The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP TILE ED.BLIC JOURNALS,

.0.--

The Times. remarks that the son of the labourer in our
-agricultural districts, such as that now visitimd by the
British Association, is under singular disadvantages and
difficulties. Canon Girdlestone may well put it to the
assembled wisdom of the empire—Who is to educate him?
At whose expense? And what is he to be taught? If
the education of the working poor be a duty, whose duty
is it ? There are various answers to the question. The
Canon answers, with many others, " The localproprietors
and occupiers." Farmers, however, say they want
labourers able to do their Work, and glad to take it on the
wages offered, not educated persons with opened minds
and prospects, and with the world to choose from. If
it is the interest and the duty of the State that all
should be educated to time extent of their powers and
opportunities, it is, then, the duty of the State to pro.
vide the schools and advance the funds. That, indeed,
is what the State does already in the much less
necessary cases of towns and populous villages,
where there are plenty of schools already, and where the
intervention of the State, beneficial as it has been, has
certainly destroyed mammy fair schools as well as made some
good ones. If there be a question as to the amount of
instruction to be given to village lads, we should think the
Education Committee much more likely to meet Canon
Girdlestone's views than most village vestries or
most masters of their appointing. As we have
observed, it is no fault of theirs if they are
disposed to teach only what is necessary to
a man's station in life. They have good
reasons for not liking over-educated persons—that
is, persons burdened with more knowledge than they can
handle wisely and profitably. They have good reason to
be shy, too, of sharp wits without the tie of local responsi-
bility. Nevertheless, the State has row long ago recog-
nised the importance of giving everybody the best educa-
tion possible under the circumstance. Instead, thou, of
fighting for a share of the rates, and, by consequence, for
the intervention of the ratepayers, the Canon had better
insist upon the duty of the State to carry out its promise
of a national system.

The Post thinks that a particular point which the great
race will probably clear up is that of training. The
Americans have unquestionably done more hard work,
and for a longer time, than the Oxonians. Which of the
crews, then, is the better fitted to row four and a quarter
miles at racing pace? Friday will decide the question.
But the recent trial seems to us tolerably conclusive on
the matter. The Harvard crew could not possibly shew
distress from under-training, and yet on Tuesday they
unquestionably exhibited more marked signs of labour
just undergone than the Oxonians did. This leads to
the conclusion that they are rather over-trained, as
distress can of course arise from that cause as well as
the other. It will be gathered from these remarks
that, putting accidents out of the question, we fully
expect that Oxford will be victorious in the great
race. At the same time defeat will be no disgrace
to the gallant Harvardians. If they could have had con-
fidence in their own boats and style of rowing the case
would be different. But to pull in an outrigger new to
them, and— abandoning the style in which they have been
nurtured—to adopt a mode of rowing foreign to their
experience, is to face disadvantages which all the pluck,
determination, and physical power they have exhibited
could not be expected to counterbalance when opposed to
such a strong and skilled crew as that of Oxford ; and
should our prognostications, based on an unbiassed investi-
gation of the case, prove to be fallacious, we shall heartily
join in tendering to the Harvard oarsmen our sincere con-
gratulations on their almost too-well-merited success.
They will have the fairest of fair play ; and where
lusiote and endurance are so equally matched, the best
style of rowing will win.

The Daily News, in examining the recent speech of the
member fur Sheffield, says that on the questions of the
future Mr. Mundella takes a moderate tone. In his view,
and in the view of those whom he represents, the greatest
of these is the question of National Education. Mr.
Mundella himself is for a national system, but expresses
his willingness to take every possible step towards it, and
to-work for more. Ife is, of course, for the Ballot—who
could win popular suffrage and go against it?--and for the
Married Women's Property Bill, and that for legalising
Marriages with the Sisters of Deceased 'Wives, which are'
also working-class questions, and must soon be settled in
the Liberal sense. The abolition of Capital Punishment,
and the important bill for applying a kind of Factory
Act to Mines, as might be expected, received his
support. But what may be a little unexpected is
that Mr. Mundella not only voted for the Permissive
Bill, as it is somewhat quaintly called, but stood
up to justify his vote before the men of Sheffield. Indeed,
he did more ; he named the question of licensing as among
the most important questions of the future, and it is
suggestive of thought that the Sheffield democracy
endorsed his opinions. There are some evils with which
the working classes are evidently inclined to deal in a
rough and ready way. We arc not quite sure that among
these evils the obstructive tendency of the House of Lords
does not occupy a place. From Mr. Roebuck to Mr.
Mundella is a long d:stance, but every step of the distance
is an upward one. Mr. Mundclla's speech is not as
readable as one of Mr. Roebuck's would have been, but
it tells us something we needed to know, which Mr.
Roebuck never did. Ile is not half as clever as his pro-
decessor, but he is twice as strong ; not nearly so sharp,
but then be is honest and earnest.. Mr. Mundella feels
with the people, and speaks for them, and we only rejoice
that Sheffield democracy should be such that a man of
Mr. Mundella's character and power should fitly repre-
sent it.

