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On that last critical occasion the process of his brutality ¦ -was elaborate in the extreme . He made his wife to stri p off all her clothes , and lie upon the bed . He beat her with a bone , which he had cut for the purpose , out of her stays , until he brolce it . He then beat her with a hairbrush ; he dragged her out of bed , obliged her to make it three times ; he tried to strangle her with his hands ; he beat her with a square stick : he threatened if she called out to dance
upon her ; he went out of the room , for a short time , and returned , to commence beating her again . All this while he was perfectly sober . The prisoner made one counter-accusation against the wife . It was that " she was the person most in fault . " He supplied no details , but asserted that charge , which appears , in fact , to refer to her having made objection at his taking another young woman to a public-house to drink . This case came before the Lord Mayor , on the 19 fch of November . The couple were married in Januarylast , and thus the woman ' s life had been of this
kind for ten months . A six months' holiday is something ; she will at least have repose for that period ; but imagine the six months expiring , with the prospect of such a husband coming back , his temper soured by prison discipline ! Technicality has made lawyers feel much difficulty in pronouncingwhat is " cruelty " within the legal sense . We presume that the treatment undergone by Mrs . Wright and Mrs . Curtis amounts to that offence , which would , we believe , give them a right at least to divorce a mensd et thoro , but there would be expenses in the ecclesiastical courts to which either must refer , five hundred pounds a-piece at least .
How is Mrs . Curtis or Mrs . " Wright to raise five hundred pounds ? Even the Commissioners who have been investigating the law of divorce with a view to improvement , only advocate the separation of husband and wife on the ground of adultery ; but surely that departure from established law is not equal in effect to the degrading influences of such brutal treatment as is inflicted by the husband and endured by the wife in horrible cases like that of Wright or Curtis . Granting , however , that a divorce might possibly be accorded , in what court should it be sought ? In Parliament . After having paid , say , five hundred pounds for relief in the ecclesiastical court , the wife would have to institute a Bill in Parliament for
a divorce , costing , at the minimum , say a thousand pounds . The law , therefore , which , is oppressive to the rich is prohibitory to the poor ; and while the wife of a gentleman can claim protection from cruelty , the wife of a tailor must undergo daily torturo because she cannot mustor 1500 / . to purchase her release .
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WHERE IS THE RUSSIAN ROUTE TO INDIA ? Many opinions have been advanced , and diseAis flion lias much fermented , respecting the probabilit y of an attack upon our Indian possessions by . Russia ; misapprehension being a largo ingredient in the fermentation . It arises partly from ignorance of the state of the countries through which a Uussian force would have to march , and partly from a false idea of the feelings of the inhabitants of those countries both towards the Russians and ourselves . Some of the lending journals of the day have entered into elaborate disquisitions concerning our means of resisting the invasion of a Russian army in India , and tlio probability that the Sepoys and other native troops in our pay might ( loBort at the approach f > f an invader . With the- truth of thono surmises wo have at present no concern ; for wo niust first noo how the invader could overcome the- difficulty—nay , the- impossibility—of finding Jus way with a groat army into the plains of India , cither by our north-western , frontier , or » y any other route .
I . Jioro arc two linos of march which the- caprice ° * . "peculators has fixed upon for tho advance of fhis torriblo force , tho bare approach of which js fo lay our empire in tho' dust , more muldonly J'han tho hordes of Tamerlane , and more irrotnovalil y than tho armies of tho Mogul . Tho i""Ht ; of those liefl through Georgia and Cireasaia , ° » i tho west side of the Caspian Sou , and so «<> uth wards through Pomia , ; the second is by *«« . Kant Hi < lo of tho Caspian through tho wild "' eppoH of Independent Tartary , and across tho oaHlorn oornor of A % hainBtan / Ihe first of those in not » h smooth , or well
kept , as the road from London to Richmond . Supposing Persia to be friendly , yet Russia does not lie next that country ; but between the two there is a large extent of land , inhabited by races who are of no tame disposition , but are warriors from . their youth , and are the hereditary foes of the Russian Czar . The history of the struggles of these tribes against the overbearing tyranny of their oppressors is written in the blood of the best and bravest of the soldiers of
^ Russia , whose armies have been shattered time after time against the impregnable barriers of the Caucasus . Again , it has been presumed that Persia is friendly to Eussia , and ill-disposed towards England ; but this is an assumption which it would be difficult to support with any good evidence . It rests upon the idea of the free agency of Persia ; whereas it is notorious that the Court of Persia is under the influence of the Affghans , and has within the last few months received , a dictatorial mandate from Herat , to which it has thought proper to pay submissive attention .
