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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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quality and extent of circulation ; that " the newspaper stamp prohibits the existence of such newspapers as , from their price and character , would be valuable to the means and wants of the labouring classes . " " Your committee consider it their duty to direct attention to the objections and abuses incident to the present system of newspaper stamps , arising from the difficulty of defining and determining the meaning of the term' news ; ' to the in equalities which exist in the application of the Newspaper Stamp Act , and the anomalies and evasions that it occasions in postal arrangements ;' to the unfair competition to which stamped newspapers are exposed with unstamped publications ; to the limitation imposed by the stamp upon the circulation of the best newspapers , and to the impediments which it throws in the way of the diffusion of useful knowledge regarding current and recent events among the poor ? r classes , which species of knowledge , relating to subjects which most obviously interest them , call out the intelligence by awakening the curiosity of those classes . "
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Mr . A . W . Stone , Secretary to the Ragged Schools , Edward Mews , Duke-street , Manchester-square , has written to the Times , enclosing a statement relative to the conduct of a Roman Catholic priest in respect of the said schools . His allegations are these : —A Roman Catholic priest came on the 16 th to the ragged schools and seemed very solicitous to obtain the names of the children . Instead of going to the teacher , he asked the pupils ; and when the teacher interfered , he asked to see the register . The teacher had no power to show it to him , and set off to fetch the landlord of the premises , and when they returned the priest made off . Outside a crowd collected , who began abusing the teacher , using disgusting language , pelting the school , the
priest looking on without reproof . " The policeman had great trouble during the afternoon to keep them from the door . The women sent the children with the books to tear up before us ; Bibles , Testaments , and the little reward books were all torn up opposite the school with horrible yells . In the evening there was a procession in Orchard-place with lighted candles , and the houses were all illuminated . The remainder of the books were all destroyed . A person passing through the court heard the beginning of the sermon ; which was a reproof to the parents for sending their children to a Protestant school . He said they were going to hell as fast as they could . Previously to this there was perfect goodwill and kind feeling manifested towards us , but now a very different
feeling is exhibited ; alarming threats are made use of and every annoyance practised . Yesterday morning a quantity of disgusting filth was put on the door , and the keyhole filled with it , so that we had to pay a man to cleanse it before we could attempt an entrance . Several people collected round there , muchdelighted , and said it served us right ; we had no business there ; and one woman clapped her hands with joy . On Monday , when the children went out of school , ttie priest was standing near , and gave each child a picture of the ' Virgin and Child . ' He again asked them why they came to a Protestant school . It is not surprising that the number of children is diminished , especially as I hear that a priest has been round to their parents to compel them , as their director , to remove their children , or tluir names would be called from the altar . "
The English delegates of the Peace Congress gave yes erday evening a soiree at Willis's Rooms , St . James ' square , to their foreign friends . The Roman Catholic " bishops" of Salford and Plymouth were consecrated by Cardinal Wiseman , assisted b y Dr . Paul Cullen , Primate of Ireland ; Dr . Brings , Biohop of Bevcrley ; Dr . Ulla'hornt ' , Bishop of Birmingham ; and Dr . Waring , Bishop ol Northampton , on Friday , at Manchester . Ann Bailey , the young woman respecting whom Mrs . 1 ' awcett , her Bister , made so strange a statement before Mr . Norton , entered , the police-court on Thursday , was identified , and taken home by her brol . her-in-law . Mrs . ' . Fawoett , it will be « een , had suspected that Ann Bailey had been murdered , and that it \ v ; ia \ w . t body which had been found in small pieces near Norwich .
c ^ arah Barber , who , it will be remembered , was accused of poisoning her husband , at Eastwood , near Nottingham , has been found guilty . Her paramour , Robert Ingrain , was acquitted , fciho ia sentenced to death without hope of mercy .
