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    Untitled Article

    Iwjth moralit y as it is usually understood , apd . are positively repelled from vice . if the vice is of a kind which is less sublime , terrible , or epic than that presented in other works of art , it is because the state of society to which the story refers is trivial and mean . If virtue is presented amid the temptations which surround Violetta , it is because those temptations are the demons which beset the soul in the . present day . If the attention of the audience is called to the

    JJoreftes and the roues of a great European capita ] , it 4 because rpues and Lorettes canaiofc be shut out of the sight . If there is anything detestable , we repeat , it is in the state or society ; if there is anything more detestable , it is that cant which attempts to prevent a remedial process , by saying that we must not turn our fastidious eyes on the . disease .

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    HOLIDAY TIME . liOirooN being out of town at present , driven abroad by the dullness of our wateringplaces and only a residue left , even at the sea-side , not much is thought or said of a political or literary nature . It is impossible to be busy or serious all the year round—rto legislate , or write , or practise at the bar , to

    condense despatches , or keep accounts—to do anything , high or law , incessantly . Citizens must go into the country , and country people must take holidays in town , for leisure is essential , and pleasure is essential , and humanity withers without them . If I have been eleven months in a dusty office , heating mj brains by application to business , can I be another eleven months in the office

    without an interval of pastoral indolence , or sea or mountain breezes ? If I have sat nightly during the session , dreamily on the benches of the House of Commons , or i n the library , or in the . coffeerroom , or have been fetched from the Opera to vote , and have suffered from the dissipations of the town for more than half a- year , is it tolerable that I should not Bhopt , ride , and sail during the holiday time , to relieve myself from nervousness ,

    biliousness , and feeble irritability ! Would the liberty of life in chambers be endurable without a seasonable digression among fields , and parks ,. and the waves of the Channel ? Certainly t h ere may be insensible beings who work perpetually without perceiving that they are wearing out ; but he best knew human nature who said , " The spirit of man cannot demean itself lively in this body without some recreating intermission of labour and serious things . "

    Well , on ( Sunday morning , a month ago , fort y sermons were preached in IJondon aggavnst over-work , and in favour of seasonable leisure . It was proved from Zechariah that boys . and girls play even in the streets of the Divine City , and we really detect no unwillingness on the port of reap eotable people to provide themselvQa with an autumnal holiday . It is one of the pleasant duties they owe to Providence . J 3 ut there are other people not quite so respectable , who may have been working longer and harder than we ; and it may seem curious to the few uncomfortable per-; 8 ojas , . who allow gentle reflections to

    trea-> pa 8 S , upon light-hearted leisure , that these . PWpJp never have healthy holidays . They J » ave , ( MiJQlynaej > it , but not recreation . They have . rtiheir , hot room at the Swan ; they have , theiri itagront concert halls ; their " free . and eaay , " to whiten still more tho cheelcB that have been whitening twelve hours in tho Jnctory . And , among the innovations of our age ^ they have , m ^ Jew places , their gardens , . pa * ka , and libraries , their spacious mueio-,, roQoae , their cheap excursions—all but the §"*«* *< r enjoy them . Even this is promised ; the ; plulanthropic generation is saying , " Givo

    us your Sunday , and you shall have half your Saturday to yourself . " But here certain discreet economists have interposed to warn the people—rwhich must be bewildered amid its multitude of counsellors—not to be led away by early closing and half-holiday ideas . " Five hours a week is eight per cent , off

    your labour , eight per cent , off your wages , eight per cent , off your employers' profits , eight per cent , off the average power of industrial production throughout the country . " And then these placid calculators , perhaps writing within sight of summer waves , " confess " proudly that they " be coldblooded . "

    The man who confesses himself coldblooded always thinks himself a Malthtts , at least . Your " sentiment " is put down at once . Possibly , however , to be coldblooded is not necessarily to be logical . For example , a great manufacturing company in this metropolis , warmed by the sun of our last splendid July , has made certain

    calculations which , if they are not coldblooded , strike us as not less rational than the doctrines of the most relentless economy . First , the partners admit , "We ourselves get holidays when we can . " Then , reckoning the daily labour of each workman as amounting , under the high-pressure system , to three thousand one hundred and ten hours in the

    year , they show that their concession of time involves only a loss of one hundred and four hours upon each man ' s work in the year . They propose , then , to pay the same wages for the smaller as they have hitherto paid for the larger number , and their economical justification is this : — " Out of these three thousand and six hours' work , done in the spirit in , which it will he done , we shall get more value than out of three thousand one hundred and ten hours in the ordinary spirit ; " they go on to show that they shall gain ' some hundreds of pounds" by the

    innovation . So that it is not always false sentimentality to suppose that a workman is not only a machine , but has a spirit which will influence his exertions . By the same rule , it is not always wise , though it may be coldblooded , to say , as the manufacturer said to Mr . Cavan , " There are plenty more men to be got . " That " plenty more men" are needed to supply the waste of overwork is shown by Dr . kANOASTEB ' s proofs that a thousand persons in London die annually from exhaustion , and that at least eight thousand lose their health .

