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gO2 Wfrt 3Le&il$V+ ' [Saturday ,
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BETRAYAX OF THE LAV BY A MAGISTRATE. Jan...
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PROHIBITORY POSTAGE ABROAD. In our Posts...
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A (.'Iir.KlUNO PACT. Tiir Times mentions...
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NKWK I'Olt YARMOUTH. Tun Catholic Biwhop...
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SOCIAL REFORM. M ¦ CONCBUVfjirHE SALVATI...
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.
"Order" Conducive To Crime. France Is Gr...
much the paramount test of right and wrong : ** WiU it pay ? " is the test of right : " It will not pay /! jS moral condemnation . Hence , in orderly , conij niercial England , we breed an uncommon supply of thieves and forgers ; in moral England , a vast host of debauchees and all their train ; in religious Scotland , a tremendous and eternal race of drunkards and diabolists ; while in France , revolutionary , non-commercial , free-thinking , free-living France ,
crime abates . Perhaps they are more chivalrous in France ? Perhaps they interfere less with Nature ? An empyric , acting on the French experience , might almost propose a general curtailment of royalty as a short cut to moral improvement . Another might propose to free education from the trammel of the " religion" upon which no one can agree . A third would pronounce English education , as it is taught at " commercial academies , " to be bad—demoralizing . We judge not ; but it is evident that Baron Platt suggests some very subversive ideas .
Go2 Wfrt 3le&Il$V+ ' [Saturday ,
gO 2 Wfrt 3 Le & il $ V + ' [ Saturday ,
Betrayax Of The Lav By A Magistrate. Jan...
BETRAYAX OF THE LAV BY A MAGISTRATE . Jane Maskeix is placed before Alderman Wire , at the Guildhall , for illegally pawning two boys' coats deliTered to her to make up by a Mr . Haven Kaye , a clothier . She gets sixpence each for the coats ; she finds the trimmings ; each coat takes her about seven hours to make . She had sent to Mr . Kaye , she said , for Is . 8 d ., which he owed her ; but he had not paid it , and being ill , she had no resource . She had given security to her employer , and she believed that her employer meant to apply to the security . Under these circumstances , Mr . Wire discharged her .
Now why ? We do not believe that he had any right to exercise any such discretion . The offence alleged was not rebutted ; and the application to the security was only stated on " belief . " But the fact is , that the laws against the labourer are often so oppressive and cruel that the administrators hesitate to enforce them . The alderman went further than the discharge of the prisoner—he ordered the officer to pay the amount for which the goods were pledged ; one of the most distinct instances of recognizing a penal offence as the direct act of necessity which we remember . But does Alderman Wire do this for the hundreds of women who are as cruelly distressed as Jane Maskell , and yet resist the temptation to break the law ?
Prohibitory Postage Abroad. In Our Posts...
PROHIBITORY POSTAGE ABROAD . In our Postscript of Saturday last we quoted what th lioinan correspondent of the Times said of prohibitory postage of English journals in Rome . All Liberal journals are excluded ; but while certain French journals arc admitted at a postage of six sous , the postage of English journals ranges from three shillings to a dollar . Why not prohibit the Jinglisli journals at once ? Perhaps that would look too anti-British . A correspondent of the Times has mentioned that at liippoldsau , in the Duchy of Baden , the postage on the English journals varied in a remarkable manner : in the Times it varied from lOd . to Is . 5 d . ; on the Spectator , from Id . to ( id . lie could obtain no explanation of the fact from the postmaster .
We lately stated that in Prussia about Is . Gd . has been charged on our own journal ; not , we suppose , solely , but only as one of the Knglish press . Thus the exclusive use of prohibitory postage is becoming common to the Absolutist Governments .
A (.'Iir.Kluno Pact. Tiir Times Mentions...
A ( . 'Iir . KlUNO PACT . Tiir Times mentions as " a , cheering fact , " that " extensive agriculturist of BiccBter , King ' s Jind , a few days since , rode upwards of twenty miles on an unsuccessful effort to obtain a Huflicient number of men for harvesting his crops . " A strange sort of " cheering fact" ! But it incited " an indicating full employment for labourers . " £ m > that , under our admirable Hyatcin of ( Economy , you cannot be sure that labourers are fully employed , until fanners are " unsucreHsful" in obtaining hands , and the cropti are in danger of rotting on the ground . And when that is the cane , it is " a cheering fact . " What must be the disconsolate nature of that uytiteiri in which hucIi a fact iH " cheering" ?
