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.«- £ THE LEADER, [No. 281, Saturday, '—...
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RIGHTS OF EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYED. Tke Rel...
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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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Four Novels. A Lot.T Love. B Y Aahford O...
parcel of blade , canting , hypocritical rascals , " and as " silly , impertinent fellows , " who presumed to ^ dictate to the crown . When the queeu seatly urged him to treat the bishops more courteously , he exclaimed : " I Junusicb to death of all this foolish stuir ' , and wish , with all my heart , that thedevil may take all your bishops , and the devil take your minister , and the devil take the parliament * and the devil take the whole island , provided I can get out of it and go to Hanover . " It may be remarked , parentheticall y , that his gracious Majesty ' s motive for wishing to go to Hanover at moment to visit mistress whom the had icked
that precise was a German p up in the preceding year . However , the queen was not a whit behind her husband in coarseness of expression . Speaking of her son Frederick , Prince of Wales , she said to Lord Hervey , My dear lord , I will give it you under my hand , if you have any fear of my relapsing , that my dear first-born is the greatest ass , and the greatest liar , and the greatest canaille , and the greatest beast in the whole world , and that I most heartily wish he was out of it , !* The king continued to treat him in much the same strain , adding -courteously , that he had often asked the queen , if the beast were his son .
At- - another time Caroline made use of " a very homely and not a very nice il lustration , to show the absurdity of losing an end by foolishly neglecting tha proper means . ' If a handkerchief lay before me , ' said she , ' I felt I , had a dirty nose , my good Count Kiuski , do you think I ^ should beckon the handkerchief to come to me , or stoop to take it up' ? ' " Equally < : hoice was her remark to Dr . Sherlock , whom she accused of having twice allowed himself to be the dupe of the Bishop of London . " How , " she Asked him , " could he be blind and weak enough to be running his nose into another ' s dirt again ? " And the filthy letters she was in the habit of eonsiauBtry receiving from the I > uchess of Orleans , prove that her mind must have been desperately tainted , even though she may have refrained from
any actual immorality . Her royal consort , indeed , had vices enough for both r and made-no secret of them even to his own wife . During his absence in Germany in 1735 , he prevailed upon " a young married German lady , foamed . Walmodea , to leave her husband , for the small consideration of a thousand ducats . Not the smallest incident which marked the progress of -this infamous connexion was concealed by the husband from his wife . He wrote at length minute details of the person of the new mistress , for whom fee * bespoke the love-of his own wife ! " With still greater effrontery , and very shortly after the announcement of his last tonne fortune , the royal beast -wrote to Caroline , requesting her to invite the Prince and Princess of Jfifodena to visit England .
She was-the younger daughter of the Regent Duke of Orleans . The reasons which ihe king gave to his wife for the request which he had made with respect to this lady was ( sic ) , that he had understood the latter was by no means particular as to what quarter or person she received homage from , and he had the greatest inclination imaginable to pay his addresses to a daughter of the late Regent of France . "Un plaiair , " he said—for this German husband wrote even to his German wife in French—*** que je suissur , ma cb < ere Caroline , vous serez bien- aiae dome procurer , quand je voua dis combien je le souhaite . " During a subsequent pilgrimage to the shrine of the Walmoden , which was protracted to an unseasonable length , the following pasquinade was affixed to the walls of St . James ' s Palace : — Lost or strayed , out of this house , a man who has left a wife and six children on the parish . Whoever will give any tidings of him to the churchwardens of St . James ' s , parish , so as he may be- got again , shall receive four shillings and sixpence reward . N * B . This reward will not be increased , nobody judging him to deserve a
