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6i6 tRtte $Leait$v* Saturda y ,
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Kiltxatntt
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Critics are nob the legislators, but the...
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The dulness of the season is nearly at i...
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A work, La, Philosophic du Socialisrne, ...
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PRIZE ESSAY ON THE WORKING CLASSES. The ...
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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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6i6 Trtte $Leait$V* Saturda Y ,
6 i 6 tRtte $ Leait $ v * Saturda y
Kiltxatntt
Xiittatnxt .
Critics Are Nob The Legislators, But The...
Critics are nob the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them .. —Edinburgh Review .
The Dulness Of The Season Is Nearly At I...
The dulness of the season is nearly at its apogee . ( We think we discern an evidence of its reflex influence on our own style , or how could we have fallen into that astronomical metaphor , commonplace itself ?) Everybody is out of town , except journalists like ourselves , who have the unhappy fatuity of imagining the world cannot spare us for even a week ! Parliament rising retires to its meditations and grouse . Publishers sun themselves in foreign climes { style clioisi /) and unblushingly ignore such things as manuscripts . Authors
disperse their radiance over provinces , country houses , and the byeways of the " Universe . " Even Circulating Libraries are deserts , and the somnolent shopmen droop upon their stools . In such a season a bit of gossip is hot in the mouth as gingerprized like earliest peas or nascent pines—therefore , beloved reader , we preface our communication with the fervor of a Pliny about to treat his correspondent with the last new story current in wearisome Rome—Assent para et accipe auream fabula : hand your sixpence and receive in return golden news , viz ., a new work by Cubrek Bell .
When we say a new work we are perhaps a little anticipating ; that another novel is in progress we believe , but the new book we speak of is a republication of the tales by her two sisters , ActOn and Ellis , which have so obstinately been set to her account by critics , taken with certain family resemblances and unable to perceive essential differences . To these tales will be added other and inedited papers by the two sisters , with some account of them by Currer Bell , herself . We look forward with great interest to this publication ; the mystery that shrouded Currer Bell has been only partially withdrawn , but enough to
encrease the regard entertained for her by those who knew only the writer of Jane Eyre j any fuller account of herself or family will be greedily pounced upon . Nor is this feeling one of vulgar curiosity . It springs from the natural desire to gain a more definite and homely idea of an author who has charmed us by stirring " thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls . " It was that feeling which made Goethe ask of his young unseen friend Carlyle , a drawing of the house in which he lived . It is the feeling which gives an interest to portraits of celebrated men . Not a vulgar feeling then , by any means , though it may become so in vulgar natures .
Further , we hear that Eliza Lynn is actively engaged on a novel for the next season . May the Lakes inspire her to quit those remote regions of the antique world in which her thoughts hitherto have wandered too much at large , and , leaving Egypt to its mummies and antiquaries , no less than Greece , with its temptations , like Sirens , to the young imagination , resolutely move amidst the thronging forms of modern life , and paint from them . Why should she not write a female Alton Locke ?
A Work, La, Philosophic Du Socialisrne, ...
A work , La , Philosophic du Socialisrne , has recently appeared in Paris , somewhat more comprehensive than the title suggests , and by no means so well executed as we might desire , but worthy attention from the largeness of its conception . The author , Dr . Guepin , is a physician at Nantes , and , after ten hours * daily labour in visiting patients , he has contrived not only to write , but actually to print tho hitter part of this solid volume : his printers , imprisoned for dvlits da 2 > resscs lnc doctor himself took in hand the compositor's stick and
here is the result . The value of the book mainly lies in its suggestivunesH and arrangement . Having to place before us the series of transformations ¦ which the world hus undergone in obedience to the law of progress , he commences with a summary of astronomical truths ; from these he passes to geology ; trotn inorganic matter to the physiology of organic inatter , with chapters tm Phrenology and
Mesmerism ; he then sketches the great outlines of the history of Religion—the Revelations , as he calls them , of the Vedas , of Zoroaster , of Egyptian wisdom , of Moses , of the Druids , of Hoiulha , of Greece , of Odin , of Jesus ; and the various phases < . f ir . odcrn history fall under review , whereby the filial inn of ideas is preserved , and the modern Medalists shown to Ik : the true descendants and " emanation :, " of all that luis gone below . In
short , he undertakes to sketch the history of this globe till the appearance of man upon its surface , and then the history of man down to our own days . Unhappily , the execution does not respond to the programme .
