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February 7,185?.] THE LEADER, 13$
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A UNITED SERVICE AMENITY. The Duke of CA...
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« [IK THIS DEPARTMENT, AS ALL' OPINIONS,...
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There is no learned maa but will confess...
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CONVICT-CONVERTS. (To the Editor of the ...
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THE MOON'S ROTA.TION. (To the Editor of ...
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Births, Deaths, andMakriac!K8,'in Austra...
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Transcript
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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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Where Shall We Get Our Cotton? "What Hav...
¦ wretched indigenous cotton of Hinddstan , as now yielded by badly cultivated fields , might in a Bhort time be tlirown into commerce iu formidable rivalry -with [ the best crops of America . It has been clearly shown , however , that reduced assessments are not in themselves sufficient to accelerate and extend the supply . They lave rather tended , as in the Deccan , to encourage a slovenly system of agriculture , and to glut the market with low-priced grains . Rentals and taxation will fall lightly on the natives when their lands
increase in value , when the fifty per cent , of available soil , now lying waste , is brought under the plough ; " but it is worse than useless to attempt the development of a cottontrade with our Oriental ports until adequate machinery and convenient roads and canals have been constructed to improve the native system of agriculture , and to facilitate inland transit . Above all , superior qualities of cotton must be introduced . The indigenous cotton has a short , weak , and generally impoverished staple . On this subject a wellinformed and suggestive writer remarks : *—
" The American cottons grown iu India are larger yielders than the indigenous cottons , and give a greater proportion of wool to seed ; and hence it follows , that were even the prices of indigenous and exotic cottons equal , it would be more profitable to grow exotic than indigenous in India . That there Is but a limited demand for ordinary Indian cottons in the English markets , and that were one million bales imported ( of common Indian cotton ) it would have no sale at all , it ' s staple being inferior . " "We may add that when the British Government sold a quantity of Dharwar New Orleans seed cotton and the best native
JLhandesh , both cleaned , prepared , and sawginned for the English market by Government servants , that although the native cotton sold in Bombay at fifteen or twenty per cent , higher than the Dliarwar New Orleans seed , in . consequence of the native cotton being extravagantly lauded by its advocates , its purchasers loat fi £ by _ per cent ; on it when it got to Manchester , tlieKlhandesh best native selling there for 3- | d ., the Dharwar New Orleans seed at 6 £ d . per lb .
Successive experiments have proved that New Orleans and exotic cottons can be raised by ryots , as ordinary crops . "What then remains to be done ? Apathy and indolence are charged upon the natives of India ; bvit indolence aud apathy seem to prevail elsewhere . Perhaps it will not be until they have only a month ' s supply of cotton in their warehouses that our manufacturers will remember the half-cultivated fields of a vast empire in the East , open to their enterprise , and capable of supplying their whole demand .
Where Shall We Get Our Cotton? "What Hav...
* " Can India grow Cotton of a sufficiently good Quality to compete with tho Produce of the United Btatoa ? " ( Woodfnll and Son . )
February 7,185?.] The Leader, 13$
February 7 , 185 ? . ] THE LEADER , 13 $
A United Service Amenity. The Duke Of Ca...
A UNITED SERVICE AMENITY . The Duke of CAWimiDaE is a very popular Commander-in-Chief . He deserves his popularity . Ho has already done good work , and promises , to all appearance sincerely , to do more . But he was very unpopular at ; the United Service Institution last Wednesday . He had convened a meeting of officers to consider the most appropriate means of erecting a public memorial of Lord Hahbinge . There was a crowded meetingbut
, no Duke of Cambridge . The gallant gentlemen assembled were kept two hours in expectation , with nothing- to do but to look at Sir "William Tunwick : Williams . Ultimately the crowd in the Club-room dispersed in a very orderly manner , as United Sorvicc crowds generally do ; but the heroic bosoms beat with a little irritation caused by " the contemptuous forgetfulnoss" with which his Royal Highness had treated them . Surely it was worth while to send a messenger with
the information that his Hoyal Highness would be unable to attend . But no : —for two hours the originator of the meeting was expected , and he never came .
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« [Ik This Department, As All' Opinions,...
