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m 2Q4 THE LEADER. fNo. 310, Saturday,
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SADLEIR OUR WITNESS. " It is an exceptio...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
. The Police-Bill Resistance. The Resist...
borough notables who would gladly join in a measure to drive away the thieves more effectually , dislike the idea of driving away the votes ; and thus , under cover of resenting central authority , they join the county members ; love of votes sympathising with dislike of rates . If the true motives to the resistance were avowed it would be more respectable . We could imagine a very refined style of argument vindicating the policemen ' s right to vote at
elections , and proving that by giving the sway over the choice of members in the Town Council to the Town Council itself , a certain unity is imparted to the borough , conducive to independence , and strengthening it as a State . We can conceive a stip more refined style of argument , which would represent "that if country gentlemen or bumpkins were completely protected against ticket-of-leave men , returned convicts , highwaymen , and burglars , they would lose that manliness which is
characteristic of the Englishman , and be devoid of any practice to keep their hands in against the Russians , or any other foreign enemy that noight invade our country . But the very same men who are pleading for local self-government Would abet a Secretary of State if they expected any degree of political disturbance in the country . They Would in a moment trote for concentration upon Yorkshire or Somersetshire . Let there be such riots as ¦ would follow upon a stoppage of the cotton
trade , and we should have borough magistrates in ;; ,-a panic , like those of Bristol , placing the whole government of their city at the disposal of a Captain of JDragoons . Why , then , should the larger third of Yorkshire , or wide districts m Somersetshire , be left at the mercy of the sepundrel ^ that may -wander about , a terror to th e defenceless , for the simple reason that those who resist do not see an immediate advantage tothemselves personally , or to their class , in the adoption of the measure ?
The fact is , that local self-government is not the real object of the agitators . If it were , we should never have had either this cr y or the necessity for this bill . Becatise times are quiet , and they think that they can " keep down" the working class without much assistance , the country gentlemen and the " borough tradesmen are willing enough to do with as little public machinery as-they can , and to keep
what they have got in their own hands . ' Sir George Grey steps 5 a with his bill , only because they have let one of the first functions of local government go by default . If the tranquillity of the times were disturbed , they would be howling for more force , a sudden recruitment of the police , or an auxiliary army of soldiers . The very men who are calling out for local government and
selfgovernment are denying the right of the English people , to even so much as a vote at the election of Members of Parliament . It is true that Six George Grey ' s bills are too much characterised by the principle of centralisation , but it is because self-government has locally fallen into an apathy . And the class that now resist dare not call forth the true life and spirit of self-government , because if they did the y would have the million of the working classes loudl
y asking for their share . They are allowing the authority to drift into the hands of the central Government , because when the proper season offered they refused the full share to thq ; preat body of the people itself . They are ptmighed by the power which the central ^ oyernmo nt is acquiring , of inflicting upon tfcotaixates wxd dictation ; and they would be IS ^ SS ^^^^^ roug « er times come , bedigaation of the multitude .
M 2q4 The Leader. Fno. 310, Saturday,
m 2 Q 4 THE LEADER . fNo . 310 , Saturday ,
Sadleir Our Witness. " It Is An Exceptio...
SADLEIR OUR WITNESS . " It is an exceptional case , " they say , when we point at any particular instance of the results to which the present temper and custom of " good society" lead . When a Sir John Dean Paul , chairman at so many religious and moral meetings , is found out , " the case , " they cry , "is peculiar ; " when the gentlemanly Mr . Strahau is detected , they say , " he has been led away ; " when the Honourable Francis Velliers " levants , " they affect astonishment at " so remarkable a case : " when an Arthtjb
Gordon is brought before a criminal court , compassion is felt for the friends and associates , who are so unlike him ; when James Sadleir , an ex-lord of the Treasury , avows forgery and frauds of many kinds , they tell us that , " Such a case has never happened before . " Now , how do they know ? If Mr . Sadleir had succeeded in all his manoeuvres , he would have made large sums of money ; he would
have redeemed the property that he has risked or counterfeited , he would have netted a fortune over and above his liabilities , and he would have been the miUionnairej " commanding" a high place in the House of Commons , if not in the Upper House : for the claims of Wealth are distinctly recognised in this country . How do we know that there is no Sadler that has not failed ? How that there is
no Sadleir who , although failing , has not found , friends to assist him in veiling his disgrace and then ? own ? Do we not see advertisement ' s in the paper , continually telling A . B . that he " may return , " that " all has been arranged ; " and if this in most cases applies to run-a-way apprentices , does not the language sometimes suggest the belief that a manager or director may be the fugitive whose place of concealment is kept so secretly ?
