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of superbly-dressed -women the utmost that could hare / been done to set off her charms by the aid of dress P Certainly jFasHon has not done this : and if-we look closer into its claims to be respected , we shall find , that it is open to heavy charges of evil doing , both by commission and omission . Fashion is a't yrant under whose oppression a generation of English , girls are doomed to slavery . There is no doubt about the matter . Moralists
have painted the picture of the feeble , the deathstricken sempstress toiling gravewards toprodu . ee the dress which is to give perfection to the living graces of her richer fellow mortal ; the picture has been hung beneath a picture of the radiant beauty adorned % the . . death-labour of an unknown sister the truth has been recognised , w-ept over—and forgotten . Fashion rules , and needlewomen die still , and , It maybe , will go on dying ; for the remedy is not easy of application , even if it is ready . Fashion ' s royalty is too old to be overthrown by plebeian abuse , let it come even from lips sach as those of the Bishop of Oxford ; and heretofore too much
reliance has been placed on this weapon . "It is for the flower-show , " says my Lord Bishop , in one of his addresses ; "it is for the gay dancing of the painted butterfly in the summer sun ; it is for such things as these that onrr sisters and our daughters are to be offered up at the shrine of the modern Moloch in the valley of abomination . " The poor struggling , suffering sempstress gains little by such advocacy as this . We have just admitted the reasonableness of 'beautiful dresses for women ; the
Question then is not whether our women shall continue to be " painted , butterflies , " but -whether there is any real necessity for the misery of the sempstress , —for her overtask of sixteen , eighteen , or twenty hours : for her under-pay , upon which she cannot live respectably ; for the thousand ills , in short , to ¦ which the present system condemns her . The evils are admitted , the remed y we fancy is ready , and the cure may "be affected without the dethronement of Fashion—much as that is to be desired , on other
accounts . Ladies and , then : admirers now want the last fashion , regardless of its fitness , regardless of every consideration , indeed , save that it is " the . last fashion . " The results are to an extreme degree unsatisfactory . Individual requirements are wholly , or almost wholly , overlooked ; the little woman is dressed after the model of a large woman ; the short woman is furnished with skirts as wide as those worn by the tallest . What is wanted to correct this bad taste is an artist in dress , who would adapt it to the forno , complexion , and character of the individual . Were there artists in dress , every lady , upon occasions such as the State Ball of Monday evening 1 , would have her dress specially
designed ; for each woman has some defect to be mitigated , some beauty to be heightened by her costume—by the setting of the living picture . As long as women simply consult the oracles of Fashion , their dresses will simply be slop-clothing , produced with all the drawbacks of that kind of manufacture — readiness at the expense of careful preparation , with poverty and fatigue out of all reason to the producer . One of the crudest hardships of the poor needlewoman is that , upon occasions of great demand , the orders ior her work are not given until the last moment at which it is physically possible to cxeoute them , the consequences being a wear and tear of mind and body ttoo great to be long withstood . Tor this evil a ( partial remedy seems to be at hand in the development of the sewing machine ; but something more can be dome still .
But it is by raising the character of women ' s dress into a branch of . art that the condition of the dressmaker would be improved . Time would be required for the elaboration of the artists designs ; thus her health would be benefited ; and her work would be of a kind to command a higher payment , soensuringhor a vast accession of comforts , beneficial to her , "both morally and physically . And it is not alone upon the workwoman that the art-spirit applied to dress vould tell ; new refinements would grow < mt of it among the -wearers of artisticallyproduced drcssos ; elevation of thought , new
beauties of form , and even of countenance , would bo developed , by their mee . A State Bnll so dressed might , as a picture , -present to the cyo beauty not greater than that upon vhioh so many eyes gazed on Monday evening , for the -silks , the jewels , tho complexions would remain the same ; but the individual beauty would be of a oomplctor kind—would include much beyond itself ; and the details of the picture would give tangible proof of tho axiom that art is labouT _ divinely inspired . The first State Bull bo
dressed will be a memorial festival to the emancipated slaves of the needle ; it will celebrate another triumph—the overthrow of the idol tyrant Tashion , and its sacrifices .
