The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-02 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 2, 1858. - - called training institutions into existence ; and the efforts of private and local benevolence were largely seconded by Government and Parliament, until at last the Education grant, having mounted u p gradually, forms a far from in si g nificant item in tlie budget of the CHANCELLOR of the Exam ucEu. For much of this we have reason to be thankful. Much permanent good has been effected, though not without considerable alloy. It was, doubtless, a misfortune that the originators of the educational movement, and those into whose hands its direction as a Government mea sure fell, belonged to that school of social philo sophers with whom religion is generally at a discount, —in whose eyes doctrine is a mere matter of private opinion, and all positive and authori tative religious teaching a sectarian inroad upon the liberty of conscience. Experience, how ever, even more than the hot controversies to which they gave rise, exposed the unsoundness of these notions. It was found that spelling and reading, writing and arithmetic, the measurement of angles and the extraction of roots, outline maps and geometrical drawings, with a smat terin of " ologies," had but little effect in forming the character or influencing the conduct. The importance of the religious element in edu cation was acknowledged ; nor, in the face of the returns presented to Parliament, could the con viction be resisted that, after all, the National Church was the great instrument for the improve- ment of the masses. The Church was not slow to respond to the call made upon her. But her machinery was sadly out of order. She was much straitened for room ; her gear was much worn in many places, her wheels grown rusty ; she was short of hands and short of funds. The importance of her in fluence, the most potent of all for the improve ment of the masses, was, however, felt ; and the feeling, once called forth, would not be satisfied without an effort. Church Commissions were appointed, Church-building Societies, Pastoral Aid and Additional Curates Socieies, Home Missions, and Scripture Readers Associations established, parishes subdivided, special services and street preachings resorted to. The popula tions were parcelled out between incumbents, sought out by parochial visitors. Clergymen were sent forth to tend spiritual flocks on wages for which no one could be got to look after a stud or a kennel. And all this almost entirely by dint of voluntary contributions; for Church Estate Commissions consumed, not only their own smoke, but the better part of the estates they were set to manage ; and a grant of public money for the aggrandisement of a "favoured sect" was what no Minister could dare to propose in Par liament. Still, in spite of difficulties, much was achieved, and another great stride made in ad vance, in furtherance of the great work of social improvement. Presently, a fresh discovery is made. The hour now and then spent in joining public wor ship or listening to a sermon, the half-hour or quarter occupied by an occasional visit from the clergyman or some of his parochial staff, bears but a very small proportion to all the hours of the busy week and the idle Sunday ; even the school hours of the children form but a small portion of the entire day ; and the fleeting sounds that fell upon the ear, the impressions they have left upon the mind, the feelings they have kindled in the heart, are found too feeble to cope with a mass of living influences inseparable from the daily existence of the labouring poor. A room or two in a low cottage, if in the country, or, if in a town, in some crowded lodging-house, ill ventilated, ill-drained, scantily supplied with water, filthy even to squalor, reeking with all sorts of nameless odours,—such is the home to which the labouring man returns from his work, and his children from school ; where the wife, even if she does not herself go out to work, vainly endeavours to overtake the daily require ments of a growing family, in the way of cooking and scouring, washing and stitching, in the ab sence of any of the appliances—most probably, too, of the necessary knowledge—for making and keeping things clean and tidy, decent and com fortable. It is no place, evidently, for the deve lopment of domestic affections, the formation of proper habits, the cultivation of religious feelings. The husband, after taking his meal, sits sulky in a corner, solacing himself with his pipe, the fumes of which qualify, hut do not improve, the do mestic atmosphere ; or, more likely, he betakes himself to the beershop, where drink and tobacco, jolly songs and coarse jokes, help him to forget that he has a home to go to and a family to sup port. The wife, whose physical powers are heavily taxed by her various occupations, indif ferently supported, it may be, by insufficient food, and imperceptibly impaired by an insalu brious atmosphere, feels the need of a stimulant, and repairs to the dram-shop to recruit her flagging spirits. The children are left to run about the streets, or to tumble about on the floor, under the discipline of now and then a sharp word or a smart cuff. As they grow older, their home becomes every day more unfit for the healthy growth of either their bodies or their souls. Order and cleanliness are utterly unknown to them ; the sense of modesty, that instinctive guard of virtue, is crushed before it has had time to ripen into conscious chastity. Their associations and their appetites are becoming daily grosser and more carnal; as they grow beyond parental control, they sally forth in quest of gratification ; and after many a rude shock to self respect, they settle down at last to perpetuate their race and its habits. This is no exaggerated picture. There are exceptions, no doubt ; but they are exceptions. The comfortless, squalid, indecent home which we have described is—commonly in towns, and not unfrequently in rural districts—the scene in which the days of the labouring poor are spent. Is it surprising that against such a combination of adverse, of hardening, debasing, polluting influences the School and the Church are alike unable to contend successfully ? thst neither teaching nor preaching avails to raise the moral tone and to ameliorate the condition of popula tions so circumstanced ? It is no undervaluing of the advantages of education, no disparagement to the ministrations and ordinances of religion, to say that the success of all our endeavours tbr the improvement of the lower orders of society depends materially upon the measures which may be devised and adopted to provide for them roomy and healthy dwellings, placing comfort, cleanli ness, and decency within their reach. That efforts arc being