The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The Liberal Party is to meet at Mr.
Gladstone's house to-day to consider the course it
becomes them to take in respect to the Reform Bill.
There are impartial observers of public affairs who
have always distrusted the capacity of any Conser-
vative Government to carry a permanent settlement
of Reform, and their opinion will certainly have
received some confirmation from the debate on Mon-
day night. When a Minister hitherto opposed to any
downward extension of the borough franchise, unless
counterbalanced by proportionate lateral extension,
brings in a measure of which Household Suffrage is
the main feature, he should frankly acknowledge the
fact, and explain the grounds, of his conversion. He
should appeal to the loyalty of his own followers,
and the patriotism of his opponents ; he should dis-
tinguish clearly between the vital and the variable
elements of his scheme, pledging himself to main-
tain all that is essential, and expressing his readiness
to qualify where it is possible to concede. A failure
to appreciate these essential conditions of success has
been the grand error of Lord Derby's Ministry.
They have not explained—perhaps they have not
realised —the radical change of policy involved in
their present position. On the contrary, Mr.
Disraeli persists in magnifying the distinction
between Rental and Rating into an issue between
revolution and constitutional amendment, and
Lord Derby has made a last appeal to his sup-
porters as if Household Suffrage had always been
a Household Word in their mouths. Whether the
Conservative party will rally to Lord Derby in
obedience to this new war-cry remains to be seen ;
but, whatever we may think of their patriotism, no
one can accuse them of political inconsistency if they
should waver in their allegiance. There is, how-
ever, no limit to the power of amnesty vested in the
House of Commons on behalf of the country, and
there never was an occasion when it was more ne-
cessary that it should be strained to the utmost.
Can the bill now before Parliament be so moulded
as to justify passing it ? We venture to hope that
it yet may, always supposing the Reform policy of
the Government to be as malleable for the public
good as it has shown itself to be for the satisfaction
of private scruples. With all its shortcomings and
all its extravagances, the bill contains in House-
hold Suffrage one piece de resistance that will bear
a great deal of cutting and carving without losing
its substance. 'The " direct-tax franchise," which
Mr. Gladstone tore in pieces so effectively, may
easily be modified, in accordance with Mr. Lowe's
suggestion, into an Income-tax Franchise pure et
simple. By the omission of licence-duties from
clause 6, the " ratcatcher" qualification is already
negatived, and by striking out " assessed taxes"
from the same clause it may be made impossible for
the possessor of " a miserable three-legged jade to
qualify 365 persons with a single horse that may
not perhaps have cost him £3." Again, there is
little to be said against the enfranchisement of fund-
holders or savings-bank depositors, if simple and
sufficient securities cses be devised to prevent the
fabrication of votes. But approach it from what-
ever side we may, the clauses introducing House-
hold Suffrage are and must be the key of Mr. Dis-
raeli's position. If he can hold his ground there, he
will remain master of the field ; if he sacrifices it by
an obstinate defence of points which are untenable,
all is lost for the Conservative Government. The
view stated by Mr. Roebuck on this part of the
bill will probably commend itself as fair and
reasonable to a majority of independent Reformers.
He is willing to accept the proposal of Household
Suffrage as the basis, so to speak, of negotiation,
pointing out the fallacy of making everything turn
upon distinctions between rental and rating. The
present £lO franchise is a form of Household Suf-
frage subject to various conditions, one of which is
that the owner or tenant shall have occupied the
premises for at least a year, and another that he
shall have been rated and shall have paid his rates
during the same period. What is now contem-
plated is, in the delicate phraseology of Mr. Dis-
raeli, to change the law " so that value shall not be
an element." The effect of this change would, of
course, be to enfranchise all householders who are
rated and pay their own rates. It so happens, how-
ever, that by various limitations, and especially by
the operation of the Small Tenements Act iu cer-
tain boroughs, a large proportion of householders
below £lO, estimated by Mr. Disraeli at 486,000 out
of 723,000, do not pay their own rates directly, but
only indirectly through their landlords. Mr. Glad-
stone would have enfranchised all of these whose
" gross estimated rental" might amount to £7, dis-
regarding the circumstance of their names not ap-
pearing on the rate-books. Mr. Disraeli would
leave them unenfranchised, unless they choose to
avail themselves of facilities to be given them for
taking upon themselves the payment of their own
rates. The object of both, and of all who desire a
discriminating extension of the franchise, being to
include as many skilled artisans and as few " migra-
tory paupers" as possible, it may obviously be
doubted whether this will best be effected by a
Household Suffrage thus restricted, or by a £7 rental
franchise unfettered by any obligation of ratepaying.
