The National Register. — London, England, 1816-11-11 00:00:00

~ ; w ~t Our thug, Con6i No. IX. MONDAY, NOV. POLITICAL DISQUISITION. --.....--. STATE OF THE COUNTRY. .(cowriNuan ►ROM OUR LART.) " ACCORDING to the anarchists, government is the rout of all the evils which afflict the country, and the cure of all those evils is political reform. In faithful imitation of the French—untaught by their errors, and undeterred by their crimes and their punishment—they proclaim that for a nation to be reformed, it is sufficient that she wills it ; and the hopeful cnd at which they are aiming is to make the multitude declare this their sovereign will and pleasure. God help the simple un derstandings of men who suppose that the condition of the people can be ameliorated by means like these, and that the fear of the mob is the beginning of wisdom in a government! And God forgive the deliberate guilt of those who perseveringly endeavour to make the mob sensible of their strength, and breathe into them their own spirit of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitable ness ! Among the manufacturing populace they have been but too successful ; they have laboured not with out success among the agricultural part of the people ; and if the army and navy are not discontented also, it is not their fault. " The people,' says Bishop Warburton, are much more reasonable in their demands on their patriots than on their ministers : of their pitriots they readily accept the will for the deed ; but of their ministers they un justly interpret the deed for the will.' In these times we could not desire a more favourable interpretation:— by their fruits ye shall know them.' The foreign po licy of our government has been such that more signal *auccesse.; could not have been anticipated or desired, than have actually been attained ; and in domestic con cerns its acts may be appealed to as the best indication of its intentions. It is indeed impossible tloit in any enlightened part of Europe a government can be so be hind hand with the age, as not to know that the secu rity of the state depends upon the well-being and con tentment of the people. The conduct of Ferdinand, in Spain, is no exception, for Spain is not an enlightened country : and moreover, the acts which excited most in dignation in England are popular among the great ma jority of that noble-minded, but be-darkened nation : the restoration of the Inquisition was their own work ; and wh en Ferdinand formally re-established it, he only ra tified what they had spontaneously done. Buonaparte's conduct is just such an exception as proves the rule. Ambition had intoxicated him, and the possession of absolute power had produced in him that specific moral madness of which so many cases were seen among the Roman and Greek emperors : he sought to reign by force and delusion, and to make the nations of Europe the mere instruments of his selfish and wicked will ; but in attempting this he acted in opposition to the spirit of the age, and was overthrown. lie conde scended to it during his short usurpation, when he abo lished the Slave Trade. The general spirit of the age is good both abroad and at home. The Christian Treaty, as it is called, however nugatory it may be deemed, is one memorable instance. The Pope also affords another ;—he has restored the Jesuits, but he has prevented the Inquisition from roasting n relapsed Jew. The Portuguese have abolished the Inquisition at (h and arc taking measures for abolishing it in Por tugal. This spirit, which exists strongly in every country where public opinion is known, exists with most strength in England, where public opinion is more decidedly expressed. There is an ardent desire of di minishing the evils of the world, as titr as our efforts can contribute to their diminution, in other countries nod in our own. The abolition of the Slave Tratie— the abolition of infantivile in port of our great Indian empire—the various miisions which are so liberally sup ported in the East, in Africa, and in Polynesia, and the strongfeeling which hasbeen excited here by the suspicion of a Catholic persecution in Fiunce,—evince the pre valence and the power of this desire, so honourable to the age, so honourable to England, and to human nature. " The Romanists used to reproach us with our in attention to the duty of disieminating the religion which we profess ; and they asserted that missionary seal could only proceed from the spirit of God, and therefore it could be timnd in the true church alone. This reproach, which was at one time ( . .eserved, holds good no longer ; and the Protestant missionaries of the present will be found to equal their Catholic pre- , • • • - sit • rtl i r Sai t o 11 4 ittititiOn '~ ' a ~ t :1 . '.~ anb UAW. 