The Express.
London, England, 1849-10-24 00:00:00

THE ATTEMPTED MURDER AT MAN.

John Barnsley, apprehended on Sunday, the 16th
inst., for attempting to murder his wife,;l7 cutting her throat,
was again brought before the magistrate', on Monday, for
eneneatioa. Ann Barnsley, the wife, was sufficiently re-
emend to give her evidence, sad was brought (min the
Halal Manchester Infirmary for that purpose, under the
era of cue of the assistant eargeona She was in en ex-
eseflagly weak and exhausted 001114i0011, sad, though an-
eammodated with a chair, was at times unable to proceed
for ISM sisrats with her evidenee, from feebleness and
emeden. M. Mande, the chairman of the bench of magis
erase, et cue time suggested the further adjournment of the
ear for her evidrnee, but the surgeon advised that it had
bettor be taken at once.
111111Isiortunate woman's statement was that she sad
lee Instead and child lived is a house in Rowe-street, Clay-
them Her husband is a plater to boiler makers, but
having been oat of work many months they were reduced to
gram poverty. On Sunday. the 16th instant, she sad her
husband (the prisoner) had taken dinner sad tea together
very ecteatortably, but the prisoner had had some drink, and
when she suggested, between five sad adz o'clock, that as
none of them had a change of linen (having pledged all bat
what was Go their backs for food), he should take his shirt
off that she might wish it, he became greatly excited,
seized hold of a table knife sad stabbed her at the
ride of her neck. Tee knife was not very sharp,
and the point glanced downwards towards the throat, indict-
ing only a flesh wound. They were up stain at the time,
and alter exclaiming " Oh, Lord, have mercy upon me ! "
she made all the haste the could down stairs. On her
reaching the room below she sank exhausted and faint mum
the floor, when the primmer, who had followed her down,
placed one of hie knees upon her chest, and with another
knife— a clasp knife which he usually carried in his pocket,
and widish is pointed semabing like a poignard—made seve-
ral stabs and cuts at her throat. He inflicted three stabs or
cuts on her neck besides the previous one, and
would have inflicted more serious wounds, but she
placed her hand in the way, and she believed he did not at
the time perceive that her hand received sae of the most se-
vere of these gashes. In one phase the knife had nearly
penetrated through her hand. She ogled on him several
times to spare her life for their child's sake. He dies
returned up stairs, and she heard him say as he went up :
" Tkojeb's dose now." She had 410814 her eyes as=
but, hearing huts coming down stairs again, she se
the remaining strength she had, reeelleming then wee a drop
latch to the stains.' door, and succeeded in letting it
slip down before the prisoner could get to her. He was thee
prevented from attacking her again. She then heard same
neighbours at the back door, gamed, as they told her after
wards, by her cries, and she succeeded in finding her way to
the door sad in opening it. She was removed to the house
next door, where a surgeon dressed her wounds, and she
was then removed to the Royal Infirmary.
A surgeon, who was called as the next witness, said he
bad examined the wounds upon Asa Barnsley's nosh sod
throat. The meat serious one was an insides which had
separated the principal Runk of the neck, and which, had h
extended a little:either, would have severed also the jugular
vein.
The prisoner, in defence, stated that he was drunk at the
time, and did aot know what he eras doing.
The magistrates committed him to Hirkdale prison hr
trial at the next Liverpool swims.

SOIREE OF THE LANCASHIRE
SCHOOL ASSOCIATION.

PUBLIC

The first monthly soiree of the Lancashire Public I,
School Arecietion, for the present season, was held on
Thursday empaisg, et the roosts of the assicciation, Cross.
street, Maaelester. A. Henry, M.P., presided.
The CHAIRMAN anaossced that the executive com-
mittee lad determined to hold a gnat mistime in the Free-
trade Hall, early in December, to which several distil'.
I visited ladividnals and menthe's of parliament had bees
incited to attecuL Kr. W. J. Fox, 3I .P., had aheady signi-
fied his lateen's to be present ; sad so doubt many other
gentlsaasa of inflame would by their proems promote the
cause of this association, which appeared to Ida (the chair-
man) to be daily growing in patina estimation.
Mr. P. Earn USSR, the secretary, read the Wowing

