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London, England, 1851-11-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4.

1, Nor era in the political development of Eng-
land is appr.x*ching. What extent of change Lord
Jun RessEers measure proposes to accomplish is
as vet unknown; but this much is certain from the
law which regulates our political progress, that the
mercantile and middle classes are destined to exer-
cise an ever-increasing influence over the govern-
meat of t'►is country, to have a larger and more
direct share in its administration, and to furnish
more immediately the motives and principles which
will direct the course of our public affairs. Now,
power involves responsibility. Influence and duty
are correlative ; their union by the laws of nature
and of politics is indissoluble. If • new order of
men is summoned to take a part in the government
of the empire, the nation is entitled to require them
to qualify themselves by every resource of self-
discipline and improvement within their reach for
the siceewful discharge of their high calling. Un-
fortunately, however, this aspect of the question
attracts far less attention than the other.

Promotion in the state is steadily and energeti-
cally gained by increase of wealth, and social im-
portance by political knowledge and organisation.
'There is no lack of seal and vigour in first acquiring
those means, and then employing them for the
attainment of their legitimate ends. But whether
Nuereso implies aptitude to rule, or, rather, whether
it dot s not impose self-cultivation as a public duty.
is a question which rarely meets with the considera-
tion it deserves. It is enough that the entrance to
farhumentary office has been won. To enjoy the
ruits of iictory, to govern according to their plea-
sure and their ability, is all that the conquerors think
they need trouble themselves about. But this is fur
trues being the whole truth. Ambition, interest, the
desire of self-government —a desire so right morally
and b/J beneficial in its results—plunge men into the
contert for the acquisition of political power ; but
when they have attained their wishes, and have be-
come the real rulers of the nation, it deeply concerns
the whole people that they should be as good rulers
as possilele, and should Fewness the statesmanship,
knowledge, and skill, necessary for securing the
happineb. and promperitv of the community.
The importance of elevating and refining those
who may have the power of wielding some day an
elfectite influence on the fortunes of thee country, is
begi iiii ing to be acknowledged and acted upon in re-
elect of the lowest classes. it is not merely the
prompting, of humanity or of generous sympathy
whet& have ulone directed so much thought, and
ntinodated so many efforts, to their improvement. A
dim feeling has unconseiesusly overspread the public
mind. that the future probably belongs, in no small
degree, to democracy; that with the advance of
civilisation there will mow also a more general par-
ticipation fur all in the office of government; and
that. to be safe and prosperous, society must in time
train the minds and mould the characters of its future
masters. In America this sentiment has taken deep
root : end in 110 .sautes are such laborious pains
taken to educate the lowest classes of citizens. In
Enghnd the National and the British and Foreign
School Societies, the Educational Committee of
l'ricy Council, and, above all, the universal discus-
sion of the gnat problem of primary instruction, at-
test the energetic action of a similar conviction.
lint whilst the intellectual condition of those whose
reign. if it be destined ever to arrive, is still distant,
swipes so in lull attention, the educational culture
of the middle, mid even the higher classics, has been
comperatinde the subject of much less scientific exa-
mination. Our higher education has been long in
bondage to the universities; it has followed the course
of those central ladies, partaking of their advantages
mid their defects in equal measure. But griev-
OUI4 aS are the shortcomings of our academical sys-
tem, it cannot lie denied that a refined, enlarged,
and truly liberal education is obtained by
un inionsiactuble number of Englishmen ; and our
parliannatary &bates exhibit accomplishments infe-
ror to none in the world. No field displays so con-
spicuously us parliument the strength and power of
a good education. just as there is no field in which
the moral and intellectual cultivation of man is of
such ;towns• value to 'society. Fur the sake, there-
fore. of all the gnat interests intrusted to the care of
the legislature, it is of the utmost importance that
the forthcoming generations of statesmen, be they
who they may, should be braced and fitted by the
highest mental training to sustain the heavy load of
duty which will devuhe upon them. Who but a
madman, in private life, would seek the aid of a
lawver. a physician, or an artisan, that had not by
study and per:wine rendered himself master of his
prof-.ion' And an tin qualifications of the man
whose opinions dominate the whole of social life
of less moment? Is less cure to be exercised in
his erve to ascertain that he has learnt the business
of his calling, then would be exercised in the case of
the meanest emulative?
The history of our reformed parliament will furnish
ample instruction on this vital matter to those who
arc willing to accept it. The Reform Bill enriched
the legislature with many men of practical experi-
ence and know Ittlue in their respective vocations;
the several departments of our national life have
been mare adequately repreiented than before by
members who understand the nature and thli
varied istereitn of the professions to which their
lives have been devoted ; and an incalculable im-
provement in our legislation has been the result.
The empty and conceited shallowness which once
weighed so heavily on the vitals of the country has
teen driven off the field ; and men of profound prac-
tical experience are no longer doomed to approve
their wisdom only to contemptible minorities.
But the princely merchant whose sagacity makes
his ships sail in triumph over every ocean, and the
great manufacturer whose' energy and invention till
every market of the world with his produc-
tions, are nut necessarily, indeed seldom will
be. statesmen. These high qualities, which
achieve success in trade, mark the man of capacity,
mid render him an invaluable acquisition to virile- I
went : hut they do not, without special discipline and
study, give him that range of thought, depth of phl-
lostithy. and ripeness of knowledge, which character-
ise a truly educated statesman. It concerns no class
more intimately than the commercial itself to recog-
nise this truth. Let it not be met with a sneer of
contempt for the statesmanship which has hitherto
Item displayed in England. Many a man supposed
that the Reform Bill would transfer power into new
and more capable hands Set has signally disap-
pinted this expectation. That revolution has brought 1
forward sonic very able and very distinguished poli-
ticians. but they have been few, whilst the reins of
power have remained in the hands of the old
race. To interpret this phenomenon as the consequence
of accident or long-formed conuexion, or official
experience only. would be to fall into a very positive
orros. he lost two causes have doubtless had some
effect; but no one who has watched the proceedings
of parliament can doubt that, ns a whole, the new
men are not vet as a body qualified by education to
assume the direction of public affairs. And yet what
they are capable of, and what education can do for
them. two of the most eminent statesmen of our ge-
neration conspicuously attest. Sir R. l'Est. and Mr
GLW+TO were Moth offshoots from the stock of
commerce; but both earned the highest honours in
literature which the University of Oxford can bestow.
They arc a warning and an encouragement to the
trailing classes of England. England has produced
few more accomplished statesmen : few men of wider
sympathies. of more comprehensive knowledge. or
better qualified to deal with complicated questions
of government; and such men will always possess
101 easy superiority over purely practical men, how-
ever sound and deep their knowledge of their several
professions. The positions they have held in
public life, prove that, in this free country,
men of such ability and attainments can-
not be barred out from the highest offices
in the state; but they prove also that the indispen-
sable condition of this eminence is the personal ex-
cellence and superior cultivation of the men them-
selves.