'FMTIER decessurs in zeal and disintiested.ness°, and to excel them in erudition. They reproached us also with a decay of charity, in consequence of the Reformation ; affirming that no monuments of durable benevolence had been-erected like the convents, hospitals, colleges, and other religious foundations, with which England was enriched by the piety of our Catholic ancestors In fore the schism. But here they exult without a cause; the establishment of schools, hospitals, alms-houses, and eleemosynary societies Of various descriptions in London, will be found to execed in number and in ex tent the charitable institutions of any other city in Europe : not to mention that the history of the world affords nothing similar to tile provision which the Le gislature has made for the ptior in England. Of these institutions, the five royal hespicals, as they are called, (St. Bartholomew's, Bedlam, Bridewell, Christ's Hos pital, and St. Thomas's), west originally endowed from the church and convent lands; the rest are all Pro-. testant foundations. T., give the briefest account of all, or even to enumerate there, would require more space than can here be allotted to-that pnrposo ; suffice it to say, that more than 30,000 patients are annually admitted into the London Hospitals ; that about 50,000 children receive the benefit of gratuitous education ; that about 13,000 persons arc supported in endowed alms-houses; and that the sums which are annually disposed of in charitable uses by the several companies and halls in London, amounted, in Maitland's time, to more than 26,0001. " But among the numerous associations which have in late years been formptk for benevolent purposes, there is one whose proceedings are entitled to particular no tice—the Society fur Bettering the Condition and In creasing the Comforts of tho Poor. This society origi nated twenty years ago with the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Wilberforce, Sir Thomas Bernard, and the Ho nourable Edward James Eliot. The latter was early removed from a world which his talents and his ex ample were alike fitted to adorn anti to amend ; the three former names need no panegyric. The general object of the Society was to collect information respec ting the actual situation of the pour, and the most effec tual means of improving it. They proposed to apply the principle of experimental philosophy to this object, and to make existiag facts tho means of practical and systematic investigation into what has really augmented their virtue and happiness, and has been sanctioned by thin and experience: The inquiry has been conducted patiently, and without oetentation. Instead of coming forward with cumbrous theories, or presenting crude plans to the legislature, they have collected filets, tried such limited experiments as were in their power, and laid their observations before the public, as materials Irma which every man may draw the conclusion.. The conclusions which every sane mind must draw from the premises thus laid before it, are truly consolatory : it appears that more may be done by well. disposed and active individuals, than could be effected by legislative interferemv ; that little exertion,. and less expense, if wisely directed, nuty produce much good ; that the poor tire well disposed to •second the efibrts which are made for their advantage, whenever they understand the be nefit ; and that the lower classes become improved in other respects in proportion to the improvement of their circumstances. ' 11, 1816. " The advocates for radical reform assert, that as the weight of taxation makes every thing dear, government is thus the direct cause of the distresses of the poor. This assertion being continually repeated as a political axiom, and involving lift the first part of its proposition a certain degrens,of truth, produces much of the mis chief which it is intended to produce. Fools ! who would been to repair the pyramid from the top instead of the bottom ! TaxatieriafFeets the poor in an infinitely trifling degree compared to the -tax which is laid upon their property by individual cupidity. It is hut t'.o obvious,' says Dr. Glass, how ant: the poor are im posed upon by the pert/ shopkeepers in the necessaries which they arc enable to purchase. The quality of the gotids is not the best, the price is extravagantly high, and the 'quantity/4's reduced by deceitful weights and a scanty measure:. It appeared upon a strict in spection of weights and scales, in a swell and by no • • t l'alcs 90. means a populous district, that the loss which the poor of the district sustained from this cause, or, in other words, the money thus fraudulently raisA from them; amounted to not less than iOOl. 3 year. Sir Thomas Ber nard asserts, that the injury which the poor suatain from buying their flour at the shop instead of the mill, -- is nearly equal, at the time when he wrote, (1798,) to two-thirds of the poor's rates then collected in England. This latter evil has, in some instances, been removed by the establishment of parish mills ; the former re quires only