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    itiak tHELEADER , [ No . 296 j Saturday , " * * * ' . ¦ —^^ - ^—^—^^^^^ M ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ M ^^ M ^ fc ^^ aMMBBMMBMBMtMBBBBBB ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^

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    siws J > t . Boom * * » not n ^ VOI f , than "i tin at the besfc of times ; aa 4 he ascribes this stubbornness of virtue m the loll-thexrown-uiuttoii order to the virtue of the British mother in that superior rank . This is a new light , or , if not exactly new , it is an old light with the extinguisher taken « JE . We have new forms of prison discipline , in order , first , to abstract the criminal population from tie non-criminal—to weed the healthier part of the population , and to reform the condemned part , if possible . " We have reformatory schools established by the exertions of men like M . D . Hill , Lloyd Baker , Bengovgh , Ellis , and Miss Cabpenter . The rationale of training for the " Arabs" of civilised life has now been reduced to a very simple form . De Metzism is rising in England ; and although a trimming government and an inert people still linger about the work , which is nearly the most distinct before us in this world , some beginning has been made . Redhill flourishes ; the school at Kingswood , which has already educated fifty children , will now be extended to accommodate 120 ; Suffolk will provide for one or two hundred of the young population ; Sussex is agitated even to its downs ; and if Somersetshire , with its three adjacent counties , cannot yet muster for the duty , we have at least aa assurance that a few hundreds will be redeemed out of the thousands of children that are annually trained to perdition . For that is the plain fact . In savage lands all men are savages . " The stoic of the woods" commits his irregular heroisms , and mistakes them for services xintainted by any depravity which follows upon the conscious committal of a bad act . In this country we separate men into three classes . We have the purely virtuous , of which the statistics remain unknown to us ; we have those who trim between vice and virtue , observing virtue on the surface and compromising with any convenient amount of Vice under the surface ; and we have our thousands annually produced who are finally condemned as -vicious , outcast , depraved . The reformatory idea is beginning to make some progress amongst us , but we have not yet arrived to a stage in which any kind of proportion—even the proportion of one to ten—is established between the process of reformation and the process of deformation . Our deformatories turn out their professors and graduates at the rate of tens of thousands annually ; our reformatories are content with their hundreds . A man like M . D . Hill shall exhaust his very body in reiterating to us all , in our habitual indifference , the very plain truth that you should train up a child in the way he should go , and you continue to train up millions in the way they should not go ; consigning some tens of thousands annually to the black hole which is at the termination of tha ^ way . Such is civilisation ! Now , for our own parts , being enthusiastic , unpractical , visionary , scarcely orthodox , although clinging to the fundamental proofs of orthodoxy , we do , hopelessly , as the confession would betray us to Dr , HasljUm , hold that this annual sacrifice of thousands ia not essentially necessary to civilisation . "We have a sympathy with Dr . Booth , although we are quite aware of the consequences of the confession . We partly agree with Lord Ashburton- ;—a safer avowal—that it would , in this year / 1855 , be a very desirable reform , if we were to commence teaching ' * common things . " The whole moral of Dr . Booth teaches , in conjunction with , Lord Ashburton , that that education Uvtjhe best which is most direct to the essential business of life . What boots it to know the ptefJOIaqr , of the stars , the population of Mesopotamia , the manners and customs of the

    ancient Egyptians , or the chemical composition of hydrochloric acid , if we do not know how to get a dinner , to cook it , to make the clothes that cover us , or to make our house tidy . Considering that we live principally at home , that education appears to be foremost , perhaps the best commencement is to know how to produce our food , which consists usually of substances drawn from the ground ; and the art by which we learn how to produce ifc is generally called agriculture . It happens that this science of agriculture in its practice is one of the most healthy disciplines for the muscular body , the natural senses , and the common understanding of man by a new idea . Sir Edward Kerbison proposes to introduce this science into the reformatory system as a punishment ; only he intends to limit the agriculture to spade husbandry , and to make it " severe , " as a mode of rendering boys virtuous and tractable . For Sir Edward Kerrison partakes a common prejudice : although he coxdd explain the training of which these little children are victims , yet he retains a grudge against them , and wants to inflict vengeance , to satisfy his virtue , by punching them in the ribs with a " severe" form oi agricultural training . It is a confusion oi Triptolemus and Medusa . But there are difficulties in the teaching oJ " common things , " hindrance in the teaching of the commonest . Nothing should be more " common" for a mother than to know how tc suckle her child , yet civilisation steps in , and we have a beautiful specimen of our modern wisdom . We have developed , of late years , a complex and -wonderful machinery , which combines metal and human hands , for the making of cotton fabrics . So greatly do we rest our national greatness upon calico , that we demand the most intense application of a large and closely packed concourse at the duty . The British mother , whose function Dr . Booth so well understands , is called from her duties to pore with steadfast eye , but restless hand and foot , over the development of calico ; the development of character in the baby which she has happened to have being consigned to the mercenary care of an old woman who takes babies by the gross . For the manufacture of character , out of the raw material of babies , you may earn half-a-crown a week ; for the manufacture of calico out of cotton , four or five times that sum . Our calicoes " beat Creation "; our babies rather shame Creation . These babies grow up , and become , as the case may be , men or women . If men , they will not pass muster before the recruiting sergeant ; if women , they become the matrix , to use the scientific phrase , for more irrecruitable Britons and more mothers of irrecruitable Britons . In this view the Deformafcory beats the Reformatory , not by thousands , but by hundreds of thousands ; and our " system" renders us rather hopeless of promoting Dr . Booth from the office of lecturer at Wandsworth to that of Director for the regeneration of the species in the Cotton Empire . ¦ ¦

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    A rural police forco for Berkshire ha » been agreed upon by a mnjozity of sixteen , at an adjourned sessions of that county .

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    Tb , ele . ' is no learned man but will confesa he hath much profited by reading controveraiea , hia aensea awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then , it bo profitable for him to read , why should it not , at leaat , be tolerablo for hia adversary to write . — Milton

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    WHAT SHALL WE LOSE AND WHAT SHALL WE GAIN BY THE WAR ? ( To the Editor of the Leader . ) SliB , —The first part of the question naked above ia not -very difficult to answer . Wo lose aome thou *

    sands , say twenty thousand per annum , of valuable lives . Some millions , say fifty millions per annum , of money , which might have been turned to account in ways beneficial to the community , and especiall y to the working and suffering part of the community . We lose thousands of lives—each the centre of a little circle of hopes , kind wishes , and tender affections . We lose millions of money , each handful of which ia not bo much vulgar , filthy lucre , as hot-headed politicians and maudlin sentimentalists agree in considering it , but is merely representative of so much wages for the working classes unprofitabl e used up , and robbed from those who would have otherwise fairly earned and profitably expended the same . I state the case broadly , but substantially it is a fact , that the bulk of the money now lavished on the war , to the direct benefit of a mere fraction of the people , would have gone into the pockets of the working classes at large . I need not now occupy your space in proving this point . Any intelligent artisan or mechanic will understand the importance of capital , not merely to masters but to men . It . is the great fund out of which labour is paid for . War loans and wartaxes eat up and curtail that fund . We are squandering , then , in this war the wages of the poor . So much for the more evident losses of the war . There are others . For instance , the enactment of good laws and the repeal of bad laws , must , for the most part , be laid on the shelf till the war is over . Again , for all ¦ that the Poet Laureate , speaking appropriately in the character of an incipient lunatic—as the hero in Maud appears to have been—for all that the Poet Lam-eate •¦ may say ; we , that is , Englishmen in general , Eriglish' men as a body , were gaining ground in the use of our : reason , and in the observance of moral law . We were less drunken , less savage , less unjust , leBS brutally ' bigoted than we were a hundred years ago . I don't p say we had become all of us scrupulously sober , or 1 watchfully humane , or conscientiously just , or gene-! rously tolerant , but I maintain we were more so than ' we used to be . We were making progress . And I L further maintain , though here and thei-e a warlike ecclesiastic , flushed with excitement , till his face rivals L the crimson coloured velvet pulpit cushion , argues 1 " that war has a peculiarly wholesome effect on men's minds , " I maintain that the longer the war continues , ! the more pernicious will be its effects upon all of us . We , shall lose ground . Christian and social virtues will languish . Crime will gain head . Nothing but a cause ' truly national and thoroughly noble can prevent war ¦ having a brutalising and debasing effect upon the ma-: jority of men . Fight we must sometimes , but it is bloody and barbarous work . Look at Punch's writing mocking verse about the death of Nicholas . The man died bravely enough , and rather like a Christian . He erred during his life , but he erred in common with sixty millions of people . He erred , but we war not , with the dead . Punch , however , wrote mocking lines , and turned the Czar's dying words into very good ' fun . And no doubt many people laughed over it light heartily . A straw shows which way the wind blows , and Punch , to some extent , expresses popular sentiment . At more than one theatre in this country the assembled multitude , when they heard that the Czar ; was dead , gave three enthusiastic cheera . That was a gallant thing to do , was it not ? Again , in the French journal ( Le Pays ) it is laid down with a happy mixture of playfulness and -wisdom , that" the best means of defeating Kussia ia to kill as many Russians as possible , " or words to that effect . I suppose the writer is correct , but it strikes as a little butcherly i when expressed in such a broad , candid , manner . . One cannot help having a touch of pity for the poor \ Russians , who are to be slaughtered so steadily and perBeveringly , and perhaps will never know the rights 1 of the quarrel in which they have to take part . This \ touch of pity is a weakness . A few more years of war , and we shall get used to all that . ' Tis like the foolish subcoptibity of a young medical student when he sickens ; at the first smell of a dissecting room , or the dainty : disgust of a favourite ensign , when he first witnesses a soldier ' s naked baok streaked red aud blue by the cat-o ' -ninetails . It will go off . Use is second nature . Old hands ridicule youngsters , who evince their ' delicate feelings , and quiz them very pleasantly . Tho feeling won't last , Wafuhall lose it . We shall acquire : in good time a comfortable , hard , leathery , well-seaaoned habit of mind . The moral nature will get well crusted over with a callous Bort of outiole , and the war , for those who can afford to pay extra taxes waA . work short time , will go forward merrily . I have imperfectly sketched , Sir , what we shall lose by tho war . More might be added , but I am fearf ul of trespassing on yourspaoe . Next week I hope to oonBider the second part of the question , namely—What do wo gain by the war ? and , in the meantime , subscribe myself . Yours faithfully , AnTHun H . Elton . Clevedon-Court , Nov . 21 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 24, 1855, page 1132, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2116/page/16/