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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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— * ^ ^ i — —SjBWaMaWawMMSWISi ^ WMi ^ SS ^*^* ' ^*^*^****** formerly ? Do they represent the yeomanry of our rural districts , or are they not the overflow of our artisans and town populations , morally and physically inferior to the former race ? We much fear that the twenty thousand who perished last winter through criminal neglect , or through official impotence , can never be replaced . They constituted our military backbone , and emigration , the high rate of agricultural wages , and other circumstances , have led to a result which the best authorities admit and deplore—namely , that the qualities of the British army are deteriorating . Not in courage , not in devotion , not in patriotism or soldierly spirit , but in that solidity , weight , and steadiness , which , marked the original British yeoman . Among consequent evils , one is likely soon to be felt . ~ We shall be astonished if the second army exhibit powers of physical endurance equal to those of the first . But those powers , it is to be feared , will be tested to the utmost , by the rigour 3 of the coming winter . We have long heard of the note of preparation ; is the summons obeyed in the arsenals at home , or at the seat of war ? If the public reports , which are in perfect harmony with private information which we continually receive , do not materially deceive us , the prospects of the army before Sebastopol are gloomy indeed . The men pass through their daily routine of toil and peril with noble perseverance ; the officers suffer their sickening fatigues with , resignation , though not without complaint ; but feelings of despondency , if not cfJ resentment , are gathering ] in the camp . Fifty or sixty soldiers are killed every night in the trenches ; the hours of rest are abridged ; the seasonjvill speedily be clouded by auguries of the advancing winter , and still , whether with or without a victory at the Redan and Malakhoff , there will be long months to pass in the weary graveyards of the camp . Scarcely a hut has been erected , except as a hospital or a store ; the thousands which were built aud paid for in England are gone , no one knows whither ; the new thousands in preparation cannot reach the heights of Sebastopol before Christmas , and the snows , the freezing rains , the bitter and cutting winds- of this second winter , will find twothirds of our noble army crouching , shivering , benumbed , in wretched hovels and tents . Already the railway needs reparation . A few wet days would derange it , almost irremediably . Only now we hear of attempts to renew the rails , or to repair the foundations . Yet upon this means of transit the entire army depends for ammunition , for guns , for stores , for food , fuel , and winter clothing , if , indeed , winter clothing be provided at Balaklava . If the locomotive and the horses can drag up sufficient supplies , the exhausted , men , after their vigils in the trenches , their vigils in the tents , their toils by day , and toils by night , will have to drag or carry them , each to his own quarters , over rough and broken ground , for there is scarcely a practicable pathway in the camp . Here we are , * then , this Becond autumn , counting the omens of another desolate winter . We had our agony and passion last spring . We broke into a storm of patriotic anger ; we overthrew a government ; we drew to light the secrets of misrule ; we confessed our sins , and exposed our shame ; yet the recurrence of the dangerous period threatens to bring a recurrence of calamities , only less appalling , produced by faf more culpable nejglect . lor , if the inclement season overtakes our army , unhoused and unprovided , with' at ' broken road from . Balaklava to the ' camp , and land-transport service
disgrace" fully organised — and if disease and cold attack the troops with a virulence more deadly than the fire of Sebastopol—whose will be the infamy ? There must be infamy somewhere , for it would be infamous , in spite of warning and experience , with unlimited means and unlimited power , to sacrifice another gallant British army , glorified as much by its manl y patience under suffering as by its achievements in the field . What will any amount of military success be worth if every winter is to accumulate materials for a new Sebastopol Committee ? And what will have been the value of evidence or example , if national crimes are to be committed and the authors to go unpunished ? There is despondency in the camps of the Crimea , and it is the fruit of gloomy anticipations . But the nation will share the guilt of its rulers , and deserve the resentment of its brave and faithful servants , if it licenses a government of incapables to squander millions of money , and thousands of lives , only with the result of superadding one disgrace and one disaster to another . The war , as it is at present conducted , seems to be planned upon the principle of doing as little injury to , the enemy as possible , at the greatest possible cost to ourselves . Our naval parade in the Baltic for 1855 is represented iu our naval estimates by a cost of nearly eleven millions sterling ; to compensate for which we have swept with fire the islets of Sweaborg , and ^ blockaded the Russian ports . Our system of blockade , however , is so contrived as to bo an inconvenience , rather than an injury , to Russia . In all previous contests , Great Britain contended for , and enforced , the most rigorous principles of maritime law . But , ~ in deference to the French Government ; we have waived the right of seizing Russian goods in neutral bottoms , so that an extensive Russian trade is carried ou in defiance of our cruizers , while large sums of gold find their way from Ijondon to Sfc . Petersburg , in exchange for the hemp , flax , tallow , and linseed which reach us through the neutral ports . Thus we blockade the Russian shipping ; but we do not cut up the Russian commerce . Wo deprive our own merchants of the advantage of the regular trade with the Baltic , while we benefit the shippers and traders of Prussia . Upon these loose principles the war can never be so pursued as to coerce the enemy . How can we assail or coerce a power whose maritime fortresses wo dare not batter ; whose commerce , enabling her to support the war , wo daro not destrov ; whose territories we declare to bo unassailable ; whoso " honour and dignity" are to remain intact ? Army after army sinks down in the vast abysmal grave before Sebastopol ; we neglect our soldiers , cripple our fleets b y short supplies of arms , and yet , with fastidious exactitude , consult the pretensions of every neutral , and disclaim alike the right of revolution aud the right of soarch , the one agency , perhaps , as formidable as the other . And now that returning winter gives peace to Russia in the Baltic , " Generals November and December" aro likely to do her work in the Crimea . We seriously believe that , unless the action of our public departments bo quickened , and that speedily , another disastrous crisis will arrive before Sebastopol . If there arc no men of genius in the nationthat is , men of capacity and resolufcion-r-at least let not official-sloth betray to death , a second British army . . .
