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Leader (1850-1860), 17th March 1855, Edition 1 of 2, Page 255, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      to the left , mapping of the -ways to heaven . And with a House of Commons' such as ours , this is the only plan : our Christianity—our Church of England —being essentially Cluristianity by Act of Parliament—the New Testament being regarded merely as a " preamble"' to clauses of salvation arranged by the not remarkably-inspired clerks at the table . Now- —or -when a third reading has taken place ( and this is the only -way in which you could get a practical assembly to read its Bible so often)—you may marry your dead wife ' s sister : 100 members of your representative government say you will be damned ; but 110 members say that Providence will not pay any particular attention to the matter : majority in favour of eternal joys and

      temporal possession of Mary Anne , 10 . Why should not the path to Paradise be regulated by Parliament just in the method which governs its Turnpike Acts ? Where would you get a piouser man than Spooner ; better up in Leviticus , or more episcopal and awful in appearance ? You could , not catch a Cardinal to talk more technical twaddle than Sir Frederick Thesiger ' s—a smart barrister , of a profession , peculiarly governed by the Gospel , who is always on the alert , as if Providence had retained him , to resist encroachments on the Church of England . Then there are the two Phillimores — gentlemen who , when there is a doubt , will oblige you with a quotation , infany

      language , to any effect . There ' s Mr . Wtdpole , too , loose on Militia franchises , but profound in ecclesiology and there ' s Mr . Henry Drummond , who' has established a church of his own , on a rock of which lie has bought the fee simple , and to whieh his wealth and wit enable him to make a considerable number of converts , for whom he contracts by the dozen . Thus , the House of Commons is a tolerable Council of Faith ; and though it is doubtless the case that great errors in saving doctrine are committed , yet the country has the consolation of knowing that it is not steadfast in its errors , and that if the Tories are damned in 1850-60 , the turn of the Whigs may come in 1860-70 .

      Mr . Bowyer did not get up the debate he expected on Crim , cons .: he is so foolish a gentleman that he is generally laughed down ; and it appeared , in this case , —that his bill was pretematurally silly—as might be expected from so learned a member . Thus , for a little" while longer , the Turks ^ in o about whose territory we are defending civilisation , will have to endure their astonishment at finding it the custom of England to assess chastity after a pecuniary value ; while for so long , doubtless , the backparlour and tea-taking morality of Great Britain will continue to be shocked at our maintaining the integrity of a people whose Mahommedan religion sanctions what Mr . Bright calls ' . ' barbarous customs "—which , of course , is a good deal worse than practising civilised vices which are not sanctioned by-your . religion .. ^

      When it has not been a conventicle " of gentlemen connected with "The Gospel , " the House of Commons , this week , has been a debating club . Take Locke King ' s anti-primogeniture notion protruded on Thursday . Here was a perversion of Radical power to an utterly impracticable object . After the experience of the last three months , it would be insanity to doubt that the country is essentially and intensely aristocratic in its partialities . An army annihilated —an empire endangered—government at home rendered all but impossible—by the imbecilities of our ruling nobles , and of their class entrusted with all our affairs ; and yet , already , the cry that was raised , and prevailed so fiercely , against the oligarchical rdgime , is as purely a matter of history as the Gordon riots , —is an affair of " vulgar

      declamation . " And as the aristocratic regime rests upon the system of primogeniture—a system so absolutely national , that the' commercial classes do that without reason which the landed proprietors do in order to sustain the supremacy of the land in the state , is it not singularly unwise in a philosophical lliidicul party to select a moment of political suspense to obtrude ideas which will be pronounced ror volutionary ? Mr . Locke King was put down—because , said Sir K . Bcthcll , who brings in three new bills a month , " nolumus legcs'Anglioo mutari ! " The debate was a debate of first principles , and after the fashion of the " Union" society ; every one knowing that it was chatter for chatter ' s sake , objectless and rcsultless . But Mi ' . King vas no doubt satisfied that he had again " ventilated a great question . " Peculiar nation : which thinks it is free becauso it has a

      machinery for ventilation . Mr . William Williams , onhia Probate Duty hobby , was perhaps more practicable—after many years Mr . W . Williams carries liis points , —but was quite ns , inappropriate to the session . Ho did some good in eliciting something of the reserved and clumsy mind of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer . Sir Cornowall Lewis is a gentleman of great gravity of mind , whose intellect has been almost entirely washed away by a prodigious stream of learning turned on from