As to the second route , that by Tartary and Afghanistan , we have no hesitation in asserting that it is simply impossible for a Russian army to get through such a country in a state of any efficiency . The impregnable nature of the fastnesses , the severity of the climate , the want of provisions , the hostility of the wild tribes of the hills , combine to render such a course impracticable . By no conceivable combination of circumstances could the tribes which inhabit those districts be brought to unite in favouring an invader , for many of them are at deadly feud with one another , and all are equally hostile to the stranger . Would their interests be promoted by the success of the invader ? The Russians have
nought to offer that they would care to accept . Would their reb " gi : > us sympathies be roused ? The disciple of Mahomet cannot fight in the same ranks with a Russian serf . Would their revenge be gratified ? The slaughterers of Cabool and the Khyber Pass would be little pleased to witness the defeat of a Russian army on the banks of the Sutledge or the Chenaub . If the Affghans were to allow a free passage through their own territory , the Khyberees and the Affreedies , safe in their mountain fastnesses , would annihilate the invading army as it slowly wound its way through their terrible defiles . Our sad experience at Cabool ought to teach us
that it is no easy thing for an army , even . with , the advantage of a wide base for militaiy operations , to thread the country which lies at the North of our Indian possessions ; and how much more would the difficulty be increased with an army far removed from its resources , with no enthusiasm to urge it onward , and composed of a people who are notoriously incapable of resisting tho severities of a campaign . Doubtless thoro are dangers attending our Eastern possessions , and it behoves us to be careful of our interests in tho vast country committed to our charge , but we havo no occasion to dread the interference of Russia otherwise than as an
intriguer . Reports , so constantly rife in the north of India , about the coming of a [ Russian army , are for tho most part idle and frivolous , as tho traditional expectation of the coming of Alexander tho Great , or of the Gog and Magog . If the Russians should over come , our troops m India will fail to grasp tho bayonots of thoir forefathers , and forgetting tho victorios of Plassy will fl
or Sobraon , y in terror ; for never yet havo they encountered so horrible a force as they must then confront , — an army of ghosts marched across the starving desert and fatal rocks , and borne by a super natural power to fulfil some dread destiny . . For never else will the liusHianw enter India . Tho Continent is closed to them , and the only other route , tho soa , is tho path of tho Anglo baxon .
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THE GOVERNING CLASSES . No . XII . LORI ) lt . KN . LtY LENNOX . In a not splendid simile , Lord Brougham , in bin Paloy Preface , comparer society—moaning- tho Sfcato to a how with moro piglings than teats ; and antooodont to his oloverly-rominiscont Lordship , Ciilray has a caricafcuro , significant an to disappointed plaeohuntom , in which , thoro being a surplusage of piglingH , fiovoral are attempting nourishment from tho tail of tho fainting mofchor . Buch avo tho ooinoidimtiilly painful aud ludiwouu altitude andhopo of tho younger
sons of the British aristocracy . They are , indeed , as a class , so completely the jest of other classes , that they are a jest to themselves . Yet the joke is a serious one to the public , for their contemptible position , leading to loss of ' self-respect , leads to defective morale in the public life in which they are actors ; and it may readily be shown that if the Peerage Jiad no younger sons , it would be much more pure and patriotic .
