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    tryman , Mr . Hale , be the victim of these Austrian proceedings , without standing up in his defence P . If they do intend not to protect him , the day of their freedom and of England ' s independence is gone : and all who desire to live in a country free , with untarnished national honour , had better follow their countrymen to America , or to Australia , the America of the South . For it is time to recognise this truth . Kossuth , Mazzini , and all patriots , have a right to levy war against the Governments that have usurped Prance , usurped Hungary , violated law in Italy ,

    and defied the code of Europe and humanity . By exercising exactly the same right against the Stuarts , England won the liberties that are her boast ; but if now she forswears that right in the persons of the foreign emulators of Hampden and Cromwell , she will forfeit her own . For the right is one that can only be maintained by a people so strong in faith as to be prepared to meet death in its defence , to vindicate it with unfaltering voice and unflinching hand .

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    WHAT WILL ENGLISHMAN DO WITH THEIE MONEY ? It is possible that Turkish financiers will be coming to London to ask for another advance of money . The bank that contracted the late loan , which the Government permitted and then repudiated , has been dissolved ; a bran new bank has been established ; rumours are afloat , and are perhaps not incorrect , that the Turkish revenue is improving ; but it is probable that English , capital will be invited to lay the basis of the new bank at Constantinople . ' Now , let us consider

    gome of the circumstances attending this new request for cash . There is another mission from Turkey at this moment in London ; come to wind up the repudiated loan : and the holders of the scrip have really so little prospect of fastening upon Turkey the usual responsibilities of the creditor , that they accept the terms offered . In fact the old loan is repudiated , as the new bank is established , under the influence of Turkish dictation . But a State that abolishes its Bank of England to get rid of a loan , that conducts its finances under foreign dictation , and asks tor help in the same breath

    that it revokes , is not exactly the kind of borrower that English commercial men ordinarily patronise . There are innumerable Greeks in that quarter , peopling the indented shores of Turkey ; they are the intermediaries for taking nearly 3 , O 00 , 0 OOZ . of British manufactures , and for supplying a large corn trade to us ; they are the commercial class of Turkey : they are on the spot ; they know all the circumstances ; they possess the means ; and if property is quite safe m Turkish hands , they would afford all the capital that is wanted , without need for having it , from London .

    Nay , Turkey herself is rich in resources , if they were but worked ; and in her late overtures to Paris and London , now' repudiated , she showed herself so advanced in civilization as to be laying the foundation of u national debt . But she was compelled to back out ; because free and beneficial intercourse between the Turks and Europeans does not fall in with . Russian views . Itussin uoes not desire the improvement of Turkey , commercially or politically . It is not capital then

    that Turkey wants , nor will , nor opportunity ; but freedom . If , indeed , our good Ministers in Downing-street could tell the gentlemen of Cornhill that the independence of Turkey should he secured , then British investments would be quite safe . But what real security can he oll ' ered in the English market by n Russian fieri' ? Instead of looking forward to an extension of commercial relations with Turkey , we may anticipate the time when the Turkish part of Russia will no longer take 3 , 000 , 0000 / . of British goods .

    Turkey is not the only foreign state in which Engliuh capitalists are risking their means . TIki peace-address deputation was a mistake commercially not less than politically . I Is object was to cover the advance of English ' . shareholders into a French railway scheme . Now , we have had railway schemeH in England ; but English commerce is not liahlo to the incidents which enliven foreign commerce ; and somo of the circumstances of this project ; are worth consideration . M . do Morny has reluctantly " consented" to be the chairman of the company ; M . do Morny , one of the aHHiHtantH of Louis JSfapoleon before he was Emperor , an < i when ho was only an adventurer

    scheming to surprise Paris . The shares are to be divided into four parts—two quarters are generously allotted to English capitalists ; one quarter is allotted to " the subscribers" in France ; and the last quarter to the Soci&e de Credit Mobilier—that huge loan society which is one of the projects of bastard socialism established by Louis Napoleon to raise the wind . English capitalists , therefore , . will literally be partners with that great loan society which its author sarcastically named " tlie Society of Moveable Credit . " And this partnership is effected under the auspices of that august Emperor who has confiscated property as summarily as he has confiscated lives and constitutions .

    Now really it does appear to us , that Englishmen have a prospect of doing better things with their money than lodging it with Louis Napoleon or the alien serf whom Russia holds in duresse . The operation which Mr . Gladstone is about to effect on the public funds is at once the sign of our augmenting resources , and the probable cause of a still further augmentation . It was declared that his proceeding would derange public credit : the market is firm . It was prognosticated that Exchequer Bills would be driven to a discount : they are rising . What do those facts mean , but that the commercial public is looking at these transactions with an eye of common " sense ; and that a measure which is to mobilize part of the public debt is welcomed ?

