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    speak of the attempts to disseminate peculiar and more abstruse matters of theology , what fate attends the endeavours of those who would rouse men to a consciousness of their lofty spiritual state and destinies , and to excite , therefrom , a feeling warm in itself , and fruitful in its action of love to God and man ? For the thousands by whom these endeavours are understood , and by whom they are at least respected , there are myriads to whom these men and their endeavours are alike objects of suspicion , or on whose eaFS and hearts their words fall unheeded , as seed on unprepared soil .

    Alive as we are to the perilous extent of ignorance and its concomitants among our population , we rejoice at any effort , from whatever quarter made , to remove them . The real remedy , organization in industrial schools and colonies , it has been our labour to recommend ; for by that alone do we see how the root of the evil can be touched . But , meanwhile , much may be done by way of palliation : and every attempt made , however incomplete , in the right direction , has this advantage , that it serves to draw men ' s minds to the investigation of social evil and its causes , and to the supply of defects in existing experiments , which each successive failure serves to render manifest .

    Mr . Statham , who has had the advantage of many years' experience among the poor , is convinced of the inadequacy of education alone , in the ordinary sense of the term , to cure the maladies by which society is afflicted . After enumerating the various efforts of philanthropy in that direction , he remarks on their comparative fruitlessness : — " And yet , notwithstanding the excellence of our institutions for reclaiming prodigals , instructing the ignorant , imparting to the destitute habits of self-support , our most sanguine calculations cannot overlook the question—whether the results will be in proportion to the means employed ; whether we can clearly trace out the

    connection between the advantages of early education and the character that will afterwards be formed , and whether our brightest schemes and prospects do not miserably fail before opposing influences , which ( at the age most valuable for mental cultivation , and most fraught with danger if this be interrupted ) , alienate the children from the hands that would befriend them , and bind them , soul and body , to a world that ' lieth in wickedness . ' Those most conversant with the subject bear melancholy testimony to the facts , —that by far the greater number of children leave school before twelve , or even ten years of age , —that by corrupt associations , children of acute intellect soon learn the vices and the

    crimes cf men , moral principles being choked by the rapid growth of carnal appetites , —that the early employments of labouring children ( more particularly in rural districts ) are rather indolent than industrial , and consequently that knowledge is soon wasted in forgetfulness , that the employers of poor children entertain towards them no proper sense of Christian obligation , and scarcely any natural sympathy , and that , consequently , in a cold and unfriendly aspect , minds once capable of better dispositions speedily imbibe a distaste for subordination und a contempt for authority , — that few continue to be church goers , scarcely any become communicants . " And again" In reference to the supposition that Education is an infallible antidote for pauperism , be it remembered that when the supplies of a labourer ' s family are cut off or diminished by his own personal sickness , infirmity , or age , learning is not bread ; nor can the best principles of religion or morality suppress the cravings of starvation . " The hardships of a labourer ' s life , his constant struggle against want , his daily anxieties , the pressure of which renders provision for the future next to impossible , and the various vicissitudes to which he is obnoxious , are well depicted by our author ; who arrives through their examination at the following practical conclusion : —

    " Ten millions and a half of our population are supposed by crime or improvidence to be preying upon the vituls of the country ; mitny , doubtless , more tunned agiiinnt than fliiining , Kulferern rather by misfortune than by fault ; yet allowing that , wherever their education has begun , they are Bupcraddiug one sad letisoii for thein-Hclverf and others in the school of misery . It in well , indeed , that we should anxiously consider how we oun get children into schools , and supply the wants of education to frit'iidleHH plaet'H like the IhnIi town iu Manchester ; but . we muHt puss from the < : are of children to the welfare of men and women , und endeavour to meet another queHtion which in often nugg < nte < l by the Might of Home of our old parishioiKiH after forty yinrn' honest toil upon the furina , nominally refunding their purinh pittance by filling rutB on the highway , viz . : How can we uphold the cottager in the respectability of honeht independence , and relieve the pariah from the necessity of resorting to ouch methods to maintain him ? " The Nolution of thiH problem Mr . Statham conceives he ban found in the establishment under Government authority , and in immediate connection with national Hchoola , of waving and nick clubs , loans to industrioiiH und deserving cottagers , provisions for old age , accident , and infirmity , and for the uxpeiiHeu and iieceNHilien of sickness and of death . Tne funds for these purposes ho would

