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    not more than 10 s . a week ; in parts of Somersetshire they are as low as 6 s ., with an allowance of the rough indigenous cider . It is very difficult to support life on such allowances ; much more easy to find food , comfort , political freedom , and the chance of prosperity , in Australia or America ; and if the employer will not , or cannot gire better wages at home , it would unquestionably be better if the men , whether of Lancashire or Somersetshire , were to seek their fortune across the Atlantic or the Southern ocean .

    The mistake which workmen make is that of supposing-that masters can pay wages according to their good will ; whereas , if masters were to let their outlay exceed their income they would soon go into the Gazette , and their mills would stop altogether . If the manufacturing interest is to be preserved , for the benefit of men as well as masters , it must be helped over the period of difficulty . , JNTow , the men can understand problems of that sort quite as well as the masters . They are not so accustomed to the inquiry . But a very little explanation would enable the leading minds to see the whole principle at once .

    The men are 'more willing to make sacrifices than \ he masters ; what they want is , exact information as to the state of labour , and its commercial value in other parts of the country . If they had that , they would not make demands " commercially preposterous . Their means do not enable them to secure the information from a sufficiently comprehensive field . The masters , under the operation of that ignorance which Mr . Cobden deplores , have thought fit to withhold that information from the men , or , in certain cases , to give

    it only m an imperfect , garbled , and misleading form , hence these quarrels , in which property and trade are wasted beyond calculation . If the masters want to prevent such inflictions , they will do their best to supply themselves and their men with specific , detailed , and comprehensive information on the commercial subjects in agitation between them ; and thus they will secure a trustworthy standard for settling these disputes , instead of bungling out the arrangement by wager of battle .

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    THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS . A contemporary , not addicted to religious polemics , has forcibly exposed the cant of " misbelief , " which , writers in the Russian interest have twanged against the Turks , by way of strengthening the pacific prostration of Manchester with the evangelical delirium of Exeter Hall in a crusade against the Crescent . We have , for obvious reasons , forborne to press the tempting comparisons suggested by the policy of the infidel , Abd-ul-Medjid , on the one hand , and the orthodox Christian , Nicholas , on the other . We

    have , it is true , in the words of an eye-witness , described the orthodox Christianity of the Russian Church , as it is practised throughout the dominions of the Czar . Wo have shown it to bo such a confusion of bestial idolatry , debauchery , ignorance , as even statecraft and pries tcraffc / mndcr tho most favourable circumstances , have seldom fabricated . But we have desisted from pressing the contrasts and analogies in which tho religious phase of tho ltoisso-Turkish dispute abounds . They arc edifying and suggestive

    enough to give sincere observers pause . It is not the fault of those whoso orthodoxy may seem open to question , thai tho groat organ of tho onlightened selfishness of this ago and country should , day by day , have represented tho existence ^ of Turkey as opposed to true religion , and the Christian protectorate us a justifiable pretension of an evangelizing Czar . ! t is not our fault that tho faith as it is in Nicholas tho God-fea . ring , and tho

    faith aa it in in Allah , should be tested by thoir fruits . Tho Times , adopting its vocabulary to tho calibre of tho Groat British evangelical intellect , never discusses tho iiusso-Turkish question without stigmatizing tho poor Mussulman as misbelieving and in ( idol . Those epithets do not , it i « teuo , l > otray any strikingly original conception , nor do they coimnunicato anything now : nut they tell upon that weak niclo of the eminently wuf-ritrhtoous Grout British mind which cherish oh

    < : ant , as it it wore a certificate of holiness : — "In tho first place , " nay » tho Economist of Saturday lank , "ifciHnot triui , in tho hoiiho in whioh it ih ordinarily alleged , that tho Uuhhkuih ar « ou r fellow OIu ' mtiiwiH , juxl that tho Turku aro ' unholiovora . ' Both , ao- nling to our vi (» w of thoir creod , aro ' w /« boliovoiH . ' Wo vory much question whothor , if tho matter woro trul y understood , wo should not find that Englinh I '