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Two propositions to prorogue the French Assembly have been presented ; one from August 18 to November f > , « nd the other from August 18 to October ' 20 . A " fast " young man died the other day at Pisa , disdainful of the good offices of the Church . Il <; w . iu told the Devil would claim him . He exacted u promise from u Corsicun , his friend , that he would watch over his body until it was buried . The Corsican watched alone in the convent chapel . In the , middle of the night came the Devil , hoofs , horns , and all . The Corsie . au nuked him his businesn . The Devil groaned and stretched out his dawn . The Cornicim informed hiuf that he inu « t go , or he would speedily send him below . ' 1 he Devil
scornfully laughed ; whereupon the . Corsiean drew a pistol , and coolly « hot the Devil . The report of the pistol alarmed the police , and a number of thone guardians of tins night having appeared , they saw to their aslctninhinent the corpse lying in its proper place , the Cortiiuiui witting tranquilly by its Ride , and U bleeding ina » H covered with red rnd black , with a tremendous puir of horns and the well-known tail . Poor Devil ! Ik ; turned out to be . the " bellman " of the convent . The ( , ' oi . sican was tried , und acquitted , n « he showed that in the Tuscan code there wan no penalty attached to shooting the Devil , and an he . persisted in saying that when he fired ho believed hu had to deal with hiu Satanic Majesty , und no mortal representative .
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GLADSTONE THE WITNESS . A witness has come forth against the iniquities of Absolutism in Naples , such as never yet joined in the denunciation , and we challenge that highminded and chivalrous gentleman to take thought , at this moment , whether he will abandon the great enterprise on which he has entered , or pursue it to the end . We do not seek to dictate to him the mode in which he shall pursue it ; there is no need for such dictation , even if we had the right . But most solemnly do we adjure him , before the period of inevitable further action arrives , the period of embarrassment and pressure , to consider the validity of the difficulties which will be suggested to him , the validity of the scruples which will arise to his own mind , when he is compelled to see , in all their nakedness , the influences that uphold the iniquitous system . William Ewart Gladstone is a man remarkable among the most distinguished of our country and of this day . He has long been noted for his natural capacity of mind : friends have feared that his
mind was even over-cultivated , and thus rendered fastidious , ultra-refined , extravagantly nice , prone to balance abstractions , and hindered in action . He had displayed much aptitude for practical statesmanship ; he is reckoned among the advisers of the Sovereign ; was the colleague and friend of the greatest statesman of our day , now departed ; and perhaps shares , most strikingly , that statesman ' s outward disposition to be over-impressed by conventions and forms ,
while , still like his friend , he is most able among our known statesmen , in dealing with the things lying under those forms . Intellectually inclined to the Conservative side , he has displayed a strong heart , moral courage , and no little decision . Among leading statesmen , perhaps there is not one that can be placed above him . With the doubtful exceptions of the Duke of Wellington , Lord John Russell , and Sir James Graham , and possibly the Earl of Derby , no man Isolds a higher Parliamentary rank .
Now , this man has been to Naples , has seen , has observed , has inquired , has been impressed , and tells what he knows , simply and plainly . He tells" it in English style , as it will impress Englishmen . What is it that he tells ? He describea how the prisoners of Naples are treated ; with a noble directness that elevates the filthy disclosure to the height of the sublimest eloquence , he describes how gentlemen are cast down to the condition of wild beasts in crowded dens ; how they are condemned on baseless charges , got up by a class of witnesses
that in this country we ( should call bloodmen ; how they are condemned by venal judges pledged to condemn ; and how there are thousands of such prisoners . Now the whole of " the Opposition" of the Parliament was incarcerated or driven into exile . Mr . Gladstone quotes the constitution guaranteeing freedom , representation , and fair trial to the Neapolitans ; the oath by which the King swore " in the awful name of the Most High and Almighty God , " to maintain that constitution still unrepcalcd .
