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January 2^ :1857.] THE LEADER, . 85
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THE VERGER TRIAL. The guillotine may sil...
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'HONEST IAGO.' Sir Robert Peed is roaste...
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.
Work Wanted. "When Thirty-Five Thousand ...
off from his labour , i 3 not a pauper ; "but if he must give up his home , and pawn his tools , before he is entitled to relief , that is the way to make _ a pauper of him . Say what you wiil about the necessity of protecting the ratepaying working classes against the encroachments of the idle ; the fact answers you , that the unemployed in London are not idlers , but industrious labourers and craftsmen , who would work if there were work for them to do . If such a proposition contradicts our political economy , our
political economy is wrong . The complaints at Smithneld refute it complaints- of the starving , which can be neither jested nor equivocated away . We do not need to be told that the Socialism of famished open-air orators is a farrago of stale delusions ; that some of the Smithneld speakers have dug up an old fetiseh , and expect it to work a miracle . There is nothing new , nothing startling , in the Common-Property , or Common-Poverty doctrine . It is simply as old as the earliest Fathers of the Church . But
it is a graceless undertaking to satirize the intellectual pauperism of men who " wait for alms or death . " Whatever fallacies may lurk in their system of ideas , quite as many prejudices infect the dogmatism of their opponents . They have done nothing to deserve reprobation ; on the contrary , they have displayed a spirit of moderation above
all praise ; and , as for their social hopes , they are not one tittle more visionary than those political alarms which made Weliin & ton exclaim , " I could gnaw the flesh off my bones ! " simply because the Reform Bill had passed . Illusions are not always strictly popular . If the working classes have their waste laud schemes , other classes have had their manias and
bubblesao let not an impracticable proposal be made an excuse for ignoring the distress that exists in the metropolis . The question is not , What can be done with the waste lands , but What may be done for the thirty-five thousand men out of work , with their families ? They must have employment , or , if left unemployed , must be fed—the problem being , whether it is better to treat them as paupers , or to devise some plan for supplying them with labour during the slack winter months .
Emigration ? Thousands of the poor would be willing to emigrate , but have not the means . . The Poor-law system works slowly aud imperfectly . Do the guardians and ratepayers care to raise the necessary sums for this purpose ; are even poor orphans and deserted children sent abroad at the expense of the parishes ? But let emigration go on as rapidly as it may , it does not meet the difficulty , which is , that the winter season interrupts the industsious classes
m their vocations . Work , in that season , is unprofitable to the masters . Let the men save , then , while they are employed . Wo repeat , they do save , but cannot save enough ; it is notorious that the funds of numerous benefit societies arc all but exhausted , and that many of these associations only profess to relieve the sick and the
bereaved , the able-bodied members , though unemployed , having no claim upon their limited treasuries . Prom every side the question converges to one issue—the door of the Union . The working-classes must understand that their property is invested in the Poor-law . In course of time that Poor-law may bo converted , not only into a superannuation fund for the industrious orders , bub into an
assurance organization , guaranteeing them , one and nil , against destitution . It cannot bo too often reiterated that the rolieving-oflicer should bo applied to , if not simultaneously by the thirty-live thousand unemployed
workmen , at least by every individual of the multitude in succession . Perhaps the parishes will then adopt the principles of modern economical science , and , by a system of parochial assurance , greatly relieve themselves , and confer independence on the poor .
January 2^ :1857.] The Leader, . 85
January 2 ^ : 1857 . ] THE LEADER , . 85
The Verger Trial. The Guillotine May Sil...
THE VERGER TRIAL . The guillotine may silence Verger ; but the recollection of his crime and of his trial will long continue to oppress the minds of the French people . The two scenes—in the church and in the Court—complete the horror and the infamy . A . priest struck dead by a priest , in the midst of a religious ceremony ; the assassin baited like a wild beast by his judges , dragged out of court , shouting horrible accusations against his order , and while still absent condemned to death !