« [ IK THIS DEPARTMENT , AS ALL' OPINIONS , UOAVEVER EXTREME , ARB ALLOWED AN EXPRESSION , THE EDITOlt NECESSARILY HOLDS HIMSELF RESPONSIBLE FOK N 0 NK . 1
There Is No Learned Maa But Will Confess...
There is no learned maa but will confess he hath xnu . ch . profited by reading controversies , Ms senses awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him to read , why should it not , at least , be tolerable for his adversary to write 7—Mii / roN
Convict-Converts. (To The Editor Of The ...
CONVICT-CONVERTS . ( To the Editor of the Leader . ) Sir ,- —A disgraceful immorality is constantly exhibited whenever a convict is hanged . I do not now refer to the drunkenness and theft amongst an idle crowd , "but to something worse than this , because those who are guilty are religious men , or , at any rate , pretend to be so . No sooner is it known with certainty that a man has murdered a couple of children or a wife , or ended his career as professional villain by beating in a man ' s skull with a life-preserver , than he becomes an object of special anxiety to the Church . All her artillery 5 s brought to bear upon him . He is regularly besieged night
and day by a storm , of addresses , exhortations , Scripture readings , and prayers , and then , after a time , in nine cases out of ten we are told that the efforts of the worthy clergyman " had a most beneficial effect" upon the wretch ; that he was observed to be frequently perusing his Bible or sedulously repeating hymns . Occasionally , as was the case with a man just executed for cutting the throat of the woman with whom he had cohabited , the murderer will shake hands with and kiss his attendants , hoping to meet them in heaven . We will not stop to inquire why all this attention should be shown to such a reprobate when thousands more hopeful than lie are perishing bodily and spiritually every day .
Perhaps , though , the care may not be genuine . Perhaps the poor felon is delivered over to the parson before execution much in the same way as his body is sometimes delivered over to the doctor afterwards , and for the same reason , because subjects on which to operate and refresh one ' s skill are scarce . However , this we do not care to investigate . We merely ask , is it not a monstrous thing that it should be publicly preached in this manner , that by some ecclesiastical hocus-pocus or legerdemain all the laws of nature can be controverted , that by some religious juggle a devil can be transformed into a saint , and in a ' hey , presto ! ' whisked out of hell into heaven ?
The magic is complete . We see the prison-gates close on the fiend—and a darkened , miserable , sinsteeped fiend he is , too—and then , in a trice , they open again , find , by a most Wizard-of-the-North-like transformation , we are presented with a humble , pardoned angel , with Ids seraph wings almost budding . We simple people are utterly at n loss . We know that it takes us months , and sometimes tedious years , to save ourselves from a single crime . We know full well what every step which we take heavenward costs , and that , poor fools , we are ' ready to weep with delight when , after long toil , we have climbed near to those " shining table-lands to which our God Himself is Sun and Moon . " What must ha
our astonishment , then , to see heaven taken at a flying leap ; to discover that by some covenant a whole life of vice can be effaced by the momentary assent of tho understanding to a few propositions . Comforting truth this , for a besotted crowd to know that a twisted , useless career can be unravelled and rewoven in an hour or two before death ! And the evil does not end here . Hypocrisy and cant , like a Nebuchadnezzar image , are openly set up on the scaffold and paraded before the multitude . The people know it is all a sham , and whdn an honest man attempts to teach them afterwards sincerity and truth , he finds that the ground haa been cut away from under his feet by those who have publicly executed these noble qualities along with the
murderer . People learn to laugh at virtue , telling you that it is all cant , and that the clergyman talks about all that . Who can tell how much of the infidelity of the musses haa been caused by the infidelity of religious men ? It would be fur better to dispense with the services of tho clergyman and all these religious theatricals . We should then in effect bo proclaiming the great doctrine that crime renders a man such a slave , that nothing we can do in a fortnight or month can have any influence on his character . We should not , then , rob the execution of hnlf its ' horror by the softening thought that most likely repentance and tho mediation of Christ have procured salvation . Neither would imposture be branded with the Church ' s approval , nor would tho mob below have an additional opportunity for fortifying itself in the belief that of all humbugs in the world religion ia
the biggest . " The reason why we do not like to act in this way is that we hare a theory upon eternal punishments , which divides the future world by an impassable partition into two great compartments , one of which is filled with the lost and the other with the saved . Now , people very naturally revolt from the thought of burning a man for ever . It is all very well to condemn men to perdition by thousands and millions , as is done in the pulpit every Sunday . That is easy enough . We are condemning imaginary thousands and millions , and do not realize what we are doing . But when the Rev . A . has to stand face to face -with the man B ., he naturally shudders more at sending that one poor flesh and blood felon to hell than he does at sending thither all those infidels and atheists over whose
awful fate he grows so eloquent every Sabbath . What , then , is to be done ? The theory must bo saved , and the human instinct saved , too ; and so we can do nothing hut declare both to the true . There is a hell , but the convict is not going there . The mediation of Christ , & c . Sec . Now if ~ we are content to say that the Great Future is in darkness except so far as present analogies throw a dim light forward upon it ; if we say that the only thing we know is that crime ruins here , whatever it may do hereafter , we shall then feel that we are not launching the murderer into a sea of fire , but into the unknown world ; we shall be silently saying that he is too bad for us to mend , and so we commit him to his Maker . This would be sincerity and true religion just on the occasion , when it is most wanted . Yours truly , W . H . W .