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g ^ \ THE LEADER . [ No . 284 , Satprpay ,
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THE PROMOTION OF LABOUR , T , he working-class ought to bo prepared to watch their interests with prudence , and with ceaseless vigilance j for a time is coming in
which their strength muat be better appro ciated . We have foreseen this time , ana ever since our journal has existed we have never ceased to prepare for it . Already we discern evidences of its approach , aud we are the more hopeful , since every advantage can . be reaped without violence , without contesjb , without bitterness of feeling between man and man . We know well enough that , as in the case of all opportunities , there will be innumerable suggestions , and that amongst competitors will be many suggesting mischievous courses , in order to snatch advantages which can be most usefully gained by taking them patiently as they accrue . We believe , however , that the best of all correctives to any mistakes of that kiud will be found in the influences of the time . It is one of the consequences attendant upon war , that the greater antagonism supersedes the smaller , and brings together as friends those who have been foea . As a danger out of doors will unite a family , so a war with a foreign country should bring members of the nation together , and in the common nationality merge distinctions of class . Decided steps have been taken in that direction , and we foresee yet greater progress . In the army itself the value of the workingclass has been felt . l a bour has been organised to act with chivalry , and in such bodies as the Land Transport Corps and the Army Works Corps we see industry take its place , corporately , amidst the powers of the country . It is an instructive fact that the members of those bodies are paid more advantageously than the common soldier ; and why ? Because , any intelligent workman will answer us , the member of the industrial regiment has more of an . art than the common soldier , and can produce more—evenproduce more in the shape of deadly machinery for destroying the foe . ^ But the very comparison has assisted to elevate th& pay of the common soldier . In the raeanwlule , a sensibly larger promotion has been opened from the ranks to commissions , anct many a gentleman with an . epaulette on , Kia shoulder has reached his position through the working-classes ^ of the army . The advantages , however , which we foresee for the working-classes are coming in yet broader shapes than these . Following on the emigration , the enlistment has told upon the numbers of those who are available for doi ^ estic labour , and we see that farmers are put to it for the means of gathering in their crops . The difficulty has been felt in Austria , where Avholo corps of the army have been disbanded for the purposes of the harvest ; and in our own country the soldiers of regiments have been permitted to assist-Still these devices can effect only a partial counteraction . Austria suffers , by declining from her military strength ; and home-stationed regiments cannot supply tho numbers that havo been carried abroad , to say nothing of tho regiments that must subsequently go * Messrs . D » a . y and Co . show where tho farmers must find their remedy . With respect to the aenroitj of harvest labourers , " they say , in a letter to tho Globe , " wo cannot refrain from calling your attention to the fact , that by the aid of the reaping machine , harvest work may be , and is , done at tho rate of 5 b . per aero ; whereas in many caaea , as you vory correctly atate , as much a « 30 s . per aero i « boing paid . Moreover , tho introduction of tjio machine oes not in any way supersede the native labour of tho farm , but merely shuts out the vagrant labour , tho necessity for which ' every farmer' pronounces to be curso . The price namod Includes gathering and binding ? and the rate of wages paid to t |» o labpurow is 8 s . Gd . per day for men , and Is . < Jd . ft > r boya . " In tho fivat plao ^ then , wo Ijoro boo that agricultural labour js rising iu value ; awa w © observe thnt in . Irelan ^ -p-ay , in mendicant Ircland-T-reapers aro i getting 8 b . or ovou , 00 . J ~
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 1, 1855, page 836, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2104/page/8/
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