Our object in making these remarks has beau to
awaken in the commercial orders, Whose influence
the of affairs is daily strengthening, alibi=
oft cities entailed upon them by these bright
prospects—to point outeto them the qualifications re-
quired of them, both fottheir own success and their
country's welfare ; to draw their attention to the de-
ficiencies of the education they now obtain • and to
suggest—which we hope to do more fully on a
future occasion—such remedies as in our judgment
seem best calculated to meet the exigencies of the
case.

AlsoNG the many important questions which will
conic under consideration in the next session of par-
liament, the law of settlement and removal holds a
chief place. The Poor-law Board having terminated
their inquiries, and the results of those inquiries
being now before the public, it only remains for
parliament to decide what use to make of them. If
the authority of the board is of the slightest
vnluc—
if the opinions of their assistant commissioners and
inspectors deserve the least respect—if any regard, in
fine, is due to the unanimous voice of the boards of
guardians which have been consulted on the matter,
each in its own locality, the law of settlement and
removal cannot be tolerated any longer. After a
continuous experience of its operation under every
variety of circumstances and legislative modifications
during one hundred and ninety years, it is confessed
at last to have been from the very outset a dead
failure. Not one of the objects for which it was, in
1662, called into existence has been realised. Not
one of the supposed amendments, which at subse-
quent times it received at the hands of the legis-
lature has hitherto had asy other effect save
that of aggravating the precise mischief it was
designed to prevent. Not one of the manifold cruel-
ties and injustices which the working classes have
suffered, and which were the direct and even the
avowed consequences of that law, have as yet been
compensated to the other classes of the community,
save by disadvantage and loss to all, and more espe-
cially to those for whose fancied benefit the wrong
was committed. It is the common interest of em-
ployers and employed, of rate-pacers and paupers, of
resident and non-resident poor, and of their respec-
tive parishes, that this law of remarol—or, as it is
vulgarly but most untruly and absurdly called, of
settlement and removal—should be at once and for
ever repealed. Upon what conditions that repeal
should take place, is a question upon which much
difference of opinion exists, and upon which we
shall upon a future occasion submit some ob-
servations. But the feeling in favour of a repeal,
in some shape, is, as we have said, unanimous
amongst all those who have studied it most,
and been most conversant with its administration.
We might even say that there exists nowhere an
opinion to the contrary. The few expressions of an
adverse tendency are clearly shown in the admirable
report of Mr. COODE, to the Poor I.aw Board, just
published,' to have no direct reference to the ques-
tion itself, or to have been founded upon assumptions
of fact quite foreign to it ; or lastly, howsoever erro-
neously or inartificially worded, to have been in-
tended, not by any means in opposition to the pro-
posed change, but rather as illustrations of the mis-
chiefs for which it alone is the appropriate remedy.
We may take it,therefivre, for granted, that so far as
popular feeling is concerned in the question, "the
law of settlement and removal" touches its last hour.
It is, as we have said, a great mistake to call it a
lower settlement at all. It is purely and absolutely
a law of removal. The office of a real law of settle-
ment, according to Mr. t'ofaw., is "the maintenance
of peace and good order, by determining the lawful
place of residence for every man." Such a law of
settlement has long since ceased to be known here,
even by tradition, but it flourished here down to the
middle of the PLANTAGENET period, under the names
of Bohr and Franipiedge. That "honourable"
law, as Mr. Coons: most justly styles it, is now as
obsolete as the purposes it was meant to serve.
'Plies: purposes were to provide a legal domicile for
errry man. to ascertain the local relations, duties, and
rights of rarh and all, withoat distinction of persons,
to secure the peace and progress of the com-
munity and the protection of every one of
its members, and to bind the lord of the
soil equally with the serf who tilled it.
We quite agree with Mr. .Cocior. in thinking
that if these be the true ends and objects of a law
