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S [ hundred led to indifference 446 The ...
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- HOKSMANSHIP IN THE COMMONS. - ON Monda...
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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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Swindling. If Any Preacher Or Private Mo...
and where also , it seems" that patriots learn to steal Their private perquisites from public ^ real " lines , by the bye , which the prescient pen of a democracy-disgusted English Whig , Tom Moore , indited some five-and-thirty years ago , s . t Ipftsf * ' Frauce does her business in the less indictable form of clipping off corners from alien territories , and overreaching m treaties ot commerce . What can we expect from pocket-watches when parishclocks are going wrong at this fearful rate ? receive from these
How many small rogues will encouragement giant swindlers ;' , as usual , comfort themselves by the consideration that they are not the worst ? We dread even the publicity which can neither be avoided nor seriously disapproved , because it lets the black band know the extent of its own forces ; it is true they are distinct and many in their practices , but they are one in their morals , and that is the maiu [ question for the public dismay and their own reciprocal encouragement . Do we say that publicity is useful ? ' Certainiv , but only on one condition—when it leads to penalty far more unflinching than what has hitherto been accorded to crime of this class . Unless the commercial air is purged , we shall have com mercial pestilence . For our honour , for our safety , let the Legislature devise some form of disgrace , or if disgrace is not enough , some form of suffering which shall save us from being all in our turn victims to this daily spreading spirit of swindling .
We demand from Government that moderate protection tor our property without which Government , with its powers and its penalties , is itself little short of a grand swindle . . There' is scarcely a family in London , we might almost say in England , which cannot count some victims among its members . We are told that it is the fault of our own want of caution , that suffering will produce care , and that care will produce cure ; but , in many cases , the utmost care is taken—all the care that a private individual can take . Laws are intricate ; Government does not take much pains to simplify them , and ladies do not know much about law—sometimes lawyers themselves don't . However , the lady goes to her attorney , hitherto a man of undoubted respectability , or at least with every visible aspect of it . - ""JCne lawyer appropriates the money , or speculates
¦ wi th it , and disappears . " The same is often the case with the-stbekbroker ; in both cases the lady has taken the best course opea to her for the protection of her property , and has used all reasonable caution . Would Government ^ ismiss the police force in the suburbs , and caution Mr . Jones not to walk in a suburban road after dark , or , if he must walk , ; to- 'walk with pockets double loaded with revolvers , and revolvers double loaded with ball ? Such an edict would produce care , and care would produce cure , for in all probability Jones would not be robbed or murdered . But , in cases of protection of the person , Government does allow not a little , but a very considerable amount of personal carelessness , and nevertheless shields , as far as it can , the individual guilty of it . We will venture to sav that Jones ' s aunt takes infinitely more care of her property
than ' Jones does of his person ; but our JoNES ' saunts are plucked bare ten times oftener than our Jones ' s are violently plundered . JJow-r-wft-say-Almfc-if . all confidence is not to be destroyed , if ( of course in our own absence ) our aunts are not to be fbrcedTcTaepositf their cash in the funds , and in the funds alone , and with their own Lands , and their own hands alone , our Legislature is bound to protect us , not against the effects of our own wilful and evident speculation , not against reckless confidence , but against villany ,, where we have taken every reasonable precaution against it ; sind if this can be
done in no other wjiv , let us have the pillory , whipping , exposure in iron cages , or " pillars of infamy . " Some protection we must Lave ; till then we can wish nothing better than that the thieves may have their prime and chief victims among the sentimentalists . A man flogged for thrashing his wife w / ill thrash her again ; unless , indeed , he id made thoroughly to understand that he will bo hanged if he dures to do so ; but a flogged swindler will certainly not flog , and probably will not again swindle his former victims , or any othor . Certainly all this is coarae—very coarse , but we hate Pharisaical sepulchres ,
" So fiiir without , ao deadly foul within ;" rotten refinement , corruption with a sentimental film over it which scarcely nets as a fly-leaf . In some things , the external acts powerfully on the internal ; external politeness tends to internal suavity ; a fiico of cheerfulness , even if assumed , is said to mako the heart gradually lighter > a mere forced habit ut last acts upon the principle ; strict decency tends gradually to morality , and so forth . We wish , in the caao now before us , that the sweetness and delicacy of the outside flesh would gradually spread inwardly ; we wish that our pre-suppositions of honesty would create it ; we wish that crime would moderato itself , bo as only to deserve existing nenaltios : wo wish the blissful consummation that , by ceasing to bo
punished altogether , people would cease altogether to deserve pum < hment . Butjt willriot do . We huvo sighed , imd mourned , and spared , nnd sentimentalized , till we are eiuk of it—almost as eiok as wo are of being swindled , and we want a severity almost Draonian . Strange ! if it were a little persecution—iv little pei-Hecution of conscience , and of things done for conscience * sake—one might soon have a corps of backers , ot almost every creed nnd calibre , many of them not very lenient in their appliances ; but when wo want to encourage a spirit of persecution—not of conscience , or of religion , but the utter want of both—people are so delicate , the ago is so advanced , that breach of trust and pecuniary dishonesty of all kinds are rife nnd rampant , trusting- to evasion or during our penalties , such us they are . We know what was . the
