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Leader (1850-1860), 1st February 1851, Edition Town of 2, Page 106, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      But at present the Manchester party has not with it the great mass of " the people" out of doors . Manchester is doing great good , especially in taking the lead on the public education question ; but it enjoys no lead at present in any active political movement ; and , therefore , it is not so formidable as it has been , or as it might be . Manchester does not , in action , come up to the foresight of its own member , John Bright : —

      " On looking over the present calm which appears to exist , I can detect , I think , signs that we are not going backwards , but that , in point of fact , we are gradually , but certainly , gathering strength for future progress and for future successes . The surface appears very emooth ; but who will deny that , in these days of calm , opinions are being created , and former convictions are sinking deeper and deeper , and men whom we know nothing of —whom we never see in public—by the discussions which are going on in the newspapers and through the press—are gradually unravelling some of those mysteries in which we have hitherto dwelt , and are becoming more alive to the necessity of those changes which we believe to be inevitable . "

      Through these speeches we descry a strange spectacle . Here are three able politicians—clearspoken Cobden , vigorous , English John Bright , keen-witted , courageous Milner Gibson—describing the actual state of affairs , justly and explicitly denouncing the men " supposed to be leaders of their party , " exposing the political tricks of those false leaders , avowing the political necessities , and prophesying a great future ; yet doing nothing to expedite that future , or to oust the unworthy men who obstruct the march of the nation . And why is this conscious shortcoming ? Because the Manchester men will not muster courage enough to proclaim a policy equal to their own declarations , sufficient to call out the people , and strong enough to give them the lead which almost any party might have that would take it on those terms .

      Untitled Article

      AN ENGLISH PATKIOT . Charles Adderley , the member for North Staffordshire , is a man of the stamp that might redeem the English Legislature , if we could have more of them . He is a Liberal Conservative—not of that neutral class indistinguishable from the Whig , Conservative through inertness and Liberal through indifferency—but of that higher class which unites Tory convictions with newer lights as to the capabilities of a people , and corresponding desires to elevate them . With his Tory convictions , such as his apology for corporal punishments and for the social classifications of rank , we have no

      sympathy ; but we have a full sympathy with his manfulness in avowing those convictions and his resolution in acting up to them . This last is the rare and valuable quality . It is the want of it which prevents every kind of movement , by involving the whole Legislature in a system of negations and trimming compromises , and so reducing its whole performance to a fretwork of intentional cross purposes and little movements that compensate one another . If we had more men like Adderley , both action and opposition would become positive , conflicting principles would be brought to a measurement with each other , and we should attain tangible results .

      He has done good work , and he is following it up . We have seen how he acted for the Cape Colony as its representative in Parliament , while it resisted the illegal attempts of Ministers to force convicts upon that colony . The case of the convict colonies is a sequel to the other . Opinion against transportation , as a process actively depraving the society of the Australian colonies , was first matured in this country by the exertions of Edward ( Jibbon ' Wukeh ' i'ld , with the aid of Sir William Molesworth , Henry ( ieorge Ward , Charles . duller ,

      and the Editor of the Spectator .- i ( . is a matter of history , that the facts and arguments collected by tho . se men ultimately forced the ( Government ; to discontinue the practice of transportation . At first the convict colonies of Australia resisted that " withdrawal of labour ; " but ultimately they too were reconciled to the purification . What , then , was their indignant surprise when Mini ( irey and his colleagues attempted to renew the practice ! Already angered in many ways , the Australian colonies have been effectually exasperated by this stop backwards .

