The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1875-06-15 00:00:00

Aloroet Conntg express.

TUMIDLY, JUNK 15. 1875.

NOTES OF THE WEEK.
The return of the Queen from her summer
visit to the Highlands is announced to take place
in a few days. Her Majesty is said to be in
excellent health, and has been partaking in
various festivities at Balmoral, including a
dance.

His Highness Seyyed Burghash' Sultan of
Zanzibar, must now clearly understand, if he
ever had any doubt on the point' that he is not
the gilest of the Queen, or of the Royal
but of the British Government. he re' .11.'
Bona fra
or his reception were of the Pmeanesi
character, he is located at a dingy hotel, and
receives not a tithe of the attention which is
shown to the smallest German princeling. At
Ascot one of the specials thus describes his
position :—" There was a tall drag to the left of
him, little else than the fag end of the line of
carriages to the right of him, the back scenes of
gipsyhood behind him, and only a small section
of the course, and the Royal enclosure, weighing,
room, and saddling paddock in front of hum."
This prosaic paraphrase of Tennyson's "Charlie
of the Light Brigades' is by no means compli-
mentary to our illustrious visitor, and his whole
treatment is a diplomatic mistake. On his
Highness's good-will depends the speedy extinc-
tion of slavery and the slave trade on the eastern
coast of Africa ; he is the ruler of the must
commercial and energetic of the Arab nations;
and, at any moment of complication with India
or Russia, he is the sovereign powerful to help
or to harm us as he thinks it. On the low
ground of expediency, therefore, it is a pity that
such scant courtesy has been shown him; while,
as a reigning sovereign, with whom we recently
concluded a treaty, he deserves more attention.
The Government has at last addressed itself to
a most difficult task in bringing in a Bill to
amend the labour laws. Its chief provisions are
that malicious injury to property, either by
actual deed or by wilful neglect, is to be dealt
with by the criminal tae ,
between masters and men servants, if they are
to be decided by law, are to be treated by civil
process; that freedom of contract between
employers and employed, and between workmen
and fellow-workmen, shall be legally established;
that cases of picketing and intimidation shall be
tried by juries, and that mere trade combi-
nations shall not be treated as conspiracies.
The Bill gives legal sanction to what is now to
a great extent the custom, and appears to be on
the whole a good measure. The second reading
is fixed for Monday the 28th inst.
In the opinion of the Times the amendments
of the Labour Laws proposed by Mr. Cross are
contributions towards the settlement of questions
which must probably wait some years longer
before they will receive a final solution. We
are all of us struggling to find a way out ot
difficulties, the existence of which cannot be
denied, and the remedies for which are far from
being apparent. We want to determine legis-
latively the limits of public and private wrongs,
and we want to construct a tribunal which, in
its decisi ~,, s, whether a course of remonstrance
has transgressed the narrow line marking off
persuasion from overawing or intimidation, shall
satisfy all parties, the jealous, exacting, and
interested critics on one side as well as on the
other. Perfect success is impossible in such
enterprises, and Mr. Cross is not to be blamed
if it shall prove that he has not overcome all the
difficulties which have foiled so many of his
predecessors. It is enough that he is making an
honest and courageous attempt to effect a
conclusive settlement of labour disputes, and
that he has not only advanced beyond former
Home Secretaries in his mastery of the principles
which underlie these disputes, but also beyond
the Royal Commission which has so recently
reported upon them. His bills, laid upon the
table of the House of Cominons on Thursday,
cannot become law this session, but they will
servo to educate Parliament and the nation on
the subject, and will smooth the way to early
legislation next session.
Thu Daily Telegraph says :—The great merit
of the new act is not that it will enable workmen
to dictate wages, but that, by granting fair
facilities for their operations, it will remove
from their minds a sense of injustice, and 1
diminish bitterness between class and class.
When handicraftsmen began to think calmly of
their employers, they will soon recognise the
function which, in the economy of industry, the
capitalist usefully fulfils.
Mr. Dixon's bill for the universal establish-
ment of School Boards and compulsory education
was, of course. rejected, but the debate showed
that a considerable advance has been made
since last year in the direction of compulsion ;
and, incidentally we may note, that the Visita-
tion charge of the Archdeacon of Dorset also
shows that the need for legal machinery to
enforce school attendance is pressingly felt by
the clergy and managers of rural schools. It
seems that we have in England three millions of
children of schoel age, and accommodation for
that enormous number has been actually pro-
vided. But last year, although the operation of
the school boards in towns had worked a vast
improvement in the attendances, the number of
children actually at school was but 1,700,000,
leaving 1,300,000 more of whom we have little
other knowledge than that they are growing up
in ignorance. Many millions of ~,,, ney have
been lavished On school buildings, and some-
thing like two millions is devoted every year to
paying schoolmasters and keeping the whole
machinery of education in thorough efficiency ;
and yet we have the lamentable fact that nearly
half this costly apparatus is producing no
adequate return throwA the absence of those
for whom it has been ungrudgingly provided.
If the absentees were for the most part a
defier% lag class there would not be so much
cause fir regret. But the reverse is notoriously
the fact. Children are not allowed to work in
factories, workshops, and mines, or, if the law
were carried out, in the rural districts, unless
they can show that they attend school for a
given period up to a certain age. But worthless
parents, who allow their offspring to grow up in
idleness and vice, are free to do so in about
13,000 out of the 14,000 parishes in England,
where voluntaryism still obtains; and the net
result of this defective system is that large
masses of young people, still outside the school-
room, are pretty certain to turn out not merely
illiterate but vicious—dangerous to themselves
and still more dangerous to society. The
religious difficulty is still the great hindrance,
although the suggestion that the present volun-
tary schools should be turned into Board schools
and used for religious instruction by the deno-
mination to which they belong after the hours
devoted to seculra teaching is not now scouted
as it was a year ago, but is receiving considera-
tion. The Bishop of Manchester, although not
greatly attached to the scheme of the Birming-
ham League, has no fear of its practical issues if
that suggestion were followed ; and, surely, as
Churchman, we must be very dubious of our
religious system to entertain a doubt that it
would still be paramount although the teaching
of the Church catechism did not form part of
the regular course of day-school teaching. In view
of the failure of the present machinery to bring
education to the class most needing it, sectarian
jealousies must cease, and a loyal effort be made
to disestablish ignorance.
The Court for the consideration of Crown
Cases Reserved—which the public very naturally
call the Court of Criminal Appeal—is consider-
ing certain points of law submitted to it by Mr.
Justice Blackburn, arising out of a trial at the
Central Criminal Court which resulted in the
conviction of one f the Peculiar People for
manslaughter in not calling in medical aid to his
infant who died—there can be no doubt of it—
from such neglect. It is quite time that these
Peculiar People were made to feel that they can-
not plum themselves above the common law.
They have established a hospital for the
"hopeless incurable," as they express it—which
will be all very well as far as it goes, but which
will mot prove whether medical assistance is
necessary. If they would establish an institu-
timi in which they would use nothing but
prayer and oil for those who are not "hopeless
incurable," why then they would do a public
service—by stultifying themselves.
The Morning Post has reason to believe that,
regard being had to the late period of the
session and the pressure of public business, the
Government are not disposed to proceed this
session with the Merchant Shipping Bill.
A method of dealing with pauper children,
the result of which will be eagerly looked for,
is about to be tried by the Wrexham Board of
Guardians. The guardians requiring more
room, the Poor-law inspector attended to con-
sult them as to the best means of securing it,
when he suggested that, instead of enlarging
the building, they should convert the children's
apartments into the new rooms required, and
remove the children into cottages to be built by
the guardians. In each cottage there might be
boys and Sit girls, in !Alamo of a man and
his wife. A shoemaker might take one cottage,

Ascot

.11)89]
of the

and those lads who were to be taught shoemak-
li,g might be placed in that particular cottage-
gardener and a tailor might be put into other
houses. The idea is not original, the Plan
having been tried with great success in other
countries; but it has not yet been attempted in
, England. It certainly looks better calculated to
bring up the children with•ait the
Pauper taint
than dotal the present system of herding them
together; while it seems better than boanling-
out, because the guardians of the children 1611
new beunder the direct supervision of the
"rd. The little ones, in fact, will be living a
regular home life, rendered more like it by their
attendance at an ordinary elementary school, if
one be near. The inspector anticipates the
objection of expense by asserting that the plan
is no more costly than the
present one, while it
certainly has its advantages over the other plans,
even over that of sending little boys to Canada.