The National Register.
London, England, 1816-11-11 00:00:00

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Our thug, Con6i

No. IX.

MONDAY, NOV.

POLITICAL DISQUISITION.
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STATE OF THE COUNTRY.
.(cowriNuan ►ROM OUR LART.)

" ACCORDING to the anarchists, government is the
rout of all the evils which afflict the country, and the
cure of all those evils is political reform. In faithful
imitation of the French—untaught by their errors, and
undeterred by their crimes and their punishment—they

proclaim that for a nation to be reformed, it is sufficient
that she wills it ; and the hopeful cnd at which they
are aiming is to make the multitude declare this their
sovereign will and pleasure. God help the simple un-
derstandings of men who suppose that the condition of
the people can be ameliorated by means like these, and
that the fear of the mob is the beginning of wisdom in
a government! And God forgive the deliberate guilt of
those who perseveringly endeavour to make the mob
sensible of their strength, and breathe into them their
own spirit of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitable-
ness ! Among the manufacturing populace they have
been but too successful ; they have laboured not with-
out success among the agricultural part of the people ;
and if the army and navy are not discontented also, it is
not their fault.

" The people,' says Bishop Warburton, are much
more reasonable in their demands on their patriots than
on their ministers : of their pitriots they readily accept
the will for the deed ; but of their ministers they un-
justly interpret the deed for the will.' In these times
we could not desire a more favourable interpretation:—
by their fruits ye shall know them.' The foreign po-
licy of our government has been such that more signal
*auccesse.; could not have been anticipated or desired,
than have actually been attained ; and in domestic con-
cerns its acts may be appealed to as the best indication
of its intentions. It is indeed impossible tloit in any
enlightened part of Europe a government can be so be-
hind hand with the age, as not to know that the secu-
rity of the state depends upon the well-being and con-
tentment of the people. The conduct of Ferdinand, in
Spain, is no exception, for Spain is not an enlightened
country : and moreover, the acts which excited most in-
dignation in England are popular among the great ma-
jority of that noble-minded, but be-darkened nation :
the restoration of the Inquisition was their own work ;
and wh en Ferdinand formally re-established it, he only ra-
tified what they had spontaneously done. Buonaparte's
conduct is just such an exception as proves the rule.
Ambition had intoxicated him, and the possession of
absolute power had produced in him that specific moral
madness of which so many cases were seen among the
Roman and Greek emperors : he sought to reign by
force and delusion, and to make the nations of Europe
the mere instruments of his selfish and wicked will ;

but in attempting this he acted in opposition to the
spirit of the age, and was overthrown. lie conde-
scended to it during his short usurpation, when he abo-
lished the Slave Trade. The general spirit of the age
is good both abroad and at home. The Christian
Treaty, as it is called, however nugatory it may be
deemed, is one memorable instance. The Pope also
affords another ;—he has restored the Jesuits, but he
has prevented the Inquisition from roasting n relapsed
Jew. The Portuguese have abolished the Inquisition
at (h and arc taking measures for abolishing it in Por-
tugal. This spirit, which exists strongly in every
country where public opinion is known, exists with
most strength in England, where public opinion is more
decidedly expressed. There is an ardent desire of di-
minishing the evils of the world, as titr as our efforts
can contribute to their diminution, in other countries
nod in our own. The abolition of the Slave Tratie—
the abolition of infantivile in port of our great Indian
empire—the various miisions which are so liberally sup-
ported in the East, in Africa, and in Polynesia, and the
strongfeeling which hasbeen excited here by the suspicion
of a Catholic persecution in Fiunce,—evince the pre-
valence and the power of this desire, so honourable to
the age, so honourable to England, and to human
nature.

" The Romanists used to reproach us with our in-
attention to the duty of disieminating the religion
which we profess ; and they asserted that missionary
seal could only proceed from the spirit of God, and
therefore it could be timnd in the true church alone.
This reproach, which was at one time (..eserved, holds
good no longer ; and the Protestant missionaries of the
present will be found to equal their Catholic pre-

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ittititiOn

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anb UAW.

