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Leader (1850-1860), 24th March 1860, Edition 2 of 2, Page 7, COMMERCIAL MORALITY. TTURLY Dr. Johnson,...

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      Principle Or Presumption ? Leading/Journ...

      ¦ ciples defended in every age . Parliamentary Reform proceeds on the acknowledgment that principle has been violated . JLhe multitude were discontented in 1830 , and the-privileged few , convinced of the justice of their claims , then by a compromise conceded much to them . The concession has been followed by almost wonderful improvements in the spirit of our legislation , by more contentment in the people , improve d conduct , and increased welfare . It is now again admitted by the leading politicians of both parties that the concession did not go far enough , and that the claims of the multitude for an additional share of the representation are well founded . T ' rbm further concessions , similar and greater benefits will probably ensue . This is an almost universal opinion . How the concession is to be carried into effect , will be decided by the strength of parties , and the debates in Parliament : but to make it has become indispensable .

      Parliament , we know , is guided by forms and traditions to ¦ which every measure must conform . The exact shape into which it is actually forged always depends oh circumstances foreign to its merits , such as the compromises of politicians and parties . What Parliament has once done , it is likely to do again , and having conceded a £ 10 household suffrage to towns , it will probably be ready to concede it to counties . Though such a measure is not consistent with any abstract principle , it is likely as a practical result to become a law . What will be its consequences ultimately no man can foretell . Parliament so encumbers its measures with words that it conceals their

      sxibstance , and hinders the formation of rational opinions concerning their effects . Nor can they be separated from the consequences of an increase or decrease of national growth , which continually alters the relations of property and the power of classes . To provide for these by any law , or to adjust any law to their evervarying proportions , so that no class shall ever find any discrepancy between its claims and- the law regulating representation , is a hopeless undertaking . This project , however , is entertained by those who are now scheming- for " practical results , " and describe their own " presumptions" as the essence of deliberate thought , far superior to the plain and certain dictates of principle . ... . . ¦ ¦ .

      March 24, 1860.} The Leader And Saturday...

      March 24 , 1860 . } The Leader and Saturday Analyst . 275

      Commercial Morality. Tturly Dr. Johnson,...

      COMMERCIAL MORALITY . TTURLY Dr . Johnson , in one of his patronising noted on Xj Shakspeee ' s Henry XV ., goes out of lii . s way to lament the costermonger times , " when the prevalence of trade Jtas produced that meanness that rates the merit of every tiling l > y money . " How fur the son of tiie hypociiondriacal bookseller of LiehHeld had a -right to decry trade as the chief business and object of a nation we will not inquire , but we might venture to suggest that the London philosopher ' s pungent remark was more suitable to the present than the past time ; not , however , that we are Quixotic enough to break our lances against popular windmills ; we do not wish to attack the morality of trade as it might be , but . to condemn commercial morality as it is . . ¦ ' ¦ . ¦

      There can be no longer a doubt , whether the ideal be high or low , that trade is now the recognised mission of England , as the philosophical cant of the day has it , just as that of Ifcome was conquest , and of Greece civilization ; the nations who see us from the outwjde see us all as working bees with commerce for the great purpose of our lives . According to our enemies , ^ ye light , make treaties , conquer or make peace , all with reference to trade arid trade alone 5 as the bird flies and the fish swims , the Englishman trades . As our commerce is impersonal , and has lio pulse tbitt can be felt , it is only indirectly that we are ever enabled ^ to ascertain the state of its moral health , and it is from stray paragraphs in papers that we sometimes clean symptoms of our internal disease .

      The other day , sa 5 's a recent Birmingham paper , a wholesale dealer from London came into a large button house in the former city , and on a member of the firm , who knew him well , offering him his hand , he angrily refused it , and threw down a parcel of buttons , which he . accused the Birminghmn tradesmen of selling to others at a lower price than they did % o him . The firm , astonished at the elWge , examined the parcel of buttons , and found the paper wrappor , the stamp , the trade escutcheon- —everything , the same as their own j but on pulling the buttons to pieces they were discovered to be internally of bad construction , though so close in their imitation that their own workmen were at first deceived . They were forged buttons , tliftt had been introduced into the market , in delianco of all

      honesty and honour , to the immense loss of the Birmingham firm . Wo have all heard complaints of the trioka of retail traders ; but surely if the manufacturers themselves are to venture on doinga like this , wo shall soon see commerce tainted nt tho vovy source . Wo need ' some modern Abistotik to write a book of ethics for modern traders , for the short lino in the Decalogue devoted to their use , it seems , scarcely comes homp to thorn sufficiently . It ia possible that wo shall oven havo to wish that Turkish laws wore , our laws—that lame ducks could bo caught up suddenly and , bastinadoed in Cupel Oouvt , or that the stately pillory could bo once more fitted up oppoBito the Exchange To seo a cheating- Whitdohapol baker ' s eau * nailed to his shop door for soiling bone lluuv to the poor , would startle but not pain us . Will there corno u timo when trade gote so corrupt , so netted up with tvioks and liee—such a labyrinth

      of crooked paths , that the honest man will rather brave the firedamp in a coal mine , the wild sea at the fiercest , or whale fishing among the closing white teeth of the iceberg's jaws , than be an English merchant ? , . . ' . ' v .- — The small disclosures of trade deceptions are perpetual . Now it is the universal corruption of food that is being discussed ; now the extravagant profit of some special trade ; now a general lamentation as to the hastiness and flitnsiness' with which things are made . Everywhere you meet with honest tradesmen who lament the tricks of trade , and complain that they are inextricably entangled in immoralities which have grown habitual .

