The Express.
London, England, 1848-07-20 00:00:00

SOLICITATION OF ALMS BY LETTER.

SIR,—On perusing the letter in yesterday's paper
on the above subject, communicated by your correspondent
" Vigil," I cannot resit the opportunity of exposing so de-
ceiving a system. " Vigil " does not name the parties, but
they reside in Lincolnshire, and refer to a reverend gentle-
man in Seymour street, Portman-square. I called as re-
ferred, requesting some account of this lady and her rev.
husband, but have heard nothing in their favour. I find
from additional inquiries that the wife drives her carriage
and lives in such comfort, that any gift would be conveyed to
every undeserving family. I could add more, but I hope this
will be sufficient for the public. I enclose my address.—
VERlTAB.—Chester, July 18.
Sir,--The letter of Vigil," which appeared in your paper
of today, is one for which thanks are slue. The clergy have
hitherto been great beggars for others; it is a pity they should
ever become such for themselves. This would soon destroy
their influence and usefulness. Attention should, therefore,
be drawn to any case in which a clergyman sends begging
letters about in his own behalf. Nothing but extreme Ise.
cesaity " should he allowed to excuse his doing this in the
first instance, and the moment the necessity ceases he should
cease to send them. I trust that this will be the result of
" " communication in the present instance. But I
take up my pen, not merely to express this hope, but to de •
fend the clergy and laity of the county to which the person
alluded to by " Vigil " belongs. It must seem strange that
they have not taken upon themselves the task of alleviating
the distress which that person (or rather his wife, who writes
all the letters) somewhat 'lush riously describes. " Vigil "
says: "Surely there must be amongst the neighbour-
ing clergy and gentry sufficient wealth and vod feeling to
have prevented the necesity of extending the appeal beyond
the c unty, or at least the diocese." Allow me, in defence
of those whose character is here involved, to soy, that they
have never been applied to. The clergyman who so strongly de-
scribes his distress to ',rangers, has not made it known at all
to them. The reason may be easily conjectured—if he had
done so, the case is not one in which they would have felt
themselves justified in diverting their charity from other ob.
jects and devoting it to him. Assuring you that this is the
general feeling in these parts,* I am, dx.—Utvasze.--
July 18, 1848.

• This correspondent, in a pyrirate oommanication, dates from •
vicarage in the prebendary of l.insoln.

WORKMEN AND THEIR EMPLOYERS.
The principle of the communists makes no allow-
ance for competition increasing the fund to be divided among
the competitors. It arises from precisely the same miscal-
culation that they propose to divide a fund among their
workers, after having taken means to prevent the fund itself
from coming into existence. They would abolish competi-
tion, and would then divide equally funds for the produc-
tion of which competition is as necessary as the sun to vege-
tation. If men who were not paid according to what they
produced, worked as well as those who were the world would
never have heard of the horrors of slavery. The lash sup-
plies but imperfictly the place of remuneration. Men
tyrannical enough to withhold the inducements of fair re-
ward have at the same time felt themselves strong enough
to apply the impulse of punishment, and hence since the
weak first succumbed to the strong, even to the pre-
sent day, hes the cry of the slave ascended to
heaven. It is not quite correct to say that only the
simplest manual drudgery is capable of being accomplished
by slave labour. There were artisans and copiers of manu-
scripts among the slaves of Greece and Rome, and in the
law-suit which Demosthenes held about his heritage he
claimed a property in 32 sword-cutlers and 20 cabinet-
makers. Thus there are precedents for attempting to apply
coercion to tr,e higher classes of producers. That it would
bear any considerable proportien to the effectiveness of com-
petition is not to be believed ; but still it is the only subeti
Lute which the communists can have recounte to, when th,
have set their men down to work, with the bargain that each
is to do his best; and all are to be paid alike. It is curious to
observe that, with this alternative full in view, something like
communism was devised, at the beginning of last century, by
the patriotic Fletcher of Ssltoun. fie saw so much want and
misery among the poorer classes around him, that in bin
benevolence he formed a plan for giving every individual a
right to subsistence. To bring the fund for this subsistence
into existence, however, he found that they must work ;
and in his simplicity, having heard nothing of glory and
fraternity, he could devise no other means of accomplishing
hie end but compulsion. Hence he proposed that the land-
owners and other men of considerable income should each be
bound to hold so many of the surplus population as slaves,
from whom, on the one hand, they were entitled to extract
work, and to whom, on the other, they were bound to im-
part subsistence.
If ever there was a case where other impulses were likely
to supply the place of pecuniary remuneration, it was that
of the tailors of Paris assembled in the Hotel Clichy. There
they were, 1,500 men, selected to prove the advantages of the
communist system, in making 25,000 suits for the national
guards. Their work was the glorious one of covering with
the honoured uniform of France the sworn defenders of the
republic. The world was looking on to see the first great
successful effort of communism. The government gave signal
advantages to the undertaking, allowing a liberal price for
the dresses, and giving each max 2f. a day as subsistence
money. It is wonderful that under such factitious im-
pulses the experiment did not succeed. It may be fairly
said that in this country a set of men thus laying
themselves out to prove a great principle would have
developed enough of steadiness and continued ardour to have
made the trial successful. If the Parisians had been fighting
Or - the impulse might have been effective ; but