Prize Essay On The Working Classes. The ...
PRIZE ESSAY ON THE WORKING CLASSES . The Working Classes of Great Britain ; their Present Condition , and the Means of their Improvement and Elevation . Prize Essay . By the lieverend Samuel G . Green , A . B . John Snow . The volume before us has been selected from some seven-and-forty other Essays as their best ; and , after a careful perusal , we are constrained to pronounce that that best is not good . The writer is evidently a man of philanthropic spirit and of considerable ability in his own particular province ; but he altogether lacks the breadth and the power to
grasp so complex and so vast a subject as the " Condition of the People . " Had the present Essay appeared as stray thoughts of an Evangelical Dissenter on certain matters , we should have been happy to have accorded oiir meed of praise to the untrammelled state of the writer ' s mind on several topics , and to have indicated the Important admissions made by him on several weighty points at issue between others of his persuasion and the secular reformers of the age . But as such we have not to consider it . It appears with an imposing and a
definite title , -which the book itself in nowise warrants . It purports to be a statement of the condition of the working classes and of the means for their emancipation , and as such we do not find it to possess any novelty of suggestion , any particular power of statement , any practicality of design sufficient to render it of any aid to those who have the condition and improvement of the working classes at heart . There is a vagueness and disconnectedness throughout . A tantalizing iricoherency pervades every feature of the Essay . Indeed , Mr . Green does not seem to possess
any logical faculty whatever . In addition to which he is partial . He starts from narrow grounds and builds up a vague superstructure upon them . He never faces the question he is considering in its vastness and totality , but occupies his time and space by swelling into a certain eloquent vapidity on minor details and suggestions . He has no alteration of any existing arrangements to recommend ; but
contents himself by confining his means to present machinery , and whenever the present results of that machinery confuse his plans , imagines that he settles the question by imperatively exclaiming , Let the working man have his rights—let him have sufficient wages , and this will not be the case ( pages 55 , 114 , & c . )» without once showing what these rights are , or how the working man is to get them . We will endeavour to give an abstract of his line of argument .
At the commencement of his second chapter we find the following announcement : — " That there must be a working class , in distinction from the class of employers and capitalists , I assume as an established truth . I hold no controversy now with the Socialist or Communist , though on a fitting occasion I might not decline the encounter . Perhaps something will have been done towards superseding their theories , if it is but proved that the present constitution of society , fairly understood and developed , includes all the great principles of charity , brotherhood , and mutual help . " And a little further wo discover a truer assumj > - tion : —
" This sympathy Christianity presents as the uniting bond of society . And experience tells us , in decisive tones , that no other bond will suffice . " Which receives an elucidation at a later period by the further assumption : — " I take it for granted that the system of doctrines usually termed Evangelical is the truth . " And again" If Christians will not accept tcetotalisin as an ally , it will bo exulted » s a lival . True , the result will be disappointment , to the advocates , and eventual overthrow to ( he cause ; for there is but onk power that can truly rei'tnerale mankind . "
Taking these one with another as mutually confirmatory and elucidatory , as well as bearing in mind the general spirit of the essay , we discover that Mr . ( Jreen sets out on his mission fust of ull by throwing overboard Socialism-and nil heresies from the creed of the Economists ; and , secondly , by binding himself down to making everything subservient to Evangelical Christianity ! A book on such a topic , which ianoros Socialism in all its forms , and stands l'igUlly by M'Culloch and Co ., and places its faith altogether in an increased supply of " Ebenezors" and " little Bethels " for tho operative classes , we cannot consider of much value in tin . present aspect of thy ( iiubt ion .
