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    1154 THE LEADEK [No. 499 Oct 15, 185ft. ...

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    THE BEAUTIES OF BRIBERY.

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    meant to have an end. Perhaps there woul...

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    THE CURE OF SOULS. The Bon well story is...

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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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    Guides To Social Welfare. It Is Easy To ...

    The Association filling his mind—it had no place for the press , "which incessantly collects vast accumulations of facts of every - description * . & ough it does not marshal them so as to suit the views and conclusions of our would-be guides and governors . The Association ' may want some peculiar facts ; the public wants all the facts , and those are supplied by the press . If Lord Shaftesbury had been well-up in the facts which the press has recently collected and carefully displayed , he would have been aware that since the corn laws were repealed the nation has been much -better , and more

    regularly supplied with food than ever before ; that food has not only been abundant but the price has been comparatively steady ; that the bulk of the people have been well and continually employed ; that in spite of much acknowledged and grievous mismanagement on the part . of the aristocracy , especially in regard to the army , the navy , and the taxes , the nation has been prosperous and increasingly powerful ; that pauperism , in proportion to population , has decreased fully onehalf ; that crimes of all kinds , except the actions foolishly made into crimes by legislators like Lord Shaftesbury and * Lord Brougham , have decreased more than at any previous period of equal length

    Association and the public of the conduct of the aristocracy and the hierarchy—which was even worse than that of the lay aristocracy—in respect to the food of the people and the freedom of their industry , because the aristocracy and its partizans carefully consign it to oblivion , and treat it as a thing which ought to be forgotten . At the same time the very classes which brought on this country , between 1815 and 1846 , an un t old amount of pauperism , crime , and misery—which degraded , and continue to degrade , the massesare now putting forth , on an assumption of great merit , fresh claims to respect and admiration . They can no longer coerce , and they seek to cajole .

    Possessing the power to be tyrannous , to Lord Brougham ' s terror , the multitude must have the power to determine their own fate ; and it will Be their own fault if they continue to be the objects of Lord Shaftesbury ' s pity and Lord Brougham ' s morose dread . It will be their own faujt if they submit to be drilled into an admiration , of the bulwark erected against their freedom ; and take at second-hand , perverted by Privy Councils and ambitious associations , the delightful knowledge which Nature offers to all her children . Indeed she may be said , as it is the indispensable guide to right conduct , to force it on their senses ; while it is the great object of social associations , and other contrivances for guiding and governing the people , to keep it from them .

    since the records were first kept of the effects of penal legislation ; that a greater change , in short , for the better has ensued throughout England since the corn and some kindred laws were repealed than ever was known in any similar period of history . This great change and its cause are wholly ignored by Lord Shaftesbury . The noble lord quoted a report of the Macclesfield Board of Health , stating a great improvement in the health and longevity of the inhabitants of that town , as other boards of health have taken to themselves the credit of similar improvements , in order to show how much might be done by removing piggeries , & C ; But if the corn laws had continued to deprive the people of food , all the boards of health in the world would not have

    increased either their vitality or their longevity . Life depends on food—the more food the more life and the more health there will be ; and all other causes for the improved condition of the people in Macclesfield and elsewhere in health and longevity , within the last ten years , sink into utter insignificance compared to the abolition of the law of the aristocracy to keep food from the people . Lord Shaftesbury , however , and all the doctors around him , the patrons of institutions borrowed from the Continent , which , never gave its people

    vigorous health , entirely ignored the improvement which had sprung from freedom , and falsely ascribed to themselves and their new sanitary regulations , the results of allowing the industry of the multitude to be free . One sycophant went so far as to couple the increase of wages with the Factory Act . All the proceedings of the Association , in reference to the health of the community , betray such ignorance or utter forgetfulness of the most important event in our recent economical history and its consequences , that we are not surprised at Lord Shaftesbury wanting facts to make all other people take the same views as himself and his associates . He wants