¦ crown . Tt » e king ' s , amativenesa seems to have amounted almost to a mania . When Garonne-was-a * the point of death , she strongly recommended him to marry again . The king , overcome , or seemingly overcome , at the idea of being a widower , burst into a-flood of tears . The queen , renewed her injunctions , that after her decease he « boo £ d take a second wife . He sobbed aloud , but amid his sobbing he suggested on -opinion , that he thought that rather , than take another : wife , he would maintain a unstress-or two . "Eh , mon Diou , " exclaimed Carotene , " the one does not prevent the other ! Cefa riexnpecAe pas /" Onr author ia reduced to thus melancholy conclusion : —
Our great-grandfathers and grandmothers must have been a terribly wicked race , lor ' I hold it impossible for a people generally to be virtuous when the court and nobility set them an . example of vice . Such vices are often the seed out of which spring republics ; and the lust of Tarquin built the Commonwealth of Rome . Nor must it ba > aet down that Caroline was blameless . She shared the vices in which her husband ind » lge , d r favouring the indulgence . . . Her ground of action was not founded on virtuous principles . She sanctioned , nay promoted , the vicious way of life followed by har consort , merely that she might exercise more power politically and personally . • Actually , she- had as little regard for married faith as the king himself . . . The result was that the king was the head of a household , and yet of auahtuncleanness and infamy , as would make a man now an outcast from society . In truth , the state of society must have been most disreputable when even under tha more severe rule of George III . the Archbishop of Canterbury drew down ; upon himself the royal displeasure for indulging : too freely in mundane pleasures . The clergy generally were held in disrepute , andshall we say consequently ?—the laity were such that at one of Queen Charlotte's drawing-rooms the Prince of Wales was nearly robbed of the diamond-studded guard of his-sword . His Royal Highness feeling a sudden pull , looked down and observed that " the diamond guard of the weapon was broken oflf ^ but it remained auspended by a small piece of wire , the elasticity of which had prevented it from breaking" : — Such attempts were common enough in the- great gallery at Versailles in the time <> f Louis XIV ., and even acts of greater felony than this ; for not only were purses cut from the person , but , on one occasion , after a grand rSvnion in the gallery , the ¦ whole of the costl y hangings were swept off the same night by a thief , too exalted for the . king , to bo willing to punish him aa he deserved . Hod Virgil lived in these times lie would have , been at no losa fur un antrma , to his inquiry , Quiddomini faoiooly audent cum . talia furea ? though he might have been induced , to violate the laws of metre by ex ~ obanging the nlathvo positions of ; " masters" and " servants . "
The length of our previous quotations renders it impossible for us to accompany Dr . Doran through the long dreary life of Queen Charlotte , or the troubled career of the erring hut injured Caroline of Brunswick . And this is the less to be regretted , because the Doctor displays but little discrimination in his judgment on persons and events in these latter days . In the earlier part of his work he had the pleasant guidance of Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole , but in the second portion of it he is by no means equally felicitous in his choice of guides , or in his manner of foilowing them . His style is also very slipshod , and at times confused , us if , weary of his task , he were writing against time . However , with all those defects , wo can cordially recommend these two volumes to the lovers oJ lioht literature , who are usually contented with a moderate share of the tUile provided it be rendered palatable by the dulce .
.«- £ The Leader, [No. 281, Saturday, '—...
. « - £ THE LEADER , [ No . 281 , Saturday , ' — ' ' ' " ^ - ^— I —^^ ¦ ¦¦ I— . I i . II — " —II— ¦» . _ . !¦¦—¦ ¦ | _ ; |
Rights Of Employer And Employed. Tke Rel...
RIGHTS OF EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYED . Tke Relative Rights and Interests of the Employer and Emjttoyed discussed ; and « System proposed by tchich th » Conflicting Interests of all Chusscs af Society man be Jteconciltd . By M . Justitia . Simpkin , Marshall , and Co . This is no trifling task , to reconcile the conflicting interests of all classes oi society ; and the man who really performed it in a duodecimo volume not 150 pages long , would write a work such as human wisdom never yet devised . But now for the disparity between promise and performance . Wo have read this little book , and , with a cordial faith in the honesty , the sincerity , the perfect self-belief of the author , we must confess that it appears to have no merit ut all beyond that of pushing the commonest errors about capital and labour to the ne plus ultra of absurdity .
