Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 11th August 1855, Edition 1 of 2, Page 774, RIGHTS OF EMPLOYE!* AND EMPLOYED. The Re...

Page 774
Page 18
18 of 24

On this page

  • Text (2)
  • Transcript

    • 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.

      Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

      Four Novels. A Lobt Love. By Aahfonl Owe...

      parcel of black , canting , hypocrit . oal rascals , " and as " silly , impertinent fellows , " who presumed to dictate to the crown . When the queen -watly urged him to treat the bishops more courteously , lie exclaimed : " I JnT « ck to death of all this foolish stuft , and wish , with all my heart , that ifeedevil mar take all your bishops , and the devil take your minister , and the devil take the parliament , and the devil take the whole island , provided I can set out of it and go to Hanover . " It may be remarked , parentheticaUy that his gracious Majesty ' s motive for wishing to go to Hanover at lihat precise moment was to visit a German mistress whom he had picked up inthe preceding year . However , the queen was not a whit behind her husband in coarseness of expression . Speaking of her son Frederick , Prince of Wales , she said to Lord Hervey , " My dear lord , I will give it you under my hand , if you have any fear of my relapsing , that my dear first-born is the greatest ass , and the greatest liar , and the greatest canaille , and the

      greatest beast in the whole world , and that I most heartily wish he was out % { it I" The king continued to treat him in much the same strain , adding courteously , that he had often asked the queen , if the beast Avere his son . At another time Caroline made use of " a very homely and not a very " nice illustration , to show the absurdity of losing an end by foolishly neglecting the proper means . ' If a handkerchief lay before me , ' said she , * smd I felt I had a dirty nose , my good Connt Kiuski , do you think I should beckon the handkerchief to come to me , or stoop to take it up ? ' " Equal ly * choice was her remark to Dr . Sherlock , whom she accused of having twice Allowed himself to be the dupe of the Bishop of London . " How , " « sked him , " < buld he be blind and weak enough to be running his nose into another ' s dirt again ? " And the filthy letters she was in the habit of

      constantly receiving from the Duchess of Orleans , prove that her mind must have been" desperately tainted , even though she may have refrained from . any actual immorality . Her royal consort , indeed , had vices enough for -both , and made no secret of them even to his own wife . During his absence in = Germany in 1733 , he prevailed upon " a young married German lady , named Walmoden , to leave her husband , for the small consideration of a ^ thousand ducats . Not the smallest incident which marked the progress of this infamous connexion was concealed by the husband from his wife . He wrote at length minute details of the person of the new mistress , for whom - & e bespoke the love of his own vrife ! " With still greater effrontery , and * very- shortly after the announcement of his last bonne fortune , the royal beast nrrote to Caroline , requesting her to invite the Prince and Princess of ! BIodena to visit England .

      She -was the younger daughter of the Regent Duke of Orleans . . The reasons which iJxe king gave to his wife for the request which he had made with respect to this lady was (« c ) , that he had understood the latter was by no means particular as to what quarter or . person she received homage from , and he had the greatest inclination imaginable to pay bis addresses to a daughter of the late Regent of France . " Un - . plaisir , " -he said—for this German husband wrote even to his German wife in French—<( que je suis sftr , ma cfc & re Caroline , vons serez bien aise de nie procurer , quand jo vona dis combien je le soubaite . " During a subsequent pilgrimage to the shrine of the Walmoden , which vras protracted to an unseasonable length , the following pasquinade was Affixed to the walls of St . James ' s Palace : — 'Lost or strayed , out of this house , a man -who has left o . ¦ wife and six children on the parish . Whoever -will give any tidings of him to the churchwardens of St . . James ' s-parish , so as he may be got again , shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward . N ; B . This reward will'not be increased , nobody judging him to deserve a