We can well imagine what would have taken place in an English criminal court had this unhappy wretch been brought to trial before Lord Camebei , ! ,, Chief Baron Pollock , Lord Chief Justice Co-ckburn , or any of our English judges . . If the prisoner burst into frantic exclamations , he would have been silenced by the immovable serenity of the Tribunal and the Bar . His defence would have been heard , and , if possible , rebutted . The most severe regularity and impartiality would have marked the whole course of the
proceedings . All evidence to the prejudice of the prisoner , irrelevant to the exact subject of inquiry , would have been ruled inadmissible . The examinations and cross-examinations would have been controlled by the rigorous equity of the Bench . The accused would have heard the addresses and the testimony against him and in his favour , the verdict , the judge ' s summary , and the sentence . The spectators would have been prevented from expressing themselves in any
way ; the slightest attempts at applause or disapproval would have been suppressed ; a word uttered , by any unauthorized person would have consigned him to custody for ' contempt . ' Justice would have been present , but not passion ; evidence , not interest or prejudice , would have influenced the verdict . What happened in Verger ' s case ? The Judge degraded himself by an unseemly altercation with the accused ; the carefullypicked audience shouted " Assassin ! " the
guards fought with the prisoner ; no one seemed to reverence the Judge , or the law ; the defence was stifled ; the act of accusation was unfair ; the testimony adduced was partial ; within the court there was confusion and iadecency , outside the court a murmur of reprobation ran from end to end of Paris . Veiigeu . declaimed to the judge ; the judge violently contradicted him . ViiitGEit appealed to theaudience ; the audience cried "Assassin ! " Imagine the Lord
Chief Justice pouring out invectives against a man on trial for his life ; imagine an Old Bailey audience yelling " Murderer ! " in the ears of one who is " presumed to bo innocent until the law pronounces him guilty . " To crown this ignominious scene , the prisoner is dragged away , the prosecution is hurried forward , the defence ia limited to an ex offtcio apology , sentenco of death is passed in the absence of the accused , and France is left to wonder why the Government stood in so much fear of the denunciations of an assassin .
The opinion in Paris is that VimaEit ia a fanatic stung by disappointment to expose to the world the frightful immoralities of the Church in Franco . His intellect gave way , in a certain sense , under the weight of this conviction . Ho tried numerous methods of making himself heard , and after fifteen years of persecution ho selected the detestable
device of a public murder . He is described to us as " an honest fanatic , frenzied in one particular . " He sacrificed everything to gam the single object of his life , which was to unmask the existence of a hideous amount of intrigue , falsehood , hypocrisy , and unnatural depravity among the French priesthood . They tried to gag him , but his immense energy defeated them . When he was put upon his trial it had been determined * not only to execute him , but to blacken his
character and stifle his voice . The scheme was not altogether successful . The few words he roared out , which the drum ecclesiastic could not drown , "were well . understood , and are now commented upon in all quarters of Paris . St . Germain VAuxerrois especially comments upon them . The trial was a monstrous burlesque , not of justice only , but of positive law . The French Code allows extenuating circumstances
to be proved ; Vergeb was not allowed to prove them . The act of accusation went back to his school-days ; the defence was allowed to go no farther than the date of the crime . It is-enough . to say that M . Djslabtgle presided , that M . Vaisse was concerned in the condemnation of the prisoner . It is whispered far and wide that a deliberate plan had been laid for taking advantage of Vebger ' s irritability to goad him into violence , and thus furnish an excuse for his removal from
the court . Groundless or not , an insinuation of this kind shows the kind of reverence inspired by justice in Imperial Prance . So flagrant an outrage upon justice , decency , and humanity , as this spectacle presented , will not , we think , be suifered to pass out of the memory of the living generation . MM . Dula-ngu / e and Vaisse may rely upon it , all the consequences of Vebqeb's act are not bygones when Veroeb , himself has been expunged in the name of justice , and in rhejsterests of society .
'Honest Iago.' Sir Robert Peed Is Roaste...
' HONEST IAGO . ' Sir Robert Peed is roasted for disclosing the hollow state of Russia ; the " white palaces" of St . Petersburg , he says , are " all outside stucco and white paint . " We remember a negro preacher who was reported as telling the fair of Jamaica of his own race that they were all " painted puckery , " which , being interpreted , means " painted sepulchres . " We should like to know how far that which we see around us is real ; whether
our aristocracy is so great , gerierous , and wealthy ; whether our gentlemen are so honourable and so well to do ; our merchants so solid , our public officers so honest . Not long since common people looked upon Lord Goiit as n . very great person—owner of the town of Gort ; a high Tory of the deepest Orange ; ho seemed a species of sovereign , a local Louis NjUPolkon . Yet we find iu the proceedings of the Encumbered Estates Court this weelc that that same town of Gorfc has
been sold to a stranger . The whole of the grandeur , therefore—the sovereign dignity and vast poaseasious embodied in that town of Gort—were nothing better than " paiuted puckery . " The Encumbered Estates Court in Ireland has been a great show-up of the " outside stucco and white paint ; " and one reason why an Encumbered Estates Court has not been
established in this country , is tho apprehension that it would equally show-up the outside stucco and white paint of our own English counties . Tho unemployed inSiniLhfield are calling for tho land which is their own . They are right on . abstract principles ; the land upon which any nation lives belongs to tho nation ; and since they have a primary right to subsistence out of the soil , they arc
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 24, 1857, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24011857/page/13/
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