made, both by individuals and by associations, to promote so desirable an object, we hold to be one of the most cheering features of the time ; and it is with great. pleasure, therefore, that we call attention to the operations of a Society 'recently formed under the title of "The Cottage Improvement Society." From a com munication addressed to us by the Hon. Secretary of the Society, to which we gave insertion in our last week's columns, it will be seen that the Society has ready, for issue to the public, plans on which good convenient cottages, with a suffi cient number of sleeping apartments, may be built at an expense so moderate as to render their erection a remunerative investment. This is highly encouraging. if the "radical reform," so much needed, of the dwellings of the poor can be made a self-supporting movement, we may reasonably hope that capital and public spirit will combine to remove one of the chief and most grievous causes of moral and physical deterioration. CARDINAL WISEMAN AND THE CHARAC TERISTICS OF PAPAL WARFARE. IF England were a century younger than she is, Or if Prince CHARLES EDWARD'S union with LOUISA of STomiEito had perpetuated the race and the pretensions of the STUARTS, we might possibly at this time hear of some Privy Councillor of a soi-disant Potentate taking a tour through the three kingdoms for the purpose of securing allegiance among the subjects of Queen VICTORIA. What might have been the course adopted by the British Government and Parliament on any such emergency, it is not, perhaps, easy to say ; but we hardly think that he would have been allowed to go at large, and to play his part without let or hindrance. The question how such a case should be dealt with is not, however, altogether as idle as the reader may imagine. The gross absurdity and still grosser impertinence which no STUART is living to commit, is actually being perpetrated lunder our very noses by an individ ual who osten tatiously and audaciously sports himself amongst us as the representative of a foreign potentate, although he has not, and, indeed, by the law of the land cannot have, any mission to the Sove reign of these realms, but pretends that he is charged with the commands of his spiritual Sovereign to; the subjects of the Queen to 947 whom he himself owes allegiance. Whether the presence in any independent State of such a poli tical interloper, without the sanction of its Government, and in defiance of its laws, is or is not consistent with the maxims and principles of international law, it needs no PUFFENDORF or VarrEL to inform us. The illegality of the in trusion is palpable ; and equally manifest is the indignity thereby offered to the Sove reign in whose dominions, and to the nation on whose soil, it is committed. Yet that intrusion we have tolerated, to that indignity we have submitted, for upwards of seven years, until at last the author of the " insolent aggression," ren dered foolhardy by the impunity he has hitherto enjoyed, has bethought himself of making a further experiment on the powers of endurance of which John Bull is proverbially possessed. When Dr. NICHOLAS WISEMAN, Bishop of Melipotamus, returned from Rome, empowered by " His holiness " to astonish the natives of these islands by the appearance among them of a full-fledged Cardinal, he seemed himself to have some misgivings as to the success, and even the safety, of the business he had taken in hand. With more discretion than he has shown at any subsequent stage of his proceedings, he lay perdu beyond the seas, awaiting the effect which the publication of his Popish proclamation would produce when it reached England. The mo ment was, it must be confessed, not ill chosen. The dignity of the British Crown and the honour of the nation was in the keeping of men noisy in bluster, but craven in deed. A lew lines from the Premier's pen, a few words conveyed through her Majesty's re presentative in Belgium, intimating to Dr. WisEmAN that the presence of a Cardinal within these realms was contrary to law, and that the Government were determined to enforce the law against him, if he should venture to show himself, in that character, on British ground, would pro bably have been sufficient to induce " His Eminence " to suspend, indefinitely, his return. This, followed by a Royal proclamation, de claring the Pope's Bull to be an illegal do cument, and threatening with prosecution all who should venture authoritatively to promul gate it, or to do any overt act in execution of its mandates, would in all likelihood have nipped the " aggression " in the bud. But the then guardians of the honour and independence of the kingdom had not the sense or the courage to do anything of the kind. A few big phrases, in Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S memorable letter to Bishop MALTBY, were all that the Whigs could think of, ;or venture on, in vindication of the Queen's Supremacy. Dr. WISEMAN accordingly took the measure of the men he had to deal with, and pursued with hearty good will his lawless en terprize. The presence in England of a Cardinal Legate, commissioned to exercise both personal and territorial jurisdiction in the name of the Pope within her Majesty's dominions, became a fait accompli, undisturbed in its effects by an intentionally abortive enactment, which, while it prohibited the Papal nominees from assuming, left them at full liberty to accept from any one willing to give them, titles conferred upon them by a ffireign potentate in defiance of British law The grave question which the Cardinal had raised—described by Lord JOHN RUSSELL himself as "a pretension of supremacy over the realm of " England, and a claim to sole and undivided " sway, inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, " with the rights of our Bishops and Clergy, and " with the spiritual independence of the nation " was suffered to go to sleep, and might have lain asleep for we know not how long, had not Dr. WISEMAN felt himself emboldened to raise it afresh. The singular effrontery of his recent progress" through a part of the United Kingdom, in the official costume of a Prince of the Church, to be knelt to on railway platffirms, and elsewhere, by the subjects of Queen VICTORIA, and to mark his contempt of her Majesty's authority by the omission of the usual loyal toast at the gather ings over which he presided, has once more aroused public attention to the gross impropriety, as well as illegality, of permitting the representa tive of a foreign potentate to claim, and, so far as in him lies, to exercise, in his master's name, supremacy and jurisdiction within the Queen's dominions. The fact that religion is made the pretext for this barefaced usurpation does not palliate, but, on the contrary, aggra vates, its illegal character. The most entire • r ,