of settlement, that honourable name is a misnomer
when applied to the existing acts of parliament for
the removal of paupers to the parishes of their birth.
The labourer or working-man suffers very materially
from his liability to removal, and derives no advan-
tage from his statutory "settlement." It is a very
great mistake to suppose that this so-called settle-
ment confers the title he has to receive relief, in the
event of his becoming a pauper. "The law," says
Mr. Coolie., " is indisputable that a destitute person,
whether parishioner or stranger, settled or unsettled,
native or foreigner, is equally to be relieved." The
advantage, therefore, of the statutory " settlement"
is either illusory altogether (and that it is so, we
shall hereafter take occasion to demonstrate), or it
exists only for the behoof of the renwring parish.
Nor is it any answer to say that the statutes enable
the pauper, if he likes, to claim the benefit of any
wttlement he may have acquired in the place of his
settlement by birth. In the first place, it is not
true that he is so enabled by any statute ; it was his
right, if no statute had passed, to labour where he
, pleased, and seek relief wherever he might be law-
fully in need of it ; and any alteration, therefore,
which was made by statute with regard to that
right, has been to restrain, and not to extend it.
In the next place—but, in the next place,
the pauper never does resort to his acquired settle-
nient, except in his own self-defence, and against
what ? Against that very law of removal which,
according to the vulgar but inaccurate acceptation,
aires him that settlement! There is no doubt that,
if the question be put to any man having such an ac-
quired settlement, whether he would like to part
with it ? his answer, in the present state of the law,
will be "No!" But it is at least equally clear that
the total repeal of the law of removal will find in
I him a cheerful defender, although he knows that all
settlements, whether of birth or of acquisition, will
fall with it.

In other words the repeal of settlement as limited
and defined by the poor law acts means simply the
repeal of the liability to removal. In the place of
his present privilege of access to one wish it will
restore to the poor man his ancient freedom in every
one of the ism:, parishes in England and Wales,
whether as regards the right of locomotion or of
employment or of habitation. The present law gives
him no settlement, but in la 534 cases out of the
ta,cgm refuses it. In one solitary parish he is a
citizen ; in all the rest an alien. Hence, as Mr.
Count very justly argues, the loss of his present
settlement involved in the absolute abrogation of the
law of removal will be to him " the gain of a great
immunity, that I;fstayiny wh,rerer he will."
But the interests of the working class are, here as
elsewhere, inseparably connected with those of every
other class in the community, and of society at
large. If the injustice to the labourer of restricting
him from carrying his enterprise to the best mar-
-1 ket, and the cruelty of those invasions of his hearth
and these dispersions of his little circle which are
unavoidably incident to the due enforcement of the
existing statute, and the impolicy of a law which thus
constitutes the million in a state of chronic hostility
to the few, were less apparent—even then, and
in the merest interest of property and economic
government. the repeal of this act of CHARLES
would be not the less desirable. Worthy in every
respect of the reign to which we have assigned it,
hastily introduced upon false pretences and against
the liberties of 4.1530,001) of Englishmen, carried by
a then overwhelming parochial Interest and without '
disew.don, and never defended but by the supposed
advocates of that interest, the law of removal has
always operated adversely to every other, and is now
found. by a just retaliation, to have reacted fatally ,
upon the interest which it was meant to gratify. It
has impeded trade, production, and agriculture, and
extinguished industry and independence. It has
caused population to stagnate in districts unprogres-
sive. declining, and impoverished, and denied to
happier districts an honest and respectable popu-
lation. suited to their enterprise and resources.
, It has encouraged the lightly taxed and wealthy
landlord of the close parish," to restrain and pro-
, ' hibit the erection of habitations for his own people,
. and even to destroy such as were already in exist-
; enee. in order to throw on the overtaxed " open
parish" the future burthen of supporting them when