      the reservoir in Bloomsbury ; who has read so much that he has never had time to look about him ; and who has as much notion of the British House of Commons as Mr . Wm . Williams has of the Areopagus . As a speaker , he rather soliloquises ; and though he knows several languages , is tremendously bothered with a sentence of English . Shy ,-suspicious , and awkward , he cannot be popular with a popular assembly ; and , so far , he has not gone on very well-In throwing over Mr . Gladstone ' s Newspaper Stamp Bill , he has been guilty of the offence of timidity before the clamour of an interested class , found to be as selfish and as sillyaas the classes it is perpetually lecturing about the public good . In his answer to Mr . Williams , on Thursday , he indicated a curious conception of his functions as Finance Minister of a " popular , " not to say " liberal , " Government . Here was a proposition that this ,, one of the last fiscal privileges of the land , should be abolished : not an argument against it , though three-fourths of the Commons' House would be opposed to it . But Sir Cornewall Lewis , the scholarly squire , who has gone into office to do Lord Palmerston ' s bidding as abjectly as Mr . Goulburn did Sir Robert Peel ' s bidding , was actually shocked at Mr . Williams' attempting to interfere with the arrangements of the Government ; and he superciliously advised that abashed gentleman to withdraw his motion . Mr . Gladstone managed Mr . Williams better ; Mr . Gladstone always put Mm down , but always left him under the impression that bis plans were taken up . Was the House of Commons exercising its proper functions' in encouraging Mr . Cobbett ' s Ten-Hours Bill ? Having nothing else to do , how proper to foment class discord ! . But even from this debate the reflecting Turk may gather materials for thought . For he may see that , even in Mr . Bright ' s own district , peace is not synonymous with Paradise : and he may ponder over the circumstance that even in civilised England there is a war between those who toil and those who pay for toil fiercer and more fatal than that raging before Sebastopol . Saturday Morning . ^ "AStkanoer . "

      Untitled Article

      WHAT WE WANT . ( To the Editor qftlie Leader ., ) Sib , —We have two things to reform , it is evident , ere the business o f this country in its present crisis can be done . Neither Parliament nor the army do their duty ; and , to my mind , the one body is just as much- to blame for-our-present nullity as jthe . other . We want active , and able , and fearless administrators , and Parliament does not furnish them . The constituencies think they have done enough if they furnish a good kind of a well-to-do gentleman , representing wealth and respectability , but a man who probably never thought of politics till late in life , and who then looked at them from over his ledger in his study , or through the spectacles of his connexion .

      Continental empires have a horrid , slavish , intolerable and unpopular institution , called the bureaucracy . Men attain to . authority by rising through the gradations of an administrative career . I agree with all that can be said against the bureaucratic of France , of Prussia , and of Russia . It is a huge mushroom bed of insolence , tyranny , and servility . But it produces capable administrators . Any chefde bureau makes an excellent minister , witness Drouyn de LhuyB , or Manteuffel . All our freedom cannot produce the like . Why ? Because our freedom and its electors will not take the trouble , or practise the discernment ; and because it is not

      worth clever men ' s while to come forward into politics as a profession . A duke ' s son may turn politician as ho may enter the Guards , for his connexion enables him to turn what is on the face of it a bad speculation into a good one . But no able man of tho middle class can ever enter politics till ho is enriched and old , his life half done , his ideaa fixed , his opinions for acquiring and originating knowledge worn out . But this is the result of tho English notion , that the duties of politics , at least all tho preliminary and inferior ones , ought to bo done for nothing . The consequence is , that what ie done | b worth nothing , and that tho profession of politics is merely an amateur calling .

      Heneo tho incapacities we obtain , or are put ofl with in tho way of ministers ; henco the insolence with which the public arc treated . Nothing can bo plainer than that the Duke of Newcastle und his friends arc to blame for tho inefficiencies of tho recent management of tho war . Parliament holds back for months , threatens to inquire , and finding

      that it has merely obtained one old official lord instead of another to manage the war-department , it insists on inquiry—when lo ! up get the whole coterie of the Peelites , express the extreme of indignation against that most patient Mr . Bull , aad declare they will not serve him . What wo « ld have been the fate of the Duke of Newcastle in England some hundred and fifty years ago ? He wotrid . hare been impeached , and run some risk of his head . What would be his reward in Russia at the present day ? Siberia , no one can doubt . But the English system at present is that of the most complete impunity for error and incapacity , and the most utter absence of encouragement or reward for

      administrative merit . If this system continue , I dare to prophesy that England and her constitution will go , where they deserve—to the depths of Venetian annihilation . What is wanting in legislation and politics ? Fair play , opportunity , and employ for middle-class talent ; and middle-class talent is above all a talent for business . What is wanting in the army ? Fair play , opportunities , and employ for middle-class energies . The army is an amalgam of superfine gentry and working-class endurance . There ia from both

      courage in both , but from neither , nor of them conjoined , has been developed that spirit of military self-management and self-subsistence which enables an army not merely to fight , but to hold together and exist . The British army at the present time is composed precisely in the same way , and of the same classes , as the armies which the unfortunate Charles I . led into the field . The middle class , the sons of farmers , the small country brewers—the Cromwells and the Iretons in fact—are as much excluded from the British army of the present day as

      they were in the year 1625 . Allow me here to narrate a true anecdote , illustrative of things current . A rare occurrence happened within my knowledge . & . respectable farmer ' s son declared ( it was before the war ) that he would enter the army . The farmer was surprised at the folly of the speculation . He was ready to stock a farm for his son , on which he might live and make money ; but to buy a commission for him , and then allow him a smart annuity in order to enable him to live with the regiment , passed -the farmer ' s idea of economy and right . The son , impatient , enlisted . wrote to the

      The good farmer , greatly affected , soon Horse Guards to be allowed to purchase a company for his son , which , as the authorities of the regiment backed , the Horse Guards graciously allowed . And lo ! young Gaffer was an ensign when the war broke out . The young officer flashed his maiden sword at the Alma , and the Russians returned him the compliment at Inkerman , but did not slay him outright . There being but one lieutenant left of all the regiment , the young ensign looked naturally for promotion . Oh , no ; the Horse Guards wrote to say they would promote him only on the condition of his father paj-ing another 3007 . / ' . this

      Do the Horse Guards or the State profit by money ? No ; it is deposited merely for the sake of ensuring that officers shall be t he sons of rich and prosperous peoples ;; If-they were poor , they-might be democratic , discontented , and , in days of sedition and disaffection , might not be to be depended on . Such is the calculation , when absurd Admiralty and War Offices exclude the sons of the middle classes from the army and navy . They are excluded by a similar system from the church , which requires an expensive education , and bishops , we know , require some fortune in those they ordain . The Bar , wo know , erects the same obstacles and conditions for itself . So that professions in England , instead of performing the natural duty of professions , that is , acting as channels for the talent of the under classes to rise toeminence , have become simply modes of

      providing a position in society for the man who can pay for it . All this system of doing everything by money , and notliing without it , is not fifty years old . In the late war , men got ensigncies and livings , and cadetships , without money ; newspaper reporters rose to be judges and chancellors . Now all ifl closed . And pray , survey the consequences . Look at tho Bar , compare it with what it was , Look at the Church , tho Army , the Navy . There is nothingand no success to be had in any career but by pounds , Bhillings , and pence . Tho talent and the supremacy of England have been bartered into that . Tho whole system of England—its administration , its professions , itslegisalture—is Mammon ; ita whole science is what M . Muntz calls money-grubbing . We eeo the results __

      . . . ^ ,. It is not , therefore , a crusade against tho aristocracy of birth that reformers of the present . day are called to make , but a crusodo against tho more powerful , more universal , and more ^ stupid anato-Sacy ! tho aristocracy of wealth . Why is Louw Napoleon possible in France ? Simply becauso he hoe put down that aristocracy . To do the same here , thouffh not by tho same means , is the first thing we want ; althoug h it will be , 1 fear , the last thing V ( shall attempt . I am , &c , A Pkbbsman .

      Untitled Article

      MmOBL It , 1855 . ] ^ PHE LEABEB . 'flCS ¦

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      Untitled Article

      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 tolerahlefor his adversary to write . — MlLTON .

      Untitled Article

      f IS THIS DBPABTHEMT , A 3 AIO . OPINIONS , nOWEVEB BXTBEME , ARE ALLOWED AN EXPRESSION , THE EDITOR NECESSARILY HOLDS HIM-3 EI . F RESPONSIBLE FOB NONE J

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), March 17, 1855, page 255, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2082/page/15/