The Press.
London, England, 1858-08-14 00:00:00

770

school, into their own houses, and health, with all
its cheerfulness and alacrity, will speedily follow.
Having homes which they can respect, they will
soon learn to respect, not them only, but them,
selves. The habits of submission and obedience,
too, which they have learned at school they will
transfer to their homes, to be exercised as chil-
dren, or enforced when they become parents,
Thus affection will have its proper guardian, and
a healthier condition of the domestic relations
altogether will arise.

There is yet another point in which, we
think, our country gentlemen might promote the
social well-being of the labouring classes, and that
is, by granting them greater facilities for innocent
and healthful amusements. We never pass
through a village, and miss the village-green, or
the cricket-ground, without a feeling of sadness.
The place, in the absence of this, seems to want
a spot where the fierce glare of the sun may
be broken by a wide-spreading tree, and
man may find a refreshing shade. There
is a moral beauty in the eyes of every lover
of humanity in the scene, with its associa-
tions, which this (where it is to be found)
presents. It is the poor man's patrimony ;it is
the common ground of humanity; it is the play-
ground for the poor man's children : it serves for
trap-ball, for bowls, for cricket, for manly
humanizing sports of every kind, in which the
gentry and the farmers may unite with the
peasants, and all, spite of their earthly distinc-
tions, feel themselves to be of one common blood.
How dreary is the life of an English husbandman
when this is wanting! " Double, double, toil and
trouble," day after day, month after month, year
after year, is their lot, uncheered by sympathy,
isnenlivened by a smile, unlifted up in their own
esteem, when they never thus associate with their
superiors. The man has no place to be merry in
but the beershop, no excitements but drunken
brawls, no pastimes but poaching, nothing to
bring him into innocent, cheerful fellowship with
his neighbours; and so he grows sullen, envious,
discontented. And why is this, but that " restless
ownership," in its grasping propensities, has in-
closed even the village-green, or denied the poor
a place for their pastimes? Men are but men,
and wise Christian philanthropists will not dis-
regard even these accessories to the social well-
being of the humble poor. What a blessed thing
it is that men cannot inclose the sky ! But who
knows what may not be possible in this age of
Wpossibilities! Will not "restless ownership" (as
onnswonru called it) long in time to partition
out this ? And then we shall have " Freehold Sky
Companies" established to send up balloons for
the purpose. Parliament, too, will doubtless be
appealed to to put forth its omnipotence by pass-
ing an act to grant them a monopoly, forbidding
the winds to offer them molestation in their en-
terprize, and authorizing that if any planet be
caught trespassing it shall be impounded, and
that all comets shall be committed for vagrancy.
But irony apart, we have an earnest convic-
tion that in robbing the poor of the advantages
and enjoyments we have pointed out, we are, in
the end, robbing ourselves. We are robbing
ourselves of their strength, attachment, respect,
and protection in the hour of need. It is quite
right to inclose all land by the cultivation of
which the aggregate produce of the country, can
be increased, but it is a shortsighted saving to
forbid the " productive classes," as they have been
termed, the little enjoyment in the way of free-
dom and recreation which are necessary to their
health and contentment. It is wrong, in a word,
to make them animals, not men. This nature
bade not; this (kin blesses not; this humanity
for no long time can endure without sensible
deterioration. Give the i4bouring poor good school
training ; improve their dwellings ; foster their
loft Of home with all the domestic affections ;
stitdv to gratify them by providing them with
sober and healthful means of amusement, and you
will soon see the Queen's wish accomplished in
6` the happiness of a loyal and contented people."

lik.