      Krovm . The king ' s « matrreness seems to have amounted almost to a mania . ¦ When * Caroline-was « t the point of death , ahe strongly recommended him to laarry again . Tha n king , overcome , or seemiirgly overcome , at the idea of being a widower , burst into-a flood of teaTS . The queen renewed her injunctions , that after her decease ho should take a second wife . He Bobbed aloud , but amid his sobbing he suggested an sopinion , that he thought that rather than take another wife , be -would maintain a ^ distress or two . " JBh , non Dieu , " exclaimed Caroline , " the one does not prevent ; the other ! Ceia riempiche pas /" Our author is reduced to this melancholy conclusion : —

      Our great-grandfathers and grandmothers must have been a terribly wicked race , sfor I hold it impossible for a people generally to bo virtuous when the court and nobiiity set them an example of vice . Such vices are often the weed out of which spring republics ; and the lust of Tarquin built the Commonwealth of Home . Nor must it ibeset down that Caroline was blameless . She shared the vices in which her husband indulged , by favouring the indulgence . . . Her ground of action was not founded on virtuous principles . . She sanctioned , nay promoted , the vicious "way of life followed by her consort , merely that she might exercise more power politically and personally . . . Actually , she had as little regard for married faith as the king himself . . . The result was that the king was the head of a household , and yet of such umcle & nness and infamy , as would make a man now an outcust from society .

      , In truth , > the state of society must have been most disreputable when even under the more severe rule of George III . the Archbishop of Canter-Ibury drew down upon himself the royal displeasure for indulging too freely in mundane pleasures . The clerg y generally were held in disrepute , andshall we say consequently ?—the laity were such that atone of Queen Charlotte's drawing-rooms the Prince of Wales was nearly robbed of the diamond-studded guard of his sword . His Royal Highness feeling a sudden pull , looked down and obaerved that " the diamond guard of the weapon ¦ was broken , off , but it remained suspended by a small piece of-wire , the elasticity of which'had prevented it from breaking" : — Such attempts were common enough in the great gallery at "Versailles in the time of Louis XIV ., and even acts of . greater felony than this ; for not only were purses tout from the person , but , on one occasion , after a grand rkmion in tho gallery , tho whole of the costly hangings were swept off tho same night by a thief , too exalted for tho king to bo willing to punish him ii » ho deserved .

      iHad Virgil lived in these times he ¦ would have been at no loss for un an swer to hia inquiry , Quid doraini iadent , j audent cum talia furea ? though he might have been induced to violate the laws of metro by ex changing tfae-Eelative positions of " masters" and " servants . "

      The length of our previous quotations renders it impossible for us to accompany Dr . Doran through the long dreary life of Queen Charlotte , or tho troubled career of the erring but injured Caroline of Brunswick . And this is tho less to be regretted , because the Doctor displays but little discrimination in bis judgment on persons and events in these latter days . In the earlier part of his work he had the pleasant guidance of Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole , but in the second portion of it he is by no means equally felicitous in his' choice of guides , or in his manner of following them , llis style is also very slipshod , ami at times confused , as if , weary of his tusk , he were writing against time . However , with all these defects , we can cordially recommend those two volumes to the lovers ol light literature , who are usually contented with a moderate shme of the tittle provided it be rendered palatable by the dulcc .

      ^ 4 The Leader. [No. 281, Saturday,

      ^ THE LEADER . [ No . 281 , Saturday ,

      Rights Of Employe!* And Employed. The Re...

      RIGHTS OF EMPLOYE !* AND EMPLOYED . The Relative Rights and Interests of the Employer and Employed discussed ; and a System proposed by which th » Coitflicting Interests of all Classes af Society may be Reconciled . By M . Justitia . Simpkin , Marshall , and Co . This is no trifling task , to reconcile the conflicting interests of all classes ol society ; and the man who really performed it in a duodecimo volume not loO pages long , would write a work such as human wisdom never yet devised . 13 ut now for the disparity between promise and performance . We have read this little book , and , with a cordial faith in the honesty , the sincerity , the perfect self-belief of the author , we must confess that it appears to have no merit at all beyond that of pushing the commonest errors about capital and labour to the ne plus ultra of absurdity . The author tells us that he has been in his time both workman an < l

