On this page
-
Text (3)
-
270 T/ie Leader and Saturday Analyst. [^...
-
THE PEELITES. IT is probable that ere ma...
-
DEBTORS AND CUKDITOllS. I^HE following S...
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Commercial Morality. Tturly Dr. Johnson,...
jninds the late great Strike suggested dyspeptic dreams of a servile war between labour arid capital . Events have shown our social balance too good to be easily disturbed , even by so large a body of men being thrown hungry and angry upon the streets of London . But when we hear of such isufferings as those practised in the factories ,, how can we wonder at any efforts , however violent or misjudged , to restrain such inhumanity ? There was a time when just and wise guilds arbitrated on such matters , and redressed every grievance ; but trade has grown too wide for guilds , and mutual forbearance and self-restraint are now our only safety .
It should humble our national pride to think that now , in this Taunting age , when commerce teems with invention and life , when . our sails are on every sea , and our power and wealth is a proverb all over the globe j now that education is getting universal and religion increasing ; now that our merchants are princes and our traders nobles , that we should have reached v that alarming pitch of commercial immorality that it is all but impossible to obtain pure and real the simplest necessaries of life , that new inventions should be liable to be destroyed by ignorant workmen , that thousands of children should be slowly put to death annually in our factories , that that code of lies called " Tricks of trade" should form part of every commercial man ' s education and creed , that unchecked forgeries should be common , that nothing sold should be quite what it seems , —that greediness , fraud , and deception should be still so paramount wherever trade sets up her noisy booths , in a word that Greshams should be so few and Dean Pauls so numerous . ,
270 T/Ie Leader And Saturday Analyst. [^...
270 T / ie Leader and Saturday Analyst . [^ ARCH 24 » I 860 .
The Peelites. It Is Probable That Ere Ma...
THE PEELITES . IT is probable that ere many years the Peelites will be placed at . the head of the nation ' s affairs . Well , therefore , is it for us to Icno . w what they are , and what we have to expect from them . They resemble little him from whom they have their name ; they are neither so thoroughly English , nor so . persistent and practical . Foreign writers have called them the doctrinaires of England ; but this is scarcely accurate . Guizot , and other statesmen in France of the same stamp , are cold * pedantic dogmatists , and it would be far more corvect to designate Wliigs of the Lord John Kussell school doctrinaires than the Peelites . The latter are men of honour and of principle , who are less dominated by ideas than by aspirings . Their distinctive feature is a certain indolent catholicity . They have not strong- sympathy with the people ; but neither have they the Whig contempt . for the people , nor the Whig exchisiyeness . Their cardinal defect is a want of energy . The Tories are often unscrupulous ; the Whigs are not unscrupulous , but they are factious , intriguing , arrogant , vindictive . The fault of the Peelites is that they arc too scrupulous ; that they doubt and hesitate when they should boldly act . They have , some of the . high qualities , some of the noble chivalry of the Girondists , with the same overstraiued delicacy and fatal vacillation . With the instinct of exalted right , they have not the courage of justice ; hence , though they will not practise corruption , they will tolerate it . To succeed in politics men must be thorough uoliticians . The leading Whigs may not be
our greatest statesmen , but they are our most thorough politicians . In talent , Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell do not greatly rise abovemediocrity , but they are intensely politicians ; their heart never wanders from the political field , the political arena . Can the sarne tiling be said of the Tory leaders ? And would it wot be a mockery to say it of the Pe « liU ; s P ¦ . ,. ,, , The dream of the Peolites js the revival of medisevahsm tlirough the renewed action of the Church . But they display no vigour in the realisation of their dream . They assume the in fallibility ot the Church , yet shrink from asserting the whole of the Church ' s autho-. rity . Behind the age in their childish Traotarianism , they ure yet before it in their general scheme of a Commonwealth ; indeed-, they are the only political party with the general scheme of » Commonwealth at all , IPor every other political party , what are politics but haphazard , hand-to-mouth empiricism P To view the State us a oitr of God , which every pious , virtuous , and patriotic soiil should
help in building-, this is familiar enough to the . Utsvnmn muM ; put the average English mind would reject it as an absurdity . JNow , the Pooli ^ es have done av signal service in giving us , however imperfectly , tho divine ideal of a Commonwealth . The English confound empiricism with wisdom ; they act exactly like the physician who , having never studied anatomy or medicine wauld treat each frosh case of disease in a rash , rough , experimental way . A he English nre fond of culling this habit by very tine names : but , besides rendering their politics immoral , it exposes them continually to disgraces and dimistGra . Two hundred years ago the i ' untnns tried to ( jreob a Hebrew theocracy in England . tUre , at least , thoro was the ideal of the State with the Scriptures m a guide m the embodiment of the ideal . The endeavour . wits , laudable , even it it tragically failed . Since then wo have . had nothing but the tioroo Ibatbloa of factions , and in the dust and smoke of the fight no holy vision of tho Stato could be neon . Ji'thoy did not roooivo profound , puissant impulses from their colosmvl industrialism , tho English pqoplo wpnhj sink into absolute lutulism . Thoy are rouaocUVom iwu
their lethargy by the tliuuduv of gigantic "team mumnors , » mu , awake , they think that ; something must reully b ° <™ " ° ° tlloy t ? ° to sleep agaiu . For tho most part , liowoVer , thoy go to slogp again without doing anything . We are not pleading- for abstractions , which must over be as barren for tho State as fov tho individual . Tho worship of abstractions has boon tho curse both of Jmince and of Aniorioii ,, and Kapqi / eon was right in his contempt and hotrod for those whom ho oallod ideologists . A country cannot nourish its
