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    686 The Saturday Analpt and Leader. 1%^ ...

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    "S. G, 0." AND GREENWICH HOSPITAL. A SSO...

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    KECENT FRENCH HISTORICAL WORKS. WHIL ST"...

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    The Bankruptcy Bill. Hphe Bankruptcy Bil...

    than in the matter of extravagant personal and household expenditure . The hundreds , if not thousands , of cases which the Times has to record iu the year of ruin , destruction , and dishonesty , owing- to this cause alone , oiightto prevent it , if honest , frpmtafcmg anything like an " easy " raw of debt , or talking fashionable twaddle about gentlemen . being ; made bankrupt whilst taking their ' little tour on the Continent y or finding brokers in the house , and carpets hanging put of the windows , after a few month ' s absence at Ryde or Scarborough . When writers are driven to such feeble instances as these , it shows us the weakness of the whole case , and that there is a great deal more will than argument in their objections . People don't like making up their housebooks , or settling their little accounts regularly , that is the long and short of it ; and tradesmen like to get them on their books , and keep them therebut only if they are worth it . Till you are known , few people are sharper ' than the Western ! tradesmen;—rwhere you are known , few people more lax . We know this from experience : and let any of our readers try the experiment . Order an article at a strange shop , it will be at home with the bill before you are , and the bearer will , in many cases , refuse to leave the former except on payment of the latter . So far from disapproving of this we . should be glad to see it , not general , but universal . It is the other , and equally common line of proceeding , that is objectionable , namely , that ' when your probable solvency and respectability are once ascertained , you are insensibly and , as we firmly believe intentionally , led into extravagances by the difficulty of getting in your bills . ' Why , only the other day , a lady of our acquaintance , the wife of ah officer in the navy , had to send , after numerous ordinary applications , a lawyer ' s letter to her milliner , in order to get in * her "little account . '' Only to mention one other case which recently came to our notice : the widow of a clergyman , in Oxfordshire , on the death of her husband , called in the accounts which ^ she was anxious to pay , and which she then bad the means of paying . Some were sent in and settled , and she believed that all stood clear , but subsequently , and at such intervals precisely as suited the ^ policy or t-onyenieiice of ; the creditors * other , and ^ unknown debts came tumbling in , till she scarcely knew when her liabilities were to be over - This evil is rife everywhere more orless throughput the obuntrv ; we have everywhere lamentations over insensible extravagance ^ but when a lancet is tpbe put to mischief ; ' vNp thank you" Sir 11 . Bethel is quite right inoffering , at anyTate ^ one form of remedy for the cunning of tradesmen ^ the carelessness of Jhe rich , and the shuffling and delays of those who overlive themselves , or swindle ; he thinks that a rough , trenchant ; ,-untemporising law would do us gopd , and put pur domestic affairs in a safer and sounder condition , and he is in the right of it . It is the duty of ~ every honest Englishman , whether it is Ms pleasure or no , to accommodate his '' life ' s form " to his ordinary means , and once , at least , in every half-year he ought to be able to make good his obligationsi or leave in some respectable hands the means of doing so . So one denies that there are pressing years and occasions where an extraordinary expenditure is forced upon an honest mail . Still the demands must be met ; , and there should be a retrenchment as soon as possible , down to the inexorably necessary . If ruin is to come ,, let it come without spreading . For people who have a thoroughly good character , undeniable securities , really Teasonable expectances , or' even" that known " honesty whictr ^ ilrn ^^^ l y ^ d ^ duet flwiu future ; what is imperiously called for in present expenditures , loans ai-e generally not ; , difficult to procure , and charitablesocieties would do well , on investigation , to relieve such eases . We fully believe we should all be in a far healthier state if no tradesman could claim his account after the expiration of a year . For every really honest man that such a measure would distress there arc fifty careless and unprincipled ones that it would curb . As for the poor , tliey should submit , to the same law as the rich ; but they are not , as it is , allowed much credit , and it is not out of mercy to them , but to be m the mode and curry favour with the fashionables , that this portion of Sir R . Beth el's Bill is disapproved by the ' Times .

    686 The Saturday Analpt And Leader. 1%^ ...

    686 The Saturday Analpt and Leader . 1 % ^ 23 , I 860 .

    "S. G, 0." And Greenwich Hospital. A Sso...

    "S . G , 0 . " AND GREENWICH HOSPITAL . A SSOCIATION hari strange links , and the owner of these XX three initials , and the reader in general may wonder what is the connection between " . " S . O . O . " and the Man-of-War ' s Man ' s retreat . . Ciceuo , in his book on the " Nature of the Gods , " say . s that the kitew and crows aro in the habit of peering sp itefully into each others' nests , and cracking the eggs ; so do Whigs and Tones , ho do High and Low Church " Parties ; " they delight to crack each other * ' eggs , or to proclaim them addled : " S . Cr . O . " is a great proclnimer of addled eggs , when he cannot crack them . He is occasionally truo and useful , occasionally troublesome and incorrect . Ono society , we believe , has already proved him wrong in scent . Also ho has a habit of sometimes assigning eggs to wrong birds , and liitely , becauso ho found a rotten charity he thought it must .. ™ lmvebceil-sat _ upQnJuy ^ mi _ e ^^ in no very courteous terms . " What does Lord Shaftesbuky know I about me P" or words equivalent . With all excuses for natural partv bitterness , this stylo of language is hardly gentloman-liko . ' S . ' G . , O . "has no busineapto challenge and complain against his own II notoriety * he knows that he is known , and spares no pains to make himself , * so , that is , as a public man ; as to private memoirs , the history ' of one "G . O ., " as it has appeared lately , is enough at a time . We wish both Lord Shaftesbury and "S . G . O , " long lives , and useful ones , each in their way , without that clashing on the stream of life which is exceedingly likely to prove " S . G . O . ' to be the weaker vessel of the two , though he assumes the position of wishing certain

    " noblemen '' to be prosecuted as impostors . But summa dtesventet for both of them ; and if it is vouchsafed tp the spnJs . of the departed to view their own funeral honours , we predict , that ,, for any good they have each done , Lord Shaetesbubt will be found to be a good deal the , better " known" of the two . " S , GLO , . may . npt " know" what we believe we are quite right in asserting , that . Lord Shaftesbuet never gives his name without giving h « s money , and that consequently he does not give the former without ; due investigation . His name , it seems , ' was inserted by a Mutual Benevolence Association , " and "S . G . O . " without exercising the courtesy of inquiring whether the name was used justifiably , recommends a certain nobleman to the notice of the police courts . ^ It is to be desired that every party should look thoroughly into what they themselves consider unexceptionable _ chanties . If evangelical secretaries are in any cases overpaid , and expenditure not clearly and satisfactorily accounted for in these associations , they are far from being the only offenders , The idea of rummaging into high-and-dry , orthodox , old-fashioned charities of royal or ancient foundation , never or rarely occurs to the likeof ,, S . G . O ., as it noblemen and gentlemen , guardians and governors could not now and then turn a penny or perform an act rather more in their own interest than that of the charity with whose funds they are intrusted . When Low Churchism was a thing almost unknown in England , the jobbing with and malappropriation of old charities and fQundations was notorious and universal ; as Southet says in one of his Quarterly Review Essavs : " Let the reader examine into the state of the charitable foundations over the kingdom , where the same number of poor persons are now maintained in the same manner as when the Institutions were endowed centuries ago , and the increase of the rents—which in some places is twenty , fifty , and even a hundred fold—is swallowed up by chaplains and trustees . " How much time did it require to rectify even one of these , Dulwich Hospital ! Even Lord Buocgham has not swept quite clean . Where one pound has been mal-apprppriated in Low Church Charities , or Missionary Societies , we will undertake to say that the old high-¦' ¦ arid-dry have , directly andmdirectly , misused a ^ id mis-appropriated a hundred ¦•; ' ¦ but ^ "S . G , O . " and- 'his . ^ chque have no notion of swindhng or hvpocrisy , except , as it would seem > in connection ^ with Exeter Hall , and a nobleman who has taken personal trouble m sounding the depth of misery in this city , when many , of those who abuse him were only talking about it ; CarCyi ^ who is certainly not an evangelical , but who , to use /•¦ his . own language , " knows a man when he seeshim , '' says , " Honour-: to the name ofAshley , that faithful Abdieij , " and we-echo the praise gladly . Greenwich Hospital is one of our fine old-fashioned orthodox institutions , and " S . GO . " prbbahl y would have considered it a kind of profanity to pry into its proceedings ; but its management has been so bad that the very Admiralty them " Shame ¦¦!' . If any of our coritemporaries wish to iriake play upon the subject , we recommend them to Lord Ekskine ' s famous speech on its viUanous maladmmistration in the time of Lord Sandwich , in 1779 , when he dilated upon the " clerks of clerks in an endless subordination of idleness , " arid when he told the Court that" the hospital might as well have been under the tuition of the fixed stairs as so many illustrious persons in difterent artd distant departments . " We have given too much space to ' : ' S . G . 0 , " to dwell on the affairs of Greenwich -Hospital , whichT-nlcralmOTtrall ^^ ¦¦ . ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦¦ as we have often shown , only a re-appearance for those who are familiar with the historyof the past . Our only comment is , ithat pur hospital for retired sailors has been waiting for thorough reform nearly a century , if we date only from Iiord Ekskine ' s siieech ? how much " longer , it might be arduous to inquire .

