The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-08 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8. 1870.

•••., • •
known as the pretty, dainty pastime of pigeon shoot-
ing. Not that the member for Bucks himself has
the faintest notion apparently in his own mind of
there being anything but what is perfectly comme ii
faut in this kind of amusement. He describ. s, it in
one of the least fantastic chapters of his most fantas-

tic book, without one momentary qualm. Pigeon
shooting it is to him, as it is to the blase earls and ire-
souciant marquesses, whom he depicts os

to competitors, or as it is to - trlija de.

licate-souled, dainty-handed Lady COIIISANDES
and others whom he speaks of as merrily
jotting down upon their ivory tablets with turquoise-
embossed pencils (the while, as with the Poet Lau-
reate's Lilian, their " silver treble laughter trilleth ")
the fluctuating scores of the Dove Murderers. Com-
paratively trivial though this fashionable vice- of the
time may seem to many—it is, by reason of a special

significance of its own, to our thinking, one of the
foulest typical blains of which our social system has

reason now, as quickly and as effectually as possible to
rid itself. Exult as we may, and with some cause, over
the abolition of the old, Idiotic, detestable,and murde-

roue laws. of duelling, which were held by our fathers

tt► eon4titute what was culled 4 those days the
Cede of Honour, we have mall reason to pride our-

selves upon being in any way more humanized than

that al derided, duelling generation, so long as the
jeunesse doree of England take a pride to theniselves
in the honours and glories won—save the mark I

;erally- awe the mark I—iii the maiming, the tortur

tg, and the murdering of a flight of doves /

IF M. JOURDAIN found satisfaction in the d iscovery
that he had been talking prose all his life without
knowing it, M.P.'s must be even more satisfied in
learning, on high authority, that they have been
obeying political economy all the session without know-
ing it. The satisfaction must be all the greater because
some of them have thought that they were
really violating political economy. The coun-
try gentlemen, for instance, who, or whose
fathers, five-and-twenty years ago, denounced the
joyless science as a new-fangled thing, the un-
cleanly offspring of Radicalism and shopkeeping, but
who, since Protection has been abolished, have been
the most devoted, if not the most enlightened,
disciples of the science, have been making their de-
votion known to all men by the frequent repetition of
certain phrases borrowed from scientific terminology.
"Freedom of contract" is one of these, and
it has been used, with happily little effect,
to obstruct the progress of the Irish Land Bill.

In fact they have been treating political economy just
as its earlier votaries of the Manchester school treated
it some thirty years ago. Then we heard a good deal
about the law of supply and demand, and the neces-
sity of not interfering between capital and labour, for
mill owners and coal owners did not like
to be

deprived of. the cheap labour
of little children who ought to have
been in the school or in the nursery. But the
instinct of the nation was too powerful for any
amount of authoritative dicta borrowed from science
"falsely so called," and the children were rescued
from the cruel bondage of the task-master, and were
taught before they were compelled to work. So has
it been with the Irish tenant. He has been set free,
so far as the House of Commons can free him,
from the tyranny of an evicting landlord.
And we doubt not that just as the 111anethester school

now admit they were in the wrong when they
opposed the Factory Acts, just as they now confess
that they misapplied their favourite science when
they used it to oppose those Acts, so, in a little
' while, Conservative Irish landlords will admit that
they were wrong in opposing the land bill, will con-
fess that they made a false use of political economy
when they urged the necessity of maintaining, before
all things, " freedom of contract."
For after all, as Mr. MILL has shewn in an admi-
rable article in the current number of the Fort-
nightly Review, there are no such principles of
political economy as the Irish landlords suppose
they have been violating. Principles differ from
precepts: "The same principles require diffe-
rent precepts, wherever different measures are
required
.for the same ends. If the interest
of landlords does not afford sufficient security
to tenants, it is not contrary, but in the
strictest conformity, to the teachings of political
economy, to provide other security instead. The
absolute power of landlords over the soil, is what
political economy really condemns, and condemns in
England as well as in Ireland, though its economic .
mischiefs are not, in England, so flagrant and un-
_ .

qualified." The truth is, the land tenure of this

Sport is proVerbially cruel : meaning by sport not
• mete contests of skill or of speed, but the pursuit of
game, and the more or less wanton destruction of
life. Supposing this country were still infected as of
ad by wolves, or other Mrening 4ttimala, the slay-
ing of fereciottB creatures suck as those would, as a
matter a course, be perfectly comprehensible. But
the destroying of the gottlparatively harmless fauna
of Errand for the mere Idle display of dex-
terity. Qt. ae on* 'neighbours have it pour
passer le teenps, has about it an attribute
itt no Ivey defensible et any time or under
any circumstances—.,the attribute of sheer heartless-
ness. To one of the earlier victims of this idle search
after amusement one might be tempted to trace back,
as though it had been overheard by .2Esop, the now
familiar axioms What's sport toyou, is death to us."
The blunting of the sensibilities by the force of
habit engendered among sporttmen of all kinds is
perhaps nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in
the well known suggestion of old IZAAK WALTON to
bis brothers of the Gentle Craft, as it is called (whe-
ther by a mere play of words, or by the sheer force
of irony, who shall decide?) when beseeching them
to impale the bait as though they loved it, One
need hardly go back 200 years, however, in order
to realise in this way the hardening influence
of Le Sport, pur et simple, if one only reads the last
new novel of the season, or glances at the light
earted competition which has just taken place

between the Lords and Commons of England during
the passing recess Of these present holidays of Whit-
suntide_

