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September 2, 1854.] THE LEADER. 825
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SUGGESTIONS FOR, THE LICENSED YICTUALLEE...
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"ACCIDENT" A PERMANENT C02TDITI ON. A HE...
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.
Emigrate, Emigrate. Iir The Great Americ...
franchise . IJet half the number of our labouring classes go , all the beggarly occupations , handloom-weavers , wool-combers , & c , the sempstresses , waistcoat-makers following , and the remaining half would have more than double wages , more than twice the goods , almost a power in the state , a real share in the English republic . The one thing excepted from the American scheme and -wanted by the English emigrant is the purchasing money for the tickets . How is that to be procured ? Ordinary associations to secure advances for bodies of men
have hitherto been a total failure . The latest —the New South "Wales advances for emigrants , is a failure ; the advances cannot be recovered from the emigrants . Emigrant benefit societies to send number's out by lot have failed because the amount subscribed was too small and the process too slow . ] Murs . CJiisholm's plan of groups would be a plan on too small a scale for the worfc to be done ; and middle class or upper class aid would be wanting to help it on . That aidof course
, , would not be given . ; The plan , however , may-be imitated by a method which would provide the point wanting in tteJSTew South Wales plan- — -a direct pledge of personal honour for the return of the money . Let working men form themselves into groups of ten , borrow the money fop the cost of emigration for one of their party ; let them draw lots for the first emigration ticket , purchased by the ten , and let the tenth man go but
pledged to redeem the loan with an advance tor the second man ; let the second man send back the advance for hunself a nd enough for another ; the third the same . By the time five had gone there would be money enough for four more ; those who pleased might then go , those who stayed might divide the balance amount , for if this plan were carried put on a sufficient scale , we doubt whether more than five out often would go ; the rest would find inducement enough to stay .
September 2, 1854.] The Leader. 825
September 2 , 1854 . ] THE LEADER . 825
Suggestions For, The Licensed Yictuallee...
SUGGESTIONS FOR , THE LICENSED YICTUALLEES . Why should the Licensed Victuallers have the education of adult England in their hands ? The fact is so because , in consequence of the penny stamp tax imposed upon a free press by the enlightened Legislature of a liberal country , only 70 , 000 copies of our daily press are daily published , and 40 , 000 of those copies are taken by the public-houses . Clearly the Licensed Victuallers , though a highly-respectable and intelligent body of good citizens , ought not to have the education of adult Eugland in their hands ; the people ought not to be driven to the public-houses in order to get news and instruction . But the fact is ao , likely to remain so , for some time : and wo must make the best of the fact .
The Licensed Victuallers of London manage very cleverly . They find themselves compelled to provide a paper for their tap-rooms and bar-parlours ; and they have established a paper of their own , which they of course take in preference to every other paper , which ia consequently circulated and supported into " a paying concern . " The profits of the paper are large : and they are applied to the maintenance of various « charitable institutions "
for the decayed and the offspring of the licensed victuallers' body—who thus are benevolent at a remarkably small expensenamel y none at all . The Morning Advertiser thus obtains an enormous advantage in its competition with ifca contemporaries ; and though it is true that the public has a choice , need not go to the public-house at all , or , being there , may ask and insist on having another paper yot , practically , so far as the constituency of several hundred metropolitan pubhe-houaea are concerned , the Morning
Advertiser has a monopoly of attention and becomes a great influence . Now , prima Jbcie , nobody has any right to find fault with that arrangement . We do not know a daily paper of which we could conscientiously say " It is less mischievous than the Morning Advertiser . " Indeed , we may think the Morning Advertiser an eccentric , but we regard it as an innocuous publication : we have faith in the British
public , and doubt the capacity of leading journals to mislead it . " We have no preferences' ; and , if we had , we would have no right to present them . " We consider Alsopp's beer purer than Bass ' s , and we abhor various entires , and earnestly condemn a variety of Kinanans and Cordial gins . But if a publichouse selects a certain brewer , or a particular distiller , that is the business of the individual victualler and of the customers who deal with
him . Nevertheless , we venture to offer some siiggestions to the Licensed Victuallers , with reference to their paper , at a moment when they are canvassing the conduct of that " organ , " and rather thinking of establishing a new oner ^ certainly of revolutionising the management of the present one . There is this difference between beer and a newspaper ; beer has a flavour ^ and a newspaperhasi an opinion ; but the bottle only speaks for the brewer—the newspaper presuines to speak for ia party . The ground upon which we inay offer an excuse for
critising the Morning Advertiser , is that being by tie controlling influence of the Licensed Victuallers the only " Liberal" daily paper with a large circulation , the JfcTormw ^ ^^ ertiserburlesques Liberalism , and , affecting to speak for the people , misrepresents the people and the popular aims . "We don't think the misrepresentation does any harm ; but \ ve object to it , — -if only because it is absurd . We entreat tlie > Licensed Victuallers , then , in their new arrangements to make some
