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    Aw 23, 1856.] THE LEADER. 807

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    THE GENERAL POISONER. It would be worth ...

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    THE DULL DAYS. Evujst on the dullest day...

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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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    The Reformatory Pailliament. The People ...

    the court is only the domestic character revealed . Prom the beginning of the day until far into the next day there is a continual tumult—the effervescent sport of the boys—& tumult which no school hours suspend . When night comes on , before these puerile tumults cease , the drunkenness of the maturer class adds to the chaos . The language is not such as would instruct the hearer ; and the disorder of noise is occasionally varied with disorder of a more substantial kind .

    ] S ow it is possible that if tbe Buildings had been very substantially reformed , a thoroughly respectable class might have been called to them , and the non-respectable class might have been kept away by the force of extrusion—by the pre-occupation of the place ; such is not the case . " When the repaired houses are first visited , they have unquestionably a show of cheerfulness and cleanliness strikingly in contrast with the squalid houses usually belonging to the class . It would be very desirable if the exhibition of such renovated dwellings were examined by competent persons . The grand object is to get rid

    of the decayed wood-work , and of the vermin bred and harboured by the squalid and dilapidated state of the dwellings . To that end the walls should be thoroughly scraped , the old paper hangings should be entirely removed , and the old dado-skirting and other wood-work should be carried off to be replaced by Keen ' s or other cement . This would destroy the vermin and remove all harbour for them . It would perhaps cost a little more than the process actually employed , which consists in putting yellow ochre over the surface—an expedient superficial in every sense of the word .

    When the houses are first repaired they have unquestionably a beautified aspect , and they have been cleaned . Revisit them after they have once come into use , and you will find the old abuses existing as before—the drains choked with filth , unsluiced with water . And the want of water , indeed , gives occasion to many of the altercations that disturb the peace of such places . We can understand

    that this course may entail less outlay , and may therefore exhibit , with comparatively small subscription , a good balance in the annual account . We can suppose that there is some real improvement in the state of the houses . But when we arc asked , as wo have been asked , whether this is doing the work in a thorough style , undoubtedly we are not prepared to reply .

    Wo must hand tho question over to the Society . We must ask whether the builder ' s work has been thoroughly done ? "Whether , if tho best class of tenants cannot be called in to occupy tho wholo of tho spaco " reformed , " some protection should not bo afforded to those of a . better class who do begin the colonization of tho " low" neighbourhoods , by establishing some sort of beadledom to defend tho peace . ISTot long since , the leading journal , in an article entirely after the fashion , informed us what tho Society had done to improve tho neighbourhood : wo aro challenged to state what the Society has not done .

    Now tin ' s Society is extending its operations , and we would respectfully suggest that if it desires to maintain tho character which it claimed for itself , it will perform its work hereafter in a more thoroughgoing atyle . Its next operations , we understand , are to be directed to Church-passage in George-street —a very don of iniquity . Whon the present leases are out , this place , we hoar , is to be handed over to tho Wocioty to bo reformed . Perhaps before that time the Society will have reformed itself , and will bo ublo to execute that good at which ifc hits heretofore bo creditably aspired . Indeed , Gteorge-street

    might claim the attention of the Societ y ^ if it were prepared to realize the objects which it professes . Of course a Society so respectable , and intending to perform services so sterling , can neither expect nor wish , to escape criticism . It cannot intend to improve the dwellings of the poor only within Exeter Hall ; but of course it must desire to be judged by the dwellings of the poor where those dwellings exist , —to be judged by the resultsin Clark ' sbuildings or Church-passage .

    Aw 23, 1856.] The Leader. 807

    Aw 23 , 1856 . ] THE LEADER . 807

    The General Poisoner. It Would Be Worth ...

    THE GENERAL POISONER . It would be worth while to inquire whether any connexion exists between the defective intellect of the baker and the sulphate of copper he puts into his bread ? And whether that defect entitles him to mercy ? And what is to become of the population , supposing that to be the case ? It may not be very lamentable to eat potato starch with

    arrowroot , roasted wheat with coffee , sugar with cocoa , flour with mustard , or even turmeric with cayenne ; but to be dessicated with alum , dyed with red lead , choked with plaster of Paris , burnt with caustic lime , is more than can reasonably be endured . Take notice that according to the final Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons , we are poisoned , or cheated , as follows : —

    Arrowroot is mixed with potato and other starches . Bread with potatoes , plaster of Paris , alum , and sulphate of copper . Bottled fruits and vegetables with various salts of copper . Coffee with chicory ( adulterated ) , roasted wheat , beans , and mangold-wurzel . Chicory ( to adulterate the coffee ) with roasted wheat , carrots , sawdust , and Venetian red . Cocoa with arrowroot ( adulterated ) , potato-flour , sugar , chicory ( adulterated ) , and ferruginous red earths . Cayenne with ground rice and mustard husk , coloured with red lead , Venetian lead , and turmeric . Gin with graiua of paradise , sulphuric acid , and

    cayenne . Lard with potato-flour , mutton suet , alum , carbonate of soda , and caustic lime . Mustard with -wheat-flour and turmeric . Marmalade with apples or turnips . Porter and stout with water , sugar , treacle , salt , alum , cocculus indicus , grains of paradise , nux vouiica , and sulphuric acid .

