The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-12 00:00:00

MR. BAINES, M.P., ON TEMPERANCE.

In a speech at the annual meeting of the Leeds Band of
Hope, Mr. Baines, Vii. P., after narrating some facts which
he learnt while on a visit in the neighbourhood of Tenby,
chewing how disastrous had been the effect of drink On
some families in that district, spoke of the Earl of Caw-
dor's estate in the same locality, where public houses
ware prohibited, and he rode for nine miles without
seeing a public house. If the people on that estate
could do without intoxicating drinks, why could not the
inhabitants of other districts do without them ? If the
people at Saltaire, again, could do without public houses,
why should malicious and avaricious people go and crowd
public houses all round about them, and why should
the magistrates have granted a spirit license on the
very edge of the Saltaire property, where it might
do the greatest amount of mischief ? This seemed to
him to be directly wrong, and he thought that the
magistrates had much to answer for in this case. He
had heard with great grief that, in spite of remonstrances,
the magistrates had granted a spirit license on the very
borders of that town, which was so happy. From
his own experience he was able to say that
to abstain from drinking liquors was no privation, or
loss whatever, and it was his confident belief that he
had had more enjoyment for his palate, taste, and
stomach than if he had taken them, while he was pretty
nearly as active as any man of his years. Had he
taken them, he was confident he would have had worse
health. Why should people therefore go on taking them?
They all knew that the drinking habits were the source
of almost all the disease, almost all the poverty, almost
all the insanity, almost all the suicides, almost all the
crimes in the country. Everything that was black—
he had almost said black and bloody—was caused by this
sad abuse of drink --and there was more harm done
in England by brandy than there was in China
by opium. When introduced into islands where
Christian missionaries were labouring, spiritous liquors
had sometimes destroyed and sweptaway all the good that
had been done. In Madagascar the effects had ben most
lareentable, and so horrible had been
.the guilt of some
so-called Christians living in the neighbourhood of the
Red Indians, that they had introduced by design, what
was everywhere called fire-water, in order that the poor
Indians might perish off the face of the earth and they
might possess themselves of their lauds. Indeed, the
whole history of drink was a history of horrors. Re-
ferring to the remarks made by a previous speaker,
Mr. Baines expressed his confident belief that
the great source of the 'want of education that
there now is in the country was not the want
of schools, not the want of persons who would
gladly assist the poor to obtain schooling for their
children ; but it was the degraded state of the parents,
and that degradation was due almost entirely to drink.
He believed that if they erected ever so perfect educa-
tional machinery, if it should not be accompanied by
efforts on behalf of temperance, they. would be almost as
badly off as they were at present. He had always said
that the tendency of education, of mechanics' institutions,
and other agencies of. that character, was in favour of
temperance ; but if there should still continue the existing
habits of intemperance, as there might, even in connection
with knowledge—for some of the brightest geniuses
he could name, some of the first poets, princes, philoso-
phers, statesmen, had perished from the effects of drink—
if there should still be any connection between increased
schooling and intemperance, then he believed we should
do comparatively little to check that pauperism which
seemed to be flowing in upon us in connection with the
degradation of our fellowmen.

MR. LEATHAM, M.P. ON SECONDARY
EDUCATION.