In that much-abused and much-bepraised novel of
" Lothair," in which the ex-Premier has, at the least,
endeavoured to pourtray the manners and customs of
those who are vulgarly spoken of as the Upper Ten
Thousand, there is one description that is true
to the life, and that has about it not one touch
of exaggeration. It is the description given
by Mr. DISRAELI of one among the pet vices, we
are almost tempted to speak of it as one among the
chel ished crimes, just now, of the fashionable world—

country, so far from being strictly in accordance with
the ideas of political economy is in many respects
opposed. thereto. It is, moreover, unique. In no'
other country of Europe does it exist. Even fixity of
tenure, which Mr. GLADSTONE repudiated with such
emphasis, exists in most other countries. Moreover,
while in England the land ia every year falling into
fewer hands, and becoming the monopoly
of a few owners, on the continent • the
land is in the possession of innumerable
small proprietors, and the peasant is his own land-
lord. Mr. HARRISS GASTRELL, who has written, in
the Blue-book on the land tenure of Europe, the able
report on the land system of Prussia, warns his
fellow countrymen that there is a serious danger in
the accumulation o land in the hands of a small
class. Who that has read the history of the
last hundred years can doubt this ? Who that
is acquainted with the events of the Frenoh

Revolution of the laet century, with the fortunately
bloodless revolution which took place in. Prussia sixty
years ago, with the not wholly bloodless revolution in
Austria twenty years ago, can doubt that the land
question is one of the most important which can pos-
sibly be raised, and that we must solve it sooner or
later. We pray that it may be sooner rather than
la ter.

One thing necessary to the solution is a clear con-
viction that land is not in the sanie position as
other purchaseable goods, It is limited in quantity
at the same time that its profitable working is indis-
pensable to the welfare of the community. A, man
may hold any amount of diamonds, and though the
supply of them, too, is limited, society does
not suffer by the monopoly, for diamonds

are simply things to possess, not to cultivate, and
society would be none the poorer if every diamond
in the world were reduced by a blow-pipe to black
smoke and ashes to-morrow. But the existence of

society depends upon the produce of the land, and
therefore society has a right to see that the land is
made productive. We ought almost to apologise
for saying thus much, for to many of our
readers what we have said will appear
a truism. But it has not seemed so to a hundred
and fifty old members of the House of Commons;
we suspect that it will not appear so to more than
that number of the House of Lords. It is
wise, therefore, to insist upon it at this time, when
the Land Bill is about to be discussed
by the hereditary chamber. We would not only
insist, but prove our position. We would remind all

those who doubt it that Parliament • has already
removed land from the ordinary category of property.
When it said that the land-owner was bound to part
with his land to a private company, because that
company was about to construct a work which was for

the public good, it established the principle that land
is not like jewels, or funds, or a banker's balance,
things over which the State had no power,
and which the owner might misuse to his heart's
content. True the landowner was paid for his land,
but he was compelled to receive that which he did
not want to take—money--in exchange for that which
he did not want to surrender—land. This principle
will have fruitful consequences hereafter, for the end
is not yet.

LIVERPOOL is about to commemorate its former
intimate connection with the late Earl of DERBY by
the erection of an institution to be called the Stanley
Hospital. The son of the deceased statesman was
called upon to lay the foundation-stone of the Inc...
morial to his father. In doing so he said a good
' word for hospitals. He contended that however much
of imposition there might be, however much waste of
power and money there might occur in other chari-
table institutions, a hospital always fulfils the pur-
poses for which it is established, and the subscriber
'to its funds may be sure that lie gets his money's
worth in the shape of relief to the sick poor. In the
main, Lord DERBY is right So far as ep,ards the
indoor patients, there can be no doubt that the per-
sons benefited are the persons who ought to be bene-
fited, for no one when sick would willingly leave
' his home to be nursed by strangers, however
kind. It would not be possible to speak with equal
confidence respecting the outdoor patients. These
are often of a class who could and should pay. There
is no sacrifice involved in going to see a surgeon or a
physician in a hospital for a few minutes, and there
can be no doubt that a large number of persons
do this who ought to be seeing the doctor at
their own homes, and to be paying him
for his visit. The masters and the mistresses
of households are especially to blame in this matter.
They, in order to save a doctor's bill, will often beg
for a hospital ticket, and give it to a sick servant.

Some of them have not the grace to subscribe even
then. The force of meanness can no farther go.
But when all •is said, hospitals are noble
institutions, and are, probably, the least
abused and the most productive of all charitable
undertakings. The subscriber to these knows that his
gifts will not be squandered upon sacretaries and
clerks, but that the money which he intends for the
good of his.really poor fellow creatures will be hilly
and wisely expended in their behalf.

MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS.