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    296 «»e &$ai!$V. [Saturday,

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    WHOLESALE AGGRESSION ON THE RIGHT OF WAY...

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    QUARREL OVBR THE TALBOT CASE. Lkt the Ch...

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    ESSEX ANARCHY AND YORKSHIRE ORGANIZATION...

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    Alas, Pooh Italy ! Theuk Are Now, By The...

    God ' s justice or Providence ? Well may the brutified populace scourge tbeir saints , their idols . In Heaven as on earth , they have no idea of power , except from the evil it inflicts . What remains to them but , in the terrible words of the old Patriarch , to " curse God and die ?"

    296 «»E &$Ai!$V. [Saturday,

    296 «» e & $ ai ! $ V . [ Saturday ,

    Wholesale Aggression On The Right Of Way...

    WHOLESALE AGGRESSION ON THE RIGHT OF WAY AT HORNSEY . The most sweeping attack ever made upon the public ways and footpaths about London has just been formally opened in Parliament , but only , we are convinced , to fail . Englishmen have very generally , but not less naturally and properly , shown jealousy at any interference with the right of way ; and especially has that been the case round London , where the right is at once most valuable and most threatened . The defence , if vigorous and persevering , has usually been successful , and many

    a pathway preserved to the public can attest the spirit and obstinacy of some local champion . The way through Richmond-park has more than once been threatened , in vain . Hampstead-heath has been defended against proprietary encroachments . That which has been denied , however , to the Crown , or to a Lord of the Manor , is now attempted in a sweeping fashion by a mere trading interest , which has no prerogative , no tradition , no special claim upon the deference of the public . ' The Great Northern Railway Company has hitherto been bound to make proper and safe

    footpaths over or under its railroads , where the rail crosses established ways ; but , to avoid that expense , the Company has introduced a bill into Parliament , this session , for shutting up established ways in such cases . The bill has excited the greatest interest amongst the inhabitants of Hornsey , whose rights are more immediately at stake ; but , of course , if the Northern Company were to succeed , other companies would follow the convenient example : the whole kingdom , therefore , is interested in a measure which threatens local rights throughout the country .

    The bill modestly recites , that doubts have arisen whether the Company can stop up footpaths and extinguish rights of way across stations and works . There are no such doubts ; the bill starts with reciting the thing which is not . It proceeds , however , to enact , that the Company shall be at liberty to extinguish rights of way and stop up footpaths which would cross the line ; and it enumerates various ways and paths thus destined for extinction . If the recital is false , and the enactment arbitrary , the pretext is not less ridiculous : it is humanely alleged , that the footpaths are productive of great danger to the public ; in total forgetfulness of the fact , that the danger arises , not from the

    path , hut from the railway ! It is not paths that come upon you , unaware , with all the destructive force of steam . The harmless path , moreover , was there before the railway was thought of ; and the law provides for the public safety by requiring certain modes of carrying the path over or under the railway , with appeals to magistrates in doubtful cases . The Company it seems , has neither obeyed the law nor appealed to the magistrates for permission to stop up paths ; but has taken the shorter cut of building straight across , and then sending a bill to Parliament with a false recital and an arbitrary enactment to stop up the paths which the railway has rendered dangerous .

    The pariah in vestry assembled has appointed a committee to vindicate the public rights ; and that committee has extensively circulated a printed statement of the case . The aggression is felt to be the more grievous , since the paths which are threatened with stoppage lead close to the intended new Park . Degenerate as the House of Commons may be , it is scarcely possible that it can refuse to throw out the bill on a plain statement of the facts ; but if it should be so corrupt— " thank God there is a House of Lords , " and the Hornsey committee will resort to that Chamber which has not quite forgotten to defend the ancient ways .

    Quarrel Ovbr The Talbot Case. Lkt The Ch...

    QUARREL OVBR THE TALBOT CASE . Lkt the Church of England go , the Bishop of Oxford , and then " the war of all sects , " followed by " the end q ( all religion . " We may demur to the philosoph y or even the piety which can auppoae it possible thtt the Eternal Catholic Faith can be destroyed , because human institutions , shaped for its expression in ft particular ago and a particular country , ms > y pass away . But there is nevertheless a deep truth in the warning . Neither institution !* nor the mind of man can fail to suffer from the animosities which defenders of the Church

    of England have been so madl y fomenting . The Bishop of Oxford may be a wily ecclesiastic ; he may have his objects in shielding Puseyism ; but it is unquestionably true that every blow which tells against the Roman Catholic Church shakes institutions , shakes the Church of England ; true that the dissensions of Catholic and Protestant damage Christianity ; that the evil speaking of creed against creed abates for a time the influence of religion . The papers are full of Miss Talbot ' s case . The Roman Catholic daughter of a Roman Catholic father , heiress of a large fortune , is placed by her guardian , with the assent of the Lord Chancellor , to reside in a convent . The tenure of her lodging ,

    her relations with the Abbess , her own ultimate intentions , become the subject of animated discussion in newspaper and Parliament ; her stepfather happens to be a Protestant , a Whig , a Berkeley , a supporter of Lord John ' s Anti-Papal Bill , and a petitioner in Chancery ; and he becomes , not only eloquent himself , but the cause of eloquence in others , on behalf of the young lady , her destiny , and her £ 80 , 000 . In the heat of shamming discussion raised by this sham aggression , conventual life in England is discussed as if the seclusion were guarded by the absolute power and the live burial of Papacy in its prime ; so openly does bigotry incite men to forget time and country .

    But the discussion goes far beyond the position of Miss Talbot . Every kind of scandal is fished out . In the Times " Tlar ^ " endeavours to get up a case to establish the impossible notion that Lord Chancellor Truro had winked at Miss Talbot ' s sacrifice . " O . H . F . " rakes up " a little anecdote of atrocious pillage and cruelty , " in Berne , by which Clara Bafond was consigned to a convent and madness , with the sacrifice of £ 12 , 000 in property . " Anti-Humbug" calls to mind that Mademoiselle Heldivier , daughter of the Charged'Affaires at Turin , was decoyed from her family . And in Parliament , Mr . Henry Drummond roundly and sweepingly

    asserts that convents are " brothels" ! Speakers who thus confound the volunteer conventual life of England , necessarily a picked society , with the incidents of countries where conventual life is enforced , and is not supplied by a selected society , — those who cast about firebrands of scandal which every man who can think tttrjee knows to be false , and which provoke an ftfe # aediflte revulsion of feeling against the speaker , —fail % o strike the institution which they would assail ; but if their blow is not spent in air , they do strike where they would defend . It is not Catholics alone that grasp at property : do we not hear of Church extensions ? Have we had

    no " Lady Hewley ' s charities " ? Is the hand that is so rash at casting stones without sin ? When Mr . Henry Drummond asserts , as of his own knowledge , that convents are houses of ill fame , are we not charitably to conjecture that the wanderings of his indiscreet years have happened so long ago as to make his memory miscall some of the places which he has visited ? Or that in some youthful experience he underwent a ludicrous hoax as to the ladiea who were passed off for nuns ? Is it not better to let him off with this conjecture , than to suppose that uncharity and vileness of language are essential traits of Evangelical Protestantism ?

    Dr . Wilberforce calls to mind that the Romanizing clergymen who are the real objects of assault , represent the same type of High Churchmen who preserve the continuity of the Church of England through the dangers of Puritanism ; which is true . Cast away the Puseyism at one end , with the Bennetts and Dodsworths , and the Puritanism at the other end , with the Baptist Noels and ( jorhams , and the Platonism at the heart , and what is left of

    the Church of England ? On the other hand , let the Church of England pull its sister Church to pieces , and it will but teach to Dissent how churches can be undone ; let Dissent pull down the Church of England , and it will but illustrate to the worldly and the sceptical how much of churches is made by hands . It seems to us that none of the parties engaged in this theological contest can gain u victory without drawing upon their own heads an overwhelming Samsonian defeat . Thin destructive process may be a means , like all other conflicts , of promoting ultimate truth ; but conflict is not necessary to truth , nor the moat direct path to it . On the contrary , there is now a healthier Hpirit abroad , which has gradually been developing the truth that is in every Church j a developetnent that this contest disturbs . A wiser piety would look at home , where it has the fullest influence to redress abuses , The pious man will Know that the

    exertions which only provoke resistance , anger , and the standing by abuses in a Church to which he is alien , may fetch out the true spirit which is in his own . We assert that throughout this conflict , truth and truth alone is absolutely safe j but we transitory beings it is that suffer from the obscuration while the conflict lasts ; as existence may be darkened to the insect of a day , by the cloud which ultimately melts before the resistless power of the sun .