'FMTIER
decessurs in zeal and disintiested.ness°, and to excel
them in erudition. They reproached us also with a
decay of charity, in consequence of the Reformation ;
affirming that no monuments of durable benevolence
had been-erected like the convents, hospitals, colleges,
and other religious foundations, with which England
was enriched by the piety of our Catholic ancestors In-
fore the schism. But here they exult without a cause;
the establishment of schools, hospitals, alms-houses,
and eleemosynary societies Of various descriptions in
London, will be found to execed in number and in ex-
tent the charitable institutions of any other city in
Europe : not to mention that the history of the world
affords nothing similar to tile provision which the Le-
gislature has made for the ptior in England. Of these
institutions, the five royal hespicals, as they are called,
(St. Bartholomew's, Bedlam, Bridewell, Christ's Hos-
pital, and St. Thomas's), west originally endowed from
the church and convent lands; the rest are all Pro-.
testant foundations. T., give the briefest account of
all, or even to enumerate there, would require more
space than can here be allotted to-that pnrposo ; suffice
it to say, that more than 30,000 patients are annually
admitted into the London Hospitals ; that about 50,000
children receive the benefit of gratuitous education ;
that about 13,000 persons arc supported in endowed
alms-houses; and that the sums which are annually
disposed of in charitable uses by the several companies
and halls in London, amounted, in Maitland's time, to
more than 26,0001.
" But among the numerous associations which have
in late years been formptk for benevolent purposes, there
is one whose proceedings are entitled to particular no-
tice—the Society fur Bettering the Condition and In-
creasing the Comforts of tho Poor. This society origi-
nated twenty years ago with the Bishop of Durham,
Mr. Wilberforce, Sir Thomas Bernard, and the Ho-
nourable Edward James Eliot. The latter was early
removed from a world which his talents and his ex-
ample were alike fitted to adorn anti to amend ; the
three former names need no panegyric. The general
object of the Society was to collect information respec-
ting the actual situation of the pour, and the most effec-
tual means of improving it. They proposed to apply
the principle of experimental philosophy to this object,
and to make existiag facts tho means of practical and
systematic investigation into what has really augmented
their virtue and happiness, and has been sanctioned by
thin and experience: The inquiry has been conducted
patiently, and without oetentation. Instead of coming
forward with cumbrous theories, or presenting crude
plans to the legislature, they have collected filets, tried
such limited experiments as were in their power, and
laid their observations before the public, as materials
Irma which every man may draw the conclusion.. The
conclusions which every sane mind must draw from the
premises thus laid before it, are truly consolatory : it
appears that more may be done by well. disposed and
active individuals, than could be effected by legislative
interferemv ; that little exertion,. and less expense, if
wisely directed, nuty produce much good ; that the poor
tire well disposed to •second the efibrts which are made
for their advantage, whenever they understand the be-
nefit ; and that the lower classes become improved in
other respects in proportion to the improvement of their
circumstances.

' 11, 1816.

" The advocates for radical reform assert, that as the
weight of taxation makes every thing dear, government
is thus the direct cause of the distresses of the poor.
This assertion being continually repeated as a political
axiom, and involving lift the first part of its proposition
a certain degrens,of truth, produces much of the mis-
chief which it is intended to produce. Fools ! who
would been to repair the pyramid from the top instead
of the bottom ! TaxatieriafFeets the poor in an infinitely
trifling degree compared to the -tax which is laid upon
their property by individual cupidity. It is hut t'.o
obvious,' says Dr. Glass, how ant: the poor are im-
posed upon by the pert/ shopkeepers in the necessaries
which they arc enable to purchase. The quality of
the gotids is not the best, the price is extravagantly
high, and the 'quantity/4's reduced by deceitful weights
and a scanty measure:. It appeared upon a strict in-
spection of weights and scales, in a swell and by no

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l'alcs 90.