Having stated these principles , Mr . Green proceeds to draw a picture of the state of the working classes . It is a very black one , but a very true one : marred , however , by the extra eloquence employed in painting it , and much inferior in compass and force to the Appendix devoted to the same task . He shows that rural labourers starve on 8 s . per week , and live in sad oblivion of sexes , in closely crowded huts : that the acting hands are nearly as ill paid , and experience a great uncertainty of employment , while the
masters and men , instead of being allies , are in perpetual hostility ; and , upon the whole , he makes it apparent that our labour arrangements give a fair idea of a human chaos . He then proceeds to indicate the remedies , which are briefly these : —All men are to become Evangelical Christians—humble , lowlyminded , self-sacrificing . The employers are to be generous—never to take advantage of their servants ; they are faithfully to pay them the market price of labour , and then , with the assistance of their wives
and families , to make up the difference between that price and the price of sustenance by a liberal exercise of the Christian virtue of alms-giving . The employed are to be too humble , too full of grace to desire to have a share in the profits of labour ; are to be quite content to receive said market price , whatever that may be , and not to be too proud to accept the alms of their rich and prospering employers . They are all to become teetotallers . Out of an income insufficient to procure the comforts of life , they are
to save and lay by for old age and periods of stagnation , when work and wages discontinue . They are to " check the over-supply of labourers " ( page 31 ) by almost forswearing marriage . In fact , Christianity is to be beautifully realized between the two classes . The employers are to practise that portion of Christianity which consists in giving of your abundance , of being thankful for temporal mercies , such as large profits , limitless port wine , turtle soup , & c . ; and the employed are to practise that other sterner portion
which consists in suffering in silence , in bearing semi-starvation , semi-nakedness , and perpetual toil , without complaining . Divested of all extraneous matters , and passing over small details , this is the sum total of Mr . Green ' s panacea for improving the condition of the working classes . It amounts to a reassertion of a fact which most of us have long been aware of—that , if all men were gods , the world would be better than it is . We know , and everybody has long enough known , that , if all men were Christians ,
social evils would be diminished considerably . We know that , if men acted scrupulously right , there would be no labour question to solve . But men do not act right ; men do not act as Christians ; men cannot even tell what Christianity is . Mr . Green has no plan for improving them in this respect , except by his own omnipotent , •« Let men , & c . " ; and in recommending a popularizing of pulpit phraseology , and an infusing of something like talent into the waste Saharas of Evangelical tracts and papers . He altogether loses
sight of the fact that every thing he suggests already exists more or less , and that evils we seek to remedy have grown up unimpeded by them . Tho condition of the people has been growing worse and worse in the face of a multiplication of Bethels and Bethesdas , " unprecedented in our history . Can all the evangelical alliance combined preach away tho " sweating system ? Even if Mr . Green ' s preachings and the preaching of his brethren , had a hundredfold greater practical effect than we can imagine them
having , the remedy would only be partial m extent and in place , and unjust in nature . In fact , Mr . Green's error lies in assuming existing arrangements to be sanatoria ! facts , and in giving advice as regards little local pains and irritations , under the impression that the general system is sound , when in reality the whole framework is diseased , disorganized , chaotic-. When wo see capital , more amassed wealth , realizing for its possessor a splendid income , without effort inability on his part ; and hundreds of thousands of toiling human being * labouring from early morning
to evening for a mere pittance , suihemg only to keep life alive , while hundreds able and willing to work cannot find remunerative lubour of any kind to do . When we see the bees starve and the drones fatten ; when we see master and man , instead of cooperating as friends and allies , arrayed in bitter and uncompromising hostility towards each other ; when wo see an employer , after writing off a princely income as interest of capital , depreciation of stock , and a variety of other cunning exaggerations and imaginations , in Pharisaic gravity , exhibit the small residue
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 21, 1850, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_21091850/page/16/
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