The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—An inquiry originating in a question of
public finance has incidentally revived a discussion
of inexhaustible interest. It was doubted whether
the endowments of charitable institutions were not
liable to assessment for income-tax, and in the in-
vestigation of the subject reports were obtained
through the Charity Commissioners respecting cer-
tain foundations of known wealth and importance.
Among other establishments selected for this pur-
pose was Christ's Hospital, and in the report upon
the revenues and services of this famous school it is
questioned whether the proper objects of the foun-
dation are either pursued or attained. Christ's
Hospital was founded especially for the reception of
helpless orphan children, and although some devia-
tion from the original design would be not only
allowable but inevitable, it is alleged that the diver-
sion of purpose actually prevailing exceeds reason-
able limits. On the assumption that the benefits of
the charity were intended solely for the destitute, it
argued that these intentions are no longer fulfilled.
The school is not a school for the very poorest
classes, but for classes more or less above them ; and
what is more, the standard appears to be continually
rising. The social position of the boys received is
higher now than it was thirty years ago, and it is
accordingly suggested that arrangements operating
prejudicially to the interests of the poor should be
carefully revised. This subject well deserves atten-
tion, and especially because Christ's Hospital, whe-
ther actually fulfilling the designs of its founders or
not, does certainly fulfil them more nearly than any
other public school in the kingdom. If this famous
Bluecoat School be not a real charity school, there
is no such thing as a charity school in the country.
Christ's Hospital differs from all other public schools
in this—that it is all " foundation," and nothing
else. At Eton, at Winchester, at Westminster,
and at Charterhouse, for instance, the foundation
boys or scholars form only a certain proportion of
the school, and even these privileges few rarely es-
cape without some charge. But at Christ's Hospital
every boy is on the foundation ; they are all " Blues"
from the top of the school to the bottom, and
all are maintained and equipped out of the funds
of the House. The number, too, of the boys thus
gratuitously boarded and educated is comparatively
enormous. At Eton provision is made for 70 foun-
dation boys only ;at Charterhouse for 40. Christ's
Hospital takes upwards of I,loo—a greater number
than all other public schools together. Yet the re-
venues of the Bluecoat School are but £60,000 a
year—a princely income, no doubt, but not very
much in excess of other schools doing not a tenth of
similar service. The fact is there is no dead weight
or " ineffective" service'.' at the Hospital. The whole
establishment consists of masters who teach and
boys who learn. Clearly, therefore, no exception
can be taken to Christ's Hospital on these grounds,
and to arrive at the grounds of complaint we must
turn, not to the immediate application of the re-
venues of the school, but to the principles of selec-
tion by which the recipients of its bounty are deter-
mined. This part of the subject the Report will
enable us to illustrate very plainly indeed. Of
course, the admission to a school even of 1,200 boys
must be regulated by some preference in times when
12,000 would like to be admitted if they could.
Children are accordingly " nominated" or " pre-
sented" to Christ's Hospital by certain patrons,
styled Governors, besides which admission is opened
through various local or special channels. Some-
times the ratepayers of a parish can nominate a
scholar by vote in the vestry, and send a poor boy
up from his native town to the great school in New-
gate-street. However, without pursuing this point
any further at present, we will subjoin an analysis of
the presentations actually made in the three years
ending with 1862. As many as 192 boys were cer-
tainly the children of professional men—that is, of
men presumably competent to put their sons to school
without assistance from charity ; but then we learn
as we proceed that 60 of these boys were orphans,
that in eleven instances their families were abso-
lutely destitute, and that the incomes of the others
only averged £172 a year. There would still be
132 sons of living professional men, but here, again,
we are told that the incomes of these men averaged
but £244 a year. Then there were 293 presenta-
tions of the children of merchants, tradesmen, and
clerks, 81 of whom were orphans and 24 destitute
orphans, while the incomes in the case of parents
still living averaged about £lBO a year. The list is
completed by 16 presentations of children of jour-
neymen or servants, seven of persons without occu-
pation, and seven of persons who had deserted their
families. We need hardly be at the pains of remark-
ing, after these statistics, that Christ's Hospital is
not a school for the aristocracy. Its endowments
have not been perverted for the advantage of the
opulent or powerful. A professional man with an
income of £250 a-year, and perhaps half-a-dozen
children, can hardly be thought above the need of a
scholarship for one of his sons. On a broad view,
indeed, of the admissions thus classified, it does not
appear that any single boy could have been an unfit
recipient of the charity. The proportion of orphans,
it will be seen, is very large, and of these several
were not only orphans, but destitute also. In fact,
the objection, as we understand it, is only taken by
comparison. It is said that the classes thus benefited,
though certainly not rich, but rather poor, are not
the poorest, and that pauper children have no share
in the charity designed for them alone. Christ's Hos-
pital, it is confessed, is of great advantage to certain
classes, but not to the right classes. Suggestions are