means a populous district, that the loss which the poor
of the district sustained from this cause, or, in other
words, the money thus fraudulently raisA from them;
amounted to not less than iOOl. 3 year. Sir Thomas Ber-
nard asserts, that the injury which the poor suatain from
buying their flour at the shop instead of the mill, -- is
nearly equal, at the time when he wrote, (1798,) to
two-thirds of the poor's rates then collected in England.
This latter evil has, in some instances, been removed
by the establishment of parish mills ; the former re-
quires only that the existing laws should be duly
enforced ; and when the weights andsmeasures of the
country shall be regulated, (as it may be presumed they
soon will be) it is to be hoped that means will be pros
vidcd for rendering those laws efficacious. These griev-
ances, which fill with peculiar weight upon t'.' poor,
arise from thit eagerness for gain, which is the sin that
most easily besets a Cmnmercial people, and which,
perhaps, has never been so generally prevalent as at
present. In this point, God knows, the country stands
truly in need of radical reform ; hut it is a reformation
which cannot be effected by laws or by political
changes ; it must be in public opinion ; in the habits of
thought and the principlei of action. There is a me-
morable passage upon this subject in one of Mr. Wind-
ham's speeches--' fhe whole country, it is said, is full
of abuses, from top to bottom. I believe arm ; with
this correction, that the description would be more just
if we were to say from bottom to top, it being here, as
in other media, the parts of which are left to move
freely, that the lower strata are the denser and grosser,
and that they become rarer and purer the. higher you
ascend. The fact is, that when the matter comes to be
searched to the bottom, it is the people throughout who
are cheating the people ; the people individually cheap•
ing the people collectively. The people in all quartet**
and by all opportunities, are preying upon the public;
and then make it the repoxich of the goverameat that
it has not the power to prevent them:—Well does Sir
Thomas Bernard lay it down as an axiom that no plan
for the improvement of the condition of the poor will
be of any avail, unless the fmndation be laid in the
amelioration of their moral and religious character. The
exactions of which we have been speaking are those to
which the poor are subject from persons of their own
class, or who are just rising above it ; but the spirit
which occasions these petty frauds extents far higher:
' it is found not only in the little shopkeeper, who cur-
tails his measures, falsifies his weights, and exacts• a
dear price for bad commodities, or in the mistress of a
dairy, who mingles water wide her milk before she sells
it out to those, perhaps, who will dilute it still further ;
but to the brewer, who procures his materials from the
druggist instead of the =hater ; to the druggist 'who
adulterates the material which he sells him; and to the
rich manufacturer who makes flimsy goods for foreign
sale, thus, for the sake of his own immediate gain, in-
flicting lasting injury upon his country, by injuring the
character of English commodity.
" Let it not be supposed that any indiscriminate cen-
sure upon the commercial classes is intended ; nor that
the censure which is intended applies to those clas-es
exclusively. The landlord who exacts a grinding rent
for the labourer's cottage is less culpable than the frau-
dulent tradesman, inasmuch as he offends aga nst no
law of the. land : but in proportion as he lessens the
Icondials and increases the necessities of the poor, he
does evil and occasions evil. Some years ago, a tra-
veller. who took shelter from a storm in a cottage by
one of the Scotch lakes, saw that the rain ran in, and
lay in pools upon the uneven floor, which consisted
only of the bare earth on which the hovel had been
built ; during great part of the year, therefore, the
floor must necessarily be wet and dirty, making it
both uncomfortable and unwholesome : he observed to
the owner with hoW, little trouble the inconvenience
might be removed ; the man shook his head, and an-
swered, it was very true, but that if he were to do this,
the cottage would be thought worth more for haying
been made comfortable, am! the rent would in conse-
quence be raised. Such cases may lee !uison], and we
believe indeed that they must be an; but it is certain
that high rents are common, and it L not less certain
that they aggravate the poverty of the poor. Another,
and perhaps greater, evil, is the difficulty with which
the cottugers can obtain some little land ; the grievance
was long mince pointed out by Mr. Kent :—' When the
cottagers,' he said, are accommodated with a small
quantity of land, they are obliged to pay, at least, a
double proportion of rent fbr it, to what time titrmers
pay themselves.' Upon this point, the facts which
have been collected by the Society, led Sir I'. Bernard