• &von of Gcorge Coale, Eq., to the Prof Law Baud, on the
Law of Settlevaect and Memo•.! of as Poor; beinz a tanker &van,
ha" doe. Is3l.

changeable ; end it be accumulated the vagrant and
nnentfied population thus created, in overcrowded,
ifilttry, and pestilential places, the refuge of wretched-
ness, disease and crime. It has stimulated pau-
perism In every part of the land. It has called
into existence the largest amount of litigation
and consecrent expenditure ever witnessed in any
nation during the same space of time, by isolating
parish from parish,. and by never benefiting one a ith-
I out corresponding injury to another, and thus oonsti-
' toting between them what has been correctly termed
• war of interparochial interests. And, in fine,
whilst every attempt at partial amendment has
failed to produce the slightest relief, and has some-
times been productive of even greater mischiefs, the
total excision of entire heads of this most obnoxious
law hes never been attempted without some benefit,
although " frustrated of some of its good effects," says
Mr. COODE, " by the remaining portions of the law
of removal." 'the only course therefore consistent
with the greatness of the mischief and the exigency
of the case,istorepeal the law. Any ehangeshort of its
entire abolition must necessarily prove a failure.
Those who prefer the modification to the abrogation
of any law, when under revision of the legislature,
must be prepared to show that there are advantages
to be derived from its retention. In this ease there
are no advantages, but on the contrary evils the
most pernicious to be apprehended from its con-
tinuance in any shape. It e have pointed out the
general nature of those evils, and we shall seize an
early opportunity to examine them more in detail,
and to test them by the light of statistics.

• FRANCE.

PARIS, MONDAT ETINING.
The President read his message to-day to the mi-
nisters at the Elysee. The Prefect of the Seine, the
l'refeet of Police, General Nlagnan, sad two or three
persons of political standing were present. It is
said that the message is likely to be laid to-morrow
upon the table of the Assembly, and that a copy will
be sent to the var:ous foreign ministers.
A new parliamentary club will be formed for the
support of the government on independent principles.
General St. Arnaud's order of the day continues
to be the object of severe comment on the part
of the parliamentary organs. The .Ilessager brings
the principles of the minister of war to a severe
test. On Aug. 6, 1840, M. Aladenize, lieutenant of
tho 42nd, presented himself at a post in the Rue
d'Alton, at Boulogne, guarded by soldiers of the
42nd, under the orders of Serjeant Morange, and
commanded the soldiers tolfollow M. Louis Bonaparte,
who had just ascended the throne of his uncle. Ac-
-cording to the principles of M.de St. Arnaud, Sergeant
.Nlorange and the soldiers of the 42nd ought to hale
followed Lieut. Aladenize, of the 42nd, because ‘. res-
ponsibility is not shared, and stops at the officer who
gives the order, which the soldier has only to obey',
and execute." General St. Arnaud's omission to in-
troduce into either his order of the day, or his circu-
lar to the generals of territorial divisions, any
mention of the obedience due to the laws, seems to be
a decided deviation, and a highly censurable one, from
military traditions. The inculcation of the doctrine
of passive obedience unaccompanied by any allusion to
the only principle which can justify the transforma-
tion of a human being into a brute machine, is a bad
precedent and discreditable error. If out of a servile
I feeling to the humour of Louis Napoleon a salutary
' usage of essential significance is to be suppressed by
a member of the cabinet, the system of appointing
obscure adherents as ministers will become us
'odious as it is now obnoxious to ridicule.
General Magnan took care not to incur so serious a
blame. Appointed in July to the command-in-
chief of the army of Paris, in his first order of the
day he made a pointed allusion to the necessity of
maintaining the obedience due to the laws.
The Assenthlje Nationale says:

Persons well informed en the subject affirm, that inter-
pellations will be made from the tribune on the subject of
the order of the day of the new Minister of War. These
interpcllations are to bear principally on tho following
phrases Under arms military rule is the only
law." "The responsibility which constitutes military force
and authority is not divided ; it belongs to the chief
from whom the order emanates, and it covers obedience
and execution." It will be formally demanded that these
words shall be effaced from the order of the day addressed
to the army, and if the explanations of the minister should
not tend to remove from it the disastrous signification, it is
thought that the interpellation may assume a very serious
character. It would, in fact, be impossible to allow such •
theory to exist iu the armed force ; it will be full of danger
for the future to allow the will of a chief to be placed above
all the powers and above the law. Placed on the order of
the day of the army by a minister of personal policy, would
not such a theory assume the character of an attenloCl

An arrest of considerable importance has been cf-
fezted in relation to the riots of the Cher and
Nievre. The Viscount de Dreuille, a young
legitimist, was arrested on Saturday, in his
yacht, at Honflcur, and conveyed to Paris. Two
country mansions belonging to this family, one in
the Nivernais, and the other in Burgundy, have been
searched, and a quantity of ammunition and 16 bullet
moulds were found. M. de Dreuille only last year suc-
ceeded to an income of 4,000/. per ann. Ibiring the
time of the provisional government he is said to have
frequented democratic clubs, but since his accession
of fortune it has always been thought that he had
resumed his place in the ranks of the most aristocratic
legitimists. On his arrival in custody at his resi-
dence in the Rue Richer, he begged to see the
Minister of the Interior, before being conducted to
prison at Bourges.
M. David has arrived in Paris, and is installed as
Minister of Justice. Hence M. Giraud ceases to
hold ml interim that post in the new cabinet.
Yesterday M. Turgot presented to the President
the members of the international sanitary confer-
ences. M. David, chairman of the conferences, an-
nounced that the report of their labours would be
ready in a month or six weeks.
Among the most important bills which will come
before the assembly, on the renewal of its labours,
are the Lyons and Avignon Railway Bill, the Budget
of Expenses of lea 2, and the Municipal Bill.
The resignation of M. Lacoste, prefect of Lyons, is
bailed with much satisfaction by the anti-Bona-
wtists. M. Lacoste no sooner observed the war
declared by the Constitution/H./ against the law of
May 31, than he openly declared that he would
resign if that policy were adopted by the govern-
ment. You are aware that a bill was passed last
session for extending the police powers of the prefect
of the Rhone over districts in the neighbourhood of
Lyons, and assimilating his position to that of the
prefect of police at Paris. Phis post is therefore
highly important. The prefect appointed in M. La-
coste s place, is M. de Vincent, late prefect of the
Seine-et-Marne, who was talked of for some days as
likely to succeed M. earlier.
Turgot, though scarcely as yet well installed in
office, has liven occupying himself with the question
of renewing the commercial treaty between France
and Belgium, the expiration of which is near at hand.
We understand that negotiations are about to be im-
mediately- opened on the subject.
Ono of the first steps of M. Thorignv has been to
save a host of sub-prefects from being the victims of
a set of decrees which M. Leon Faucher signed for
their ejection during the last days of his brief au-
thority. The new Minister of the Interior has
maintained the trees marked for cutting down in
their places.
A deputation of the 2nd Legion of the National
Guards has waited upon M. earlier, the late Perfect
of Police, to invite him to come forward at the proxi- j
mate election as a candidate for the coloncley of the !
legion, recently vacated by General Itapatel.
The democrats exclaim reasonably against the ille-
gality of trying the prisoners taken for being con- ,
cerned in the riots of the Cher and Nievre by court-
martial, which mode of jurisdiction can only be applied
by giving a retroactive virtue to the decree declaring
those two departments in a state of siege.
The citizen Blanqui complains that all his corres-
pondence
is regularly seized at the Lille post-office.
M. de la Guerrontuere has published to-day his
portrait of the Count de Chambord, which was, as it
now appears with excellent judgment, prohibited by
M. de Lamartine from appearing in the republican
Pays. This portrait, as it is called, is daubed with
the grossest flattery, and is quite sufficient to turn
the stomach of any reader who has a common sense
of human dignity,. not to talk of republican feeling.
If after a more abject grovelling at the feet of the
representative of legitimacy, M. de la Gueronnire be
still permitted by M. de Lamartine to sign republican
articles in the Pays, not only will the character
of that journal itself suffer, but M. de Lamartioo
himself must expose himself to the suspicion of being
a legitimist, a republican in disguise. In fact, my only
reason for alluding to the performance of M. do 1-a.