      J'ho last plea in which Lord iln-. y and his colleagues took refuge , added to the insult : "If you stop transportation , " said Ministers , ** what arc we to < lo with all our convicts ? Our prisons arc too small for them , and the colonies are the only places that we can use ! " Yes , use ; the colonies were thus avowedly to ho used as a sort of dusthole lor our criminal refuse . But Charles Adderley lias

      In the pamphlet which has newly broug name before us , * he has shown that transportation , otherwise indefensible , is not justified by the plea of necessity ; but the process by which he does this is remarkable . He finds that a rigorous and able administration of the criminal law , with improved prison machinery , would amply suffice for the controul of the real criminals . Investigating the causes of " crime , " he further finds that the gross number of criminals , so called , would be reduced to onefifth of what it is , if we discharged from it those

      ht his discharged even that plea . A natural sympathy induced the champion of the Cape to take up the Australian cause , and then , by a not less natural progression , he has carried the resistance from the colonies home to fight Ministers on their own ground ; he has even " turned" their position by going beyond the broad question of transportation , into the administration of the criminal law , and into the very causes of crime .

      who are rendered criminal by bad government—by laws and administration which check employment for the people , augment pauperism , neglect public education , follow up childish offences with prison instead of school , withhold recreation for the people , promote ill-controlled beer-shops for the people , breed poachers , monopolize land—in short , predispose immense numbers to crime by making them ignorant , untrained , alienated from order , and hopelessly poor . We shall recur to some branches of this subject .

      In this tracing of a public wrong to its source , we see how a man , taking simple facts and plain truths as his guides , is led at last to some broad common truth . Here we have the Conservative Charles Adderley , not confessing , but urging the fact , that four criminals out of five are made so by causes which may be prevented . While no effort is made to remove those causes , the Ministers of the day ought to be held personally answerable for the crime committed by the misled multitude whom they call " convicts , " and ask what they are to do with . We say personally , because , if they are not strong enough to turn back that crimemaking method of government , they ought not to enter upon the post of responsible Ministers . If the House of Commons were filled with Charles

      Adderleys—with men able to listen as well as he can speak—we should not have a Government which fills our hulks and asks where to put the people .

      Untitled Article

      INVASION ON THE LONDON WORKING PRINTERS . The Glasgow enterprise to introduce a new system of printing in the offices of the morning journals has not been justified by the attempt at explanation . We have , indeed , no knowledge of the case , but we take it as it stands in the statements of both sides . The facts are stubborn and cruel . Some fifty men , against whom no charge is brought , have been suddenly ousted and cast loose in the labour market .

      That is a cruel fact . The capitalist is to save £ 2000 a-year ; but what good will that saving of " capital , " or stored wealth—what good will that do to that one man , commensurate with the sudden and total stoppage of income to the fifty with their families ? We reckon that the dismay , the trouble , the poverty , perhaps tlie hunger , inflicted on so many of the capitalist ' s fellow-creatures , would form an aggregate mass of Buffering , gigantic in proportion to the benefit snatched by him . This is cruelty .

      There are two kinds of cheapening , one good and one bad . The good kind , is where art discovers a mode of lessening the cost of produce by saving in raw material , time , or tool-working ; the other kind , is where an encreased demand for employment , and competition , enable the capitalist to seize more of the fruits of labour and return less to the labourer . This is not cheapening by saving the expenditure of materials , time , or tool-working , but by subtracting from the subsistence of the labourer . It is not malting the article less costly to labourer and consumer , but making it less costly to the consumer at the expense of the labourer . This is where competition becomes destructive .

      It is nonseriHe if you say that this process of cheapening is effected by free trade . The trade in labour is not free : it i « oppressed by laws that avowedly protect the capital-monger . It is borne down by bad government , which alienates labour from the land -the food-producing land -and forces it into towns , where it crowds the employments that are not . food-producing . Labour , too , is constrained hy laws which facilitate the

      combination of capitalist with capitalist against labour but hinder the combination of workmen to rJrotect their very subsistence . Such cheapening is not warranted by sound oeconomical theory , by justice , or by humanity we challenge the aid of the Morning Post , which has so ably and earnestly distinguished itself by advocating " the protection of industry , " to resist this aggression on an important and intelligent portion of the industrial communit y . ^^

      Untitled Article

      • 'lYdnsjiortation not Necesitary . By (' . II . Addurloy , M . P . A |> uiiij > hlet of Homo Buvunty octavo pugcs . John W . I ' urkor .