    It is true that one reason which renders capital welcome in any form , is that rising value of labour which enables wages just now to encroach upon profits ; and we can well understand that capital may be tempted into France or any other country by the " favourable terms" offered . You can get from three to four per cent , in the public funds of France , while our Chancellor of the Exchequer is establishing a new denomination of two-and-a-half per cent . ; and while Consols are above par in- London , in Paris you can buy in for 80 J . But is not the 10 QL stock worth

    more at 100 £ or f , than the French stock is worth 80 ? Who can tell what may befal your 100 Z . trusted out to nurse in France ? Again , mere money value of wages is not the only consideration , in . the market . Labour has risen in value , partly because it is scarcer , but very greatlv also , because it is the means of obtaining

    the large and certain returns which attend legitimate commerce in this country . Should matters proceed aa they now do , labour is likely to become still more costly , the labourer more independent , and his social relation to the capitalist very different from what it has been ; and , for our part , we anticipate that continued advance with hope . Docs it follow that capital will be worse off because labour is better off ? On the

    contrary , we believe that the present opportunity for capital is exactly proportionate to that for labour . People are leaving the country at the rate of more than 300 , 0 ( 30 a-year ; they have been doing so for the last five years , and the ratio is increasing . Hand-labour is growing scarcer , and therefore dearer , in almost every county ami

    every trade . It is becoming evident , even to the agriculturist , that the deficiency must be made good by machinery . Machinery requires skilled labour , which in better instructed than rude labour , therefore more productive , while the labourer ia better able to manage himself for las own interests . Thus , under the continued dearth of labour , a great change in likely to bo effected for the better in the condition of the

    labourer . But what will be the duty of capital In the first instance , to supply that machineryin the second , to use iL . Capital in England , then , has before it now opportunities—first , in the shape of the regular increase to the ordinary commerce ; secondly , in the facilities offered to it by the influx of gold and the improved arrangements of the public finance , including the mobilization of the public funds : thirdly , in the creation of machinery to supply the rude

    handlabour ; fourthly , in supplying the wants of a population , more- limited , but able to enjoy a much larger consumption of priced artieles ; and fifthly , in the extension of scientific and organized industry to agriculture' —that stupendous commencement of a now trade taking place in the wealthiest country of tho world . Truly it appears to us that there is plenty of work for the profitable employment of capital , without lending it for a plaything to a French or n Russian Ernporor—without establishing banktf fuf Greek

    account under Russian patronage , or entering into partnership with Louis Napoleon ' s funny '' Society of Moveable Credit . "

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    INTELLIGENCE versus EDUCATION . Let us not , in considering the bearings of the Education Scheme of the Government ,, forget that Lord John Russell has ever insisted on the educational test in politics . The property qualification , as he has always viewed it , is a representative qualification . The bricks get the vote , because to attain bricks is supposed to necessitate the having brains ; and Lord John has only faith , in the educated brains . He has never opposed demands for suffrage extension by a principle : his argument has been , and still is , that " rights

    can only conveniently be admitted to exist in " intelligence ; " and that various tabulated statistics disclose that there is no guarantee of educated classes being discoverable much below a 101 . or 5 / . house franchise . To his mind , then , his speech and proposal of Monday week had political tendencies of an influential character . His educational scheme precedes his suffrage scheme . He must have considered that he was taking the first step toward the intellectual preparation of the British community for perfected political enfranchisement . And in that light it is obvious his scheme is a distinguished non

    seqmtur . But the opportunity should be taken of ventilating this educational test question . The unenfranchised may plainly perceive in the conclusions of the Cabinet , as reported by Lord John Russell , that the objection so often used against tlie ignorance of the applicants for freemanship is only a dexterous cant ; and that there is no the to the

    real resolve to catechise country up fit-for-voting point , which , if sought for in the vague directions given by the aristocracy , will be found exceptionally without position , as well as without magnitude . It would be well , therefore , to face the cant , and expose . it ; for clearly the democracy cannot wait to pass that examination , the character and date of which the holders of power of certificate cannot be got to fix .

    There is a confusion of terms in all that is said on the subject , which only needs detecting to explode the entire argument . Sydney Smith used to meet the talk about the " want of education , ' &c , with the emphatic , " Pooh ; it ' s the worst educated country in the world I grant you—but it's the best instructed . " The whole blunder is in using as synonyms " intelligence" and " education , " and in assuming that education is only of one sort—that which comes from schools . It would be better if there were what Mr . Phinn

    called , recently , " compulsory education —if every man and woman had to begin at a school , and to reach certain qualifications , as a basis for tlie adult education , before being let away from school . But does it follow because the masses are not school-taught that they are ignorant ? The instruction of which Sydney Smith spoke , is political and social—that species of education which goes on in the workshop , in the taproom , in tho club , in the meeting , in the reading of newspapers ; and politically and socially our masses of tho working-class arc tho beBt

    instructed in Europe . In the same session Lord John will talk of the " enlightened" country , and , when he has to stave off a reform motion , of the "ignorance" in the community ; and the reconcilement of tho belief that we are at once the most forward and tho most backward of civilized rnankind is not easy . Supposing that tho national school system of England wero perfected ; when the boy leaven school , what better political and

    social education could be get than it is in his power now to get , not having been at school at all , or for a longer period than enabled him to ai tfn his name and read tho town placards P Tho anti-democracy argument always appears to proceed upon tho assumption that children are to vote ; tnere i « no provision for adult education . A suggestion of Lord Brougham ' s used to . be , that an enfranclnHoment of the mastics would in itself

    be an education : that when a man got a vote the thinking how he should use that vote would rapidly make him an educated man . In effect , there is no real thought until there is responsibility ; no political earnestness until there is direct political conscience . Let us contend by all means for national education ; but for our children , not for our men . The artisans and peasants of Prance and Gormany are better educated , iji the school sonsy , iUm \ U »

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    * re THE LEADER . [ Saturday , . 1 c *;/ 25 - . - ¦¦ '

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 16, 1853, page 372, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1982/page/12/