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AN AilSONIC ODE . Sir Archibau } Alison is perhaps the only man in this country who can carry poetical fictions into political economy . Were the Western Bank of Scotland as poetical as that 'founded by Oberon , the wordy Baronet could not more apologetically discourse of the " wild time" of ' Free . . 'Trade , or " babble of green" ledgers with greater Cameronian grace . The Western Bank , he says , conducted its business in . a confidence " founded on the belief so strongly inculcated by statements made by the most respectable members of Parliament , and in . the Times and other popular journals , that no limits could be assigned to the progress and prosperity of British commerce under the system , of free trade , and that all danger of a , collapse was prevented by the restrictions imposed by statute upon our currency , so that every real transaction could stand upon its own basis . " Since the poet Fitzgerald denounced Napoleon by asking , " Who fills -the butchers' shops -with large blue flies , Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise ;" since Mr . Macawber referred to " tightness in the ruoney market" as causing his own difficulty in raising a loan of five shillings , we know of nothing equal to this in the whole course of fiction . We no longer require to " Call up him " -who left half told The story of Cambuscati bold , "
for here is one who " can sit upon the ground and tell strange stories of the deaths of banks . " Banks , to Sheriff Alison , are like kings ; portents wide , the delusion of a whole nation , the mistakes of a mighty people , herald then- fall and contribute to their demise . But if the preliminary promises of the Freetraders led shrewd Scotch bankers into evil ways , were there no other victims ? Has not Commissioner Phillips ruthlessly sent back to gaol insolvent gentlemen avIlo could have pleaded with force that , misled by Mercator and the bullionists , they had imagined " danger of a collapse was prevented by
the restrictions imposed by statute upon our currency . " We imagine that even the good-humoured Commissioner Murpliy would consider that such a poser as this in the mouth of an insolvent petitioner were no joke . It is equally bold and cunning . It would suggest a plea for Falstaff and Poins ( mute , inglorious Gladstones , Cornewall Lewises who could not quote Latin ) , that by sacking the king's exchequer they were only " attempting to redress the one-sided manner in which the balances had been arranged by the Chancellor of the "Exchequer . " Why is not Sir Archibald Alison made
Attorney-General for thieves ? He would soon teach the world a new nomenclature . Fancy him before the Recorder ( Hamlet defied his friends to play on recorders , but what were Hoscncrantz and Guildenstern—mere barristers of six years' standing- —to a Scotch sheriff ?) playing on the fine humanities of the judge and jury . Surveying mankind from China to Peru , he would find in foreign wars and gold discoveries causes which tended to tighten the money market , such tightening in a chain of causation of fine links leading to the bankruptcy for five millions of a great discount-house , the dismissal of John Jones , of Peckham , from his comfortable post , the refusal of John Jones to allow Sally Brown " a follower" the despair of such
fol-, lower , and his refusal to lend Bill Sykcs live shillings , " which refusal ulone caused Bill Sykes , my untortunatc client , a victim of false finanoial theories , to pick the pooket of the prosecutor , who , owing to a providential coincidence , happened to be himself a benighted bullionisl ,, and at that momont reading Mercator'B new book . " Suoh an appeal would have an oleotne oneof ; on r jury : circumstantial evidence would break down before providential causation . In fact , we now discover that Free Trade and a gold currency are devices of Satan and Lord Overstonc , and that Providence , on tho whole , was on the buIc of Micawbor during the late crisis .