Ami to whom was all this wrong done ? To men , says Mr . Gladstone , like Lord John Runnel ! , Sir James Graham , or Lord Aberdeen ; to a people so mild and well disposed , that when , for four months , Naples was in thchands of its font hundred thousand inhabitants , not one of the more serious crimes was committed ; not one , although long acorcn of vengeance might have been remembered . For bo if , remembered this tale ~ w not new , but only the witnens to it . Pepe has told it . Thrice did the iiiKt Ferdinand swear , like the present , with tearH and protestations , to maintain the
constitution-Francis swore ; and the second Ferdinand keeps up the shocking practice of swearing . And for three generations of the Bourbons have the Neapolitans endured what Mr . Gladstone now describes . When the Bourbonisin power , itis areign of Jefferies , perpetuated and multiplied ; when the People has been in power , it has been mercy , trust , kindness , even to that brutal Bourbon that" never dies . " We are not exaggerating , we are not colouring : the Englishman may understand what Naples is from what Jefferies was ; only that our James the Second had but one Jefferies , Ferdinand has many ; and our Jefferies had no prisons read y to his hands like those of Naples . It was thus after 1812 , thus after 1821 , it is thus after 1848 , thus in 1851 .
Is not this horrible ? Now , why is it ? Could not the Neapolitans right themselves ? Unquestionably : they have done it . But then have they been betrayed by foreigners . Ferdinand the First swore to the Constitution won by the Neapolitans , went to Laybach , and returned with Austrians ; Francis playing traitor to keep open the path for the foreign enemysupplying his own soldiers with worthless weapons to make their defeat the surer . France and England both have to answer for treachery in that region .
On whom does the perjured Ferdinand , whose power maintains this horrible system of Jefferieson whom does he rely ? On Austria . Austria is ready to put down any rebellion ; and while she is busy at that work , Prussia will do the work of Austria in the North . France will fill up the gaps . And Russia is behind . Mr . Gladstone should ask himself whether this horrible system , which he so justly and nobly denounces , could subsist , if it were not for the combined powers of Absolutism . He would leave questions of government to be settled , as internal questions , between sovereign and people : are they so left in Naples ?
But there is another , and for Englishmen a more formidable question : what part has our Government taken to counteract that Jefferies 5 system , or to uphold it ? We are forced by such facts as have come out , and by the secrecy in which the rest are veiled , to believe that our Government has practically helped to maintain that horrible system , and that it intentionally maintained the authors of that system . Is Mr . Gladstone prepared to face that question ? He should be so . We need not labour to make
him feel the misery inflicted on that beautiful country whence he has just returned ; we need not urge upon him that some nobleness is still left in he % sons , some capacity for the enjoyments and the duties of life , some faculty for obeying the Divine behests in promoting the welfare of mankind ; we need not exhort him to learn the truth of the tales of Neapolitan prisons ; we need not intreat him to inquire whether there are not inhuman tyrannies also in Sicily , in Rome , in Lombardy ; we need not incite his imagination to call up the aggregate suffering inflicted in that renowned land , generation after generation , since the day when Napoleon cheated Venice out of her ancient constitution , even as England cheated Sicily out of hers . AVe need
not urge these reflections upon him , for his own mind will do the work better than we can ; but we do implore him to reflect upon the power which opportunity , which the gifts of God , which the dictates of his own heart , which the sympathy of Europe conspire to place in his hands ; we implore him to dare to survey the good that he might do , if he pursue his high and chivalrous enterprise , if he persist until he exposes the whole of the wrong that oppresses unhappy Italy . He has described the wrong : what would not Italy be if that wrong were removed from the land ? what happiness to millions even of those who now live , and of tho . se who are to come , if that J cileries-system were not to be upheld and were merely to cease ?
lie has persevered ^ lie has faced the first aspect of some of those huge questions , and has not turned back ; he has tried private remonstrance with the Government of Naples ; he has ascertained , in bin own case , how the clainiH of justice are met by the , organized multiform Jcileries of Italy ; he has braved some of the consequences of a public denunciation ; lie has done a great nervico to Italy , to Europe , and to mankind ; but there is a future , and in that ulso ih there renown for him to win—nay , let us Kay rather , in that also in there yood for him to do a « the friend of his race , uu a servant of Gnri .
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There 13 nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation xn eternal progress . —Dr . Arnold .
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* ^ SATURDAY , JULY 26 , 1851 .
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702 & \) C 3 LtatC ! t * [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), July 26, 1851, page 702, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1893/page/10/
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