    them to forget freedom as a means of welfare , and rely on regulations . One little bit of theory Lord Shaftesbury seems to have learnt from the press . It is not his " success , " not the " success of the Association j" it is emphatically ours to " have taught th £ people that to cry out ' a law , a law , ' on all occasions of a grievance felt , or-an evil detected , is to check private , individual and combined exertions , oftentimes to perpetuate find extend the mischief , and tp keep man from a wholesonie conviction , that in many matters ^ and especi ally such as these , they must be a

    law to themselves , " And how does the noble lord carry out our teaching , which ho has adopted ? Why , he is perpetually introducing new laws , which suit his own views and serve his own purposes , and still advocates a new law to " give tfower to the police to toko jury vagrant or begging child bpfore a magistrate , who , according to the evidence , might send the child to the workhouse , Pfl ^ any place wen tp receive it , and , make the ^ njjftffttt 1 iiwwfyWfl * o > ¦ $ & ' charge . ! He is ; the , Ww |» tociaH . QUt , " ft law , ft Uwr , " to promote * WS '» phnwxtnroDic > crotchetsand does not

    under-, i » 8 ^ w , ork ' acliijtjhlff owncaee on the theory he has * ' . It'is iwgotiitly necessary now to remind the

    1154 The Leadek [No. 499 Oct 15, 185ft. ...

    1154 THE LEADEK [ No . 499 Oct 15 , 185 ft . ^ —

    The Beauties Of Bribery.

    THE BEAUTIES OF BRIBERY .

    Meant To Have An End. Perhaps There Woul...

    meant to have an end . Perhaps there would be no great harm if it never had a beginning . Good , however , may come out of evil . Contact with , the hard world had hardened our belief in human virtue . After the perusal of the Gloucester and Wakefield inquiries our failing faith has revived again . To us , Utopia is no longer an empty name , Gloucester is the garden of Eden , and Wakefield is Paradise regained . What is there more beautiful than mutual benevolence ;

    Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to goodness . If so , a bribery commission must be a kind of gigantic hecatomb , offered on the shrine of offended virtue . If ever there was an " organised hypocrisy" it is a parliamentary inquiry into purity of election . The thief is set , not to catch a thief , but to hide a thief . We are "bound to confess that the task of non-detection is fulfilled most admirably . The inquiry is not only a story without an end , but it is a story also that was never

    what more noble than silent and unostentatious generosity ; what more endearing than simple , child-like confidence ? Henceforth virtue is no poet ' s dream , benevolence no visionary conception . No ; Gloucester is their dwelling place , and Wakefield their local habitation . Unto the pure we know already that all tilings are pure , Taut in the charmed atmosphere of these favoured spots the very impure themselves become innocent and guileless . Sir Robert Carden is chairman of a joint-stock bank , alderman of the City corporation , and a member of the

    an envelope on their tables , and are not surprised . They no more think of asking wliere it came from than Elijah did of questioning the ravens in the wilderness . They see nothing strange in men bringing down sovereigns under a feigned name , and take it for an ordinary trade precaution . The Saturnian age has returned again . Our sole regret is that its duration should be so short , and that v / e ourselves were not admitted within the sacred circle , or shared in the sanctifying influence . As , however , we have only watched the revival from , a distance our conversion is not , yet complete Something of the old man still remains within us , and a misplaced curiosity compels us to ask how it is that in no other occasion in life do zealous '

    philanthropists expend money on behalf of their friends without being solicited ; -without ever expecting or asking to be repaid ; and strangest of all without ever letting the objects of their benevolent charity even suspect the obligation conferred upon them . The stern law of fact suggests that the money spent at Wakefield and Gloucester must ultimately have come out of somebody ' s pocket . Whose pocket , we cannot guess ; of course , not the candidates ! Perhaps the money , like manna , had a miraculous origin . Marvellous , indeed , are the effects of Gloucester grace .