Besides how is it possible , in this case , that the delinquent can stand alone ? The actual forgeries that Mr . Sadleir committed may not have been executed with the privity of others ; but the partners in his bank must have known their own means ; those who had access to the books must have known the risks which their chief was * running , with sums supposed to be in the coffers 5 and somebody must have known what was implied when Mr . Sadleir induced the East Kent
Kailway Compan y to deposit £ 8 , 000 of its unemployed capital in the Tipperary "bank . If unauthorised , the jssue of Swedish Railway Shares was his own unaided act ; does that issue differ very greatly from the issue -which chairmen and directors of railway companies have themselves authorised ? Mr . Sadleir borrowed money on the security of a deed representing landed estate . The deed was a simple forgery , representing nothing ; in what respect did it differ from railway shares
representing no capital at all , but simply constituting surplusage created in order that people who . had contributed nothing might draw part of the dividends aa if they had paid their quota . In what respect does it differ from the tradesman who professes to sell you coffee , and gives you chicory ? In what , frorn the conduct of a great shipowner , who borrows money upon m 6 re ships than lie has to stake ; yrho undertakes to make payments without having any certainty of being able to fulfil his engagement ? In all cases there is
money obtained by the pretended sale of something that is a fiction , a fraud , a counterfeit ; and in all cases the purchaser ia cheated ; the only difference being the amount 01 tie loss . It is the same with a scion of a noble family who professes to make bets under such circumstances , that the other party mny lose money and ho may win it ; but that he has not the money to lose , and his fellow-sportsman cannot win . Nay , there is no difference
in the case of the nobleman , whose estates have long ago been impounded for more than their value , who still has goods from his tradesmen at three years' credit , and borrows on the security of the land that has done duty so many times over to defraud ^ the tradesman , or to screw money out of some friends and relatives that combine to compromise his affairs and conceal his disgrace . The substance of the fraud is in all cases the same . It consists in taking money put of the pockets of the unsuspecting , by telling a lie , and substituting a counterfeit for a reality .
The great excuse is the maxim , " Caveat emptor "—let the buyer beware . We are all of us so wide-awake that if we are taken in it is our own foolery , or our knavery over-reaching itself . What is this but to say that every Sadleir is surroi \ nded by Sadleirs ; that we are all of us more or less familiar with the stratagems that he uses , and that in fact he is not the exception that he is represented to be ?
" We have a right to assert that he is a type . The class is not always so completely developed ; but he is only taller than the plants in the same bed . Such practical and material contradictions of truth could not exist , if it were not for what appears to us to be at this day the ruling" vice of society . It is not the drunkenness of the last century , the Bon-Juanesque profligacy of the previous century the royal tyranny of the agebefore ^ the priestcraft or baronial turbulence of an earlier asre .
It is not the commercialdepravity ^ which is only the ultimate symptom on the surface , though it threatens to undermine our commercial strength , by taking away nationally that character for the " sterling " whicli we have lost individually . It consists in the habit which has grown upon us of having a set of morals which we profess to uphold in public , and betray in private . The code of society decrees certain laws ; the open infraction is
punished , the open denial is treated as infamy ; yet the veiled avoidance is winked at , and the wholesale infraction is tolerated , so that it be not avowed . We preach a law of marriage , while Regent-street swarms with the walking proofs that the rule of theory is not the rule of practice ; but the habit of slighting the conventional law begets the habit of observing and respecting no law at all ; and those who would have chased Mary Wolstonecrai'T into exile
are guilty of debaucheries , of unblushing infamies , and cowardly betrayals , at which Tom Jones himself would have blushed . We profess rigid commercial exactness' a committee of Parliament now sits to explore a system of wholesale fraud by adulteration ; the leading men of the Turf are debating checks upon wholesale cheating in " debts of honour ; " courts are established to deal with wholesale and
habitual bankruptcy , whicli earns judicial praise when it just escapes fraud . Thus our commercial classes learn habitual laxity of dealings by the universal slight of laws which everybody professes to uphold , The only wonder is that a Sadleir could not have hit upon some more bold and ingenious modo of transferring his own bankruptcy to unsuspecting strangers than common forgery or fraudulent sales * , and that he should not have blushed to seek refuge in so foolish a device as suicide , as if a man . should break his heart or hide his head because
he has deceived all round and brought ruin upon otJievs . The true shame in our day is for the deception to fail and the ruin to reach one ' s self . But no man who will keep Ins outlay and his professions going—no man who can . ride in a carriage , and speak moralities from " the ohair , " needs yield to the vulgar fate of confession , self-condemnation . Look round you when the highest in the land arc mustered
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 1, 1856, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_01031856/page/12/
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