Mu :
tomeving phllusepher has compered ea uneducated people
in which eTtry man should have his right hand lamed.
What a sad thing it would be, thinks this philosopher, to
travel through a country where all the inhabitaats had their
211114 ands lamed • incapable of working—wen so it is, he
with an nnichicatere people, a people that (swot read
and write. There is mach aptness in this comparison of the
living philosopher's; but would there not haw been more if
he had compared an uneducated wade to one in which
every man should be deal and dumb. The man who cannot
rum what is his sense of hearing worth ? The menwanica-
lions of business, the gossip of this household, the clink of
guinea, and the whir of spindles he ma hear; but to the
high and highest voices which God has fashioned to
edify him and all men, he is deaf. The man who can-
not write, beyond some little temporary circle, he is
dumb. While he who can read has an eartnuapet that
conveys to him the uttered thought of the remotest
past and distaste., he who can writs has • speak-
ing-trumpet that tarries his messages over all the con-
detente, and through the loudest storm of the ever-noisy sea
of time. This is true indeed of all ages, in which the art of
writing has been practised ; but of no age is it so widely true
es eif ours. A cursory glance at the modes by which the
British people have been spiritually instructed and delighted
fa pmt seas, will perhaps make the matter clearer for us.
all written popular literature, there has existed in
every soundly, eves In inarticulate Ragland, en oral popular
literature aeon". In the rudest sges, the tragic and pathetic
sad notable incidents in which human life everywhere and
every when abounds, moved meriting men of
.gesius to
embody them in simple song. Chevy Chase, and the
" agitation " which Robin Hood conducted " under the
greenwood tree," have had their laureates not 1111 than
Waterloo and the anti-corn-law movement. Transmitted
from the lips of parent to the lips of child, kept fresh and
living by beads of wandering minstrels traversing the
country, these songs were no doubt a chief element in
the cultivation of the unreadiag people—they were its
rhymed novels and biographies aadhistuirs. But as acts of
parliament began to punish the wandering minstrel for a
vagrant, song died out smogs the rural populations ; and
last century the Pereies and Kitson' with difficulty rescued
some few fragments of what had owe been a whole world
of mud". And now remark what even in this department of
gfor
Wile the Ithremadniarryanandtilrquriartill were collecting collemct.in
ancient reliques and the like, a Scottish ploughboy, with the
I fiery and susceptive heart of en old minstrel in him, was
driving his team afield. Had the lot of Robert Burns bees
east in an mareadiag and unwriting age, the dumb plough-
boy might have died • dumb ploughman ; his melody wen
have to Mersin upon the dry grimed, refreshing it but
I disappearing for ever. But Robert had been taught both to
read and wnte, and • book or two ley in his pocket as heehaw
his team &field; so instead of an anonymous minstrel Mu
one of the cattle on a thousand hills, he became a ass
waiter for Britain and the world. And already, in • slash
generation, who Anglo-Saxons meet? en the banks if
the Mississippi er the Irwell, among the Himalayas, or beside
the Australian *genes, his songs an heard ; to perish only
with the human soul, of which they celebrate the emotions.
Next, in order of time, as a favoured helper in the culture of
the people, soma the drama—a kind of composition whisk
presupposes reading and writing in its neaten, but by no
ma'am' In its esjoyen. In order to get a hearing for his
I some, the minstrel had to pious the ears of his rude waken
with a mesical accompaniment of voice or fiddle ;'ad se the
dramatist had to please the eyes of his rude speedsters with
scenery and costume, and the pretended actual preemies it
the persons whose doings and sufferings he communicated its
dialogue. It is true that Shakespeare and his brethren were
patronised by reading royalty sad nobility; but his
mainstay was the weeding multitude ; Maw the
boldness with which he took kis plots hem em-
rent contemporazy. works. The scholar might shaky
English history in Hollinshed—the educated man
the world could enjoy the pages of Boomed°. Bat
to Skullcaps's'. unnewing audiences these were ell enkaowa.
In • wider way than the old miostrel had hum, the dram.
tilt was now • novelist, historian, mad blegewher he the
people. Very soon, too, witness Ben halm ;he Weans its
moralist and name elm. Skip a century or so from the
death of Shakspere and Ben Jenson, and what a difference
do we find ? Obscenity struts on the stage ; profligacy ap-
plauds from the pit. It is not from wooden boards toe few,
but on printed paper to the many, that the man of genius
now gives instruction and delight. The satirists and moral-
ists of the eighteenth century are not dramatists. but Addi-
eons and Steele., with their gay Spectators and Tatters
P..pes with their polished rhymes, Johnson. with their
stately Ramblers and Idlers. In the hands of the
FieUlege and Suellen', the Richardson' and Sterne',
the English novel arises, and British history in those of the
Humes, and Robertson', and Goldsmiths. Coming nearer to
our own time, we find the actor a more important person
than the dramatist, and writing for the stage abandoned to
trifling dilettantism. William Shakspere found in English
history matter cap Age of yielding wino pleasure; he works
it up into an historical play, and carries off the applause of •
Globe Theatre audience. Walter Stott finds in European
history similar matter ; but not into an historical play, into
an historical novel does he work tt ; and for audience, even