that the existing laws should be duly enforced ; and when the weights andsmeasures of the country shall be regulated, (as it may be presumed they soon will be) it is to be hoped that means will be pros vidcd for rendering those laws efficacious. These griev ances, which fill with peculiar weight upon t'.' poor, arise from thit eagerness for gain, which is the sin that most easily besets a Cmnmercial people, and which, perhaps, has never been so generally prevalent as at present. In this point, God knows, the country stands truly in need of radical reform ; hut it is a reformation which cannot be effected by laws or by political changes ; it must be in public opinion ; in the habits of thought and the principlei of action. There is a me morable passage upon this subject in one of Mr. Wind ham's speeches--' fhe whole country, it is said, is full of abuses, from top to bottom. I believe arm ; with this correction, that the description would be more just if we were to say from bottom to top, it being here, as in other media, the parts of which are left to move freely, that the lower strata are the denser and grosser, and that they become rarer and purer the. higher you ascend. The fact is, that when the matter comes to be searched to the bottom, it is the people throughout who are cheating the people ; the people individually cheap• ing the people collectively. The people in all quartet* * and by all opportunities, are preying upon the public; and then make it the repoxich of the goverameat that it has not the power to prevent them:—Well does Sir Thomas Bernard lay it down as an axiom that no plan for the improvement of the condition of the poor will be of any avail, unless the fmndation be laid in the amelioration of their moral and religious character. The exactions of which we have been speaking are those to which the poor are subject from persons of their own class, or who are just rising above it ; but the spirit which occasions these petty frauds extents far higher: ' it is found not only in the little shopkeeper, who cur tails his measures, falsifies his weights, and exacts• a dear price for bad commodities, or in the mistress of a dairy, who mingles water wide her milk before she sells it out to those, perhaps, who will dilute it still further ; but to the brewer, who procures his materials from the druggist instead of the =hater ; to the druggist 'who adulterates the material which he sells him; and to the rich manufacturer who makes flimsy goods for foreign sale, thus, for the sake of his own immediate gain, in flicting lasting injury upon his country, by injuring the character of English commodity. " Let it not be supposed that any indiscriminate cen sure upon the commercial classes is intended ; nor that the censure which is intended applies to those clas-es exclusively. The landlord who exacts a grinding rent for the labourer's cottage is less culpable than the frau dulent tradesman, inasmuch as he offends aga nst no law of the. land : but in proportion as he lessens the I condials and increases the necessities of the poor, he does evil and occasions evil. Some years ago, a tra veller. who took shelter from a storm in a cottage by one of the Scotch lakes, saw that the rain ran in, and lay in pools upon the uneven floor, which consisted only of the bare earth on which the hovel had been built ; during great part of the year, therefore, the floor must necessarily be wet and dirty, making it both uncomfortable and unwholesome : he observed to the owner with hoW, little trouble the inconvenience might be removed ; the man shook his head, and an swered, it was very true, but that if he were to do this, the cottage would be thought worth more for haying been made comfortable, am! the rent would in conse quence be raised. Such cases may lee !uison], and we believe indeed that they must be an; but it is certain that high rents are common, and it L not less certain that they aggravate the poverty of the poor. Another, and perhaps greater, evil, is the difficulty with which the cottugers can obtain some little land ; the grievance was long mince pointed out by Mr. Kent :—' When the cottagers,' he said, are accommodated with a small quantity of land, they are obliged to pay, at least, a double proportion of rent fbr it, to what time titrmers pay themselves.' Upon this point, the facts which have been collected by the Society, led Sir I'. Bernard • It is not, perhaps, generally known, that earl, of the three elder missionaries at Aernmpo le r. Carey. Dr. Nlarsh• man, and Mr. IVin . t.D coatributc to the styport of the mi..: the whole of their itteohqw, beyond what is sufficient far a bare subsistence and that the mints thus contributed ace not I(!...1 than 15001. a year front each. These are the men who were 1-' 1 ,0 , 1, hut a ten ytlartt ago, in the worst spith of Seer. , for tne lownew of tlit it origin! ~'~ F,: 7 • • ...;1e).. . • F A N l b. • - 41i