This is a very proper topic for discussion in Com-
mittee, but we entirely agree with Mr. Roebuck,
that to erect it into a Parliamentary casus Belli
would be a grievous error on both sides. Mr.
Gladstone himself admits the convenience of
making the downward limit of representation coin-
cide with that of personal rateability, and this,
after all, is the professed aim of the Government
bill. The system of dual voting, we understand, is
already abandoned, but there are other objections
to the bill in the non-enfranchisement of lodgers,
and the almost illusory plan of redistribution. To
cure all these defects in a measure which has al-
ready been embodied in a definite shape is, doubt-
less, a colossal task, but it is not yet hopeless. Mr.
Roebuck's advice may still be adopted, if the House
of Commons possesses the necessary pudic spirit.
" Our plain and simple course," says he, " is to dis-
cuss this bill upon the second reading, to read it a
second time, to bring it into committee, make it
what it can be made—if necessary, take it out of
the hands of the Government ; but, at all events,
let us pass the bill." In this spirit alone can a legis-
lative settlement of Reform be accomplished, but it
will never be honestly faced till some delusions still
current are finally discarded. One of these, ac-
cepted by Mr. Disraeli, is that power can be given
to the working classes without any sacrifice on the
part of the upper and middle classes. This is a

mere sophism, which cannot deceive any one long.
True Reform will increase the effective power of the
whole nation for all purposes of government, but it
cannot leave the relative power of classes the same
as before. What one class gains in this sense must
be lost by another, but the loss will be far more
than compensated if it should substitute the legiti-
mate influences of intellectual and moral superiority
for those now abused by electioneering agents.
Another delusion is the belief in the magical effi-
cacy of " a principle." A rental franchise, accord-
ing to Mr. Disraeli, is an " expedient ;" a rating
franchise contains a " principle." Let any one
attempt to define these terms, as applied to politics,
and he will find how unmeaning the contrast is.
What legislators have to seek is not a " principle,"
but that practical solution of the problem which
promises most benefit, and is likely to entail least
injustice or inconvenience. Equally barren is the
eternal controversy as to the proper conception
of the franchise. You may call it a right, a trust,
a privilege, or a function ; but the designation
adopted will produce not the slightest effect on
the conduct of the man who exercises it, sublimely
unconscious of these subtle abstractions. The
statesman deals with ascertained facts and probable
consequences. Forms of expression which repre-
sent neither of these do not impose upon him, and
he abstains from using them, lest they should im-
pose upon others.
THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE ON " THE POOR."—
Sidney Smith used to say that when some people
read a charitable appeal they are very much
moved to put their hands into their neighbour's
pockets and subscribe. Those who write philan-
thropically, and those who read such writings for
the sake of grumbling at shortcomings and offer-
ing a dole of pure and naked pity to the suffer-
ers from poverty, have excellent intentions.
