The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-30 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER so, 1848.

their y.
Prodavident funds, self-supporting dispensaries, mud
all inditutims, that have a tendency to elicit the NM-
exertions of the poor and to enable them te odd
thearalmen_seem to us to deserve partial, meow
rageoleat. We have that high opinion of there,
p i
we believe it is entirely an error to suppose lisp as a
class they are willing recipients of any sort Cl amide
ante from the bands of others. Afford the indelible=
poor the opportunity of saving, and there is *My di
evidence to show that they will only too gladly pd Wei
to-day to meet the necessities of to-morrow frees thdr
own resources. The industrious man is invariably a
provident man, and he who will save well can be
trusted to spend well. It is entirely a mistake to sup-
pose, as we have sometimes heard said, that it the peer
do lave, they only Nave to squander. In the wall of
hundreds of instances of providence meow the poor
that have come within our knowledge, the remote for
saving by depositors have been about the most
remarkable and interesting of all the circumstances.
The sagacity, prudence, and long foresight which cha-
racterise the poor as a body would in a clam of greater
means ensure the success of &hundred more inausace
offices than we have already. _
There is a clam of so-called charitable institutions
for which one cannot bat express considerable
I disapprobation, together with strong suspicion,
in certain cases, of the bond Or character of
!heir objects' and management. We refer to the
institutions in what may be appropriately styled " the
guinea trader and certainly many of them are quite
black enough to merit the designation. The Goma
Trade asylums subsist upon the friends of the
poor—not, we are thankful to say, upon their Only
'heritable friends, bat upon those who want to make
a show of assisting them. "My Lady Rooky" is
the type of the class—the lady who thought that the
luxury of feeling was not so much in peered= to
the number of votes the guinea secured for her as in
proportion to the number of poor applicants ter her
proxy, and the wholesome state of mind to which
their canvass reduced them. Theme people, as lady
Bowky's felicitous depictor says, " find their` urest
excitement in having two votes to dispose o mon
fifty people." The guinea asylums afford them an
excuse for charity. They perform their Christian
duty through the medium of their annual subscrip-
lien. The collector is the almoner, the guinea is their
Uses institutions are in reality very far from being
sodded to tall themselves charitable. In effect they
are very far from being so. Too often, as it is easy
to show, they stand between the poor and public
assidance. Take the Orphan Asylums for example,
than are a dozen or more of them near London. some
in the highest °audition of financial prosperity and
architectural magnificence, others in the most miaer-
able state of decay and dilapidation. One effect of
these societies has been and is to prevent the state
from doing its duty. The orphan and the fatherless
should be the peculiar care of the state. Every other
nation recognises this principle. There is not a
reentry in Europe, except England, that has
est :nr2 han asylum supported by the state. To
make men sad goodcitizens we must educate
the •d, and the orphan child occupies the first rank
fa asseseity. Every state but our own, accordingly,
adertakee the care and training of the orphan child.
Bat in England the government turn round upon
you and my, " Oh, the benevolence of the public sup-
plies this. There are so many Orphan Asylums that
it le mmemeary ferns to fulfil this duty." Present the
rase of an fin child to the government, and you
are asked immediately, "Has he committed any
crime :ishe a thief f " Indignantly you answer,
" No." "I am very sorry for it," replies the minister •,
" if he had been a thief the state would have provided
for him, for we have excellent reformatory asylums
for juvenile offenders; but as he is unfortunately
honest, and only unfortunate, and an orphan, I can do
nothing for him! Go to the Orphan Asylums."
Doubly unfortunate, indeed, is he who goes there.
He is received by the Recretary politely, blandly. A
114—a most alarmingly pompous list—ofpatrons is
before him. It commences,FobsUy, with
eller most gras, Majesty the Quota, 1 vote,"
and ends with ""—Mr. B. B. CABBELL, 1,000 mem"—
the Importance of the patron being of course peeper►
timed to the number of the votes. The object al yew
vidt being mode known, you are invited to maim
f a sabsesiber by payment of the Oath Thin
rraielei soary formality, for you must be a soksodlar
in order to nominate your candidate. Having pail
your guinea you nominate the orphan in whoa yea
ialkisba He is placed No. 163 on a lid epee
fatherlees and motherless children, wham bolglite
and wahsppy histories are enedallp rm
below their mead ad some 25 or 30 et whom an to
be mieded by the saloribers to fill the theathiso in
the NO= at the mot half-yearly election. The a-
Widomtheyea d ow" bet mks if yoe lath
Month to get a News goaded for the
eseiste Yes have ad ; but strop in the panne
Cl year so" you go to:work earnestly. You soon
lad that you have engaged in a labour scarcely
We Herculean than a ;convex for a
Yea incur expenses which are by no means
doable for paper, printing, and postage. Tar
iis excessive. You plague all your friends
aciroroirtehelir wits to get you proxies. You call span
all sorts of people and meet with all sorts of romp I
Lions. Your heart often fails you, but still, mined et
the poor orphan, you pluck up courage and ge on.
