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interest between trader and consumer , and exhibit the former in his true character of agent for the latter , all customers should be admitted to a participation in the benefits of the business in proportion to their purchases , on condition of supplying a portion of the capital required ; or , which comes to the same thing , all goods sold to such contributors should be sold at an abatement of price ; to be regulated with the concurrence of contributors of a certain amount . Suppose a union of traders on such principles to be formed ; and let us endeavour shortly to trace out some of its principal effects : — 1 . There would be a great
oeconomy—In the acquisition of stock : —from the great amount of the purchases enabling them to be made on the most advantageous terms , the body becoming , in fact , their own wholesale dealers ; from the employment of the ablest judges in making the purchases . In the preservation of stock : —from the possibility of keeping all the goods required for the various establishments of the union in large de ' pdts , constructed in the best manner , whence they would be supplied as they were wanted to the several retail establishments .
In the distribution of the articles : —from combination in the delivery of goods ; from concentrating all the custom of each district into as few centres as were required for the convenient supply of that district , and employing the tradesmen whose services might thus become unnecessary in one district , in forming new connections in another district . In advertisements and other means of making
the business known : —from all the shops of the union being advertised together ; from each shop forming a centre of advertisements to every other in the union ; from the publicity which such a movement , if made on an extended scale , would certainly attract , the notices , the attacks , the defences to which it would give rise in the public press , forming advertisements of the very best kind , but costing nothing .
2 . This ceconomy would furnish the means of giving to contributing customers , and to all who were employed in the business , the advanages already mentioned , thus securing the support of the one and producing increased faithfulness and efficiency in the discharge of their duties on the part of the other , while a sufficient surplus would remain to allow to the principal managers and superintendents such a scale of salaries as would adequately remunerate their services .
3 . The smaller tradesman would be delivered from that precarious struggle to establish himself ; that continual liability to ruin from the appearance of some more powerful competitor ; that dread of an old age of poverty as the result of a life of toil , which Mr . Nicholls ' s statements—statements admitting of too easy and general confirmation—exhibit as his present lot . 4 . The conscientious tradesman might have the pure gratification of feeling himself to be filling in society an honest post , benefiting himself and all around him , and to be free from that contaminating atmosphere of fraud which threatens to turn the retail dealers of the present day into moral pests . With this sketch I will bring this long letter to a close , and remain , Dear Sir , yours faithfully , Edward Vanbittart Nkalk .
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Among the many pregnant sayings of the admirable Heinrich Heine , there is one which has a solemn accent rarely heard in his lively words , " Wherever a great spirit gives utterance to his thoughts , there also is Golgotha ! " Many red pages in the records of human progress respond to this . Of all virtues , Toleration is , perhaps , the latest , for our arrogance is coextensive with our ignorance ; and we need great experience of human
fallibility , and of the vast illimitable sweep of knowledge , ere we can humble ourselves to the conception that our dearest convictions may possibly fall short of the truth , and our opponent may have seized the portion we have missed ! It was said by Tacitus that the happiest times were those in which man could feel and express himself with perfect freq ^ om— rarA temporum felicitate ubi sentire qua velis et quce sentias dicere licet j and in this sense England bears the
palm" The land where , girt with friends or foes , A man may speak the thing he will . " There lies the moral greatness of England ; there also lies her security . Look around , and you will find liberty of thought—man ' s first and highest prerogative — repressed by Jorce in every other country . In the land of Luther it is a farce ; in the land of Voltaire it is a peril . In America , republic though it be , liberty is respecied only so
long as the dominant prejudices and dominant injustice are not in question ; let an unfortunate Abolitionist raise his voice against that deep and frightful degradation of America—slavery—and , like poor Mr . M'Coy , he is ducked , pumped on , insulted , half-murdered by the " free and enlightened Republicans . " Liberty of Opinion is a grand phrase ; but slaveholders are not willing to tolerate liberty when it leads to anarchy—to the subversion of all Order !
Here lies our superiority . We are no fonder of those " wild theorists" whose " Utopian dreams " of justice threaten our beloved Order , than the American is of the Abolitionist ; but we let them speak ; we answer them with arguments , statistics , ridicule , declamation , just as it suits us , but at all events we suffer them to get their thoughts uttered , and to conquer as many disciples as they can . " We have discovered , " said the Times on Monday , " that the highest degree of political stability not only may coexist with the utmost latitude of discussion , but in point of fact depends on it as effect from cause . " Rard temporum felicitate !