    Pickles and preserves with salts of copper . Snuff with various chromates , red lead , lime , and powdered glass . Tobacco with water , sugar , rhubarb , and treacle . Vinegar with water , sugar , and sulphuric acid . Jalap with powdered wood . Opium with poppy capsules , wheat flour , powdered wood , and sand . Scaramony with wheat flour , chalk , resin , and sand .

    Confectionary with plaster of Paris , paint , with deadly pigments , and essential oils containing prussic acid . This is no longer suspected , but proved . But the Committee of tho House of Commons , for once reversing tho maxim that property is more valuable than litb , propose to exonerate the cheat , and to fine or imprison only the poisoner . Had they looked far into the nature and effect of laws , they would have perceived that dishonesty , legitimatized , becomes dangerous , and that to admit tho practice of adulteration is to encourage adulteration of all kinds , AYlicthcrhurtful to lifo or not . If you suffer tho petty tradesman to mix ground rieo with cayenne , is not that a

    temptation to the use of Venetian red as a colouring matter ? Supposo tho law Avcro to prohibit tho Venetian red and allow tho ground rice , would not the adulterator find out some unnoticed poison , such as those which havo been lately discovered in South America , and thus evade- tho index expurgaiorius of colouring ingredientw ? The only safe and intelligible principle is to insist that ; what is sold aa sugar shall bo sugar , and not plaster of Paris , and that to forgo a grcon tint in pickles Avith salts of copper ahull bo as illegal aa to utter a spurious bill of exchange . When is money obtained under false pretences , if not by tho dealer avIjo sells powdered

    carrots for chicory , flour for mustard , potato meal for cocoa ? Of course the sale of caustic lime for lard , and powdered glass for snuff , is a worse offence ; but it is the office of legislation to discriminate between the qualities of crime , to inflict on mere rogues the : " penalties of roguery , and on the more desperate adulterators , who traffic in poison , punishments adequate to the atrocity .. If the maxim , of

    lawholds good ,, that a roan intends the consequences of every deliberate act , why should the miscreant , who , taking advantage of the confidence of trade , introduces into your system a daily dose of red lead ,, or sends ground glass into your brain , or prepares you for the Asiatic cholera by infusions of verdigris , be treated as less than a felon or a misdemeanant of the worst order ? But ,

    that he should be punished severely is no reason why the " cogging knave" who gives the poor invalid potato starch for arrowroot , or decomposed turnip for marmalade , should not be punished at all . What we want is honesty , and the law that should tell the tradesman he may be dishonest , but only " to a certain extent , " would not be a very creditable addition to our statute-book .

    The Dull Days. Evujst On The Dullest Day...

    THE DULL DAYS . Evujst on the dullest day something may be said . " We can always say , How dull it is ! Yet that is not very interesting . " With Parliament dispersed , men silent , books few , everybody engaged in the serious pursuit of pleasure , publishers abroad , announcements held back , how many are forced into reminiscent moods , to cast up the accounts of the season . It is carefully recorded what bills were passed , and what were not passed j total amounts connected with trade and revenue are laid before us ; leaders count their parties , and parties criticize their leaders . Still the days are dull . There is no excitement anywhere , except that of some agonizing scene in a court of justice , or the miserable moralities of the scaffold . This week , one of our excellent contemporaries was furnished with a fictitious report of a trial in the Court of Exchequer , which is not sitting , and printed it at the cost of an apology . The whole case —names , dates , incidents—proved to be a fabrication ; but as they raised the curtain upon some of the equivocal dramas of modern life , the storv was too acceptable to be laid

    aside for authentication . The Court is not particularly active just now , so that Court correspondents have nothing to say , hut that Prince Albert went up Southampton Water in the Elfin , and then joined the Queen in the Fairy , and that afterwards they asked Lord Ernest Bruce to dinner . It is true that , a few days ago , the " authorities" Plymouth were " astounded " —did not tho Post say so ?—by a signal that tho royal yacht was in view , and that tho establishments were to be royally inspected . But such events have been few . We havo

    fallen back on comets , and count the meteors . We hear with interest that turnips are late , that wheat looks well , and that oats havo stood tho rain surprisingly . Some one , too , has come- to tho relief of the used-up , by inquiring why the Victoria Cross idea has faded with tho roses and lilies of 1856 . Tlioro is oven a disposition to forge bright sayings of Sydney Smith ; but the weather is against it . Nor has tho Krakon loomed this early autumn off the Norway coast .

    Of course wo have had the British Association , but that is over—the breakfasts , the presidential oration , the sectional tables , excursioning , tho dining , and promenading . A great philanthropic congress , howevor , i » held at Bristol , and one of tho happiest things connected with it is that JLord BnovaiiA . M has omitted a spark . Tho Em-

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 23, 1856, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_23081856/page/15/