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g 86 THE LEADEE. [No. 284, Saturday,
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THE PROMOTION OF LABOUR. The working-olr...
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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.
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The Perils Of The Nation. Last Winter A ...
formerly ? . Do they represent the yeomanry of our rural districts , or are they not the overflow of our artisans and town populations , morally and p hysically inferior to the former race ? "We much fear that the twenty thousand who perished last winter through criminal neglect , or through official impotence , can never be replaced . They constituted
our military backbone , and emigration , the high rate of agricultural wages , and other circumstances , have led to a result which the best authorities admit and deplore—namely , that the qualities of the British army are deteriorating . Not in courage , not in devotion , not in patriotism or soldierly spirit , but in that solidity , weight , and steadiness , which marked the original British yeoman .
Among consequent evils , one is likely soon to be felt . We shall be astonished if the second army exhibit powers of physical endurance equal to those of the first . But those powers , it is to be feared , will be tested to the utmost , by the rigours of the coming winter . " We have long heard of the note of preparation ; is the summons obeyed in the arsenals at home , or at the seat of war ?
If the public reports , which are in perfect harmony with private information which we continually receive , do not materially deceive us , the prospects of the army before Sebastopol are gloomy indeed . Th » men pass through their daily routine of toil and peril with noble perseverance ; the officers suffer their sickening fatigues with resignation , though not without complaint ; but feelings of despondency , if not of resentment , are gathering ] in the camp . Fifty or sixty soldiers are killed every night in the trenches : the hours of rest are
abridged ; the season will speedily be clouded by auguries of tne advancing winter , and still , whether with or without a victory at the Redan and Malakhoff , there will be long months to pass in the weary graveyards of the camp . Scarcely a hut has been erected , except as a hospital or a store ; the thousands which were built and paid for in England are gone , no one knows whither ; the new thousands in preparation cannot reach the heights of Sebastopol before Christmas , and the snows , the freezing rains , the bitter and cutting winds of this second winter , will find twothirds of our noble army crouching , shivering , benumbed , in wretched hovels and .. testsT
Already the railway needjg- xGparation . A few wet days would der ? inge it , almost irremediably . Onlvn ^ hear of attempts to renew the raji & for to repair the foundations , ^ tupon ^ feis means of transit the entire army utspencls for ammunition , for guns , for stores , for food , fuel , and winter clothing , if , indeed ,
winter clothing be provided at Balaklava . If the locomotive and the horses can drag up sufficient supplies , the exhausted men , after their vigils in the trenches , their vigils in the tents , their toils by day , and toils by night , will have to drag or carry them , each to his own quarters , over rough and broken ground , for there is scarcely a practicable pathway in
the camp . Here we are , then , this second autumn , counting the omens of another desolate winter . We had our agony and passion last spring . Wo broke into a storm of patriotic anger ; we overthrew a government ; wo drew tq light the secrets of misrule ; we confessed our sins , and exposed our shame ; yet the recurrence of the dangerous period threatens to bring a recurrence of calamities , only less appalling , produced by far more culpable negloct . Jyor , if the inclement season overtakes pur army , unhoused and unprovided , ¦ with a-broken * road from Balaklava to the camp , ' trad lana-fcransporfc service diegrac © -
The Perils Of The Nation. Last Winter A ...
fully organised — and if disease and cold attack the troops with a virulence more deadly than the fire of Sebastopol—whose will be the infamy ? There must be infamy somewhere , for it would be infamous , in spite of warning and . experience , with unlimited means and unlimited power , to sacrifice another gallant British army , gl o rified as much by its manly patience under suffering as by its achievements in the field . What will any amount of military
success be worth if every winter is to accumulate materials for a new Sebastopol Committee ? And what will have been the value of evidence or example , if national crimes are to be committed and the authors to go unpunished ? There is despondency in the camps of the Crimea , and it is the fruit of gloomy anticipations . But the nation will share the guilt of its rulers , and deserve the resentment of its brave and faithful
servants , if it licenses a government of mcapables to squander millions of money , and thousands of lives , only with the result of superadding one disgrace and one disaster to another . The war , as it is at present conducted , seems to be p lanned upon the principle of doing as little injury to the enemy as possible , at the greatest possible cost to ourselves . Our naval parade in the Baltic for 1855 is represented in our naval estimates by a cost of nearly eleven millions sterling ; to
compensate for which we have swept with fire the islets of Sweaborg , and Jblockaded the Russian ports . Our system of blockade , however , is so contrived as to be an inconvenience , rather than an injury , to Russia . In all previous contests , Grreat Britain contended for , and enforced , the most rigorous principles of maritime law . But , in deference to the French Government , we have waived the right of seizing Russian goods in neutral bottoms , so that an extensive Russian trade
is carried on m defiance of our cruizers , while large sums of gold find their way from London to St . Petersburg , in exchange for the hemp , flax , tallow , and linseed which reach us through the neutral ports . Thus we blockade the Russian shipping ; but we do not cut up the Russian commerce . We deprive our own merchants of the advantage of the regular trade with the Baltic , while we benefit the shippers and traders of Prussia ' . ' Upon these loose principles the war can never be so pursued as to coerce the
enemy . How can we assail or coerce a power whose maritime fortresses we dare not battei *; whose commerce , enabling her to support the war , we dare not destroy ; whos * territories we declare to be unassailable ; whose " honour and dignity" are to remain intact ? A rmy after army sinks down in the vast abysmal grave before Sebastopol ; we neglect our soldiers , cripple bur fleets b y short supplies of arms , and yet , with fastidious exactitude , consult the pretensions of every neutral , and disclaim alike the right of revolution and the right of search , the one agency , perhaps , as formidable as the other .