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RUSSIA AND OUR NORTH-WEST FEONTIER . Wiien , at the close of the year 1856 , wftr was declared against Persia , we pointed out that our true policy in relation to Central Asia lay , not in the direction of an aggressive expedition to the Persian Gulf , but in rende-ring the north-west frontier of our own Indian empire " permanently unassailable . " Tiic question , we maintained , should , on our part , lo viewed defensively , not aggressively . We were interested in Herat , and in Persia herself , no further than they could be made directly or indirectly dangerous to the tranquillity of British India , Other views , ( however , prevailed . A British licet , carrying an Anglo-Indian army , entered the Gull ' , occupied JBushire , and eventually took Mohammcra . The declared objects of the expedition were the evacuation on the part of the Persians oi ' tho Herat territory ; the humiliation , but not injury , of _ Persia herself ; the dismissal of an obnoxious prime minister ; and the destruction of ltusshm influence at the Court of Teheran . How have these objects been attained ? The cost of the expedition amounted to nearly two millions sterling . Its drain upon our troops in India endangered , ' -the sequel , tho existence of British rule in HindosUm . And surely this xisk and this outlay nhovilil not have boon incurred for nothing . "Yet what arc the facts of tho case ? Having gone to war for specified objects—huving at 'Constantinople refused to a Persian ambassador terms protending' to be newly all wo required—huving then , under the auspices of Louis Napoleon , accepted at Paris , from the
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NATIONAL Oil LOCAL CHAIUTY . Mn Ayhton ' s bill tending to equalize poor-rates in the Metropolis has been lost , but tho question docs not full to thfi ground ; for it involves tit onoc a principle , and ! i practical concern coming homo to men ' s business . Is chanty a local or a genera l
obligation ? Are we to refuse pit y because the pitiable do not ' " belong to our parish ? " Is the " good Samaritan to refuse a second rate of " twopence" for the relief of Jews ? Is the " quality of mercy" "to be strained so as to exclude our neighbours across the Union boundary ? There is then , the practical evil that the localization of re lief makes tile very poor parish support its own destituter-in other words , makes the very poor support the very poor . St . George's-in-the JKast is an unfashionable neighbourhood full of cheap houses ; they have the poor always wifch them . St , iv £ irkt * AtA c T * I ai »/ v «< M « er * ii « t »* i ic . o \ Y * i /* n YMiTn&l * ^ irltA .. ^
MVUl ^ V » J JU . UJ 1 U T VL ~ ) Jl | UUI Vi ^ X" "C * iiWU | JtVVJ . OXL ^ »\ Y 1 V £ \ £ builders erect houses for rich people , and the poor are almost entirely excluded . The poor parish supports itself , while the rich parish does the same ; and considering that one class inhabits the Westend parish and another class inhabits the parish in the East , thte fiscal arrangement is practically the same as if the gentry of a county declined to support any charitable subscriptions on the ground that none of their own class required charity . St . George ' s , Hanover-square , says " we have little or no poor , we will pay little or no rates . " The pressure of the times accumulates liabilities on the poor
and suburban parishes , while the West-end pavishos ox the central City parishes , full of the countinghouses of the merchant princes , find their burden lightened every year . For instance , in Fulham , during the last five years , there has been an increase in the number of removable poor from 252 to 4367 , and the cost has extended from 354 / . to 3277 / . while in the parish of St . George ' s , Hanover-squave , the amount expended for the poor remains the same as in . 1880 , notwithstanding the enormously increased value of property there . In addition , the removing and removability of the poor is bad policy in every way . It deters that free circulation of working men m search of employment where most plentiful , and makes the management of the
poor additionally expensive . There is a great deal to be said on the other side . If you do not give local authorities an interest in cheap management of the poor-houses , you cau have no economy . Central head and local hands have always failed in money matters in this country . This argument is so strong , that -with many minds it outweighs all that can . be said on the other side . It is said that" if you have anything like one metropolitan rate the same principle points to one national rate , and then you have the House of
Commons voting , at midnight , and with the apathy succeeding some fierce personal conflict , millions to be muddled away by local guardians . The only check on the local bodies would be the tardy audit of a central bureau , while now county papers and rural Humes and village Hampdens denounce fraud and mismanagement with voices loud enough to keep the ratepayers awake . If some plan could be devised that would secure this local vigilance without unduly crushing down poor localities , we might secure a fair workable system .
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470 THE LEADER . [ 3 STo . 425 , May 15 , 1858 .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 15, 1858, page 470, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2242/page/14/
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