life with an array of arid philosophical propositions , cannot forget its historical development . But . the historical development should not be compelled to depend on the coarse pressure of material necessity . Identifying abstractions with idealisms , the English abhor the latter quite as much as the former , and herein they are guilty of a most deplorable blunder . _ ^ Nothing but more transcendent and triumphant idealism is needed to make the English who are so strong , so laborious , so valiant , and so truthful , unrivalled among modern nations . Now , if the Peelites wei-e not politicians at all , if they were simply students—and there is a good deal of the scholar's refinement in them , with , alas ! too much of the scholar ' s feebleness—they would have shown themselves as England ' s faithful friends , by preaching , though in antiquated and theological iashion , the regeneration of England into a catholic Commonwealth . What they have preached they will strjve to incarnate . They may not achieve much , but at least they \ yill render politics broader , richer , deeper , more poetic . In -a nation culture cannot be a substitute for heroism , b \ it culture is nearer heroism than that idiotic prose which -in England we are so fond of dignifying with the name of common sense . Revolutions must b & accomplished in England by men who have nothing of the revolutionary temper j sueh revolutions are always the best , and are alone enduring . The Peelites are disposed to be revolutionary from the most conservative feelings . They bother themselves with silly casuistries , with obsolete ceremonialisms , with pitiful puerilities ; it is , however , because they believe that the eternally celestial is enshrined in all this . That they believe in the eternally celestial in some form is enough to make us love them . . With those alone must we forswear brotherhood who deny the eternally celestial . The Peelites are not the slaves of formulas , however , fervent they may be in their idolatry of ritual . Though , therefore , conscientious and highiiiinded , they ' will never be Quixotes to . the death for a crotchet . They will . yield at the right time , not from selfishness or fickleness ^ , not from the low calculations ' of the adventurer , . . -but because , if they have the narrowness of a traditional creed , they have the comprehensiveness of the infinite feeling out of which the creed sprang . There is a dash of dilettaiiteism in all their sayings and doings ; but whom in these days , except the cynics , does'dilettaiiteisin not infect ? Even the cymes have their dilettante moods , and Thagkekat , the high priest of the cynics , whines and whimpers now and then very much like the blubbering boobies whom he ridicules . The Peelites cannot rule England for any iong period ; their weakness of character and their fastidiousness : render tliis impossible . But in the transition , from Whiggery to a genuine , national statesmanship , the Peelites have a godlike mission to fulfil . Let us not blame them for being Peelites , and merely Peelites . Providence has no daintiness in the choice of instruments , and why should we be more dainty than Providence ? The Peelites do not , like the Whigs , claim Povvriing-street as a perpetual patrimony ; they are human beings , and not odious oligarchs . They proclaim the alliance between monarchy arid democracy , but they leave aristocracy to take care of itself . Even if the Peelites could do nothing but deliver us from , the thraldom to the Whigs , we should owe them everla . tjt . ing gratitude—it is always so welcome to get rid of a thing which has no heart . Meanwhile , though we would prepare England for Peelism , we would * prepare it for what is to succeed it . When Palmekston , the heartiest 6 f the-Whigs , departs from the scene , there is no one but Gladstone to take his place . We are convinced that Gladstone w ill yet be prime minister of England we are convinced that England will , grow very tired of him . It will hunger ., and pant , and shriek for a man , and Gladstone is a clever though honest Oxford professor . After the Oxford professor we must , have an Englishman , who combines the radiant Apollo and the robust ! Hejucul : es ; wo must have the marriage of the Ideal and the Real . That the ' farce of chattering epileptic parliamentarism , of which we have all grown so tired , caii lce « p on its legs or wag- its tongue , much longer is impossible . Hansaud has grown a nuisance . Nobody now roada the best-reported speeches , though the Tiines finds them useful to iill its columns . Constitutionalism is perhaps not m a healthier condition than parliamentarism . Though , therefore , we would bo merciful to- tho reporter , we think that enough has been reported till something more is achieved .
Debtors And Cukditolls. I^He Following S...
DEBTORS AND CUKDITOllS . I ^ HE following Statistics relating to the Debtor and Credit system will be interesting at the present time : —Wo learn by tho Judicial Statistics of 1858 , that in that year . 1 , 5 » 2 petitions ( of which only 134 i 2 proceeded up to the " adjudication " ) were presented to the Courts of Bankruptcy ; 897 by creditors , and M , 5 by debtors themselves . The debtora alao presented & 1 O petitions for private arrangements , which , pan be carried ' out with tho consent of throe fifths in number and value ol the orediturs . The adjudications declared l , S 4 S persons bankrupts either trading singly or in copurtnoriihin . Out of these 1 , 280 passed their examination . Tho amount of their debts , as Htatocl by themselves , was £ ' 8 , # 15 , ( J 2 i > \ } against which they only produced nssetu value £ l ( 7 ti 5 , 2 fi 8 . Out oi this sum had to be providod " speqiul charges aud deductions , ^ 318 , 729 , debts- ^ -auoh as wages and' taxes , to be paid ia full , £ , 2 $$ 75 , leaving assets sufficient to pay about three shillings in tho pound j but no loss than ^ 84 . 09 , 852 were required for " exnonaos , " so that creditors , only got an avortvgo dividend of little move than two aliilUfigs and Hixpence . , , If wo go iVoiu bankruptcy tp insolvoncy we find the Ununoiai result not ^ uite so good . Out of 3 , 387 petitions presented , to the
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), March 24, 1860, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24031860/page/8/
-