therefore offered towards remedying the alleged evil,
but, with one exception, we should doubt the expe-
diency of the measures proposed. In short, we are
by no means certain that the reforms recommended
would render this famous foundation productive of
more public good than it yields at present. It would
be necessary to look closely into the incidents of the
original foundation before entering on a rigorous
definition of the original design, but if Christ's Hos-
pital was really intended for the benefit of paupers
only, we may say that the diversion of its funds to
their present object is no more than has been accom-
plished by common consent and with common ap-
proval in most seminaries of the kingdom. At the
universities the claims of mere poverty havein many
prominentinstances been deliberately set aside, and
probable proficiency has been accepted as the quali-
fication instead. It has been decided that no public
advantage could ensue from offering a high educa-
tion gratuitously to those who were unlikely to
profit by oit, merely because they were unable
to pay for it. As far, therefore, as the mere de-
flection of purpose goes, Christ's Hospital has but
submitted to an influence universally and almost
insensibly at work. Nor do we see exactly what is
the alternative kept in view by the proposal of re-
form. If, the benefits of the foundation are to be
confined to helpless paupers, Christ's Hospital would
simply be turned into an enormous ragged school.
If its benefits are merely to be carried down to a
lower stratum of society, the objections at present
preferred would be applicable still. Supposing, for
instance, as suggested, that presentations were
allotted to some of the best conducted benefit socie-
ties or trade unions, it is not only possible but pro-
bable that the parents of the boys presented might
still be in receipt of incomes of £lOO or £l5O a year,
for many a mechanic could earn that much. And,
again, if the existing system is to be denounced as
favouring a certain class or classes, what would be
said of a system favouring one class only—namely,
the very poorest. It really appears to us that little
can be said against the present uses of the founda-
tion, excepting on a single point. Let us admit
that the hospital should be for the benefit of all.
The rich classes do not want it, nor the class under
them, nor the class under that. In fact; all classes
of society above professional men with very small
incomes do, as we have seen, dispense with any ap-
plication for advantage out of these endowments.
The applicants begin with struggling lawyers, clergy-
men, or surgeons, and they go downwards through
the classes intervening, even to working men and
domestic servants. This is a very wide range of
good ; we doubt very much indeed whether the true
interest of the public would be promoted by an
abrupt return to the alleged purposes of the original
foundation.

HERALD.—That a courteous and generous under-
standing should exist between the bench and the
bar appears a condition so essential for the dignity
of English justice that the least public failure of it
is in a high degree painful. This does not imply
that the judge and the advocate should necessarily
be at all times in accord, because there have been
occasions, and those of memorable import, when
noble assertions of right have been made by inde-
pendent lawyers against judicial attempts at brow-
beating ; but there is the step from the sublime
to the ridiculous, which the president and pleaders
of a criminal court would do wisely to avoid
with all the caution at their command. It has been

unpleasantly manifest, however, for several months
past, that there is a hitch in the working of the
Middlesex Sessions at Clerkenwell, and that two, at
least, of the extra judges sitting there are in fre-
quent collision with one or more members of the bar.

The two judges are Mr. Payne, conspicuously, and
Mr. Sergeant Dowling, a little more agreeably
obscure. The barristers are 11(1r. Pater, conspicu-
ously, and Mr. Warton, also a little more agreeably
obscure, considering what the circumstances have
been. It was only a short time since that the prin-
cipal figures in this quartet got up not at all a pretty
quarrel, which ended in the usual forensic smoke of
words, only to break forth again when the opportu-
nity offered. Simply to clear the ground, wo may
recapitulate two or three incidents which took place
on Tuesday afternoon last, when this unpleasant
opportunity did again occur. Four thieves were
tried before Mr. Sergeant Dowling, deputy assistant
judge. They were all convicted, so that they form
a very slight part of the case. Mr. Pater defended

one, and Mr. Warton another. Mr. Pater, in this
particular instance, held to the ordinary course of
an advocate, but Mr. Warton launched into an un-
measured tirade against the police ; he denounced
them as growing up into a most unconstitutional
power ; he declared that this country was in danger
of becoming police-ridden ; he told the jury that
men were constantly raised from the lowest rank to
wear stripes upon their arms for manufacturing
prosecutions and suborning evidence. Here he was,
very properly, interrupted from the bench. He had
no right, said the judge, rather too rhetorically, to
asperse so large and respectable a body of men as
the metropolitan police, to say broadly that they
were in the habit of employing boys and other per-
sons to get up evidence, or that they dealt in perjury ;
for " if this were true then this country would be the
most degraded the world has ever seen." After a
picturesque interlude of " suppressed applause in
court," Mr. Warton went on. He acussed Sir Richard
Mayne of endeavouring to set up a despotism of
setting aside acts of Parliament, and of subverting
English liberty. Considering that his client was
a doubly-convicted pickpocket these heroics were
absurdly out of place. But this ended the forensic
frolic of the day in Mr. Serjeant Dowling's court.
