The Press. — London, England, 1857-06-27 00:00:00

613 school not more than twelve per cent. are engaged in labour. We do not for a moment doubt the correctness of Sir JOHN PAKINGTON'S statistics ; but we should be glad to know how much ground they cover. Do they embrace all the children who, in the manufacturing districts, are employed in their parents' cottages? In the stocking-making districts a child of very tender years is able to add no in considerable amount to the weekly earnings of the family ; and the needle is an influential ally of the plough in distancing the claims of the village school. Again, in many of our model districts some of the children of the family are constantly at work on allotment grounds. What we ask, therefore, is, that in striking the balance between the idle and the unemployed children of the poor, these various kinds of employment should all be taken into account. With regard to the indifference of parents, Sir Jour; PAKINGTON does not deny the fact, but attributes its existence princi pally to the badness of the schools provided. Now, we cannot believe that in the majority of instances the parents ever trouble their heads upon the subject, or could arrive at any conclu sion upon it if they did. They see a large room hung round with maps—a gentleman in black clothes for the schoolmaster—the lady of the manor surveying its management, and the Member for the county, perhaps, presiding at its festivals, and they naturally consider that such a system must be all right. While in the next place, even were it not so, the power of criticising their children's education implies a degree of education in themselves which dues not exist. " The advantages of a good education " is a phrase susceptible of two interpretations It may mean either those higher and nobler results which flow from the cultivation of the moral and intellectual faculties, or it may mean the additional loaves and fishes which additional knowledge enables a man to pick up. But to appreciate the first sort of advan• t iges a man must be educated himself; and he certainly cannot appreciate flu second if they are not visible. Now, what we want in the present instance is the ^rov c7x, from which the minds of the poor may be favourably inclined towards education. If we expect them to value it for the first-mentioned reason we shall be for ever in the same difficulty as ARCHIMEDES. It is, therefore, on the second that we must mainly rely. And the object to b kept in view is how either to make educa tion directly lucrative to the poor, or at least to prevent its interference with immediately remunerative employment. The half-time sys tem is so far a step in the right direction, but is open to objections to which we shall advert presently. Let any of our readers, if he will, allow his mind to travel over the unceasing revolutions of agricultural labour. If clas sically inclined, let him peruse the first Georgic of VIRGIL, and then ask himself where the leisure-time is to be found. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter each brings its appropriate toil— agricohe labor actus in orbem ; and this obvious but obstinate difficulty the members of the Conference have not, we must s ty, fairly confronted. It is not, we are convinced, until education teiall be recognised as a necessary of life— until intellectual nudity and moral pollution shall be thought as indecent as physical—that the malady of ignorance will ever be fairly rooted out. When it shall become as great a r.?proach to an employer that his servants are brutally ignorant, as it is now that they are r egged and filthy, then, and not till then, may iv.: hope for some real improvement. But the a;)proach to this great revolution lies through the minds of the employers much inure than tirough those of the employed. To begin with tie latter is beginning at the wrong end. We m tat influence those from whom alone can be obtained such relaxation in the hours of labour as may enable the poor man's boy to cultivate his mind without damaging his body. But how do the present race of employers appreciate education themselves? Do they set an example of surrendering some portion of this world's goods for the sake of better things? There must be few of our readers whose experience does not furnish them with THE PRESS. a ready answer. The merchant who removes his son from the sphere of a liberal education, and plants him in his connting•house at the age of fifteen, has no right to wonder at the weaver or the ploughman who takes away Billy or Tommy from " his book " at the age of eie•ren. - - llthis movement, then, is to come to any good, an appeal must be made to the body of employers ; and this not onl3 for the reasons already stated, but also because a number of gentlemen, though all honour to their motives, cannot expect to do much by g etting together and disposing of other people's affairs without their knowledge or consent. A conference of practical men, as represented by employers, is the fitting corollary to a conference of theorists; and until the matter be taken up in this spirit, we have little hope of a satisfactory result. THE DUBLIN MURDER. OUR readers can scarcely have forgotten the discussion in our columns of the atrocious Broadstairs murder, at Dublin, of Mr. LITTLE, the unfortunate cashier. We took special means for secaring particular information on that occasion, and the result of our inquiries was that gross mismanagement had been shown by the official authorities at Dublin, and that the close inquiry had aided in the concealment of the murderer, who, in our belief, was connected in some way with the railway. We showed, also, that the Dublin journals had not been well treated by the authorities, while knowledge of particular facts was allowed to circulate freely in certain families; and we strongly dwelt on the danger resulting from the lamentable impunity given to daring criminality. The cruel injury done to the private characters of several innocent persons