At last comes the day of election. You go down to
some large hotel in the city, which you find placarded
on the outside sad at the staircase with bills of every
variety of colour argil( you to vote for the " Bev.
Dr. Samara's to No. 110," or, on very much
smaller paper, for " boom Soso, No. 194
on the let, oat of sixteen orphan,; fifth
end last application." You find the rooms very
crowded with poor, sorrow-stricken-looking people,
of whom a berth are widows, and who as-
sail you all together as you enter with earned
entreaties for a vote. Little Joan Joins, No. 194 on
the lid, is probably stationed at the bottom of the
room with all his kedges and sisters in a row wi
th a
view to excite your drepadon. The bland erarety,
earoded by a doses portly gentlemen, is very buoy
et the Idle, receiving guineu and
presien Yeisigt4tbose you have so laborriegsslria
fully confident that the merits
degrogilbsiag now made known, you will find,
I who the ballot clod that a great number of nn-
hewn onbecribers have also voted for your candidate.
At four o'clock the poll closes. It is now five minutes
to three. At this tier a gentleman enters the room
whose presentee mg. a sensation. It is one of the
heroes of a thousand rotes. You make bold to ask the
favour of his inflows. So do all the widows, and so
does the eldest sister of little ham loan. He replies
to you with a megnifloent air that be
never promises any one; that he madden
every case attentively on its merits, sal will sopped

the hest eau dhilisk . Tea ha esoildio* d Moist
being with pis: p dose sash d. thelsidurs : Ms dm
Mir Jou& The hopeltut•lfets4 grafted' *dee
top el the rem: 'rho Ilesepley 1,014 MA the TuOi
saner rises. Half se bese popes is sahib sosyssk
ties.
prosy At the and offrees that pew *milliewie
valor
takes a paper his. Tea baur
that be Anises it way be raeried be No. 10 es the
list. Tea tees to the amber and fled the sem of ,
Gs Rolm Ong, aged 11, no brothers or deters,
father (a autism's'a butler) died list month, maw
lives at Albert's Villa,
_lmAndMo." The happy de.
pots bad enjoyed the gratifloadon of living
=leder'. envies. Master Coal and Dr. SUOMI'S
is dl and three and twenty ethers of the oases
sort ue elected, and when the poll is declare
And the orphan yea We soadasted and JOHNJob
both very low en the poll indeed. Dr. Bmocrneel
candidate you afterwards discover waest in fa
wither way. That revered and ppudieing I
bad, on a line Sunday morning, in the height of the
mane, preached a touching sermon to his dock on the
merits of the Asylum. A doses or twenty little
children, sent the had also borne living witness
to it, by standing in the aisle and singing a character-
istio hymn beton the sermon. The collection after-1
wards realised 120 L, and for each guinea the reverend
dotter (who "lent his pulpit," u it is called, for the
oixasion) obtained a certain number of votes. These,
exercised for the very respectable child of a former I
lady's maid of Mrs. atwootn's, of course secured the 1
interesting orphan complete 11110010 L The doctor him-
self never gave a shilling to the asylum or spent one
in obtaining a vote. He had advertised it from his
pulpit : you had advertised it by printing and posting
letters, and entreating help from friends at a oat of
some 301. or 401. Both had equally served the insti-
tuticn in their way, and this was what the institution
wanted.
Let us say, sincerely, that in this picture there is
no emergent/ea. It is literally nothing more thin
whet aura every day with these asylums. The
Worm of poor stricken people whose hopes are es.
sited only tote dashed to the ground in these sew
tests are innumerable. Many a pang We hawthorns
carried to ths already tried and weeded hetet br
these orphan asylum doings. Bat tie eseleties
flourish by this means. They get their guineas by
this means. They build palaces by this means. What
do they do besides? Do they provide for the children
when they get them, anything like a proper Educa-
tion ? In most eases we believe car. Do they take
care of them when they send them out, as they do at
the tender age of 14 or 15, upon the wide world ? Al
London clergyman has stated publicly (we do not
know en what authority, but we attach weight to hie
statement) that there are proofs that the majority of
young women who leave these institutions turn oat
badly. If this be so, the matter is even more serious
than we have represented it, and we hope wo have
said enough to make people inquire before they em-
bark in " the gains* trade."