The author tells us that he lias been in his time both workman an I employer ; and seems to refer to that fact as if it gave him a special right to be heard upon these questions . This is error number one : those employers who have been workmen arc , perhaps , of all mankind , the most unfit to < ji \ v sound opinions upon questions affecting both classes . They have the prejudices and the faults of both . This fact is too notorious to need amplification . In discussing the present status of the workman , the author treats emi"ration as a disease . " Emigration , " writes he , " springs from our monopolies of land , health , and power , and not from our exhausted resources . . . All such monopolies are the result of might and not of right , and are unju > t in principle , because they affect the interests of others . . . . \\ hat right
has any one of us to monoriolise God ' s earth , Goi >' s health , or God's power For what have we that we can call our own ? " Who has an independent claim ? Whatman among us can originate even an iilea independently ' : ' ' . For it is God who workcth in you to trill and to do . "—This mixture ot Cant with Fourierism is certainly novel . Further on , we find even the right to patent an invention denied , with this not very intelligible saving clause for the protection of the inventor : — " The inventor ought to be rewarded by those who reap a benefit from his labours , and the invention should be at once thrown open lor public use . * ' If the invention be of service to the public , we do not sec how the public can reward it except through some such machinery as a patent right ; which is , after all , only a means of collecting that reward .
But these arc mere theoretical errors ; here is something more practically dangerous — It has often been asserted , that the interests of the employer and employed nrc identical . Fine theories have been written upon the subject , and conclusions deduced therefrom ; but they huve failed to convince many' even of the most credulous * , tliat conflicting interests can possibly be identical . That the interests of these classes arc at present arrayed in hostile antagonism is ae demonstrable as the . simplest proposition in Euclid . The fact appears self-evident , that it is the interest of the employer to gain all he can by hid workmen , and to accomplish this object he is , in many cases , not very careful whom he pinches . On the other band it is tho obvious interest of the employed to extract from the employer tho largest possible amount of remuneration , utterly regardless whether that employer be rising or falling—acquiring an independence , or going headlong to ruin .
This is tantamount to a defence of the man who killed tho goose for the sake of her golden eggs , and that upon economical grounds . If such were tho real interests of the two classes their case would be indeed hopeless , and we might well despair of ever . seeing their relations fixed upon any other bnsis than mutual rapucity and over-reach ing : but they are not so . It is a fact which no one familiar with the Labour Classes will venture to deny that establishments where regular work may be obtained are preferred to those where the pay is higher but permanent employment not so eertaiu . " The universally admitted fact" continues the author , in explanation ol his theory of natural Antagonism , " that no two human beings arc exactly alike , either in body or mind , renders it impossible that the interests of any two human beings can ever be the game . "—The logical sequence of thi .-reasoning is extraordinary ; because A and 15 have huir of ditlurctit colour .-, erga they never can be partners . Having thus separated the industrial cormogony into antagonistic ami mutually-repellent atoms , the author proceeds to describe tlic precise conditions npon which u man should agree to lubour . Aa ho (¦« . t . the workman ) eats , drinks , und H . luops for hiiuHulf , a * liin requirement . ¦* ore for himaolf alone , ho it in juat that he should labour only for himaelf , or tuut lie
should receive tho Jull vuluu of his work if lie lubour for others . What is the meaning of the word " full" ¦ hover" Surely not tlw full selling price of the manufactured article ? If so , what becomes of the capitalist ' s interest , nnd tho fair profit for the salesman ? Yet if not , the assertion is tl > e tritust of truisms ; albeit tho connexion between the < : om'lu . sion and the premises ie not so obvious . The man who cut * , drinks , und Hluepd for himself ulune is a brute . And how does the author propose to reconcile tho conflicting hit , er « stnyi a society which , us he believes , is formed of sull ' -in tores ted and neccHsurily antagonistic individuals ? By " a hhvahxth awi > a wistjncjt intjskkmt , om kq , vitaiiij : l'jitNCHM . Ka . " Hut how in this to be brought about ? " Ity co-operation \ " The interests of all being distinct and antagonistic , tliey can only be reconciled by co-operation . This in , to say the least of it , pani-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 11, 1855, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11081855/page/18/
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