Our stability depends on Freedom , not upon Coercion : to the Catholic mind a fearful and anarchial condition ! In the last number of the Rambler , a bold and vigorous writer , standing manfully by the doctrines of his Church , declaims against civil and religious liberty as equal in absurdity to the inalienable right of suicide . lie declares openly that the Catholic Church has always avowed the deepest hostility to the principle of liberty ; and that when the Catholic pretends the contrary , it ie for the purpose of deceiving the Protestant world : —
" Ilia great object is to silence Protestants , or to permiadt- thorn to let him alone ; and as he certainly feels no personal malice against , them , and laughs at their creed quite as cordially aH he hates it , he persuades himself that he is telling the exact truth when lie professes to be an advocate of religious liberty , and declares that no man ought to be coerced ou luscount of his conscientious convictions . The practical result i 8 , that now and then , but wry seldom , IVoteHtantH are blinded , and are ready to clasp their
unexpected ally iu a fraternal embrace . ** They aro deceived , we repeat , nevertheless . Bflie-ve us not , Protestants of England and Ireland , for » ui iiiMtnnt , when you see uh pouring forth our liberalism * , lie is not talking Catholicism , but nonaeuse and Protestantism ; and he will no more act on the » e notions in different circumstances than you now act on them yourselves in your treatment of him . You ti » k , if Ke were lord in the land , and you were in « . minority , if not in numbers yet in power , what
would he do to you ? That , we say , would entirelv depend upon circumstances . If it would benefit th cause of Catholicism , he would tolerate you ; if „ pedient , he would imprison you , banish you , / n « you ' . possibly he might even hang you . But be assured of one thing : he would never tolerate you for the sake f the ' glorious principles of civil and religious liberty ' ' This is outspeaking , and as such we welcome it It does not , however , render Catholicism more beautiful in our eyes ; and the less we like such
arbitrary and despotic creeds , the more we see how the salvation of society depends upon a thorough and hearty adoption of this great antagonist perfect Freedom . And what we say here of religious speculation applies equally to the political ; the only alternative of Force is Thought .
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We have just trumpeted England . Leon Gozlan , in his charming volume of Contes et NouvelleSy which lies so temptingly on Jeff ' s counter sarcastically explains why France cannot pension her poets :- — " Mademoiselle Elisa . Mercoeur often said , in a very , very low whisper to her friends , when reduced to frightful distress : —* I wonder whether the Greek pcets had bread to eat every day ? ' And she seemed to think that her published poetry entitled her to a small
pension . A pension ! But the Government cannot really grant pensions to poets , even to good ones . It keeps at the menagerie , lions which eat every morning ten francs' worth of hot meat , tigers which absorb fifteen francs' Avorth of mutton , a giraffe which drinks six francs' worth of milk , not to mention the monkeys of Brazil and the white bears of Greenland , which it takes paternal pride in feeding . How , then , can it think of poets ? Instead of being a poet , be a lion or a monkey , and you will have a lodging gratis . What is an author compared to an antelope r' '
It appears we can occasionally pension a poet—( the feeding of monkeys and antelopes being left to private enterprise)—and at last our discerning Government has recognized John Wilson , poet , philosopher , and critic , the colossal , the eccentric , but always genial Christopher North ! Three hundred pounds a year England bestows on her loved Christopher , and wonders why it was not bestowed before . He chose to call himself aToryand fight the Tory battles ; but being a man of genius no party could narrow him within its limits , all parties claimed him as their own . Rousseau in one of
his bursts of maddened vanity , said that only scoundrels could help loving him on account of his works—quiconque ne m'aime pus a cause dc mes livres est un fripon : jamais on ne m'dtera cela de I'esprit ; what Rousseau says of himself we say of Wilson—estimate his opinions how you may , the health
man , you must love if your sympathies are y We , who trace these lines , so love the broad , energetic , manysided impulsive nature of the man , that we hear of his pension as if it were a windfall to ourselves . Now the Government has recognized Wilson , perhaps it may cease to overlook Dk Quincey , although he does labour under the disqualification of being a man of genius .
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Mettbknich is writing a book , and that book ia a History of Austria during his own time ! Unhappily this bit of gossip can only interest our grandchildren , as the Prince inserts a clause in his will , which forbids the publication till sixty years after his death . What a lying book it will be ! We do not make that exclumation as at " sour grapes , but moved thereto by a conviction that Mktxkknich , with all his sagacity , waa in a po sition which excluded him from the truth , had he wi « h ' ( 1 to find it .
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Mazzini ' s little work , The Pope in the Nw ^ ternth Century , which we noticed some months » g <» . when it appeared in French , has been traii « 1 » « into English , and in now published an a pamp lile , in which form our readers will be glad to posses it . And while noticing publications let «« h" 1 " that of Bkkntano ' h works i « «« volumesone of the most fumous of the Romanttsche btn « - BitBNTANO in interesting to all students ot V " , literature , anil the present publication r *™ ™ " ' ditional stimulus from the knowledge that »' tano , late in life , looked upon his work s as u . gerouB , " if not " devilish / and destroyed all * copiei he could lay hand * on .
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Critics are not tlie legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Review .
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The Mask ok Oocui'ATIOnh . —The mysteries of London involve many strange and hideous evils that must not be revealed , and that cannot be even legislated for . In what other part of the world in an avowed calling made to minister so succesfully to a concealed one ? or where the most apparently dissimilar and incompatible pursuits are driven together ¦ with the utmost ease , like a team of differently coloured horses ? or where ostensible respectability of station , and a character carefully built up of plausible externals , are so adroitly cultivated and employed as a musk lor the most audacious robbery and uwindling ? Look at the long-established and orderly jewellers '
shops that do not sell five pounds worth of jewellery in twelve months , and are nothing more than blinds for smelting pots ; —the attorneys' oilices that are really no better than baits to entrap young spendthrifts into bill transactions and suicidal post obits ;—the fashionable establishments which shed such lustre on the West-end—mercery , tailoring , plate -and which , instead of making their profits , an they seem to do , out of the regular channel * of trade , derive their income exclusively from an invisible and un-HUBpected system of usurious discounts . A catalogue of the fraudulent masquerades of London would fill « volume # nd a very aingular volume it would make , if we had a Vidoca . or » Eugene Su « to do justice to t » multifarious topics . —Fraier ' s Mag *** m .
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874 CtK & £ * & £ ?? [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 13, 1851, page 874, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1900/page/14/
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