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the attention of materialists as it affords another species of argument against the doctrines of the spiritualists. For my own part, I think it both useful and entertaining, and calculated to add another very material link to the knowledge of mankind; but I must repeat again my regret that it should be so abused by its most zealous supporters. R. H.

The following bit of truth is taken from the Weekly Times
Sunday Newspaper.

KINGS AND LITTLE GIRLS.

"GREAT men are but children of a larger growth," is an old and received axiom: kings are but men; therefore, kings are but overgrown boys though in the instance to which we are about to allude, they rather evince with physical maturity and even with decay, the dispositions of little girls. We meditate no high treason, when we openly assert that our gracious Sovereign George the Fourth is, in some respects as much a little girl, as was ever his illustrious mother. Just, dignified and gracious though he be, he delights in the fine and the mutable. No one doubts the correctness of his taste while it lasts; it is its fickleness which we lament, and which keeps Mr. Wyatville and all the army tailors upon the continual alert, and the nation-the rich, the overtrapped nation-in surmise and doubt. Bishop Earle, philosophizing on the pastime of an infant, says, "We laugh at his foolish sport, but his games are our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business." There cannot be a truer illustration of this, than afforded by the actions of a King. The boy trundles a hoop where he will; the King makes equally free with the wedding-rings of his court; the boy builds houses of cards and puffs them down again; the King erects lath and plaster pavilions, paints and gilds them over, and leaves them to the housemaids and moths; the boy gambles with his half-crown; the King almost to the extent of a whole one; the boy plays at battledore and shuttlecock; so does the King, with this difference; he throws up the contentment of a people, and strikes it up and up with the battledore of taxation. The boy tyrannizes over two or three individuals; the King over millions; the boy is softened and pleased with sugarcandy; the King with a parliamentary grant; the boy plays with wooden soldiers; the King has his grand review-days. The boy, if left unheeded, surfeits himself with home-made wine, apples and peaches; the King is carried off to bed overcome by champaigne-punch, turtle, sturgeon and venison.

We might go on with the similitude, but let us not forget sovereigns and little girls. Who has not seen a young miss with her first doll? Who has not seen it dressed and undressed, and readorned ten times in as many hours, some new improvement always striking the fancy of the juvenille owner.-Now it has a feather clapped in its hair, now a ribband, now it takes a cap; in the morning, muslin; lace in the afternoon; at night, satin. Thus, the little waxen image is doomed to be continually handled, and tumbled over until a new toy shall cause it to be, for ever, discarded. So with Kings and their armies: and so especially with GEORGE THE FOURTH and all the soldiers who have sworn to march over sands or through swamps, for his honour and glory, at (let us be liberal) thirteen-pence per diem. How many times have the horse guards been transformed within the last ten years? ("Go count the leaves in yonder forest.") All the army has been so many little dolls for the recreation of MAJESTY; they have been stripped and dressed, re-buttoned, and their tails cut short, that by this time they deserve to be called the Royal Fancy Cameleons. However, another change is to take place. The following paragraph from a cotemporary, proves that the King's Dolls are to undergo one more mutation.

"The costume of the British Army is to be altered in December next:-instead of jackets, long coats with single breasts are to be worn."-Country Paper.

To be sure, considering the present tranquil and flourishing state of the country, at a period when our "operatives" are celebrating the prosperity and abundance of the time with song and dance-at such a period when the general good feeling admits of no enquiry, when there is nothing to improve in affairs, and the legislature may keep holiday, it is but necessary that royal cogitations should digest the cut of red serge and the amplitude of military skirts. The soldiers certainly do approximate to the dignity of dolls; but what of that, they are the play things of a monarch-a monarch of taste; and why should the Duke of Wellington or the Marquis of Anglesea care about filling the place of a wooden doll, when one of the greatest kings is nothing more than a little girl. We believe the suits of the Guard's trumpeters cost each seventy-two pounds: should their habiliments be newly-fashioned, we would humbly submit that a figure of a five shillings per week cotton-spinner be worked in the back or on the lappets: it would speak most eloquently to the feelings of all

men.

LINGERING SPITE OF RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.

THE persecution which I have received has come to me as a matter of trade. I have not been annoyed with or without it, as far as it has been applied to myself; but I have been much annoyed by the detention of Perry, Clarke, Campion and Hassell in " Newgate, after my liberation, and after the cessation of further arrests upon the same ground. Hassell's time having expired, the three former individuals have been removed to the Giltspur Street Compter. This removal has been long talked of, and was carried into effect on the morning of the 25th instant. Its strict legality is questionable, and much formality took place before it was done. The City Magistrates suggested to Mr. Peel, that as their case was somewhat hard and extraordinary, a liberation would be preferable to a removal. Consultations took place upon the subject. I felt confident of the liberation on such an occasion combined with the magisterial recommendation. The City Aldermen must not be in high repute at the Home Department; for it is rare indeed that the recommendation of a knot of country Magistrates is uncomplied with. While I was in Dorchester Gaol, I have heard the admission, that very improper recommendations have been complied with. But in this case, on Monday last, Mr. Peel sent back word to Newgate, that he saw nothing in the cases of Perry, Clarke and Campion to justify his recommending their liberation to the King! Nothing! in a three years imprisonment for selling that which I will sell on any day to Mr. Peel or his agent! Nothing! in the vindictive sentence of Newman Knowlys, the Recorder! Nothing! in confining those men while the instigator to the acts for which they are confined is not molested for similar acts! Nothing, after the liberation of William Haley, a bad character who had got among them, at the recommendation of such a character as the late Joseph Butterworth! If Perry, Clarke and Campion are criminals in the eyes of Mr. Peel, then Mr. Peel must be a criminal in the eyes of the country, for suffering similarly criminal acts to be performed unmolestedly before his face. Or will Mr. Peel acknowledge that he a minister of state, of law and justice is, held in terrorem by me a daring and defying criminal of the stamp of those men whose liberation he cannot justly recommend to the King! The one or the other horn of this dilemma is his inevitable portion. I dare no one; but I will defend my conduct against all who oppose it. R. C.