    obtain through a system of industrial prizes , illustrated by a series of elaborate tabular calculations , for the details of which , we must refer to the work itself . He recognises the principle of State education : and in this respect , whatever may be thought of the validity of his plans , he is a fellow-worker in the cause for which we have so long contended : — " Our proposition , " he says , " is to estabish under the authority of a royal charter , an institution which might be auxiliary to the Poor Law Board , the Government Education Board , the National Society , and other like

    authorities ; and which should be enabled to raise contributions and to attach the above-named benefits to schools ( upon stated conditions ) , the administration of which should be provided for by an allowance from the Government Education Grant ( augmented by an education tax ) , at the rate of 10 s . per head upon the cottage children in the schools selected , to meet 5 s . per head supplied out of the funds of the institution itself , the same being reducible in course of time , until the institution becomes altogether self-supporting , and able to repay the Government . "

    By these means , Mr . Stathan calculates that , w process of time , the poor rates would be reduced to the extent of seventy per cent . But this result , though great and important in itself , he holds to be subordinate to the improvement likely to ensue in the habits and condition of the people . He fully recognises , moreover , the necessity of industrial training , as well in connection with the unions as independently of them ; and , upon the whole , while we are still convinced that a more searching and immediate remedy is required for our social ills than that which he indicates , yet his work may direct public attention to the subject , and will gain for its author the reputation of a sagacious counsellor , and a benevolent and laborious man .

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    CENTRALIZATION AND LOCAJL . GOVERNMENT . The Quarterly Review . No . CLXXVI . ( Art . V . ) Murray Local Self-Government and Centralization : the Characteristics of each .- and its Practical Tendencies , as affecting Social , Moral , and Political , Welfare and Progress ; including Comprehensive Outlines of the English Constitution . By J . Toulrain Smith , Esq ., Barrister-at-Law . John Chapman . We place these two antagonistic treatises together , for they deserve to be studied together . The Quarterly Reviewer advocates Centralization in the abstract , but with an eye towards the sanitary commission in the concrete . Mr . Toulmin Smith is uncompromising in his hostility to Centralization under every form , and upholds Local Self-Government as the ideal of social liberty . It seems to us , however , that these two writers , if they came to discuss the subject , would not find themselves so antagonistic as they now appear ; the more so , as in denouncing Centralization Mr . Smith always identifies it with the vicious forms of despotism it assumes in Continental polity , while in upholding Local Self-Government he never accepts the vicious , peddling , jobbing parochial forms which it assumes in England , but always points to a democratic condition of society in which Local Self-Government would doubtless

    accomplish all he asserts . But this is the point from which Centralization is also viewed ( perhaps unconsciously ) by the Quarterly Reviewer . He , too , needs a democracy for the free movement of his social machinery . When he theorizes on the action and advantages of Centralization , it is clear that society is by him understood as thoroughly democratic . Let him repudiate the counteraction and counterchecks afforded by democracy , and his boasted " consolidation" becomes at once the machinery of despotism , more or less tempered by the more or less democratic condition of the state .

    So also by Mr . Toulmin Smith society is always understood as democratic ; and by so understanding it , he can free Local Self-Government from the charges bo truly brought against it of Parochial Despotism—a despotism as vicious as that of any known government , and more contemptible . Democracy lying thuw at the very basis of this great political question , it is a fault in both writers that they have not clearly , unequivocally , emphatically stated it . I ' crimps the Quarterly Reviewer could hardly have been expected to do so—not in that place , at least . Mr . Toulmin Smith wan

    under no such restraint . Yet to our thinking the absence of this preliminary statement confuses the whole diacustjion . We agree- with the Reviewer that rightly-considered Centralisation und Local Self-Government are not antagonistic -that t > o far from being mutually repugnant , they aro , on the contrary , necessary concomitants , developed paripussu each at ) the corrective und counterpoise ) at the other . It is only from an incomplete und one-sided view of these forms that their antagonism inanif « HU itself . Centralization is had ; Local Self-Government is bad : both arc clumsy and despotic in action . But

    in theory Centralization Is the culminating point of national perfection ; Local Self-Government the perfection of sectional operations . Observe , however , that in theorizing , the actual hindrances and deteriorating influences are eliminated , and the state so centralized and sq self-governed is always Democratic ! Let us first follow the arguments of the Reviewer . He is a man of large and liberal mind , and his

    scientific training gives to his speculations that union of breadth and minute detail which is so characteristic of the positive thinker . He would meet Mr . Taulmin Smith on his own ground in applauding Local Government j but to that he would add the supreme , central , controlling , general power . He takes organic beings as an analogy ; in the lowest forms of organic life we find only local life—in the highest we find the greatest diversity of focal lite with a supreme unity : —»