alterations ip . their journalistic plans . If they were wise they would have a paper fulfilling Mr . Thomas Carlyle's aspiration—a journal with the maximum of news , and the minimum of editorial comment ; that sort of paper would best suit the class who go to publichouses , and would certainly allow of more profits for the " charitable" institutions- — tor an array of editorial talent sucli as that engaged , as every one knows , on the Morning Advertiser , must cost a vast sum of money . The objection we take is not that the
licensed victuallers publish a paper of their own , but that they insist on that paper promulgating itself as a " Liberal organ , "—attempting a mischief to Liberalism . If we viust have a victualler ' s paper maintaining " popular rights , " and denouncing the Times every day , because the Times is not Liberal , we are entitled to demand some logical faculty in tlie journal which , though it may not lead us people , assures all the world that we are following it . We , as a portion of the people
thus represented before enlightened Europe and the London Licensed Victuallers , decline to lmve it supposed that we consider the principal democratic business of the day is to abuse the Pope , and demonstrate that every Roman Catholic prelate and priest ia a scoundrel , and that every lloman Catholic layman is an idiot . The Pope may Ibe wrong , and Uoman , Catholics may be in error—we
rather think they are—but we think that they are as likely to be right in theology ns an array of editorial talent selected by the Licensed A ictuallora' Protection Committee ; and , at any rate , wo want to know why our democratic loading journal should so exclusively devote itself to the promulgation of the philosophy of Exeter-hall ? The Reformed Religion seems , in Scotland and England to load to the democratic consumption of alcohol in extensive quantitioa , and the
array of editorial talent on the Morning Advertiser may have Licensed Victuallers' interests in view in their fiery denunciations of Puseyism , which is the religious reaction of feeble-minded persons who despair of an " Establishment" incapable of competing for popular attention with the public-houses and beer-shops on the Sabbath . But are the Licensed Victuallers entitled , under colour of Liberalism , to sustain the " shop" in this manner ? In the next place we
may object , with analagous fairness , to the alacrity so frequently displayed by the great democratic organ to insult . the Court , whenever the array of editorial talent finds out that the Court is interfering , in the government of us people , with the aristocracy . We don't understand the great democratic organ's love of the aristocracy . We noticed that this week the array of editorial talent acknowledged , in a painfully obsequious paragraph , unworthy of enthusiastic members of the reformed religion , the " honour" done to the Morning Advertiser
by a IDuke who , calculating that the Times wouldn't find room , for himj resolvedon , nieiitioning in : the Morning Advertiser that he was going to give 15 Z . to somebody , jjords riever go near licensed victuallers ; at least not to the respectable ones and why should the licensed victuallers allo \ y their paper to be impregnated with the odour of a eames ? Why should the great democratic organ so palpably compete with the great aristocratic organ in the supply of " fasliibnable intelligence ? " The other day , w ^ ett Mr . James Wilson and Lord Palmers ton differed about
a commercial point , the Morning Advertiser denounced , the commoner for his impertinence in having an opinion , with a dignity and a ferocity singular in Christians and odd in democrats ; and we mention , the instance as aptly illustrating the whole tone , of the journal . Day after day the Morning Advertiser encourages the communications of Mr . David Urquhart , whose political philosophy may be summed up in the sentence ¦ ' Every peer who is a Cabinet Minister is a traitor ; " and we are at a loss to reconcile that doctrine with an exclusive faith in the
peerage as our rulers ;—r-not to mention the other faith—in the reformed religion ensuring the blessings of honest government to any and every people . And if the aristocracy are all traitors , why denounce the Court , when the Court occasionally modifies the aristocracy ?—• as , for example , when the Queen dismissed an English I ^ oreign Secretary for having written an exhilirating despatch practically congratulating a military despot on having accomplished a coup d ' etat . For our own part , aa humble democrats , watching -with weekly awe the daily lead of an array of editorial talent ,
we have always taken for granted that an unrepresented people has only one chance of conquering an oligarchy—viz ., by acquiring the sympathy and the aid of a monarchy which our aristocracy has systematically attempted to reduce to a formality . Therefore , as Liberalism is in the hands of the licensed victuallers , may we beg of them in thoir new journal , or in their altered old journal , to condition for a little logic in the array of editorial tnlont ? It would cost a very little more money ; but a 3 it would cost something , perl inps Mi ' . Oarlylo should be consulted as to the boat sort of paper to bring out .
"Accident" A Permanent C02tditi On. A He...
" ACCIDENT" A PERMANENT C 02 TDITI ON . A HEMA . itKAULii ! oecoutrieily is observable in the enlightened journalism of the lust fortnight . In thai period 1500 peoplo have been killed by cholera , and three people have boon killed by railway accidents . The en-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 2, 1854, page 9, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_02091854/page/9/
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