The Standard says that poor Lucas, the lion tamer, has
paid the usual penalty of his profession, and has died of
the injuries inflicted upon him during his recent pester.
mance in Paris. The gallantry of his servant, Jose
Mendez, who rushed into the den and rescued him from
the two infuriated beasts between whom he was torn to
pieces, has been unavailing, and all that the brave
Spaniard achieved was to prolong his master's life for a
few wretched days. This is always the end of lion-taming
stories. Van Ambergh did indeed pass successfully through
the Valleyof the Shadow of Death, but the betting in such
matters must always be something like twenty to one
on the lions in the long run. Does it seem
very horrible to calculate the odds on a man's death in
this cold-blooded way? Indeed, we think so. It is only
a little less horrible than it is to encourage such
demoralising entertainments as that with which poor
Lucas will never more offend public morality. Can any.
one who " assists," as the Frenchphrase suns, at such a
spectacle, feel that he is much m advance of the crowds
who used to gloat over similar shows when gladiators were
" butchered to make a Roman holiday," and the Chris-
tian religion was a new idea, that seemed for the moment
to have failed ? Lion-taming shows are lessons in ferocity.
The animal courage they call forth makes the man who
performs at them a hero for the moment in the people's
eyes, and always in his own ; and in this way the
lowest qualities of humanity, those in which it most
resembles brutality, are held up in admiration and
glorified, and every lad who looks on and thinks
what a splendid thing it would be to be a lion tamer is
made just in proportion to the intensity of his admiration
a worse man, a coarser and a lower creature in the scale
of humanity than he might have been otherwise. If we
speak of Lucas's death in a manner which seems a little
unfeeling, it is because reflection on the mqtter shows how
much harm such men do unconsciously by their lives. The
shame of this, however, rests with the authorities who
permit their exhibitions, and it may be acknowledged that
with the men themselves, at all events, rests such glory as
can accrue from mere brute courage and the penalty which
is always in reserve.

The Telegraph declares that it is an excellent thing to
find a representative working man like Mr. Potter telling
the trades unions the truth about the gigantic vice of his
own class. How vast, how momentous the topic is, may
be gathered from the fact cited, that every year
£228,000,000 sterling is spent in Britain upon intoxicating
drinks. The speaker did not fall into the error of advo-
cating either total abstinence or Parliamentary restrictions;
he knew how to distinguish between the "productive" glass
of ale, which invigorates and sustains, and that " unproduc-
tive" swilling, which ruins health, impoverishes the pocket,
and makes the home squalid, unhappy, and quarrel-
some. But none the less he asked the new age of house-
hold suffrage to disestablish by its own action beerhouses
and gin-palaces ; for these " destroy what we want to
save, and save what we want to destroy." Mr. Potter
accused his order of guilty folly in not recognising the
truth, that they laboured under no worse incumbus than
the habit of drinking for drinking's sake. Money spent
in this vice, he went on, "is waste of land, capital, and
labour, in producing drink ; loss of labour and time by
destruction and theft, by pauperism, destitution, sickness,
insanity, premature death, police, prosecutions, courts of
justice, support of criminals, &c. This simple item
of expenditure would pay off the national debt
in less than five years, and lessen taxation for
ever." It would! yet we. all know that those words
will receive the comment of just the same baleful statistics
of drunkenness next year—just the same consequent
pauperism, the same. bodily and mental loss, the same
Aquandered opportunities on the part of the six millions
,)f working people taken as a class. No sensible working
man but will admit the amazing mistake of this passion
for strong liquor, whether he looks at it as the vice of the
individuol or as the opprobrium and obstacle of the order.
With few exceptions everybody at the Congress acknow-
ledged the transcendant importance of Mr. Potter's facts,
and confessed that trades unions could not make in-
dustry free and strong, unless something else made it
sober.

The Herald refers to the recent admission of two Ben•
galee ladies to the Calcutta University. Female educa-
tion in India has made great way of late years so far as
children are concerned, and the n.aterial cannot, of course,
be employed too early. But the demonstration to which
we have called attention is far more important than the
acquisition of any number of children to local schools, on
account of the influence which it exercises upon the thought
of the country. We do not here allude to the movement in
connection with Christianity. In the face of facts of
this kind religion may be left an open question. But of
this we may be assured—that whenever women in the
East shall be raised to the position of women in the West,
changes for good of the highest possible importance will
inevitably come. And by the position of women in the
West we mean the position of women as they are, not
women as Mr. Mill wants them to be. The Bengalee
girl graduates have gone to an extreme for which we at
home are scarcely prepared ; but initiatory measures
must be strong to be effective, and it is in this light that
we have to regard tinir Aspiration to .Uuiveraitar honours.