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with little more than labourers and paupers . These are incidents which prove that the metropolis is really a whole , its classes not mingled in one district but separated into quarters . The Government is mistaken , in leaving it so . It may be all very well in a time of quiet ; but how dangerous it would be at a period of distress and disorder , if St . George ' s in the East should remember how St . James ' s had distinctly refused to have anything to do with its poverty or its sufferings !
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THESIGER —DEFENDER OF THE FAITH . Ton the last time , we hope , the House of Commons has heard a speech from Sir ! Fbei > ebick Thesigkeb on Jewish disabilities . It would seem that the learned gentleman can only argue cleverly when he is paid for it . His oratory in Parliament leads generally into depths of dull mystification . On Monday evening last , he proposed to amend the Government Bill by adding to the oath , as framed by Lord Pa : lmebston , the worda ' on the true faith of a- Christian . ' That
phrase , he said , was the wedding-garment , signifying the right of a person to sit in the Imperial Parliament . Here was the old fallacy about Christianizing the Legislature , which is impossible . The Legislature cannot be , and never has been , Christianized . It is , and always has been , as easy for an atheist to take his seat in the House of Commons by repeating a formula to which he
attaches no meaning , as it is for a traveller in a Mohammedan country to enter a mosque by taking off his shoes . There are numbers of men , who , if requested to break saucers in China to prove their credibility , would do so as readily as Sir Frederick Thesigeb would swear upon the Christian Scripture . Upon the Christian cross we suppose he would not swear . Nor do we believe that after his
break-down on Monday evening , Mr . Samuel Wabben will finish up a speech against the Jews by groaning Ichabod to the Speaker , and then saying awfully to the House , ' Mene , mene , tekel ! ' For , what did the reporters record ? Not ' loud cheers , ' but ' laughter , ' ' renewed laughter . ' But we had in view Thkbigeb ' Defeusor Fidei , ' and a ludicrous thing he made of it . If he were intelligent we would explain to him that the House of Commons resembles a
building with a big door and a little door ; you put a chaplain at the little door to keep out the Jews , but through the big door , by which latitudinarians , professors of contempt , and the general gentry who thiuk English oaths not worth Chinese saucers , the Jew may make his way , provided he can gulp down nine insignificant syllables . If a bigoted barrister can imagine a case , let Sir Fbjsdebick suppose himself one of those philosophically calm individuals who do not care to stumble over your opinions , although they have sincere convictions of their own .
He comes to the gate of Parliament , where the chaplain asks him to say ' the true faith of a Christian . ' He replies , " The saying of those words will not make the oath more binding on me , but aa it makes it more satisfactory to you , I have no objection tp utter them . If your Christian oath ia made of no effect and brought into derision by this means , the fault is yours , not mine . ' ill
'W ' S * « -ma" * ¥ . *¦¦•» m Language of this kind might fairly be held by a Jew , unless he were very scrupulous ; but it is the very scrupulous man whom . Sir Fbedebiok Thesigkh . would exclude . But Lord Djhbbx ' s Attorney-General misunderstands logic as much as he misunderstands history , and it perhaps never occurred to him that the mass of persons in the British Empire are not Christians at all .
Mr . J . B , Stanhope , who seconded the amendment of Defensor Fidei , argued quite as sensibly as Defensor—that is to say , with incredible obliquity . He objected tp the omission of the words ' on the true faith of a Christian , ' upon three grounds . " His first ob jection was that the Jews had no right or claim to seats in the legislature ; his second , that they ought to be excluded on political reasons , using the term in its widest sense ; and his third , that it was important to
maintain the Christian character of Parliament . " We have three reasons quite as good why Mr . J . B . Stanhope should be turned out of the House of Commons . The first is that he has no right or claim to be there ; the second that he ought to be excluded for political reasons , using the term in its widest sense ; and the third that it is important to maintain the political respectability of Parliament . Is Mr . SrjLNHOPE satisfied , and will he resign his seat ?
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CLOSE OF THE SESSION AT BRUSSELS . Kino Leopold has not disappointed the Liberal party in Belgium . Occupying as he did a most difficult position , with a formidable priesthood backed up by a majority of the population pressing upon him and his Cabinet , lie yet felt that to push , the Charity Bill to its ultimate stage would be to open an endless series of conflicts , the most bitter through which the kingdom could pass , between the Liberal and reactionist parties . The Church and its illiterate militia in the provinces were for the Bill ; the towns with their intelligent masses were against it ; the KHng had avowed himself neutral , but the Chambers were giving way to all kinds of untoward influence , and the Government had been swept away with the stream . Belgium stood , so to speak , at the door of a dangerous crisis when the Liberal party , wLich everywhere else on the continent distrusts monarchy and would destroy its prerogatives , appealed to the King for a safe-conduct ; out of these religious and political perplexities . Impressed by wise convictions , the King has closed the legislative
session , and the obnoxious measure is allowed to sink into the limbo of delayed possibilities . We have yet to learn what will be the vengeance of the violent Catholic party , which at Brussels has been by no means inspired by the preachings of any La . oobd aiue ; its representatives in that capital are chiefly of alow intellectual class , and although we are sincerely disposed to concede to every party , civil or sacerdotal , a perfect right to create if it can a majority in its own favour , and to make use of that majority in the interest of its own principles , we cannot bat rejoice that Leopold has interof the
fered to check the perilous successes hierarchy . The Church has been spared a scandal if the nation has been spared a crisis ; and we do not for a moment doubt which party has most reason to be grateful . When an institution , already obsolete in spirit , attempts recouquests in an age of mental progress , its victories are its dangers , and for every step the nation is led backwards it will revenge itself the more mercilessly hereafter . The closing- of -the Belgian session , and adjournment of the Charity Bill , have rescued the Church as well aa its opponents from a situation of difficulty and alarm .
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A Dat ' s MUiunui Hunting . —Here , in a pool , wo find three curious flah , one a ribbon-flub , the other two unknown to mo 5 and on mining the atone , behold , a queer eel-ilko flah , with a miniature greyhound ' s head ; it ia the pipo-ffish , 8 yngnathua anguineua . » Pop him in ; also this bit of rod wood , on which I observe some Polynoa clustering . What is this ? a tiny Daisy on n frond of weed ? the boauty I No , now it is in the bottlo , It turns out to 1 ) 0 an JSolla , Eotta alba , lovoly among the loveliest . Stay I horo nro two cowries , and alive ! The aholia every one has aeon , but few of us have aeon tho
animals ; so the capture is very welcome Tvr « . t » 1 T aching with all this stooping and grop £ g , & } £ & must get home now , content with my day's wort a farewell glance in at that pool , and / have do ^ e i ± on my face and dangling my feet in water , I peer swu timzingly for some minutes , and bear off a lovelv , «! Action , as a reward . Now I will turn home ^ S Another day , in idler mood , we ramble along the ri « m » 4 receipt of windfalls . A bottle is alwaysYeady " nth , pocket , and something is certain to turn up The sto and root of that oar-weed , for example , is worth an in vestigating glance , certain as it is of being a , colony of life . The tiny annelids , white , green , and red , irri&ek in and out among the sheltering shadows of these rootsthe sponges and polyzoa . cluster on them ; and see ' what pink-and-white feathery creature is this clasDiW
the weed with a circle of pale pink roots ? By heavens ! it is a Comatula ' the romance of the sea ; ' and now that it feels the grateful sea-water again , how it expands its feathers , and reveals itself as an animal fern , marvellous to look upon . Sudden joy leaps in our heart at the sight of this creature , hitherto known only from hazy descriptions and inadequate engravings . There is interest in reading about Crinoidea , fossil and recent , and in learning that the Comatula is one of these , having kindred with star-fishes ; but how that interest is intensified by direct inspection of the living animal ! I could not satiate myself with looking at my prize . All the -way home the bottle was constantly being raised to my loving regard , that I might feast myself upon the waving grace of those pink and white feathers ; and I thought of the poetical passage in which Edward Forbe 3
expresses his emotions about these Crinoidea which ' raise up a vision of an early world , a world the potentates of which were not men , but animals—of seas on whose tranquil surfaces myriads of convoluted Nautili sported , and in whose depths millions of Lily-stars waved wilfully on their slender stems . Now , , the Lily-stars and Nautili are almost gone ; a few lovely stragglers of those once abounding tribes remain to evidence the wondrous forms and structures of their comrades . Other beings , not less wonderful , and scarcely less graceful , have replaced them ; while the seas in which they flourished have become lands whereon man in his columned cathedrals and mazy palaces emulates the beauty and symmetry of their fluted stems and chambered cells . ' — Blackwood ' s Magazine .
