The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-28 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC) JOURNALS.

The Times thinks the appeal to the State to under take
the conduct of emigration is not likely to be successful,
but those who understand what it means are bound to
protest against it. It is, indeed, unnecessary that tho
State should interfere, even if we could allow that under
certain circumstances interference might be the duty of
the Government. The example of Ireland spews how ex-
tensive voluntary Emigration can become; nor need
we travel out of England to find proof of this
truth. Emigration can be organised by other
classes of workmen at least as well as by Irish pea-
sants or Cornish miners. But we are bound to protest
against State emigration, above all, because of the erro-
neous conception of the duty of the State that underlies
I it. There is a tendency to throw upon the State the
burden of securing to every man, irrespective of his own
acts, the enjoyment of a certain standard of comfort,
against which we cannot be too much on our guard.
This is the latent principle of much of the reasoning
of Trade Unionists. Mr. George Potter, for example,
when he has proved that a workman cannot live
as he thinks he ought to live under a certain sum
p.?r diem, treats the result as a conclusive reason for
demanding as much in wages. A workman's pay
is not the value of his work, but what he can live upon,
and that must be secured to him. The Poor Law lends
some countenance to this cardinal heresy. Existing as a
protection against the worst evils of unregulated private
almsgiving, it is often twisted into a recognition of the

doctrine that the State is bound to make everybody com-
fortable. The resolution of the Birmingham League
to make education gratuitous is apparently based
on the same error, and, if it is to be defended

at all, it can be defended only as a temporary
expedient, justified by the deplorable backwardness of
primary education in England. The cry for organised
State Emigration is the extreme manifestation as yet seen
of this tendency, and ought to awaken reflection upon it.
The suggestion that the State is bound to find work for
all, either here or eliewhere, must make men search the
foundations of such an imputed duty. There is no truth,
no bottom to it. If the State has to find work, so may it
find food, lodging, education, amusement, until we are
landed in a purely Communistic society.
Mr. Roebuck, says the Post, has been consoling the elec-
tors of Sheffield for their loss in not having him as a
representative by a speech on Education, in which he
disposes out of hand of all the points which to other
people appear to present difficulty in dealing with the
question. It appears that Mr. Roebuck desires to "educate
everybody" by means not of a new, but of a supplemen-
tary system. Those who get educated now are to be as
they are, whether they are the victims of sec-
tarian struggles or not ; but for all the rest the State is
to step in with a system of its own, and is to

draw them all, as it were, by a smaller mesh in to the
educational net. In every pr.rish Mr. Roebuck would have
" an infant school and an elementary school," and those,
supplemented by the universities (freed, of course, from
tests), would, he holds, provide for the whole population.
The difficulty, however, that at once occurs is that this
proposal would in effect saddle us with all the expense and
trouble of an entirely new system without giving us any of
the advantages to be expected from a fresh start—a
double system would have to bo kept up at double
expense, and would perpetuate instead of removing the
old difficulties. Sectarian education we have, and secular
education is demanded, but for a national system we must
choose between the two, for we cannot afford to have
both systems in play at once, each of them with half-filled
establishments. With these strong and rough-minded
opinions, Mr. Roebuck is of course in favour of
compulsory education, as are, it may be observed,
all those who have a cut-and-dried plan to impose.
But after invoking so much charity and forbearance on
every side, surely the policeman is out of place. The
advocates of compulsion are in this dilemma, that either
their plan is a good one, and then compulsion would not
be necessary; or else that it is a bad one, and then com-
pulsion would be injurious. Difficulties of this sort, how-
ever, do not occur to thorough-going advocates, for they
assume from the first that their plan is the best possible,
and thenceforward the conclusion is easy that any machi-
nery is good for carrying it into effect.

The Pall Mall Gazette observes that the hour which
precedes the dawn of a new day is generally exciting for
weather prophets. They try to gather indications of storm
or sunshine from every passing cloud and from the beha-
viour of the brute creation. Even so at this moment of
political uncertainty we gather up such hints as may be
discovered in the addresses delivered to public meetings.
There has been of late no effectual Radical opposition. There
has been no independent member of any considerable mark
ready to denounce the backslidings of the Ministry. The
Liberal victory has been too complete. It has been almost
an open question whether more might not be done by
bullying a Conservative Ministry than by following
Liberal leaders weighted with all the cares of office. Every
Government feels the need, after a short time, of a perti-
nacious, irritating, unreasonable party iu the II moo of
Commons to keep them up to the mark, and to make them
practically aware that they cannot afford to rest upon
th it oars. When there is a band of outsiders always
ready to cap the Government proposals by a higher bid
for popular support they have a motive for a
certain degree of activity. We cannot say how this may
be, but one thing is plain : a great deal of business has to
be done somehow, and the sooner it is done the better. If
those who are in the most conspscuous places don't do it
efficiently, we may in time make a discovery which has
been made once or twice before now—namely, that though
a great reputation is a very useful thing, and is a great
force in politics, yet there are more people in the country
who can do its business than might be supposed from
common modes of talk. Leaders can generally be found
when they are wanted, and therefore no man or set of
men, however high their character, can afford at critical
periods to act in a manner unworthy of it.

