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    and almost creates some trades ; causing that disturbance of the trading exchange which gives secondary employments preference over primary employments , —non-essentials over essentials . Sixthly , it occasions a corresponding enormous waste of timefilling up the whole day of the labourer to earn a minimum of subsistence—gradually eating up the hours that should be devoted to recreation , rest ,

    and even to public business ; a process attested by the efforts to bring into use the topical remedy of " Short time . " There can be no doubt that the whole neeedful produce , now created for the use of the country , might , with concert , be produced in a fraction of the time ; and that in less time than is now consumed by unconcerted labour , more produce might be produced .

    Let me call your attention to two great facts , and do you work out their meaning . With abundance of material—the Americans resort to all sorts of devices to keep up the price of cotton—with capital enough to multiply mills infinitely , with people wanting employment , millions of our fellow-subjects yet lack clothing . With millions of acres of land under-cultivated , as Lord Stanley says Lancashire is , thousands upon thousands are idle and wanting bread ; because our system will not permit them to work their subsistence direct out of the

    land , but only allows them to take their returns by the channel of trading exchange . Some fewsquatters are occupying lands beyond Sheffieldvery difficult land to subdue ; and they are doing very well indeed : but it is very doubtful whether legitimate farming " pays "—so the land is half idle , the people half idle , and both starving . Such , as the Times has phrased it , are " the results of our boasted competitive system ! " Such is the stimulus which political ceconomy presumes competition to give to industry ; such the final effect of our system of dividing employments without concert .

    But , you will say , you cannot set men concerting in this immense " wilderness of monkeys , " called " Society , " with its hordes of multiplied , uneducated , surplus , unskilled labourers . No more can you set them competing . Indeed , that idea is ludicrous , if you imagine any Druid sage presiding over the first distribution of employments , and deliberately setting men to compete against each other . You see at once how unphilosophical , unceconomical that would be . Men were not set to

    compete , and perhaps may not be set , all at once , to concert ; although concert as essentially implies reciprocal understanding as competition forbids it . They are guided by circumstances , and we live under what Mr . Owen would call " inferior circumstances , " much multiplied by laws based on a blind theoretical reliance on the all-sufficiency of competition as an incentive , and of the trading exchange as a regulator of industry . Let us thoroughly conceive the opposite principle , that of concert , and we shall find our laws modified by our enlarged knowledge , our customs , our circumstances .

    The principle of the competitive system—that is , of the existing system—is , to keep the workers engaged in divided employments , ignorant of what the rest are doing , each only doing as much as he can ; afterwards to distribute the produce , thus by haphazard created , not according to the wants of the persons engaged in that dissociation , but according to the exchangeable value—least to him that devotes his life to the most thankless employments , most to him that stumbles upon the least irksome employments , nothing to him that strays to employments not needed , except pauper dole . The consequences I have described , and you maynote them for yourself in practical existence .

    tradition—in which he shall labour in the sweat of his brow and not obtain his bread . Yes , below " the curse " is the condition of multitudes , because we violate the natural principle of labour in society , the fundamental principle of communism—concert in the division of employments . Do not , my dear brother workman at these great social problems , suffer your mind to conclude upon this letter until you have seen my next . Ever yours , Thornton Hunt .

    But , how to apply the opposite principle now to existing circumstances ? That must form the subject of another letter—one more abstract letter with which I shall trouble you , and after that I shall submit to my readers a plan of public policy which shall be based on the principles expounded in this and the foregoing letters . In this one I

    have endeavoured to explain that the fundamental principle of all communistic theories and systemscall them by what name you will , is the principle of concert in the distribution of employmentsj involving a distribution of fruits according to the original claims of the labour as they exist before the distribution of employments , and not solely according to the principle of trading exchange .

    All industry is based upon the land , the fruitful surface of the planet to which we are born . The system of unconcerted employments unsettles that natural basis , renders the returns of industry precarious , and places the position of man below that assigned to him by ' the curse" of the Hebrew

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    There is no learned man but will confess he hath much profited by reading controversies , his senses awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him to read , why should it not , at least , be tolerable for his adversary to write . —Milton .

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    A PROPOSED PRIZE ESSAY . Wb have been requested by a correspondent to announce that on the last day of this year will be published an Essay in elucidation of the 18 th verse from the 2 nd Chapter of the First Epistle General of John : all competitive Essays can be sent to our office , addressed to the " Editor of the Leader , " or before the 1 st of December , with the names of the writers in separate envelopes ; and the Prize will be awarded to the author of the Essay which is selected by competent judges as possessing most

    merit . We have received a communication from a correspondent , requesting us to set him down as a subscriber of £ 1 10 s . towards the prize-fund ; but we have unfortunately mislaid his letter . Will he be so kind as to renew the expression of his wishes ?

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    great and orthodox theologians , " excluding from his studies , of course , all theologians not " orthodox , and " for thirty years" never suffering his mind to wander from these consecrated traditions . I conclude that a similar training , had the doctor been born in Turkey , would have made him a Mussulman . Dr . Hook ' s extreme simplicity of mind is displayed in the declaration that the true basis of the English

    Church is " the principles of the Reformation , ' as if these " principles" -were not also the professed basis of every variety of Protestant dissent . Are there no " Little Bethels" and " Salems" in the populous town of Leeds , whose walls , as elsewhere , ring with the exulting cry of " the Bible , the whole Bible , and nothing but the Bible ?"' And is Doctor Hook ready to subscribe -without reservation to their watchwords of dissent ?

