ' ¦ - ¦ ¦ — ' — — - —— - — - ¦ ¦ '— — " *" - ¦— - ¦¦ - — - ^— ¦ — - ¦* - — ¦ — - ¦ ¦¦¦ . .. . i ¦ . -- - — ... / ^ 'W «
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Northern Star (1837-1852), Oct. 2, 1852, page 10, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ns/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1698/page/10/
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