    roteatauts , and Scotch Protestants still more , have not more and closer sympathies of faith and feeling with the Mahometan than with the benighted votaries of the Greek Church . - The Turks pray to God onlythe same God . as ours—' The God of Abraham , of Isaac , and of Jacob : ' the Russians pray exclusively to the Virgin Mary , and a host of saints , who are an abomination in our eyes . The foundation and the first points of the creed of all three Churches—the Mahometan , the Oriental Christian , and our own—are identical . We all believe in one God , and in Moses and Jesus—we as a Divine Saviour , they as his Prophets . There we stop : the Russian and the Turk both-go further;—the latter add Mahomet—the former add St . Nicholas , St . Catherina , and an interminable

    calendar of canonized pr iests and worthies . The former have added a multitude of " corruptions—the latter have introduced but one . It is sad and unsatisfactory to be called upon thus to cast the balance between two false and guilty theologies ; but we will appeal to almost any earnest Protestaiit who has lived in Turkey , whether he did not feel more prompt and natural religious sympathy with the followers of Mahomet , whose simple faith is comprised in two formulas—prayer to God , and charity to man ; who never fails , night and morning , at business or at table , when the Muezzin sounds the hour for his devotions ; and who never passes a mendicant without bestowing alms upon him ' for the love of God , ' however poor he may be himself : —than with the so-called Christian of the Oriental

    Church , whose whole religion is a mass of fasts and superstitious ceremonies , who is enslaved by a priest almost as ignorant as himself , who knows little of his Saviour , and less , even , of his God . "In the next place , in the immediate affair now under discussion , it is the Turk who has acted like a sensible Christian , and the Russian who has acted like a rapacious infidel . And how can a Potentate claim our sympathy on the ground of a common creed , while trampling under foot every commandment of that creed , and acting in . the most flagrant contravention of its spirit ? 'By their fruits ye shall know them . ' And we have the highest authority for embracing in the closest bonds of fraternity those of every nation and of

    every faith who ' walk humbly' in the presence of God , and ' act justly' in the face of man , and for refusing to recognise as Christians all those , whatever may he their profession or their name , who are ' oppressors , extortioners , or unjust . ' 'In that ^ ay many shall say , Lord , Lord , have we not preached in tJiy name , and in thy name cast out devils , and in thy name done many wonderful works ? And then will I profess unto them , / never knew you ; depart from me ye that work iniquity . ' Nor is this the only case in which in the Ottoman dominions heathen crimes are perpetrated by the Christians , and Christian duties are reserved for the practice of the ' unbeliever . ' No one who has been at Jerusalem at Easter , or who has read the accounts of those who have , can fail to be aware of the scandalous

    scenes transacted there every year ;—how the Greek and the Catholic Christians fight round the very sepulchre of their professed Lord and their common Saviour , till blood flows in torrents on the sacred floor , and how tho astonished and disgusted Ottomans have to provide a regular police for the occasion , to compose the feuds of the ' true believers , ' and to separate the infuriated ' Christian' combatants . " , All this , no doubt , is very true to fact , very sound in doctrine , and altogether very well put by our semi-ministerial contemporary . But is it not a waste of common flense and sincerity upon those who identify Grospcl truth with CortschakofF- — upon those who sent a bishop to Jerusalem , who , after many years' labours numbers more

    nurserymaids than converts—upon those who in one breath condemn free thought and anathematize the Pope , as the champions of a basfcar , d and barren Protestantism ; upon those who are taught to sympathize with State Churches wherever established , especially when the Altar and tho Throne are one ; upon those- who forget that more than one Christian empire is kept alive by Jewsand that in our own Indian empire we can odor no satisfactory substitute to . Buddhism for tho poor Hindoo whom our missionaries hav e preached out of their native faith ; no substitute , we mean , which the Hindoo will in his soul accept , ; while forty millions of our Indian subjects , and thoso not the leant brave or tho . least cultivated , aro misbelieve ™ liko the Turks P