And if we grant that the way to the workhouse,
like a certain dangerous way about which the
saints used to write, is paved with good intentions,
perhaps we shall not be far from the truth. No
pauper knocks at the gate of a poorhouse who has
not trodden on a whole pavement of good in-
tentions by the way. These may be strewn for
them by friends or enemies, or partly even by
themselves ; but, there they are, and the poor
have had enough of them. When they get into the
prison—we were nearly calling it voluntary, but
considered that a mistake—they may stand in
need of sermons, and instructions, and a great
many more good intentions ; but they also stand
in need of bread, and that is a keener want to them
than all the others. Some wiseacre says that all
men are governed by their stomachs, and it would
not offend the feelings of the poor to say they
formed no exception to this rule. There is, how-
ever, great danger of our looking upon the poor
as animals with empty crops, instead of as rational
men. The State provides them food and lodging,
indifferent enough to be sure, but something
which may be put down on the other side of an
equation as amounting to such, and then the public
conscience is believed. This is a mistake which
our good old Catholic forefathers never dreamt
of committing. They did not think the poor
were made of a material differing from the stuff
which composes a rich man. They remembered
that many of the poor had been rich, and they
knew very well that they had feelings. It seems
beneath the majesty of law, perhaps, to take the
feelings of the poor into account. But they have
feelings for all that, and the good old Catholic
instincts dealt with them accordingly. This
accounts for the old poor which live now-a-days
only in hovels, or in countries unblessed with
workhouses and poor-law guardians. The old
Irish beggar was a rare being. He travelled miles
every day, was the walking newspaper of his dis-
trict, said his " Paters and Ayes," or his De Pro-
fundis, for those who gave him an alms, or their
deceased relatives, carried more gossip than a dozen
ordinary tattlers, and knew the genealogies of the
fairies and the legends of saints with extraordin-
ary accuracy. People tried to have their hearth
blessed with a deoraig (wanderer) every night,
and put something in his bag for the morn-
ing. Beggars did not steal in those days, for they
had a great deal of self-respect, if not religion,
and they were as much afraid of a bad name as
anybody else. The Scotch gaberlunzie was much
the same sort of being, and the jolly beggars of
Old England had their codes of honour and eti-
quette. If this class of beings received they
also gave, and indeed the politics of the parish
were not dear at a morsel of bread which could
be easily spared. The beggars had a circle of
friends, too, and paid visit and refused invitations,
when they were vexed, much after the fashion of
grand people. Why, they were an institution.
If they levied black mail occasionally, it was
only by lampoons or sorry jokes, whereas the
poor-rates are no joke at all. :We do not get a
joke itself in return for our modern way of helpingthe poor to a crust, after their paid officials
have feasted on the pittance which the law wrings
out of us. Let us think of the privations of the
poor in workhouses. They cannot trudge about
the parish and make speeches. They cannot change
their lodgings every night. They cannot have a
crowd of smiling faces welcoming them to the
comfortable farmhouse. They cannot gather up
news, nor manufacture stories. They cannot, in
fact, be beggars. These are real privations, be-
cause they betoken a want of enjoyment. It
would be a very hazardous thing to take up the
cudgels for beggary. It is a source of many evils,
but we have yet to learn the way of putting it
down, without entailing worse. If a man be sent
to prison for asking a halfpenny in the street, it
is very likely that he will revenge himself on
society by taking one without the asking when
he gets out again. Beggary is bad, only when
associated with roguery ; we should try to catch
the rogue and let the beggar have his fling. That
is the point. Who can catch a rogue ? And,
when he is caught, is he not very like the prover-
bial Tartar ? Of course we try to send rogues to
catch other rogues ; but it requires something
more than prison walls to take the roguery out of
a man. Rogues have feelings as well as poor
people, but they stand on our corns and forfeit the
right to a consideration for them. They are
bad, and very bad ; it would be a great thing if
we could find out how to make them good.

Perhaps we could go a great way towards this
praiseworthy object by preventing the develop-
ment of a beggar into a rogue. It must be con-
fessed that few take to roguery as a vocation,
and that the ranks of this fraternity are generally
recruited from those of poverty. Beyond the
hypothesis we have advanced, namely, that poor
people have feelings, there lies another which is
equally tenable—to wit, that they have a holy
claim on our regard. There is the injunction of
Our Lord, and the fact that they are always with
us and represent Him. A singular privilege for
poor outcasts, and one that ought to be recog-
nised. Perhaps it would be coming nearer the
truth if we concluded that it was this notion of
the poor which made them the objects of so much
care to the Church and her faithful children at
all times. This age is particularly squeamish
with regard to the poor. It will fill books with
empty talk, in order to get the poor out of our
sight. It has a great horror of rags, except when
they are going to the paper-mill. But when the
wearers of rags can be put together, and counted
like so many quires of paper, and then bound up
in red-tape, it has no objection to consider them
as a commodity for legislature. It is very diffi-
cult to revive the holy love of the poor which
once pervaded Christians, but it is not perhaps so
difficult to do them the amount of good which the
possession of such a love would cause in altered
circumstances. The system of poor law, as now
in vogue, is acknowledged to be a failure. It is
unnatural and impracticable. It will as soon meet
the requirements of poverty as an Act of Parlia-
ment will change human nature. There is one
feature of the poor law which would go a great
way towards alleviating misery if it were extended
—that is, out-door relief. If there were hospices
erected at public expense, where poor bodies might
call and get a dinner for the asking, and where
they might get a lodging, when in want bf one,
without their being subjected to the trammels
of unbending officialism, the evils which puzzle
our Administration would be, in a great measure,
remedied. These hospices might be small places,
erected here and there within easy reach of the
sufferers. The large sums of money now spent in
erecting those gaunt, ugly buildings called work-
houses would be better employed than it is, and
go farther than one might at first sight suppose.