      Nor is the degradation confined altogether to the higher classes connected with trade ^ its black foots stretch to the lowest strata of workmen . Neglected by capital , and ill-used , the workman seems often to think no means however base by which he can recover or assert his rights . A Sheffield paper of a few days ago , whi le exulting in the thriving trade driven by the fabricators of steel hoops for crinoline , and in thS return to a sane mind by th e awl Made makers who bad , been on the strike , relates ^ the ^ following occurrence , which seems to us of the most alarming significancy , as showing , in large manufacturing towns , the passionate violence of ignorant selfishness , when imagining itself to be injured by capital equally selfish , though , perhaps , more enlightened ^ of a wider mental vision : —A manufacturer of the cutlers' town

      aforementioned has lately invented a machine for grinding saws , by which we imagine a machine that slices out , the thin plates of steel , polishes their surfaces , and bites their edges into teeth . This machine has excited , since its erection , the horror and indignation of the grinders . It h > s been talked of at artisans ' clubs as if it were a Hydra that fed on children ; as if the oil that lubricated its cogs and wheels were mixed with murdered women's blood . Those who it was to deprive of labour , to starve and pinch arid render homeless , grew desperate . The ., machine would destroy them t » r they must destitoy it . How were they , grown old , with unpliable minds and stubborn fingers , to retrace their lives arid learn new trades P Who was to feed their wives and children while they learned thuse trades P Can we wonder that , inciting each other ; ,

      the more violent forcing the-weaker , they tried every means to blow up and crush aiid destroy that machine ?—that secret clubs of angry riieri put their heads together to toss that monster machine into the bottomless pit , from whence they swore the fiend had sent it , to drive poor , innocent , industrious men to penury , temptation , and crime ? Threatening letters reached the speculative / triumphant master , that if he did hot stop his new-fangled machine , silent bullets from air-guns would reach him some morning as he sat at breakfast with his children ; that shelfs might be thrown in at the window , or that accidental fires might some day soon break out in his workshop .

      At first be disregarded them , but the threats grew blacker and darker ; life became a misery to him . Death ' s hollow face stared at him between the fire bars , through the blinds , between the window curtains , from behind every opening door . He looked back with regret to the happy days of quieter and slower profit . lie issued , at last , a reluctant notice to the scowling workmen that he would remove the machine arid resume the old ¦ grin dings byhand . The workmen tyrants— - ^ the intolerant shouters for toleration— -the manly , generous , English workmen , ( for once the advocates of assassination and terrorism- —tlie would-be ribbonmen and murderers , ) had triumphed .

      Is this the conduct that kind and considerate masters should receive from their workpeople P Is the ojd blindness that made our rural mobs break to pieces threshing , machines and eurso steam never to cease in England ? Ifc was this wild conservatism that made watermen hate coaches when they were fifat started , coachmen hate railways , and bowmen arquebuses . It is that wicked hatred for what is new and better that has always been the curse of the world and tho-chief barrier to its improvement . But the workmen , too , have thoir suffering * and wrongs , us the recent facts elicited about the children employed I . iy the Bolton bleachers prove inqontestably . We do not like to seu legislators officious or interfering with self-government , but we do think that whilst trade is so greedy arid selfish and unhesitating as it is , that some chock must bo found to the cupidity of the inflatory who vuly on' the poverty and necessities of the children ; feet blood-raw ; fingers bleeding and sore— -labour , even for children , unduly prolonged , to

      the destruction of future body and mind , insufficient wlcep , arc evils which must npt be allowed to exist . It never must bo that popular feeling shall view every great manufacturer ' s palace an built in a vast churchyard where his victims alcep ; or that those prints and stuffs shall go forth to the world bearing stamps of . blood on every bale . Let it not bo said that if every yurd of cotton Mimchestor produced wore a shroud , it would not furuiuh sufficient for the poor children its groat juggernaut mills have ground to death . Lot it not bo that some future Hatirint , sterner limn Hogarth :, and fiercer than Gill » ay , shall havo to depict a cannibal factory at work , the horrors of-which , shall vio with the Hell Dreams of Dante , and tho fantastic purgatories of that errant genius , Guotavio Dojtrc . Lot him not show us tho sleek , " proaporouH Domhky of oommeroe , watching smilingly tho vast world of wheels spin round , grinding live children to gory pulp ; nor represent lmlf '« ei'Uahed men and women drawn pub in torture on the broad quivering fjtrnps , or flattened in tho huge cylinders ; whilo shrouded shapes Joed tho lioppors and shoot'the ahuttles , and akoleton linnde sorb tho refuse and twist thp fragile threads with horrible indjilbrojico . Wo had hoped that tho day for this oruol rapacity nnd godlesfl indifforonco tp human Buttering 1 hud pasflod . To sorno timorous

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), March 24, 1860, page 7, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24031860/page/7/