    In our century , and in tho classic land of cant , the cry of "infidel" is tho cheap revenge of hypocritical conformity upon the few who remain faithful to their own consciences in the teeth of social ostracism and civil disabilities . It is tho safe and easy refuse of enli g htened selfishness . " Misbelief ' " in , alter all , in more senses khan one , t ' oo much , a question of latitude . Perhaps it in iJMy to remain no for some time longer in the Christian knowledge sense ., unless , indeed , the " Coming tf trugglo" ( prico % l . ) should bo out short by I he Millennium . It is ono thing | u Xurkey , another

    in Russia , another at Calcutta , another in Ceylon , another in Borne , another in London . But we need not be surprised that those who , with the conduct of the Turkish Government throughout these tedious complications before their eyes , can speak of the dignified calmness and moderation of the Porte , in spite of vacillating allies and hostile outrages , as the indisposition to come to extremities with the invader , and of the patriotic uprising of a martial people in defence of their

    nationality , their faith , and their independence , as an outburst of fanatical barbarism—we need not , we say , be surprised that writers who are compelled to such perversities as these , should be little ashamed to pander to the ignorant clamour of evangelical platforms , with the vulgar claptrap of " the misbelieving" Turk .

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    TURNPIKE JOBS AND COUNTY MAGISTRATES . Some weeks since our attention was invited to a flagrant local job about to be perpetrated * by an offspring of that prolific parent of jobbery and model of maladministration , the Turnpike Trust . Indeed , we had remarked in a Bristol paper some very trenchant and vigorous letters , written apparently by one on the spot , and practically familiar with the operations of which the special case denounced was but an occasional example . A contemporary has already glanced at this particular case , not without a necessary apology for the " utter staleness" of the whole subject ; and , to say the truth , it was nothing but the sense of this staleness that prevented our taking up an instance of so marked a character , and so full of illustration . In common with the entire turnpike trusfc system of the country , the turnpike trust of Bristol is not in a wholesome condition . It is , indeed , &joaying concern , in the sense of paying " for superintendence only , a sum equal to onesixth of the outlay . " It has lately been attempted to erect a new gate upon the Ashton road : in other words , to levy a new toll precisely on that branch of the trust which did return a profit . The total cost of this road is stated to be 1306 ? .

    its rovemxe 1301 £ . ; leaving a balance in hand of 85 £ . Why , then , levy anew tax ? Obviously for no other reason than to squeeze out of tins Ashton road some more profits to prop up the illconducted credit of the general trust . Other circumstances , indeed , with which we are mado acquainted , suggest other reasons . Within two miles of the proposed new toll-gate , there are collieries , the transit from whioh to the adjacent districts at present has no turnpike to pass . But had the contemplated job succeeded , these coals would have had to pay , and the rival collieries at Bedminster , whose coals have to pass tho existing

    gate , would have rejoiced in an impost , which would arrest the natural ( low from tho rival pits , to the exclusive advantage of their own . The promoters of the intended turnpike are reported to have comprised in their councils several wortliies more or less indirectly associated with the Bedminster collieries . It is not ooalowners only , however , who would have been mulcted at the gate . The stoppage would have been a nuisance to tho ricli of the neighbourhood ; to the poor it would have been an intolerable exaction . But there are other circumstances

    attending this happily defeated project oL' establishing an additional tollgato within eight and a halt miles of the payiiuf tollgato at Bedminster , worthy of notice . We do not desire to press the case as if it wero exceptional . On the rontrary we have too much reason to know that it ; is but one flagrant exposure of a radically vicious and disorderly system . No doubt on many other roads a , gang of surveyors and sub-surveyors divide the spoils of which the public is defrauded ; no doubt on other roads the lame , the hall ; , and

    tho blind are employed at the public ? expense to find rent for their employers ; just as in other counties , no doubt , there are magistrates who , liko Hea-lawyers , know just enough of Jaw to botroublosome to thoir neighbours , and to bring the law itself into contempt . But in tin ' s particular caso of the Bristol Turnpike Trust , there is tho amusing and edifying point of the treasurer

    summoning a meeting of trimtoes without authority , and thereby exposing himself to a . severe penalty , and to the disability of over acting again in the Trust .- And thin treasurer , as often happens wo darn nay , is described , as a gentleman of active powers of annoy unco and restless local ambition , who "< miimilutes" the limctionu of a branch banker " with , tho govoro ,

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    October 29 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 1043

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 29, 1853, page 1043, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2010/page/11/