in his lifetime, he has a whole reading Europe, and a colossal
fortune for his profits. So many Englishmen can now read,
that the man of talent finds a far surer and wider audience
through the press than through the stage, and is at the
same time freed from so many shackles which the
latter imposed on him. That great engine of popular I
culture, the theatre, has been in the wane of centuries '
degraded into what we see it to be. He who wishes the beet
instruction or delight that his contemporaries can afford
him must look for it now in printed books. It is curious
to observe the means by which, mainly, this change has
hem produced. Just alter that glorious flowering of the
drama " which so did take Miss and our James," Peniten-
tial burst forth indignant, finally triumphant, bade the
theatre manager 'hut up shop, and his establishment has
sever yet recovered the blow. You might have been tempted
to say—Here is • positive injury ; one attractive means of
educating the people is abolished. But sue what puritanism
did for the education of the people in a merely mechanical
way. It is seveateentle-century puritanism, and eighteenth-
century methodism, that more than any other influences have
bestowed on the English people what reeding power they
have. Before pantomime there was nothing in the English
church (whatever else of good it might contain) to make the
English • reading people. Provision was made for the read-
ing of the Bible to the ropier, not by the people._ Puritan-
ism started up, saying, ' Interpret the word of God for your-
selves—this prieethood's interpretation aft is worth nothing."
What an educating influence was this! All serious men
now set their children to learn to read, that they
might read the Bible. The mac who could read the Bible
could read other books; hence, in great part, our present
multitude of readers. So true is it, as even the political
economist may understand : that religion, of one kind or
another, is the parent of all good things on this earth;
small as well as great. Not less important was the change
which, in the matter of reading and writing also, the great
revolt of Puritanism has introduced into our political pro.
cedars. The king and his parliament having both finally
quarreled, and resolved on settling that quarrel by arms,
they both appealed to the people. Doubtless sash had its
settled and decided 'odium whim no appeal' from any
quarter could alter ; but is that salional dispute thew were
many =dependent or indifferent persons, whose support was
moat valuable. And now berms that appeal, through the
press, to peals opinion, which has oontinsed ever sines, and
whisk hems so remetkable • feature in modern polideal his-
tory. Is thuold feudaltime, the great noblemen and chweh-
men wee. ill important to snare ; as the chiefs west. so
went the meals. Bat with the growth of an independent
middle class of yeomen, traders, merchant', each member of
it ready to set en his own judgment, • conviction of the un-
derstanding was the one thing needful. Add to this the call
for new', as natural la a Was of civil war; and you hew is
the Pains revolt the origin of the newspaper press sad
political writing. In the next maturyyou find the men of
talent who canwrit* • class sweemely important. The real
political debate is carried en, net la parliament, but in the
press. JOINNWS pamphlets were ant re important than any
minister's speeshes. It is whaled ea all hands that Burke's
one book did mere then eight she bawdy England for an
attack on Frames end beg Rawhides. In the premat cen-
tury William Cobbett wrestles he a dew months with Eng-
lish grammar, gad emerges late pendia literature—tes be-
comes a power fa the state. People week of the church in
old times—how it furnished men of talent with the
means of procuring authority and influence. But for
thr man who has talent and insight now, the
areas of the press may well be an ample one for
power over the heads and hearts of his fellows is sure to'find,
exact proportion (in the long ran) to hie merit; and what
ambition could look for more ? For the gnat mass, there-
fore, of mankind, the sue sole avenue of amusement, untrue-
, time, and edification is reading ; for the man of genius, the
sae sole arena is writing. Brindle', the great engineer, his
=weeks all finished, dropped into deep melancholy in his
years, say the biographers ; be had never been taught
to read ; his mind, engineering schemes once removed out of
it, was a black vacuum, which the amts shows of things
presented in books might have perhaps ea ' ly filled, to
the exclaim of hypochondria. William hakapere's father,
it Is pretty certain, could not write ; leanly there was a free
grammar school in Stratford ; and new we have Shekapere's
works. Were it ooly for the sake of the few Shaksperee,
eel the few Windom let schools everywhere be built in
Mislead ; and the sounds of young instruction blend every-
where with the tones of labour which rise there without
elees.bia.7 te the cops of heaven."
awe followed the readieg of the essay.
Mr. OIatIPOUNTNEY proposed a vote of thanks to
Mr. _glasses for his valuable paper, and observed that be
bribes* highly gratified by the manner in which the sub-
jest led hew treated, is an historical paint of view.
Mr. Alderman HARVEY saciaded- the resolution. He
taila WWI with the meayist, that if people were universally
taught to read and writs, many men who did not st linnet
peasw the power of representing their thoughts and feelings
M With fellow-eaten, woad enlighten the world upon sub-
Sae morality, the arts, and sciences. In order, however,
to lie mach good, the morality of the people must be raised ;
gal he felt convinced that such would be the tendency of
ildemeutation, were its principles carried into effect.