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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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Palmer has his portrait painted in the accounts of his neighbours , and yet to this day ihere is a disposition to rally round him ; but he is a man who carries his prayer book in his hand , and has always done his best to " keep up appearances . " If he had avowed opinions of doubt as to the institutions of the Church , if he had been a confessed disciple of George Sand , or Milton , on the subject of marriage , if he had been a democrat in principles , he would probably have been persecuted by his
neighbours ; and instead of finding lawyer , coroner , and curate , to express indignation at the persecution , the society of Rugeley would hare declared that he merited all that he met , and that " they expected such a termination at last . " Rugeley is punished for this confusion . If it treats a " inaluni proliibitum " the breach of a conventional law , as " maluni inse , " or a violation of the law of nature , or indeed as something worse , it tacitly puts a licence on violations of natural law , on outrages against life and affection , so long as the offender pays forliis licence by keeping up appearances ; and advantage is taken of the licence . N " o sooner is Palmer detected , however , than those who stand apart from him join in the hunt , although they may be not unaccused by conscience . Do the other 148 poisoners of last year come forward in the sincerity of their hearts to confess ? Do post-masters who have
examined letters , magistrates who have listened to one side , relations who have taken out policies of insurance , declaim against casting the first stone at Palmer ? Most likely they are foremost in the hunt , for to seem on the side of the accuser blinds suspicion— as the pickpocket in the street cries , " Stop thief , " to prevent the crowd from tripping him up before the policeman .
There is immediately a cry that we must niter the law of insurance , to prevent " these evils , "—that we must not put a premium upon poisoning . But it is precisely by relying upon these artificial laws , these police guarantees , that Society $ as we call ourselves when wq want to abuse other people , has superseded natural safeguards by artificial safeguards . We owe to Mr . Fitzroy a bill for preventing husbands ftom beating their wives ; and people do say that the cases of wife-beating have multiplied since the "bill passed ; though others oxplain that a more stringent law only multiplies the cases of detection . But what must be the
state of that society in which the policeman is the guarantee for the safety of the bride ? We have instances this week of parents endeavouring to force their children into courses of vice and crime , and the police magistrate interferes . Palmer avows that he made hus wife commit forgery ; and had the couple persevered in that course , a detective would probably have interposed ; but what is the state of society in which the family education , and I he domes lie morals , are regulated by the constable ? If we had arrived at that pointwhiclr , thank Gor >! we have not— -we had better
all of us give up the ghost , and retreat to a better world ; for Devildom would have been established in this . But , if we want to encourage the progress of such civilisation , we had better continue multiplying our artificial safeguards , our * ' statutablc compacts , our police surveillance within the street door , as a substitute for the natural affection between man and"man , man and woman , parent and child . Perhaps if we had something less of this disguise of nature , these moral stays to improve the natural figure , instinctive affection would recover its force , and " the plant , man , " would grow more healthily , and in more safety .
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LQRD STRATFORD DE EEDCLIFFE . Whatever doubt may rest as to the interference of Lord Stratford i > e Redcliffe to prevent the succour of Kars , there is none whatever as to his Lordship ' s habitual temper . His influence at Constantinople is becoming daily a sorer offence to every one placed within , reach of it . He may be an excellent man ; he is , unquestionably , an acute and powerful diplomatist ; but sufficient illustrations have been given of his ungovernable ill-humoar , and
of his egotism , to render it probable that bis authority is not always exerted in a public spirit . The controversy relative to the sacrifice of General Williams must be brought to a head . If Lord Stratford be to blame , he must not be shielded . If the Turkish government neglected its duty , it is important that the truth should be known . Perhaps the war department in England is responsible . But -we believe we have correctly indicated the causes of the abandonment of Kars . They will not be
breathed in Parliament . In another campaign the policy of the Allies might be modified ; but hitherto France has not adopted or sanctioned one step towards the establishment of a strong military position in Asia Minor , France has no considerable trade in that direction ; England sends , upwards of a million sterling worth of her manufactures to Trebizond alone , and her trade penetrates thence into Central Asia . Who is accoimtable for the disaster which threatens to blockade this important road ?