And now that returning winter gives peace to Russia in the Baltic , " Generals November and December" are likely to do her work in the Crimea . We seriously believe that , unless the action of our public departments be quickened , and that speedily , auother disastrous crisis will arrive before Sebastopol . If there are no men of genius in the nationthat is , men of capacity and resolution—at least let not official sloth betray to death a second British army .
G 86 The Leadee. [No. 284, Saturday,
g 86 THE LEADEE . [ No . 284 , Saturday ,
The Promotion Of Labour. The Working-Olr...
THE PROMOTION OF LABOUR . The working-olriss ought ; to be prepared to watch their interests with prudence , and with ceaseless vigilance ; for a time is coming in
which their strength must be better appro ciated . We have foreseen this time , and ever since our journal has existed we have never ceased to prepare for it . Already- ^ e discern evidences of its approach , and we are the more hopeful , since every advantage can be , reaped ! without violence , without contest , without bitterness of feeling between , man and man .
We know well enough that , as in the case of all opportunities , there will be innumerable suggestions , and that amongst competitors will be many suggesting mischievous courses , in order to snatch advantages which can be most usefully gained by taking them patiently as they accrue . We believe , however , that the best of all correctives to any mistakes of that kind will be found in the influences of
the time . It is one of the consequences attendant upon war , that the greater antagonism supersedes the smaller , and brings together as friends those who have been foes . As a danger out of doors will unite a family , so a war with a foreign country should bring members of the nation together , and in the common nationality merge distinctions of class . Decided steps have been taken in that direction , and we foresee yet greater progress . In the army itself the value of the workingclass has been felt . Labour has been
organised to act with chivalry , and in such bodies as the L and Transport Corps and the Army Works Corps we see industry take its place , corporately , amidst the powers of the country . It is an instructive fact that the members of those bodies are paid more advantageously than the common soldier ; and why ? Because , any intelligent workman will answer us ^ the member of the industrial regiment has more of an art than the
common soldier , and - can produce more—even produce more in the shape of deadly machinery for destroying the foe . But the very comparison has assisted to elevate the pay of the common soldier . In the meanwhile , a sensibly larger promotion has been opened from the ranks to commissions ) and many a gentleman with an epaulette on his . shoulder has reached his position through the working-classes of the army .
The advantages , however , which we foresee for the working-classes are coming in yet broader shapes than these . Following on the emigration , the enlistment has told upon the numbers of those who are available for domestic labour , and we see that farmers are put to it for the means of gathering in their crops . The difficulty has been felt in Austria , where whole corps of the army have been disbanded for the purposes of the
harvest ; and in our own country the soldiers of regiments have been permitted to assist . Still these devices can effect only a partial counteraction . Austria suffers , by declining from her military strength ; ancl home-stationed regiments cannot supply the numbers that have been carried abroad , to say nothing of the regiments that must subsequently go . Messrs . DnA . Y . » and Co . show where the farmers must find their remedy .
" With respect to the scarcity of harvest labourers , " they say , in a letter to the Globe , " we cannot refrain from calling your attention to the fact , that by the aid of the reaping machine , harvest work may be , and is , done at the rate of 6 a . per acre ; whereas in many cases , as you very correctly state , as much as 20 s . per acre is being paid . Moreover , the introduction of the machine does not in any way supersede the native labour of the farm , but merely shuts out the vagrant labour , the necessity for which every farmer pronounces to be a curse . The price named includes gathering and binding ; and the rate of wages paid to the labourers is 3 s . 6 d . per day ior men , and Is . Cd . for boys . "
In the first place , then , we hero see that agricultural labour is rising in value ; ana we observe that in Ireland—ay , in mendicant * Ireland—reapers are getting 3 s . or even G » .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 1, 1855, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_01091855/page/8/
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