MECHANICS' INSTITUTION.

I copy the following defence of the London Mechanics' Institution from the Trades' Newspaper; first, because it is in itself good; and second, because I can vouch for the name of Thomas Single being the real name of a real person, a person known to me, and an old correspondent of mine. I have every reason to suppose Mr. Single an honest man; though I have lately noticed that he has become a singular projector of schemes, the failure of adoption in regard to which has, perhaps, induced him to prefer the bliss of ignorance to the vexations of unavoidable or ill applied knowledge. I have a proof of Mr. Single's honesty or sincerity of acting up to his profession in the fact, that, as soon as his knowledge led him to discover that ignorance was preferable to knowledge, he moved his children from a respectable academy at which they were placed, under the presumption that further education would injure them.

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"To the Journeymen of Great Britain.

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R. C.

"The Editor of your (The Trades') newspaper is certainly the most impartial of all editors. No one can justly complain that he does not let him see what can be written on both sides of every important question. Bread Wages'-' Minimum of Wages' Mechanics' Institutions'-' Machinery'-' Corn'• Finance' Debt' Taxes'- Currency'- Population''Labour and Capital' have all had their advocates and opponents. Even Mr, Thomas Single, of Mile-end' has not been denied a place in the columns of The Trades' Newspaper. This is as it should be discussion on important subjects must produce good. No doubt the Editor knows who Mr. Single really is; for though it is of but little importance to the reader who the writer is, it is of some importance to an editor to know whom his contributors are, lest some of them should turn out to be wolves in sheep's clothing.

"Mr. Single may be described as an avowed enemy to the improvement of the working classes-the advocate for ignorance. Were it not that his letter dogmatises on subjects of vital importance to the working people-namely, Machinery, which but too many are disposed to consider as an enemy, and the principles which govern the rate of wages, his communication, as a piece of reasoning, might remain unnoticed. But as these matters must be clearly understood by the working people, before their condition can be much improved, and as he has decried the

knowledge which may lead to these desirable results, his performance must not be passed over.

"Mr. Single asserts, that SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND MACHINERY have so reduced the QUANTITY OF LABOUR, that men are starving from the want of work.'

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"This either betrays great ignorance or great waywardness. I shall meet this assertion by another-namely, that in every branch of business whatsoever, without any exception, SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND MACHINERY have INCREASED THE QUANTITY OF EMPLOYMENT.* I say this advisedly, and in consequence of an extensive and long-continued inquiry, and I shall be corrected, when a set of cases shall be produced in which my assertion is shown to be incorrect; I have never yet been able to find one. Political Economists predicate this from general principles, and practice proves the truth of the principles., Mr. Single says, What is the use of talking about a thing being good in principle, if it be bad in practice!' but who that has any understanding ever uses such jargon? A thing cannot be good in principle and bad in practice,'-the words are sheer nonsense. If a thing be good in principle, it must be good in practice; it does, however, happen, that when a bad practice has continued a long time, and people have been induced to embark property in concerns connected with the bad practice, till it has become extensive, to adopt the good principle, and carry it into practice all at once may injure or even ruin a number of people, and cases may undoubtedly occur in which the bad practice should be gradually superseded, and the good principle be gradually introduced but this is the whole extent; the good principle is not bad in practice' because the removal of what is bad cannot be done away with conveniently at once. But if the use of scientific machinery does, as Mr. Single asserts it does, reduce the QUANTITY of employment, it is plain, that in time it will destroy the people; and as the public good is the supreme law,' I should be disposed to go a great way further than Mr. Single has gone, and should

say, AS THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT MAKE THE PUBLIC GOOD THE SUPREMR LAW,' TAKE THE LAW INTO YOUR OWN HANDS, BREAK ALL THE MACHINERY, DESTROY ALL THE BUILDINGS WHICH CONTAIN IT, KNOCK THOSE ON THE HEAD WHO HAVE MADE IT, AND EXTINGUISH THE GOVERNMENT WHICH COUNTENANCES A SYSTEM WHICH WILL OTHERWISE EXTINGUISH YOU.

This is doctrine which all men will, I am sure, concur in, for the people ought not to suffer themselves to be extirpated. But, if on, the contrary, the use of the machinery does actually increase the demand for labourers, how mischievous is it to teach doctrines

"The whole quantity of employment in every branch to which the machinery is applied, including the workers in metal, machines, buildings, &c. occasioned by the use of machinery.

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