The Telegraph considers that at a time when we are
going to educate every mother's son and daughter in the
land, something ought to be done for the grown-up gene-
ration who were born too early for the schoolmaster.
Happy, indeed, it would be, if it were possible—as the
League believes—to initiate universal instruction with one
Act of Parliament and abolish inebriety with another;
but temperance, we fear, is a thing which nations have
to learn, and of which the very essence and virtue
consist in the self-learned lesson. It is almost im-
possible, we readily concede to exaggerate the
evils of our national vice. Nothing that the advo-
cates of despotic legislation can say about the mischief
of inordinate drinking can well be exaggerated—our police
courts, our prisons, our hospitals, all bear accusing testi-
mony; and the revenue returns show that the working
classes spend annually upon alcoholic poison enough to
make all their homes comfortable, and to keep their wives
and children safe from privations. The champions of tem-
perance ought to be careful, therefore, not to spoil a good
cause; which we fear they do so long as they insist
upon confounding temperance with abstinence, and
upon muzzling the thirsty Briton in place of enlightening
and elevating him. Let the League, then, by all means,
agitate against the excessive multiplication of liquor-
shops; for we own, sadly, that "the sight of means to do
ill-deeds makes deeds ill-done." But let it not call upon
the Legislature to brand a glass of ale as immoral, and to
treat the working people like helpless children. Much
might be done to help Mr. Bright's bill if the
League would take into account two facts. In
the first place, our climate is so inclement that
holiday-makers must have some place of shelter ; in
the second place, with re3pect to refreshments, the
choice at present lies between the intoxicating liquors of
the public-house and the wretched fare of the pastry-
cook's counter. He that should establish in England warm,
cheerful, comfortable cafés like those upon the Continent
and find out something to drink when thirsty and cold
better than ginger-beer or cook-shop coffee, and not so bad
for the blood as spirits and water, would have invented
sobriety among the working people in this land. It cannot
be instituted by Act of Parliament, and would not be a
virtue if it could.

The Daily News hopes that the Premier will not grudge
us the peep at him in his private life which we obtain from
a Liverpool paper. One day we find him with his son and
his nephew busily engaged, by way of recreation, in cut-
ting down a beech tree near Hagley that measured
fourteen feet in circumference. The process of felling
the great tree takes three days of three hours
each. Another day we visit him at Hawarden
in company with the Archbishop of Syra and Tenos,
and we discover him in the act of sawing planks
for a job of joiners' work which he had undertaken and
nearly finished. Mr. Gladstone has the reputation of
being the hardest working man in England. Few men can
work so hard as he, and still fewer can in the same amount
of time accomplish as much ; and we are sure that if
he takes to clearing wood or sawing planks he
will do it with a will. Even his amusements
will
r curiosity of a
eencrgetie, and ho cannot be surprised at tho
c
people who like to see' their great
men at play—when they throw o/ their official
robes and airs, and become orclinarTmen. Much of a
statesman's popularity depends on the case with which he
can take us into his confidence—and, so to speak, into his
family. We seem to know him and to like him better if
we can follow him, like Lord Palmerston, to the hunting-
'field, or like Mr. Bright, to a day's fishing, or like
Mr. Gladstone, to a bout of wood-cutting and
joining. This is, indeed, one of the great sources of
the pleasure which the. English take in political
dinners. We like to see our statesmen eating. It
did one good to see that wonderful old
.man, Lord Pal-
merston, eat with tho zest of an Eton school-boy. And so
it did one good to see Sir Robert Peel bobbing in his
saddle in Rotten-row. Perhaps it may also do us good
to see Mr. Gladstone, after a hard morning's work
over State papers, throw off the cares of office with
his coat, and proceed to wield the axe, the NM; and the
piano, . .