Nkwk I'Olt Yarmouth. Tun Catholic Biwhop...
NKWK I'Olt YARMOUTH . Tun Catholic Biwhop of Edinburgh at the Lite Dublin meeting , ia reported to , have uttered the following uentenco , which iiiuhI strike terror into the Uouso of Louds , und fill the good people of Norfolk , with wonder : — " Jt i « in the power of every vemrable bloater to put on his < : \ mitiH ( or the keeping of hi « sovereign '* conscience , seat himself on the Woolsack , find sport a Chancellor ' s wig . " Fancy a bloater , " tall on end , " addressing the lloune from the Woolsack , adorned with hia chains , and suortiW u Cnaticellor ' fl wig , against the F » pftl Aggrcflnion !
Social Reform. M ¦ Concbuvfjirhe Salvati...
SOCIAL REFORM . M ¦ CONCBUVfjirHE SALVATION OF THE MIDD 1 E CLASS . TO K . H . August 18 , 1851 . My dear Grandfather , —I address this one of my letters to you , not only because I am glad to place on record my grateful remembrance of your unfailing and affectionate kindness — unfailing through every change of adversity and prosperity , of constant intercourse and of distance—but because you have been yourself * n-trade ; you have experienced the reverses of trade , have seen its working ; and your strictly practical mind is precisely the most candid , and perhaps the toughest , of that kind which I desire to reach . I was much struck lately with the remark which a friend told rne he had encountered from more than one trader , " Oh ! you Socialists mean to do away with us ; " and undoubtedly there is a feeling among Socialists , as well as their opponents , that the middle class is somehow to be superseded , swept away , ' annihilated . Now , nobody likes the idea of annihilation , at all events in his own person , even hypothetically . We have , at all events , a bias
against a doctrine which we expect to annihilate us ; the more so , if its advocates admit , or rather boast , of sucb > ah effect ; and we take refuge in the presumption that the doctrine is visionary . It is very desirable that such an impression should be removed , since nothing could be more calculated to hinder the peaceful and thoroughly advantageous progress of Association , and nothing could be founded on a more fundamental misconception .
I have always endeavoured to keep distinct these three things—the principle on which Association is based , and which I have defined to be general concert in the division of employments ; secondly , the immediate and practical application of that principle to the ~ actual condition in which we find society , so that such condition may be improved ; thirdly , the ulterior , theoretical , and speculative results , which are necessary to complete the rationale of the subject , but are as little likely to be realized at the moment * as the principle which has been
enjoined upon Christians for rather more than eighteen hundred years—zthat they should love one another . In fact , retail traders are themselves suffering from the want of concert , not only amongst themselves , but among the different classes of industry . While otheij 3 wera attacking traders for their dishonesty , when the . Lancet . disclosed ; the enormous adulterations' practised in variqus provision trades , all Communists were immediately struck with the effects of competition which that practice betrayed . The Lancet shoved that in many cases the
adulteration proceeded to the degree of fifty or even a hundred per qent . When you are supposing yourself to buy " coffee , " for example , you are buying a mixture , perhaps half coffee , perhaps half chicory ; possibly chicory , beans , and other things , with a mere spice of coffee . It was shown that some of the most largely professing houses , and not the cheapest , were among the most guilty . This was not confined to the coffee trade , but prevailed in every kind of grocery . We find it in every other
business / I have myself been condemned to write upon paper which was , I believe , " felt" touched up with piaster of Paris . I know , on the very best authority , that the trade in medical drugs is in an equally vitiated state ; and you might see from the letters of Mr . Joseph Flint , that the same kind of thing is seen about the country ; soap offered to the institutions in Lincoln at live shillings a stone , a sum , with the carriage , less by two shillings per hundred weight than he could buy it for , though he takes ten tons at a time . Thus we find the trader supplying , in the name of food , rubbish , or even poison ; defrauding the sick man in his medicine , and making some unaccountable " contract" even with the managers for the poor . They could scarcely have become so loat to moral considerations , so hardened to the precepts which they profess , ho deadened to common good feeling for their fellow-creatures , if they were not themselves the sufferers under the system . The same trick is played all round ; each trade is
taught to regard itself as an interest isolated from the rest of humanity , with all other intercuts opposed to it . Each trader in commercially a Cain in a nation of Cains . All moral consideration is reduced to the rule recently proclaimed from the lips of our Finance Minister , " Caveat emptor /' " lluyer , beware . " People talk about the danger of dissolving soci « ty iuLo its elements , but I ask you if tins is not dissolving the Social Hywteni ? Man is net against man , and is taught from the higheat bench in the Legislature that it is » ot