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OUR SILENCE ON THE HOILE CASE . A Correspondent writes to express his surprise and regret at our having abstained from comment upon the case of the poor lad Hoile , sentenced by a bench of county magistrates to a month ' s imprisonment , for tlic heinous crime of slaughtering a pheasant in the execution of his natural and religious duty as a British scarecrow . We beg our correspondent to
believe that it was from no inattention to the case ( reported in another part of oui paper , under the heading of " Our Civilisation" ) , that we left it to make its awn wa ; to the feelings of our readers , but it ia ou habit and practico to decline to follow need lossly in the fcrnck of our duily contemporaries whoso more special office , and whose peculis opportunity it in , to seize upon each passin
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January 26 , 1856 . J THE LEADER , 85
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NEW PRISAGHKSfO OF THE WORD . Will Oxford continue to be the seminary for the gentlemen , the leaders , and the instructors
of the English people , or continuing to be the seminary for a sect , will it lapse into an ambiguity , and cease to he national ? The question is practical . At the present moment , strong in the belief that " The Church of England" is not to be overthrown , the " Dons" Oxford may laugh at their voting such a question ; but established forms of faith have been disestablished . At one time the Druidical form of faith was established in these islands ; and persons who lapsed were recalled by a
peculiar mode of destruction in wicker baskets , to the orthodox " persuasion . " The Romanist form appeared to be unalterable until Henry VIII . wished to divorce his wife ; the Independents had hopes of ascendancy until Charles II . brought back Popishhopes , to be overthrown finally by the Orange dynasty , which secured the Apostolical succession to the schismatical " Church of England ; " trifles less than the
deep questions of the present day having overthrown ecclesiastical regimes not less ancient than that now dominant in Oxford . During the Reformation , the " Church of England " was pronounced to be the Christian Church , according to the enlightened view of this country ; and there really is no other tenure for a national church . Oxford dissents from that national definition of the national church , and sticks by
some local test . An incident occurred lately which confirms our statement ; and the shame of Oxford is about to be consummated in a very painful way . The Reverend Benjamin Jowett put forth a new view of a doctrine , which has perplexed many ingenuous and earnest Christians—the doctrine ofcJtlie Atonement . It was not , he said , God who \ vas reconciled to man in the sacrifice . — - such an interpretation of the event would be barbarous , and would impute anger and passion to the Most High—passions which
man Mrnself contemns and repents . But it did reconcile man to God ^ —an interpretation consistent with religious feeling , with the conception of divine attributes , and with logical argument . But it is not consistent with the thirty-nine articles ; a fact obvious to one Golightly , who is the Del Carretto of Oxford . He at once challenged Mr . Jowett to lie down on the Procrustes bed with its thirty-nine degrees , and Jowett lay down . But this is not all ; he is about to . republish his work , explaining away the doctrine .
In vain . The interpretation cannot be explained away . Such passages remain in literature , though the author repudiates them . Coleridge erased from the " Ancient Mariner , " the . stanza beginning " A gust of wind stevt up behind ;" but no ono passage is more quoted than that quaint octave . Malthus talked , ia his first edition , of Nature having " no cover" at her bojird for the " unbidden guest , " who belongs to surplus population ; he omitted the startling Avortls in subsequent editions , but they survive in a thousand other volumes . And these are
only phrases—trifles . Mr . Jowett ' s interpretatiou of the Atonement is a real light upon the moral interpretation of Christian doctrine ; it reconciles the doctrine with history , with facts , with instinctive sense , with the conception ot divine mercy . It cannot be suppressed ; but Jowi' . tt may , and he consents to be so . As . some creatures survive only to crcjtto a structure , and then dio—as the coral insect builds
its lair island and expires , so the amiable Mr . Jowett completes a great doctrine of the English Church , by lighting up the lamp that hitherto remained unkiudled and durk ; and then , yielding to the stronger will of lower minds , he consents to be dragged down , smd to drill in the stream of forgotten agencies . But the doctrmo stands , and the lump will not be extinguished .
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The force of truth is greater even than the obstinacy of dogma . The people " of England" has a Church , divided though it is by doctrines which possess sections of it , and unconscious as it is of its real unity amid the conflicts of sect . The freedom which has been allowed to discussion , however , is gradually enabling the preponderating truths to crush the half truths ; and religion , by no force of rack or inquisition , is gradually suppressing schism and dissent . At the church
of St . Peter's , Saffron-hill , on Sunday week , the Rev . George Mansfield preached a sermon on Religion in Common Life—a fine out-spoken discourse which tells the world that religion is not imprisoned in dogma or chorch ; that one truth cannot be incompatible with another , one law of God destructive of another ; but that to live well , and do good , and to obey the laws of the creation , is to be religious . Who wrote that sermon- —Jokn Caird , Minister
of Errol . It was preached before Queen Victoria , " defender of the faith , " who commanded it to be printed . It had the imprimatur of her consort Prince Albert , whose own sermons have sometimes been such as Nature preaches , God's silent minister . The discourse , composed by a minister of the Scottish Church , was preached again by" a minister of the English Church . Verily , it seems to us that , Oxford notwithstanding , we are arriving at a real Christian era
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 26, 1856, page 85, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2125/page/13/
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