    But Dr . Hook intends , I suppose , to define the «• principles of the Reformation" in the following words , they ** are both Catholic and Protestant—Catholic as opposed to the peculiarities of rationalism , and Protestant as opposed to the medisevalism of the Romanist . " A profound simplicity of mind can alone have suggested these words as defining the " principles" of the English church . If the English church consists of its ordained ministers and lay

    communicants , there is no variety of religious opinion , from the highest " churchism" to the lowest rationalism , that is not to be found in that " united family ; " and the Reformation itself produced ( as every one knows ) a literature sufficiently various and conflicting to justify these endless varieties of human opinion . When will men learn that the Reformation , instead of being the blossoming of the highest spiritual instincts in the soul of man , was but the seed

    cast upon the waters whose fruit shall be " after many days ? " Liberty of thought was to some degree the result whether or not it was the professed object of the Reformation , and that liberty has so far leavened the minds of men that all authority in matters of faith is fast becoming impossible . ^ Men may profess but they do not acknowledge it in the conduct of their spiritual life . The liberty of thought that has taken Lord Feilding to Rome may yet bring him back to the church or the conventicle . recalcitrant ites at Bristol

    Dr . Hook , like the Pusey , will have nothing to do with the •• Yorkshire Union , " and prefers an adherence to that mystical abstraction the true Church of England , to any modification or extension of her constitution . His brother highchurchmen , however , appear to demand no more than is strictly consistent with their common principles , viz ., 1 . The extension of the Church . 2 . The encrease of the Episcopate . 3 . The revival of a Church Legislature . 4 . The removal of all civil impediments to the right exercise of spiritual functions .

    Surely , Dr . Hook may consistently work with the Unionists for the attainment of these objects , if he is the same Dr . Hook who a few years ago led forth the young chivalry of tractarianism to the rescue of the Church . But , alas ! how changed is the great champion of orthodoxy : —

    " Qu&m mu tat us ab illo . Hectore /' etc . In the letter before us , he actually warns those same chivalrous youths not to ?• go a-whoring after the abominations of Rome , " much in the language of Kettledrummle or Mr . Plumtre ; and , after some timid allusions to the temper of the times , " concludes with a terrible vaticination ( of which , the " progress of infidelity , " the great " falling away , " the " second coming , " " Antichrist , " &c , &c , form the staple ) , and which records the firm belief of the ¦ writer that the last days are come " ! I think you will agree with me that there is but little chance of two sections of the hih Church

    THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN . — " A HAPPY FAMILY . " Cheltenham , October 7 , 1850 . My Dear Hunt , —I remember , some years ago , an exhibition which amused the idlers in the public thoroughfares , consisting of a quantity of animals of the most discordant natures , and the most hostile instincts towards each other , "whom the ingenuity of their keeper had trained into a peaceable occupation of the same cage . I think the exhibition was known by the name of the happy family . " It seems probable that the projectors ot what are called church unions , " whose object it is to gather within the pale of the church the greatest possible number of her revolted and contentious children , have taken as

    their model this touching display of animal placability under the softening influences of an enlightened discipline . If ( they might argue ) almost all the beasts , clean and unclean , that came out of the ark have thus , by gentle training , been brought ( despite their natural instincts ) to live together in peace and harmony , surely , a fortiori , Christian gentlemen and clergymen may be united in one " household " of the common faith . " The past week has , however , afforded us some melancholy proofs of the failure of these fond imaginations . At Bristol the objects of the unionists were entirely defeated , and their meeting broken up amidst ' confusion worse confounded ; " its only result being some idle recriminations , and the actual secession of some of the most distinguished of the members .

    The Times of Saturday last contains a letter from Dr . Hook to the secretaries of the " Yorkshire Church "Union , " which is valuable for its attempt to distinguish the fine shades of difference between the creeds of the Church of Englandman and the Romanist , between what Mr . Roebuck so happily distinguished as " Mother" and " Grandmother church . " Dr . Hook is evidently a man of much honesty of purpose and simplicity of mind , and both these characteristics are exhibited in the letter before us . The first is exhibited in the frank confession that he is a churchman " because brought up at the feet of her

    union between the g party , when we reflect on their present position . I believe there is no greater probability of unanimity amongst other sections of churchmen , At this moment the orthodox Standard is at open war with the more orthodox Quarterly , ytKi \ Bt the Record , the organ of the Evangelicals , flatly denounces them both , and coquets with the leaders of the " Evangelical Alliance . " If you could spare me room , I could multiply proofs of the utter disorganization , the conflicts and antagonisms of parties within the Church ; but , surely , I have said enough . These edifying squabbles , bo it remembered , are principally confined to the clergy themselves , and the people really take but matterThe Church of

    little interest in the . England is fast becoming one of the greatest anomalies in modern civilization—a national Church with which the nation has no concern . During the late famine in Irelnnd , we were horrified now and then by reading of living children found hanging on the breasts of dead mothers . The present condition of the Church and her children reflects a moral picture equally monstrous . That the Church of England , the ideal church of the more orthodox fathers of the reformation , subsequently of the Stewarts und of Laud , and more recently of the Bishop of Exeter and Dr . Puscy , is actually dead , as far as having lost all power of action , all individuality and corporato existence , is a patent and indisputable fact . And yet do so many of her children still continue to hang upon

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    Oct . 12 , 1850 . ] C& * & * && **? 685

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    [ IN THIS DEPARTMENT , AS ALL OPINIONS , HOWEVER EXTREME . ARE ALLOWED AN EXPRESSION , THE EDITOR NECESSARILY HOLDS HIMSELF RESPONSIBLE FOR NONE . ]

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• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 12, 1850, page 685, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1856/page/13/