we also dwelt upon, and we carefully closed our columns against certain unworthy suggestions of a sectarian character, which seemed to us made with more zeal than discre tion. We intimated strongly our opinion that the whole inquiry was much mismanaged, and we have now additional reasons for entertaining that conviction. Without discussing the case against the person or persons now accused, we may call attention to some apparent cases of neglect of search. One of the places where the missing money has been found "is situ " aced at the western side of the cattle plat " form, adjoining the boundary wall of the " North Dublin Union Workhouse grounds." It is a house of office ; and, recollecting the wild and desperate characters that are too often to be found in a workhouse, we may express our surprise tbat the place in ques tion had never been searched. Every place of that sort in the immediate locality of the railway should have been carefully examined, it' not for the money, at least for some of the weapons or incidental accessories employed in the atrocious deed. Again, it is asserted that " a statement made by " SPOLLEN (the accused) as to his whereabouts " on the night of the murder was accepted as " true by the police, because it was corrobo rated by the wife before she had any means "of communicating with him. These state " ments agreeing satisfied the police." How could the police have known whether there had not been a previous agreement as to what story should be told? Agreements in such cases are often extremely indicative of artifice. It is stated also that " early iu November"— the murder was on the 13th—" the accused " was employed in painting portions of the " interior of the building, and, according to " sonic, upon the day itself, or on the one pre " ceding the murder, was engaged in some " painting-work in the room of the deceased " gentleman." We have asked previously in these columns—" Why were the counter and " railing of defence, put up by Mr. Little, " removed from the room Why were the fixtures " dismantled? And on whose authority was that " dilapidation of the apartment caused ? And what " possible good was to be expected from the removal SATUIiDAY, - "of those objects !" These were questions which we know were eagerly asked by learned persons profoundly experienced in the prac tice of the criminal law. We now forbear to put certain questions as to those fixtures, which may be of immense importance in a judicial inquiry. In our former comments we reminded our readers that Lord Chancellor BRADY had never been eminent as a practi tioner in criminal law, that Mr. Attorney- General PITZGERALP excelled chiefly at Nisi Pries; that Mr. CHRISTIAN, the Solicitor-Gene ral, was a leading equity lawyer, not versed in criminal practice. We strongly urged that there should be an " open inquiry," and that Government shoulJ aid the Crown lawyers with the help of Mr. BREWSTER, or Mr. NA PIER, or Mr. WHITESIDE, or Mr. M`DoNoon, or Mr. Burr. With the last news from Dublin before us, we see more reasons than one for believing that there was miscarriage of justice in the previous inquiry. Against the person now accused we say nothing, but enough has transpired (without discussing the guilt or innocence of SPOLLEN) to warrant us in charg ing the authorities with mismanagement of the investigation in November. THE INDIAN COTTON DEBATE. THE proposition of the Member for Stockport for an inquiry into the causes which impede the application of skill and capital to the development of the laud in India was worthy of a better fate than was announced for it on Thursday night. It was then stated that on Tuesday next, to which evening the debate had been adjourned, it would be impossible to continue it, owing to the number of other motions on the paper for that night ; while there would not be another evening available till the 23rd of July, which for all practical purposes was far too late. NVell might Lord ADOLPHUS VANE TEMPEST express his indig nation at this mockery ; but the Premier, when appealed to, refused to give an earlier night. Of course, the progress of the exposure of the Government's shortcomings in relation to India would have proved most damaging to it; and hence their eagerness to close the inquiry as soon as they could. But though the debate lasted only a single evening, it was long enough to show the line of defence that the India Board and the India-house are prepared to take. The speeches of Mr. MANGLES, the Chairman of the Company, and of Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR, the Secretary of the India Board, were explicit enough on this point. The last was a painful exhibition, considering the place among Indian Reformers which he once held. The transition was too abrupt from leader of the Ind an Reform Society to official defender of Indian mis government in every shape ; and the only result will be that his advocacy will afford as little real support to the cause which he has joined as his secession will occasion regret to that which he has left. His explanation of his change of character was curious in the ex treme. He had not varied, he said, but the whole system in India had done so ; and the monstrous evils which had called forth his harangues in 1853 and 1854 had since his joining the India Board (most miraculously ceased. The defence offered by Mr. MANGLES was of another kind. Roads, he said, had been made, more were in progress, and the Manchester men were not to sit down and call upon Jupiter to help them, if they wanted cotton, but to set their shoulders to the wheel and help them selves. Now we confess, for our parts, that we cannot see any analogy between the posi tion of the waggoner in the fable and the manufacturers of Manchester in the present case. As far as we can understand the matter, they do not want Jupiter—that is Nature—to help them, at all, for they are perfectly satis fied with everything that Jupiter has done. He has given an admirable soil to India, a •