The " detrimental is a stock character in the fashionable novel , and also in politics , and it is because the younger son has small chances as to heiresses , that he is turned into the government of this free people . The younger son has no taste for politics ; but what else is there for him to do but govern England ? Assuming that the British aristocracy includes the great landed commoners , there are many thousand younger sons in each generation to be provided for ; and the Church being limited , besides being dull , and
the Bar requiring cleverness , besides being unfashionable , and the army being poor , besides taking one out of London , what is a detrimental to do but take a precis writership , attache-ship , private secretaryship , good clerkship , or colonial appointment ? Notwithstanding our Venetian constitution , our nobles consider commerce vulgar ; they many merchant princesses , when they can get them , but disdain to become merchant princes ; and no University man ever thinks of pushing on to independence through a counting-house . Public life , —and Mogga , of the
Colonial , fully believes that he is a statesman when he ponders at ten a . m . over the Times , — -is all that is left to the young gentleman who is of a good family . The detrimental , when you meet him hanging about the club all day , will tell you that a feller must live , you know ; and it is only because he sees no other chance in life that he bores all the kith he hath to bore the minister . A young English gentleman of this class is as fine a fellow as there is in Europe , from twenty to twenty-five years of age ; unconscious of the constitutional delusions on which his " governor "
has thrived , he never thinks a meanness , and would scorn to measure his private career by considerations with respect to a taxed but complacent public . But he gets into debt , of course , and then the public must pay . Public offices must be filled , and he does not see why he should not have an easy 2001 . or 300 L per annum , which , with , "what tho disgusted and over-bled governor still consents to allow , will keep him till—till something turns tip . Certainly he has no particular qualifications for auything in general . He has read Paul do Kock , and
has French enough for a precis writer , —which ia periphraso for copying clerk , who knows the difference between grave and acute accent . Ho'd bo puzzled to tell you where the Mauritius is , and would bo longer than Di Gama in rounding tho Cape , if you put a globe before him . But , never mind , ho'll go to tho Colonial Office , with pleasure ; , and gets accustomed to Grey ' a or Newcastle ' s autography , with groat quiekuesH . Aa to education , has ho not forgotten as much Greek as Liddell remembers , and can ho not vory nearly translate his chioFs Latin quotations , in tho House ? His general "information" is extensive : ho
can toll you all about BmIs Mabillo and tho Argyll Itooms , and why Colonel Wool gavo up his « tud ; and ho is convinced , over his cigar , in tho evening , that Palanquo is a wonderful cook , and that tho li ' ronch pooplo aro not fit for liberty , sir , —not a bit of it : whilo ho is Buro that tho British Constitution ia stunning . Ho lian niado up his mind about tho Manchester school : low , sir , narrow-minded , think of nothing but money ; and ho has a hankering aftor pitching into Cobden , and no doubt would , but that ho thinks Bright might coinu up . On tho wholo , perhaps , ho in a very ridiculous animal .
Tho British aristocracy in , obviously , not clovor . Except Lord John Russell , no youngor hou has dwtinguished hiiuHol-f , for years , and tho present Iiouho of Derby offers tho only really prominent eldest sons , for several generations . In politics the Cannings , PooIb and Disraelis gut tho first places , and olsowhoro tho aristocracy in utterly uuilluHtriouH . Throughout tho Peninsular war only Pagot , of tho wholo peerage connexion , got a first position ; and , in India ' h military Borvioo , no lordly name in known , sinco WolloHley . In , diplomacy we may count Lord William liontinck aa tho only groat wan that . has turned up , from , tho poor-
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December 3 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 1167 I ^^^^ m ^^^^^^^^^^^ - ^^^^^^^^^— *~ ™ 7 ¦ — ¦ ¦ — . _^__^^_ . i _— ^^ ~~ ^^^^^ . ^^^ M ^^^ h ^^^^^ M ^^^*
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 3, 1853, page 1167, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2015/page/15/
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