    and know it not . They touch pitch and are not defiled . Political Godivas , they are exposed to the public gaze , and strong in the innocence of purity , come forth chaste and stainless . A portion of their mantle descends on their adherents . Their friends and supporters are , for the time being , gif ted with a scarcely less degree of trustfulness and simplicity . They go about doing good . They help the needy and feed the hungry—voter . They go into shops , and ask the shopman to sell them what article he likes and name his own price . They write off old debts , and volunteer to compound with the creditors of " distressed electors . Their pockets are always open , and their right hand never knows what their lef t hand gives . They find £ o 00 notes lyino- in

    London Stock Exchange : one would suppose , a priori > that none of these positions were favourable for * tho cultivation of simple trustfulness and implicit confidence , Mr . Monk is the son of an English bishop , and the gon-in-rlaw of a Greek merchant ; yet notwithstanding , for guilelessness and simplicity , he might be the scion ofsoinc Greek Bpiscopas , in the days of primitive Christianity , when the church had all things in common , and when spiritual' peers , and country curates , and Greek loans had not yet arisen on the face of the earth . Mr . Price is a timber merchant , and yqt a life-long experience of charter-parties , and policies , and drafts against consignments , has taught him to trust all men at all times . Mr . Lcatham is a Manchester man , a mill-owner and cotton lord ,

    and brother-inrlaw to Mr . Bright—not the most charitable or unsuspicious of mortals—and yet the lesson Mr . Lcatham has learnt in life is one of faith , hope , and charity . All these gentlemen— -however unlike theh » careers may have been , however dissimilar their politics—are alikq in the simplicity of their character . Well have they followed the scriptural precept ; Being in the world , they are . out of the world . When they are at Gloucester , they do as Gloucester does . Elsewhere they may be shrewd , haid-hoadedmon , proud of their knowledge of the world . Here , and here alone , they exchange the wisdom of the serpent for the meekness of the dewe . They think no evil . They toehold vice

    The Cure Of Souls. The Bon Well Story Is...

    THE CURE OF SOULS . The Bon well story is not a pleasant episode in our social history . The admirers of Holywell-street literature may find the details of the case elsewhere , and may revel to their heart ' s content in extracting therefrom the utmost amount possible of suggestive impropriety . It is not our wish to enter upon the discussion of its merits . We should be heartily sorry to say anything unduly hard about the unfortunate clergyman , who is apparently the hero of this melancholy drama . Without , however , prejudging the case , or stating anything th at is not a matter of public notoriety , we wish to draw attention to one peculiar aspect of the case , which in our eyes is not the least important .

    The charge against Mr . Boimell , whether true or false , virtually amounts to this—that bcin | the incumbent of a London district church , and , we believe , a married man of mature yonrs , ho formed an illegitimate connexion with . : i young ludy of respectable position ; that he used the school-house attached to his church for a hiding-place for this lady when she was about to be confinod of a child of which he is the putative father ; and that after the death of the infant , whether caused by disease or culpable neglect , he had it buried surreptitiously , m order to avoid exposure . It would be mere folly to attempt drawing any conclusion from this story as to the lish clerg

    morality , or immorality , of the Eng y . There are black sheep in every flock , nnd oven admitting the worst features of the story , it is clearly one of the cases in which the public never know , or will know , enough of the rcnl facts , to decide on the amount of moral guilt attaching totne offence . The important consideration ia ' aboufctiio parish , not about the pastor . Even taking tne most favourable view of the case , it is almost impossible to suppose that Mix . Bonwoll ' a previous career can have Deen suqh as to entitle him to tne respect or sympathy of his parishioners . . 1 no tact that the parish schools have boon shut up tor a long period ,, owing to want of funds , is almost a conclusive proof of the contrary . Mr . Bonweli ,

    however , has remained undisturbed in ins pof » uu » - Even npw we believe that his incumbency remains untouched , and short of a voluutary resignation , or an actual conviotion by a civil court pf , some criminal offence , we doubt whether there is any

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 15, 1859, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_15101859/page/14/