The Moon's Rota.Tion. (To The Editor Of ...
THE MOON'S ROTA . TION . ( To the Editor of the Leader . ) SiRi—Mr . William Ken ward , for I will not stoop to imitate his discourtesy , would never have been troubled with any letter from me , liad he . in . his first letter to Mr . Best been less discourteous and more argumentative . His attempt to bring in question the mental state" of Mr . Best , and say that he , Mr . Best , would find the " straw to present always the same end to his nose , " was a very poor substitute fora series of geometrical proofs as an answer to those of Mr . Best . Is Mr . William ' Kenward still so obtuse as notto perceive the difference between true axial motion , where the centre of that motion is within the revolving body , and that species of revolution so lucidly proved by him in his experiment of the bason , & c . Is he so wedded to the old dogma as to ignore all that haa been said relevantly on the other side of the question . In all scientific questions , ought not the establishing of truth to be . paramount to that of a victory ? As to whether I am in a " quagmire"in asking the real question at issue , I appeal not to Mr . Kenward , but to the reading public . I perceive that he has glided into the same error as Lieut . Morrison , in confounding velocity with axial rotation . In the name of common sense , what two things can be more dissimilar ? Is it not possible for a shot propelled by gunpowder from the cannon ' s mouth to progress without revolving ? And is there anything very revolting to our understanding to suppose that the moon revolves round the earth without turning on an axis within herself , somewhat like a suspended ball swung round the hand , the swung ball having no tr-ue axial motion within itself . Yet , to an observer , at a Tight angle to the motion , the ball makes similar revolutions to those made by the " bason" in Mr . Kenward ' s experiment . Some people seem so affected with the idea of the immense velocity of the earth through sp ; ice , it being 68 , 000 miles an hour , that they appear bewildered , and ready to imagine any tortuosity of movement . No rational evidence has yet been advanced by the pro-axial-rotatory theorists to account satisfactorily for tlie moon at all times presenting the same face to the earth . Yours respectfully , John Tayloii .
Births, Deaths, Andmakriac!K8,'In Austra...
Births , Deaths , andMakriac ! K 8 , ' in Australia . — Tho number of births registered in tho colony during the last ten years—viz ., from 1846 to 1855 inclusivewas 40 , 590 moles , 39 , 432 females . Tho proportions of tho respective sexes in each 10 , 000 births were , in ten years , 5072 males , 4928 females . The deaths registered during the same period numbered 18 , 4 , 29 maleB , 12 . females . Tho average mortality of males during 1851 to 1855 was 1 to 01 ; that of females 1 to 66 . Tho net gain to the population by the excess of births over deaths waa : — 1846-50 . 1851-55 . Total . Births 35 , ( 514 ... 44 , 408 ... 80 , 022 Deaths 11 , 883 ... 18 , 914 ... 30 , 797 Excess of births ... 23 , 731 ... 25 , 494 ... 49 , 225 The number of marriages returned from 1846 to 1850 were 7814 ; during the next fivo years they numbered 12 , 185 , being an increase of 4371 , or 56 percent . The number of births , dcatlia , and marriages in tho colony last year averaged daily—birtha , 28 ; deaths , 11 j marriages , 8 . —/ Sydney Herald .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 7, 1857, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_07021857/page/13/
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