were unaer pressure or . some great necessity , and I find the necessity confessed in the very resort to devices . Those practices nni 6 t tell against each man more than they tell for him ; in the bankruptcy which hangs over every trader , threatening him with destruction if he flagged in the race of competition ; and also in destruction which threatens him in another shape . The aggregate amount of bankruptcy officially recognized which falls every year upon the class of retail traders is enormous ; but how much larger were pressure some tn-paf
noi ine wrong , not practical' infidelrfcy ,- npi . unchristian anarchical , antisocial , if he defrauds hie fellow ^ creatures of their food , the sick man of his medii cine , and the j ) oor of their allowance ; but the phrases which are not applied to the man who thus performs his social duties , are applied to those who suggest a plan that would not compel the trader to seek self-defence in fraud . I know that no set of men , much less a whole class , would resort to practices like these , if it not under the of
is the additional amount annually disguised under the form of " composition" ! How much humiliation does the trader have to undergo when he has to meet creditor or commissioner , and to be rebuked in his mortification for careless accounts , reckless trading , or " not stopping soon enough" ! Yet I often think that offences of this kind are not half so bad as those which are justified in high places—the giving to a fellow-creature poison for food or rubbish for medicine .
The retail trader vainly apprehends destruction for his class from the principle of Association , while , in fact , his class is actually undergoing a destructive process by the operation of capital . Where are the small haberdashers that used to be scattered about London and other towns ? In place of them you find a few very large establishments , the Morrisons or Shoolbreds , each employing shopmen by the hundred . A Morrison devised the plan through which the capitalist is enabled to undersell the small trader , by taking a fraction only of the profits which enabled the small dealer to go on , and yet the many fractions put together form an immense return in the aggregate . By this
process the great capitalist has converted the small dealers into his shopmen . The trader who employs a hundred shopmen , may be said to have eaten up a hundred small dealers .
Now , under any form of society , it is mconceivable . that people would be able to do without the functionaries represented by traders—those who carry on the exchanges of the products ot industry ; and , unquestionably , if we ware to arrange our business matters on the most desirable footing for all classes , we should desire to have traders in sufficient numbers , and furnished witn sufficient means , to conduct their operations effectively . It is a remarkable fact , that while terrible lessons
traders are beginning to learn , in the of bankruptcy , and in the more terrible trespasses of adulteration , how desperate is the struggle toey are maintaining against Competition , the promoters of Association are making practical arrangement to keep up the efficiency of exchanges , in thirty-five or forty agents , the People a raw Leeds may be said to have created so many traders ; who carry on their business , however , ^ a strict understanding between the mselves , wholesale producer , and their consumers ,
working together in concert . . . j n Several of the Associations in Paris maintw " their " gc - rant , " manager , the ex co ^ part of the trader ; only it is a trader who cxi ^ perfect understanding with his wor * j ' e ( i the ruined pianoforte-maker , whose stock ioun ' ^ stock in trade of the Associated Pianoiorte- ^ ' ^ —the thriving company that may be said . l ) ic adopted his children , and has sent hucIi ^ ^ , specimens of its work to the Exposition * f ti , c may be regarded as typif y ing the ^ "lC , ' , Central retail trader . The establishment oi : _ i" tr aIlK A .. W .. W ... ln T , *» wl , v » ... ill fni-+. linr H 3 TCHH » l"y i ..,, ini
i * mjin-y 11 * jLjuuuuii * ni * * m » v »»~ - ----- _ ( j worn mutation of the trader alienated fr « ! wo , jcii ) Ci » - into the trader incorporated with l * eX |) iana-But I must reserve for a second letter ai - j ^ , lion of the manner in which Concert opr t | lC the safety and advantage of the trader ,, ,. „ competitive » ystem subjects him to * w » l by tlio of ruin—the eating up of the » in <> ill tx , * , (! great capitalist , tbc bankruptcy of t ><>«« w ^ devouring , and that adulterut . au wh'C « t ,, „ an escape from the presaure of coinP ™ ^ „ ,. < which corrupts the very aubatiinee o « ^ tends to destroy the products ** Jj ° ' t | lPug » on which trade faunA .- Your •***« "f % „** Communist , T « oh » to * *
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 23, 1851, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_23081851/page/14/
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