    Essex Anarchy And Yorkshire Organization...

    ESSEX ANARCHY AND YORKSHIRE ORGANIZATION . The labour question is becoming complicated with the practical working of the Poor-law , in a mode which will render impossible much longer delay of some attempt to grapple with it . Scarcely a week passes , without striking evidence that whole classes of the labouring population are undergoing a process of being beaten down to the level of pauperism ; at which low level they are met by a law that does not welcome them , but is expressly framed to " repel" them . Inasmuch , however , as the law cannot repel whole classes , it always breaks down under extensive pressure ; as it did most signally at Leicester , and has done more recently at Carlisle . Its Managers then resort to some exceptional device , some wholesale vexatious " labour test , " which exasperates the paupers and produces either contumacy or despair ; unhealthy moods that lead to anything but independent labour . This week the Barham rioters are to be tried , and our Saturday postscript will probably announce the result . The unhappy ringleaders may be punished , though they are far less to blame , than a system which sends a hundred and twenty ablebodied men to waste their time in a workhouse . While the trial of these men is pending , the Essex farmers , following up the advice o ( Mr . John Ellman in Sussex , and the conduct of the farmers in Suffolk , are announcing to their labourers , by " proclamation , " that they cannot pay the rate of wages hitherto current ; so that the pauperizing process is spreading like the waters over the face of Essex ; agricultural labour will be converted into pauper idleness a « d cast from the fields into the workhouse , there to press upon a law framed not to deal with such a state of things . We have more than one sign that the labourers in Wiltshire , are in a condition even more than usually hard , eren more than usually discontented . It may 'be " practical" to let things take their course ; but unquestionably it is bringing the labour question irito ^ jpeh a mess that it is likely soon to be snatched ouf of the hands of practical men , so called , by those who know how to deal with human beings and set human hands to their proper use . Pragmatical advocates of the * iew poor law contend that any attempt to find reproductive employment for ablebodied paupers will end in disappointment , and in proof of this they quote many failures which have taken place . But why not look rather at the successful experiments which have been made in various quarters and endeavour to imitate them . Let them takefor examplethe very successful

    , , experiment at Farnley Tyas , near Huddersfield . This was an attempt to find work for unemp loyed workmen during the manufacturing depression of 1842 , at such a rate of remuneration as would enable men with families to maintain themselves without aid from the rates . A committee of the inhabitants of the township was accordingly formed , and they agreed to rent , for five years , a plot of land belonging to the Earl of Dartmouth , five acres in extent , and overgrown with furze : —

    " This they net to work to reclaim , paying the labouriTB ( out of a grant of £ 40 which they had obtained from the Manufacturers' lie ] it-f Fund ) at the rate of is . per day , except those who took piece work . As l Jj ey reclaimed they cultivated ; and at the expiration of five yenrs , when the possession of the land was relinquished , they had not only improved the value of the land fro . f > H . to 36 s . an acre , but they were enabled to deposit in the bank a sum equal to the amount of the grant from the Ilelief Committee for use at a future emergency . We should have wished rather more information regarding the increased value <> t the land . Here were five acres to which an additional value of £ 7 10 s . per annum had

    been given by the hard toil of these poor men . Now , if this was handed over to the k < ir * Dartmouth at the end of the five years without his giving anything for it , wo may consider that the committee made him a preuent of something like £ 200 , that being about the value of the improved rental of thirty yearn * purchaHe . If the committee could have bought the land in its rough atato , at thirty years' purchase , all , Una additional value would have beon theirs . But , unfortunatel y , the

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 29, 1851, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_29031851/page/12/