In Mr. Payne's court Mr. Pater provoked a slight
explosion in the case of a man acquitted by the jury,
without the judge's summing up, of assaulting a
constable at a fire. There was a loud burst of ap-
plause, which the judge severely reprehended. Then
Mr. Pater interfered, to apologise for " the body of
the court." "No doubt," he said, " they feel that
this is a police prosecution." Counsel for the pro-
secution instantly interrupted him with a rather illo-
gical question, and he was, in the mildest manner
possible, reprimanded by Mr. Payne. Two exhibi-
tions so unseemly sufficed for Tuesday's sittings.
There are some reflections to be made upon these
scandalous altercations, slight as they are in them-
selves. With reference to the judges it would be far
from our wish to suggest any other remark than
that their particular court at Clerkenwell appears to
contain the peculiar atmosphere favourable to these
wranglings, of which we hear more from the Mid-
dlesex Sessions than from any other. Is it a fault
of temper or taste, or an infirmity of judgment ren-
dering them impatient of the hot harangues which
other judges, more serene and equable, might hear
to the end and then dispose of by a few words of
cold and keen rebuke ? We do not venture to sur-
mise ; but it does seem a striking coincidence that
scarcely any session elapses at Clerkenwell without
one or more ebullitions similarly to be regretted.
With respect to counsel, assuredly Mr. Warton was
bound to do the best for his clients ; but the worst
can be done with the best intentions, and it was
almost ludicrous to dilate before a jury on the perils
of the British constitution, when the safety of a
gold watch was the prominent question with a batch
of well known malefactors to answer it. These loud
tongued appeals to jurymen upon false issues do no
good whatever. They exalt the rascal in the dock
with a sense of his own importance ; they teach the
scum and vagabondage in " the body of the court"
to believe that the thief is an ill-used citizen ; they
may bring a few briefs to the bullying advocate,
but they degrade the advocate's profession. If we
are to have justice administered between the highest
and the meanest, our trials must take place in an
atmosphere not influenced by the vulgar vehemence
of declamatory, counsel ,or the still more painful
irritability of susceptible judges. It is said that we
cannot expect the highest forensic etiquette or
judicial calmness in a minor criminal court ; nor
can we ; but, upon the whole, the bar is what the
bench compels it to be less by rebuke than by ex-
ample. It is bad- for the public, for the profession,
for delinquents on their trial, and for justice itself,
that criminal investigations should be interrupted by
episodes of recriminatory passion. At the same
time, endeavouring to stretch the whole compass of
the question as raised by these untoward incidents,
it is not to be denied that the country pays a great
deal, and that individual wrong is occasionally in-
flicted by what are termed police prosecutions. No
doubt, the police of London, east and west, are, as
a body, generally respectable, though not in an equal
ratio sagacious. They have arduous duties to fulfil;
they undergo considerable risks ; and much is con-
stantly expected from them. On the other hand,
they enjoy a peculiar protection under the law,
which holds a wilful assault upon a police-officer to
be little less than heinous. But, as in other bodies,
the superiors are ambitious of power, and the in-
feriors are eager for promotion. Hence, although
Mr. Warton, to whom the Deputy Assistant Judge
gave a contradiction so direct and so stinging, that
the court of justice at Clerkenwell appeared for the
moment to have lost all dignity, was inexcusably
in the wrong when he pointed around him to men
present as having won their way up by impermis-
sible methods, he aimed, widely indeed, but still
aimed, at an evil which indubitably exists. Looking
at the whole matter without prejudice, we can but
deplore the frequently recurring brawls—for they
deserve no other term—which are rendering the
Middlesex Sessions (whether the responsibility lies
with the bench or with the bar) intolerably conspicu-
ous ; we must regret the looseness of language in
which counsel with a vituperative faculty indulge,
and we wish the judges could find a better method
of rebuking them. As to the main point of contro-
versy between them, may it not, in due course, be
considered worthy of investigation ?