    Kecent French Historical Works. Whil St"...

    KECENT FRENCH HISTORICAL WORKS . WHIL ST " Louis XIV ., deceived by the evil suggestion * of Madame de Maintenon , Louvois , and the Jesuils . waa giving full play to his iiiribitioua designs , and hurrying on France Lo the brink of tliw precipice , a powerful opposition Itnd » naen witliin the very Paluce of Versailles ; umler the shadow of ; the throue , schemes we reprepared for tlie purpose of upsetting the entire system of despotism which the Cardinal tie Richelieu liacl organised and bequeathed to le Grand Monarque . The centre of the opposition , the man » roun ( lwl > oin the French Liberulwot tho Reventeentli century gathered tog « ther , was the fumoiis Due tie Bourgogno , so eloquently pourtrayed by Saint Simon , nna who , if he had been spare * I to reign , would most probably liave nnticipated the greut national movement of 1789 , and prevented altogether the terrible catastrophe of 1793 . The Dues de BeauviIIiers and < le Chevreuae , Feuelon , Archbishop of Cambray , and Saint Simon himself were the leading men in the movoment we have just been alluding to ; an opposition , the programme ot which Rtill exists in that benutiful prose poem , " Telemaque —a work , which , containing the princi p les of the most enlightenea form of government , faintly concealed under the mask of "O * " ! " ' conUl scarcely escape the notice of a prince like Louih XIV . " ^ VlIiiecTwrili tlTe " fojnnrcnaplaminfi * lujr & bet ~ e 8 priFchi 7 ? Wtquef F « n « lo « wiis Umalied to lila diocese ; but this measure provea inefTrictunl , becauso the dissatisfaction had become universal uml the prelate , in describing the happiness <> f Salensnm , had ouly oxi > ressed the feelings , the longings , ot tne whole of IVuuce . Tho Comte do BoulainvUliera , «» a AM > 6 de Saint Pierre , 'drew up several schemes for tne anticipated reform : the Dauphin himaolf had a desk ; full oi MS . memoirs on the finances , the administration , the magistracy ; and it is well known that the father of the unfortunate Louia XVI . had discovered , and caused lo be copied , another important

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 28, 1860, page 6, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_28071860/page/6/