    " It is in man * the highest type of life , that we find , at once , the most strongly pronounced unity of the whole organism , and also the greatest multiplicity , diversity , and individuality , of the constituent organs . And this concurrent expansion of the central and local vitality ^ is not casual bwt necessary ; each being obviously the indispensable condition , as well as the inevitable consequence of the other ; while in the well-l&alaneed intensity of both we recognise alike the sign and the source ^ of man ' s organic supremacy . This counterpoised duality of individual life is repeated , on a vaster scale , in the social organism ; which is impelled to a similar double development , as well by blindly striving popular instinct ,

    as by conscious philo&ophio statesmanship . And as , within the womb the embryo man springs at first from a mere nervele .-s cell , or simple monad , which unfolds itself gradually , by simultaneous expansion of its local and central forces , into many-ganglioned , full-brained humanity ; so likewise does society , during long ages of painful gestation , unfold progressively its double life , ganglionic and cerebral ( or local and central ) , from primal anarchy to well-knit constitutional government . Civilization , indeed , is but the name we give to an intense manifestation of this double life , elevating while it complicates the organization of society , and exalting , by its reaction , the character and conduct of individual man . " Again : — " These very expressions , indeed , order and government , if examined in a comprehensive spirit , yield a satisfactory clisproval of the alleged repugnancy between centralized and local institutions . For all government , however narrow its sphere , implies a convergence and concentration of force , determining the subordination of minor to major interests , and of partial to collective rights . In that first degree of government , for instance , which a man is bound to exercise over himself , the passing impulse of each particular appetite and organ is subordinated to the permanent and collective interest of the whole organism ; which would be compromised by the unrestricted freedom of its several constituent

    members . So , again , in that second sphere of government which has its centre in the father of a family , each member ' s individual freewill finds its proper limit exactly at the point where further indulgence would compromise the interests of the entire household . And as individual self-government is but the first degree of centralized power , and paternal or family government the second ; so likewise the district government of many households constituting a parish , or precinct—the municipal government of many parishes and precincts , grouped within a town or borough—and the imperial government of many towns and provinces , forming a realm or kingdom

    —are but ascending grades of the same progressive centralization ; whereof even the last-named eminent degree still ranks below that loftiest supremacy , which , based on the general law of nations , and administered by theii diplomatic representatives , subordinates the internets of particular states to the collective interests of humanity . At each ascending step we still find the power of a superior or more central organ maintaining order in a subordinate group , by regulating the mutual relations of all , and by correcting , when necessary , the internal irregularities of each . In the individual mau the permanent fuuetion of the great nervous centre is to keep the inferior organs in harmonious equi while

    poise . ; , by its exceptional curative interference , it afso brings about the internal readjustment of any particular organ which may become deranged . So also it it * the father ' s permanent function to maintain harmony among all his children ; and his exoenlional duty to correct the aberrations of any particular child who . se unaided free , will proves inadequate for its self government . In like manner It is the permanent office of parochial boards to maintain justice and fair play between household und household ; while th « y are ooi-atrionally obliged , in consequence «( private roiwrule , to riHtruiu or modify tlie internal government of particular domiciles . And to our iudiruieut it ueeuiH clear that the

    central orate authority is bound hy the same rule not only to hold the balance ? even between rival localities , but also , in each particular locality , to interfere occasionally for the loinedy of dittt > iitlert » « ai » t * ed by too misconduct of the local power . ... If , now , the question be raised , What degree of local miHiiiunugcinent justifies the interferonoe of the central power ? or how , in any given cane is the need of such interference to be determined ? the auswer is obvious . Th » u « ed of central interference is evinced hy the . exact converse of that evidence which suffices to prove the adequacy of local self-Government the condition the

    or ruled furulHhin , in both cases , the proper test ; and manifest disorder culling for curative intervention , us pluinly an evident healthiness , claims to bo let alone . Just as a complaint of the liver , traawnittcd

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    370 ftt W $ Leatte t * [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 19, 1851, page 370, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1879/page/16/