effect of hanging by the —frequency , audacity , and mutual encouragement in evil , naturally ; but still atrocious villany is not to be encountered with studied delicacy . When at opposite corners of the same' street one vagabond under the lash winks at another on the pillory ,-it will be time to hold then , perhaps . " All will be rogues , and all men laugh at all . We said , in a number or two ago * that falsification and adulteration frauds were no new things , quoting from Addison and others , and referring to a book on these matters , recently reviewed by the Times , with copious extracts . We could add a great deal more on opprobrious ways of getting money on a smaller scale than that on which we have now been dwelling . Lord Bacon says , that in Ins dav there were enough " false weights and measures to make battlements and bells for all the churches . " Parliament after to enemies
Parliament had to pass acts against exporting arms — another of our villanous ways of making money , practised , mdeed , by the corrupt Romans under Justinian , and by him forbidden , as it was by that Charles of France who lost Normandy , and whose degenerate subjects sold weapons to the Northmen . ' . But this direct money-stealing on a large scale is a comparatively new vice for the middle classes , almost unknown to our grandfathers , the old merchants of England , who stood on their own respectability , and were neither deceived nor corrupted , nor made impudent by divided responsibility , of which we have now-a-days so much . With this state of things , we shall be soon unable to buy even plaister of Paris for bread , or port roughened with that indigenous astringent , the sloe : to the emptied pocket short weights and fair ones will be the same ; and as to arms and enemies , Cantabit vacuus—om- foreign plunderers will only be able to rob our native peculators . The main hard-cash rascality in the days of Anne and the early Georges was miite in the unner , or quite in the lower regions , not amongst those
who earned England ' s name for commercial honour . The respectability-loving and pure English have absurdly confined their pet term , " immorality , " to matters connected with what is called " the social evIV either * from ignorance of etymology , and the meaning of words , or from a one-eyed contemplation of evil . Perhaps before lon ° " they will actually go to the length of allowing men who swindle wh ^ le families out of their subsistence to be called " immoral men . "
S [ Hundred Led To Indifference 446 The ...
S [ hundred led to indifference 446 The Leader and aturday Analyst . May 13 , 1860 .
- Hoksmanship In The Commons. - On Monda...
- HOKSMANSHIP IN THE COMMONS . - ON Monday last the Legislative arena was the scene of a rapid and fearless act of Horsmanship , which left the performance of Mazeppa - and the bounding . Brothers of Babylon , far behind . ^ The curtain drew up upon the right honourable member for Stioud mounted upon the Pegasus of Printing-house-square . As fiddling upon one string is more wonderful than fiddling upon four , so the performance of the right honourable gentleman mounted on one newspaper proprietor , was a more attractive spectacle than his old feat of riding the whole Bench of Bishops , a la Andrew Ducjkow . After the second reading of the Reform Bill the performance formed , a very agreeable interlude , while the scenes were being set behind forthepantonuineofflarlequinLicensingBin , ehdingwiththeastonishing transformation of the Pastry Cook ' s Shop into a Public-house . —LBt _ us _ describe the plot and criticise the actors in this equestrian drama . The scene opens upon- Mr . Walter , IM ^ rfo ^ BBrkshirer Times
and part proprietor of the newspaper , rising xo move me adjournment of the House , in order that lie may enter into a personal explanation . The right honourable member for Stroud had written him a private letter complaining of a speech which he ( Mr . Walter ) had made in the House on the Reform Bill , in connection with an article which appeared on the day after in the Times . In that speech Mr . Walter expressed the opinion that certain members ini ' n-ht not be so indifferent , or so opposed to the Reform Bill , if they were assured that the passing of the measure would not entail It thatin
nil immediate dissolution of / Parliament . so happened , next day ' s number of the Times , this-remark was repeated in connection with the name of Mr . Horsman . Whereupon that gentleman concludes that the leading article was written by the same person who made the speech , and incontinently complains , in a letter to John Walter , Esq ., M . P ., that he ( Jo * tn Walter ) liad , in the Times newspaper , usod the name of Edward Horsman , Esq ., M . P ., " for no other purpose but as illustrative of the general measures of the House of Commons . " " Surely , " wrote Mr .
Walter in reply , " your letter must havo been written m a moment of irritation , and under circumstances of misapprehension , which your cooler judgment must have led you to regret . " Thus Mr . Walter . To him Mr . Horsman : — " Sir , —I did not write under feelings of misapprehension , and still less of irritation , and lmvo not the smallest regret to express ; " and Mr . Horsman , at No . 1 , Richmond-terrace , having time on " his hands , that evotung writes Mr . Walter along epistle on the duties , obligations , and responsibilities of a journalist , As journalists ourselves , we are fluttered by the high regard which Mr . Horsman entertains for the members 1
of our calling } and we fancy Mr . Waltejb Jbiinself must hayo been not a little proud to be mistaken for the editor of the Times . Fancy the feelings of Jones when he henrs himself pointed out to a country cou > in ns " the great Thackeray , Sir , " " the immortal Bo ? , Sir . ' Fancy how much tuller Mr . Walter must have felt himself when ho rond this : — " I beliovo ; you to be tho proprietor of the Tiinos , the leader of its councils , and nioro than any other man responsible for its net ' s . I think I may do the public good service if I ciui induce you io weigh well the remarks now privately offered . You combine in your own person the two moat powerful attributes that an . Englishman can possess—as a talented member of tho legislative body , and the supreme head of the press which governs the world . "
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 12, 1860, page 10, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_12051860/page/10/
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