Tne Pope of Rome to at this moment an object
far more of pity than resentment. Borne down by a
popular torrent, of which he himself opened the
sluices, he cannot be considered master of his govern-
ment or of his territory. Holding political power by
sufferance at home, Lisecelesiastical power in the most
remote and fanatic of the lands attached to his tiara,
is but a thing of sufferance too. And whatever autho-
rity he may have in Ireland or in Poland, such distant
countries, is merely obtained and preserved by fallieg
in with the views, and flattering the prejudices, of
the local clergy. That he should bine another edict,
therefore, against the Irish colleges, is a matter of
little marvel.
The great complaint against the Roman catholic
church, and the principal fear and jealousy which it
excited, proceeded from the supposition that the
power of that church was wielded by a foreign auto-
crat, who might render hie religious authority subser-
vient to views of political opposition or subversion,
and whose infallibility was an ultra-monarchic prin-
ciple hostile to freedom either of mind or institution.
The fact is, however, that Roman catholicism in all
countries has ceased to be monarchic), and has become
democratic. Instead of being "an authority from
above," it has become "an influence from below."
Bend no longer on the dictates of pope or conclave,
ths flue of Roman catholicism, like that of
inglish Dissent, mete altogether on the public
outimente of its community. When that com-
munity is enlightened, in Ireland or elsewhere, there
b little fear of the Pope. And indeed, until it be hilly
enlightened, and whilst in consequence a power
b westieg to moderate its fanaticism, that of the
Pepe will, in general, be found a useful auxiliary to
lay and every fair and liberal government.
There never was a more democratic institution than
the Roman Catholic church of Ireland—its clergy de-
wilding upon the contributions, and consequently on
the sentiments, of the masses; the bishops elected by
the lower clergy and paid by them. The most
tharoogh of our religious republicans could,
net desire to see the Roman Catholic
church, in at least its constitution, other than
tt is. A project is on foot to alter this,
by making the lower catholic clergy dependent on
the state. We but the other day developed our opi-
nion of the futility of such a scheme. It is utterly
lampa-ible to continue the system of a lower class of
seelice and an upper clam of protestant' in any
°sentry. The upper class of every country must be
recruited from the lower; and when this natural
sperationhasbeen prevented as in Ireland, or hasbeoome
impendble, es in countries of white masters and black
blenren, then society is on a volcano, and its
beet of times is but a resting place between two
Ilitarimman catholic clergy of Ireland will be
allegrad end ignorant, as long u it is the clergy ex-
elusively of a lower class. But with the develop-
meat s middle and a higher class of Irish catho-
Iles their clergy will, like every clergy, come to
raged the sentiments and the intellectual state of the
classes to whose spiritual wants they minimise.
What is wanting is to allow or favour the meths of
these classes in Ireland, by favouring a better &OA-
bution of property, a greater development of industry
and commerce, and consequently of the middle clue.
We must own that we look more to such material, and
social changes for the humanisation of the Irish sad
their clergy, than to any increased facilities for
learned education. There is already a great deal of
academic knowledge in Ireland, and we do not see
that it has either improved or enlightened the re-

sate awl Whelks— andf replace in a trios
the ode inequality which has existed for
ttlionsp: by • mud inequality of a precisely
No weed* the catholic/ strive for
ralliC7's(Tnest issitl se be pasted. for it
Wein be tbe sabstitalka of a most grievous
paled inequid-
11111111inewhioltakendy exist& Thatinetoslity the
im =ni elows ese remedy and remove
wittiest seltesedes, or revolution, and
repeal. is war eploinb veil he all three. In mem
and in jade, Wee Irma enelestant, and the hitherto
dominant and mot aims et Irish. repeal should never
be granted. Mil re we say, at the same time, that
it cannot be lemor7 Wood, without an Windt,'
more a tele ontiviq, and °maiden/Aix, in *III
mane d tam government to Ireland, and without its
proceeding at once, with boldness and resolution, in
great and necessary messures for modal, religious, and
political equalisation in that country.
We may here return thanks that the trials for
treason are over, those sonde representations, which
absorbed ministerial u well as public attention. We
may rejoice, too, that the last act is tragic only in lan-
guage. Surely even this might have been spared; a
humane and sensible law dignitary acquainting a pri-
soner that he was to be hanged, to have his head
severed from his body, and this said body to be cut
into four quarters, and disposed of at her ILusserrt's
pkasure ! Why, it is like an extract from a cookery
book, or might serve as directions for a Cincinnati pig
butcher. The only excuse for nob language is that
it mesas nothing real. But is not this also its con-
-