      Untitled Article

      THE WANTS OP BOYALTY . The executors of the Queen Dowager urge an extraordinary demand upon the Treasury , and have actually gone to law about it . To make it understood , we must state the facts . Queen Adelaide was allowed £ 100 , 000 a-year as Queen Dowager ; William the Fourth died ' on the 20 th of June , 1837 ; her " first quarter" became due on the 30 th of the same June—ten days later . Queen Adelaide died on the 2 nd of December , 1819 , and her pension for the quarter then current would have been due

      on the 31 st—twenty-nine days later ; but her executors claim for the proportionate amount of the part quarter . This is not only in breach of the customary rule in the case of annuities and pensions , but in breach of all sense . The Queen Dowager lived as widow forty-nine quarters all but nineteen days , and she had had a round sum for the whole forty-nine quarters ; but her executors claim for fifty quarters—a quarter more than she actually existed ! Would such a claim be advanced on behalf of the family of a poor clerk ? But " de minimis non curat lex "—the law does not care for the small .

      Untitled Article

      INCAPACITY OP THE LEGISLATURE . In course of the arguments on the Queen Dowager's annuity , Lord Chief Justice Campbell uttere d an obiter dictum , or opinion by the bye , which it would be important to have cleared up , negatived or affirmed , forthwith . Allusion having been made to a " legislative declaration , " Lord Campbell said " it has been held , if the Legislature mistakes the law , that will not biud the court ; " that is

      to say , legislative declarations are of no effect , and are to be disregarded by the courts ; in other words , the Legislature cannot declare what an existing law is , it can only make or unmake laws . Some politicians have supposed that in the Papal aggression Lord John Russell would fall back upon some declaratory process , which might satisfy the clamour he has raised , and evade the difficulty of doing anything : but , according to Lord Campbell , any declaratory process would be a farce .

      Untitled Article

      THE NEW REFORMATION . If any quietists should doubt the unsettled state of religious opinion among all sects , and the imminence of some great movement—if they should suppose that suoi an idea is the vision of speculators and enthusiasts , let them look to the speeches of the matter-of-fact men , the elite of the Manchester school , last week . The " Neir Reformation" was distinctly foreseen . Mr . Cobden eipressly recognized the divided state of the Church of England , of the Wesleyans , and of other Dissenting bodies ; he spoke of large numbers among the working classes " not in community either with the Church or with Dissent . " In matters of fact , Cobden may be regarded as the gauge of ascertained public opinion : the new Reformation is among the recognized realities , though it has not yet shown its full presence : it is known like the approaching army or the flood , by the Bound of its coming .

      Untitled Article

      SOCIAL REFORM . E V I 8 TOL JK OBBCUIIOHUM VIKORWM . No . XXVII . —Difficulties Teaching Us . To G . J . Holyoakb . January 557 , 1851 . Mydbah Holyoakb , —Difficulty is the measure of the power requisite for a given purpose . The difficulties which you have described in the service of the People are not of a nature to daunt any true servant of the People , because the clear conception of them includes also the proper mode of overcoming them . I am glad that you have used such explicit language . I wish that your letters may bo read by the thinking portion of the People itself , and by those also who have an ambition to nerve , not the Government of the day nor the ascendant classes of the day , but their country at large ; because you have enabled us to understand the terms on which the service is possible . But although I apprehend your meaning and ag * ee with you throughout , yet , looking beyond , in what you call the difficulties , I discern the facilities for such men as have the head , the heart , and ihe

      will to undertake the service . You adopt the saying , " You cannot serve the People in the language of the People . " But 1 should rather turn the phrase thus : you cannot serve the People in the language of the day : * or

      Untitled Article

      106 ®!) tf QLeahtV * { Saturday ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 1, 1851, page 106, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1868/page/10/