Despotic Socialism . —For the poor , and the advocates of the poor , if they desire a despotism , surely signs have been given in history as glaring as a sign in heavp . n . There is the long cry of misery which strikes on the historian ' s ear from Diocletian to the fall of Constantinople . There is the population of Spain , famished and decimated , as well as degraded , by Charles V . and his successors . There are the faille ami corvee , the grasseating serfs and the dragonnades of Bourbon France . There are the bloody vagrancy laws of the Tudors . As to game preserving , ' it was under a very civilized despotism and in face of a strong clergy , that the Prince de Charolais used to divert himself with shooting , not
pheasants , but workmen on the roofs of houses , whose death-throes , as they fell , beguiled the sameness of a princely life . His pardon was easily obtained , I He most Christian king , who had made incest the fashion , could not be hard on murder . Had tho Prince do Cnarolais , however , been an ordinary person of quality , and not of the blood royal , he would probably havo been exiled to his country scat . Had he been a peasant suspected of worshipping God in a way not patronised by Louis XV . and the Prince de Charolais , he would nave been sent to die bv slow torture in the galleys ; ana u ho had resisted , " he would have been broken on tUe wheel . Sociology ( if that is to bo its classical name ; must bo a science of experience : and what experience shows that tho rich and noblo will act more conscientiously towards their dependents when they have in ad that amiU
over their consciences to a czar ; or a czar his courtiers will think more of those who are farthest from , than of those who aro neanwt to , Ins throne r *» French freeholds , bo they good things or bad , « ere we gift of a republic and not of an emperor . W « that eomo despots have learned tho tnck of W >»» S W the passions of the masses against intellect , at t 0 « ni tirn / thut they appeal to wealth against the pass » a > 0 the masses . But what has boon done for ^ "JJ ; except giving thorn back , in ostentation ^ f **^ little of the money which is ultimately drawn from men in unobtrusive taxation , and swooping oif a goodI ma 3 of thorn to Cayenne ? Tho population 0 t *» " « . seems , has hitherto diminished under the ' tran « of the Emp ire ; though diplomatic Journalism roUonw ) hopes fur a conation of this sad oiloct from J » J , JL of its beneficent cause On tho otojr " ^ % over may bo tho shortcomings of Lngll « l » » ° «' JKM .
, n ay say without boaating , and wo hold 1 . " ^ = cynioiam to deny , that groat and "d fj '" ££ „ „ , } made by tho wppor classes to improve the condlU * the education of tho poor ; and tho source 0 a efforts ifl tho sense of individual ^ X-lS X ^ 1 Hlncoro religion and a froo proas . I ™ Uvld" £ fl Jj fl , lnllty Is what a despotism U desired to aupo flodei ^ coro religion is what « doapotiam novor J "; .. ! * novflf press is whnt a doapotism novor has endured ant * oan endure . —Fraacra Magazine ,
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592 THE Ii E APE R . [ No . 378 , Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 20, 1857, page 592, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2198/page/16/
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