When presiding at the inaugural meeting of the Wake-
field Mechanics' Institution, Mr. Leatham, M.P., made
some remarks on secondary education: He said that the
measure passed last session of Parliament did not take
away the functions of mechanics' institutions, but doubled
the importance of them. The functions hence-
forth of mechonics' institutes would be to take up
the child where the State left him, and to give him the
true education, the real training of the mind, to which
everything which he had learned at the elementary school
could only be introductory and preliminary. He heard
some people speak as though the Education Act was to
give us national education. It could do nothing of the
kind. If it was attended with a very large measure of
success, all it could do was to make national education
possible, to smooth the way for it, to remove some of the
rudest and coarsest obstacles in the path—unless, indeed,
the notion of national education was confined to the
smattering of knowledge to be obtained at State
schools. In some instances a boy would forget
his little bit of "cram," and become a more
stupid being than even the boy who had not passed
through the mill at all. But if they could catch the boy
while his intellect was still awake—while his mind was
still supple from his recent training, they might hope to
carry forward his education so as to become really useful
to his mind. It was the secondary system of education
everywhere supplementing the elementary system,
developing and retaining its results, which had made
Prussia what she was, and we might almost as
well expect to reap a crop from our fields by
simply ploughing them and without sowing and
weeding them as expect a great harvest of national
renown from an education which was to terminate before
our population was in its teens. If, then, we were to have
secondary education, and if the mechanics' institute was
to be regarded as the true secondary school, it must receivo
a development commensurate with its new aim, and there
must be more than lectures upon such subjects as half
hours with fashionable poets, hints about history, glimpses
of truth, glimmerings of science, and gleanings of
literature. The Mechanics' Institute must become
a school in the highest sense, just as the Liver-
pool Institute or the Huddersfield Institute was
a school. The whole lecture system must be made
subordinate to the class system, just as people betook
themselves to cakes and apples after dinner. The full
meal must precede the dessert. Perhaps hey would
allow him to say that they must remodel their whole
lecture system, for they must never lose sight of the
fundamental principle that mechanics' institutes were
for mechanics. How many persons in actual receipt of
weekly wages were to be found in their lecture rooms ?
A few perhaps sitting near the door or standing in a
corner, coming in late and going out early, as if they
thought themselves instructors. There was no doubt of
the fact that the Middle-class bad almost everywhere
displaced the artisan class in the lecture rooms.
The cause of this was very obvious. When mechanics'
institutes were'first founded they were regarded by many
persons as a dangerous innovation. There were a.
great many sensible people in those days whose
minds were shocked by the idea cf men in IT-
ceipt of weekly wages being taught anything but
I their trade and their Catechism, and to order
themselves lowly and reverently to their betters.
In order to disarm opposition and concilitate these
very sensible people, they wanted to strike out from their
programme all the great subjects of human interest, and
having divested themselves of everything about which
people could quarrel, they had been wondering from that
day to this why they had never become popular. But
when this amicable arrangement was first made,
perhaps it did not strike many of them in
what a state of life God was about to please
to call working men, or how much of the safety and
honour and dignity of this great country He was about
to place in the keeping of such men. If we had known
this from the beginning, he could not but believe that

there would haN; beeri less jealousy about teaching a
working man what it was essential for him, as a citizen,
to know, and affecting through him the government of
the vast empire of which he had acquired so important a
share. The career of living statesmen, the domestic and
political history of the last thirty years, the story
of all our great institutions, and of those of
other countries, the study of the laws which
affected property, and treated of the incidents of
taxation, were all embraced in what was known
as "the education problem"—a problem which had only
been half solved as yet. All these, and many kindred
subjects, ought to be discussed,. and must be discussed,
not only in their news rooms, but in their class rooms ands
lecture rooms as well, if they were to aspire to that posi-
tion as instructors of the enfranchised artisan to which
they were entitled, and to which he thoroughly believed
their strength and ambition were equal.

A. MUNICIPAL SCANDAL.—A remarkable case of
alleged perjury was investigated by the Shrewsbury
magistrates. The accused was Mr. Thomas Edwards,
auctioneer, and a member of the town council of that
borough. The prosecution arose out of a county court
case, in which Mr. Isaac Simon, a commercial traveller,
sued Mr. Edwards for £lO 10s., expenses put to in
seeing various members of Parliament, and in
other services, with the view to induce the Lord
Chancellor to create a new batch of magistrates for
Shrewsbury, of which batch Mr. Edwards was to be one.
Mr. Edwards resisted the claim, and in his evidence be-
fore the county court judge he swore that the proposed
list of new magistrates was made out by Mr. Simon, who
wished to obtain for his nephew the office of magistrates'
clerk for the borough, which it seems to have been as-
sumed—though, as the result has shewn, on very insuf-
ficient
tethengrounds—wouldholdveer7
Mr.sh ortHlyabwefeoyme
Edwards.yacan
tbyAtihre
death of h
.
Edwards also swore that he did not know his
name was on the list, and that he was much sun,
prised when he found that such was the case. This
was the perjury charged ; and in support of the
prosecution it was held that it had a material in-
fluence on the issue of the county court case, since
the judge held that the alleged combination be-
tween Messrs. Simon and Edwards was contrary
to the policy of law, and he gave judgment for
defendant. Evidence was given to shew that Mr. Edwards
did depose to the statements imputed to him ; but for the
defence it was urged that even if he did do so they were
not material to the issue of the action before the county
court, and that, therefore, in law, no perjury had been
ozminutted. Various cases were cited in support of this
view, and the bench, after a short consultation, said the
evidence, they considered, was not sufficient for a com-
mittal, and the case would be dismissed—a decision which
was received with some applause in court.