      employer , and seems to refer to that fact as if it gave him a special right t <> be heard upon these questions . This is error number one : those employers who have been workmen are , perhaps , of all mankind , the most unfit to j * i \ e sound opinions upon questions affecting both classes . They have the prejudices and the faults of both . This fact is too notorious to need amplification . In discussing the present status of the workman , the author treats emigration as a disease . " Emigration , " writes he , " springs from our monopolies of land , health , and power , and not from our exhausted resources . . . . All such monopolies are the result of might and not of right , and are unjust in principle , because they affect the interests of others . . . . AY hat right

      has any one of us to monopolise God ' s cartli , Goi >' s health , or Gor > "s power r For what have we that we can call our own ? Who has an independent claim ? Whatman among us can originate even an idea independently !' ' for it is God who workcth in you to will and to do . ' "—This mixture of Cant with Fourierism is certainly novel . Further on , we find even the right to patent an invention denied , with this not very intelligible saving clause for the protection of the inventor : —" The inventor ought to be rewarded by those who reap a benefit from his Tabours , aud the invention should be Jit once thrown open for public use . " If the invention he of service to tlie * public , wo do not see how the public can reward it except through some such machinery as a patent right ; which is , after all , only a means of collecting that reward .

      But these are mere theoretical errors ; here is something more practically dangerous—It has often been asserted , that the interests of the employer and employed an * identical . Fine theories have been written upon the subject , and conclusions deduced therefrom ; but they have failed to convince many even of the most credulous , that conflicting interests can possibly be identical . That the interests of these classes arc at present arrayed in hostile antagonism is as demonstrable as the simplest proportion in Euclid . The fact appears self-evident , that it is the interest of the employer to gain all he can by his workmen , and to accomplish this object lie is , in many cases , not very careful -whom he pinches . On the other hand it is the obvious interebt of the employed to extract from the employer the largest possible amount of remuneration , utterly regardless whether that employer be rising or falling—acquiring un independence , or going headlong to ruin .

      This is tantamount to a defence of the man who killed the goose for the sake of her golden eggz , and that upon economical grounds . If such were tho real interests of the two elasnes their case would be indeed hopeless , and \ rc might well despair of ever seeing their relations fixed upon any other basis than mutual rapacity and over-reaching : but they arc not so . It is a fact which no one familiar with the Labour Clauses will venture to deny that establishments where regular work may be obtained are preferred to those where the pay is higher but permanent employment not so certain . " The universally admitted fact" continues the author , in explanation of hia theory of natural Antagonism , " that no two human beings are exactly alike , either in body or mind , renders it impossible that the interests of any two hunum beings can ever be the same . "—The logical sequence of thi > reasoning is extraordinary ; because A and 1 $ have huir of diilcrent colour * , ergo they never can be partners .

      Having thus separated tho industrial conuogony into antagonistic i ' " mutually-repellent atoms , the author proceeds to describe the precise conditions upon which a man should ngrcc to labour . Aa lte (* " . < :. tho workman ) oats , driiiktt , mid bleeps for liJnutelf , nn his rwjuirouH'iits are for hiumclf alone , ho it is juat that ho tthoulU labour only for himself , or that In-Bhould receive the full value of Inn work if ho lubour for other * . What is the meaning of the word " full" here ? Surely not the full selling price of the manufactured article / If so , what l » eooinea of I lie capitalist ' s interest , and the fair profit for the salesman ? Yot if not , the abortion ia tho tritcst of truisms ; albeit the connexion between the eoiieliinion and tho premises is not bo obvious . The man who eats , drinks , mid sleeps for himself alone is a . brute .

      And how does tho author propone to reconcile the eon dieting intercuts a society which , as ho believes , is formed of sclf-interoated unu necessarily antagonistic individuals P lJy " a siuwiiATii : anu a instinct intkiuoht , on EaurtAnM PBiNcirjuus . " out how w this to be brought about P " 1 *>" co-operution 1 " The interests of all being distinct and antagonistic , they can only be reconciled by co-operation . This is , to any tho least of it , pnru-

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 11, 1855, page 774, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/ldr_11081855/page/18/