    It is quite unnecessary to write dismally on this subject . We all know what is the effect of overwork , of over-excitement , of too continuous application to one pursuit . We find that we lose nothing by a holiday , that we need not be less zealous , ambitious , or successful beoauae we do not choose to exhaust mind and body by one unrelaxed effort carried on in an unwholesome atmosphere for years . ! No one regrets tho month he has spent in Switzerland , or in North Wales , or

    at Brighton . No one imagines -that he would have been richer , stronger , happier , had he never qeased rto " attend to his affairs" for the sake of an . annual holiday . But , with this universal assent to the law that exertion should be relieved by leisure , it ought to be remembered that millions of persons do not enjoy the pleasures " that win . most upon the peoplo "—rambles and pastimes , pure air and change , release from labour , and the indolence that brightens and re-empowors tho mind .

    Thoro is no danger that " society will become too philanthropic , though there is danger that it may become too paternal . Suppose , however , that whilo we refresh ourselves on aea . and laud , > wo think a littlo of tho vast stationary mass , and resolve that , if

    we cannot ask " the people" down to dinner or offer them a bed , we will allow them to do as they will with their own time , their own means , and their own opportunities . A notion of . this sort of tolerance , picked up at Hastings , would be as pretty as the pinkest of sea-shells , and worth more money .

    Untitled Article

    HIS HIGHNESS MEEK ALI MORAD . When" the British forces first entered Scinde in 1838 , Meeb Sohbab was Eais , or chief , of the Talpoors of Khyrpoor . Peeling that his end was at hand , that prince divided his territories , which comprised the whole of Upper Scinde , into four parts . He had three sons , Meeb Eoostum , Meeb Moobabuck , and Meeb Am Mobai > , each of whom received one of these portions as his hereditary property . But the fourth was assigned to the eldest born , in addition to his other patrimony , for the express purpose of

    maintaining the dignity of the Pugree , or Turban . The second son , however , died in 1839 , and thus , in accordance with the will of Meeb Sohbab , Ali Mobad became heir apparent to the throne . During his minority , Ali Mobad had been placed under the guardianship of Moobabuck Khan , who had abused the trust reposed in him , and had unjustly deprh r ed his ward and brother of a part of his inheritance . Hence afterwards arose many disputes , in the course of which blood was frequently shed . In the words of Ali Mobad himself : " The matter was one

    between myself and the other Meers or Khyrpaor , as brothers , and they sometimes had been in the habit of taking my villages and sometimes I used to take theirs . " In these disgraceful contests Meeb Roostum Khan , the head of the family and nominal sovereign of Khyrpoor , took part with Nttsseer Khan— Moobaeuck ' s eldest son —not altogether indeed on account of the justice of his claims , but rather because he had himself received an affront at the hands of Ali Mobad .

    A treaty recently imposed upon the Scindian chieftains by the British Government , prohibited an appeal to arms for the settlement of such disputes , and referred their adjustment to the British political agent . Ali Mobad , however , being " a man of unbounded ambition and great tact , and consistent and unswerving in his purpose of aggrandizement , " was not to be restrained by the mere letter of the law . He know his

    own abilities , his skill in intriguing , and his utter freedom from the impediments of conscientiousness . He therefore raised a considerable force , and marched against his nephew , while yet unprepared for tho encounter—chiefly throug h his compliance with the counsels of Captain Bbown , the Governor-General ' s political agent . On the 15 th of September , 1842 , the hostile bonds confronted each other at Nownahar , near

    Khyrpoor , and an engagement ensued altogether in favour of Ali Mobad . To prevent an entire overthrow , and to check tho slaughter of his friends , tho venerable Bais , Mint Roostum Khan , proceeded to hia brother s camp and purchased peace by tho cession ot nine vill ages , seven of which belonged to himself . Tho compact was barely ai ^ ncd when a messenger arrived in hot haute irorn Captain Bbown , forbidding tho fig ht , and requiring the grounds of dispute to bo laid before himself . On this Ali Mobad wrote to

    inform him that ho had already granted poaco to his relatives on their coding to him mno villages , whilo the othcra acknowledged that they had been compelled to " satialy the hungry fellow for tho moment with a moutUful , " at the saino timo intimating their intention of making good thoir present Ioshcs

    Untitled Article

    ^ j 92 TM < E LE ADER . [ Iffo . : 334 , flAgpRPAar ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 16, 1856, page 782, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2154/page/14/