Boards of Guardians could be dispensed with,
and society would not lament their loss. The poor
would be free to go about among their friends, in-
stead of being caged up like wild cats. Individual
charity would have more congenial exercise in
helping suffering with its own hand than it has
now through committees. But, is there any like-
lihood of such a change? Very little. Com-
mittees are very fond of speeches, and circulars,
and reports, and balances, and boards of guardians
make such wooden palisades with their heads
around the poor that it will take more than
words to break through them. The people broke
the Hyde-park railings, and why could they not
break a poor-law fence? We should not advo-
cate a muscular way of doing it, but the spread-
ing of proper ideas on the subject of the poor
which may permeate the crowds and make its
way into the public mind. Let us be convinced
that the poor have feelings, and that we owe them
protection, and that we ought not to relieve
them at the price of their liberty, and it will, be
very easy to make us do the right thing. Casuals
and exposures, and dismissals of masters, and
public indignation, and newspaper articles are

doing a good deal latterly. They tend toward
improving the system in the workhouses. No
measure will succeed if it gets inside those
dreary walls. Let the walls come down, and
the machinery which now works be put into better
gear, and then we shall look forward to something
like provision for the poor. Let us abolish the
paupers and get the good old Christian poor in
their stead.

ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE.

A brief paragraph has lately run the rounds of
the press, stating in effect that a fortune of $250,000
was awaiting Dr. Patterson, or his heirs, of Mobile.
The full history of the case, the discovery of the
heir in Chicago, and the previous experience of that
person, afford material for a first-class romance,
without need of embellishment. We propose to give
merely the outlines of the story, which is not less
true than strange.
In 1863 a rich widow came to this city from
Mobile, and stopped for some time at one of our
principal hotels. She was the daughter of Dr. B.
F. Patterson, of Mobile, who was once a judge,
and subsequently became a surgeon in the rebel ser-
vice. Not sympathising with the rebellion, she
came within the Union lines, and, having converted
most of her property into money, was pos-
sessed of $60,000 in cash, besides some lands, upon
her arrival in Chicago. Of course a widow, young,
handsome, and so rich, was the recipient of many
flattering attentions while here. With her child, a
little girl, as her only companion, she led, however,
a very secluded life, waiting for the termination of
the war.

When hostilities were over she went to Mobile,
found that her father was missing, and no doubt
dead, while his estates were almost wasted by the
disasters of war and by litigation. Residing for a
short time at Washington, she became acquainted
with and presently married a Mr. D—, son of a
well-known rebel gunmaker at Richmond. They
were led to try to increase their fortune in the oil
regions, and removed to that vicinity. Mr.
I) 's investments in land, and in sinking wells
were large, but were altogether unsuccessful. The
result was that in a few months they were quite im-
poverished, and the husband went to the frontier to
repair his fortunes, while the wife came to Chicago a
second time, having upon her arrival hardly suffi-
cient means to sustain her for one week. She was
one of gentle blood, and unused to work, but at
once sought employment as an humble seamstress;
some of our clothing house men being impressed by
her appearance readily gave such light work as she
was able to do—preparing neckties, &c. With
diligence, she was in a few months not only able to
provide for herself the necessaries of life, but to em-
ploy two or three assistants, and to look forward to
the establishment of a more independent business.
Her husband, meantime, did not do well, and
proving to be unable to combat misfortune success-
fully, as she had done, he returned in a few months
to be supported by her exertions. A few weeks ago,
however, he 3 got work in a locksmith's shop (near
M'Vicker's Theatre), where his skill as a mechanic
soon gave promise of large returns. The faithful
wife often carried his meals to him, cheered hire,
and sometimes chided because he prolonged
his labours far into the night. He was then con-
triving a patent skate. We are told, by the war,
that the rooms they occupied were curiously adorned.
The man was a rebel, and on his side of the house
were hung pictures of rebel chiefs and other indica-
tions of his sympathies. On hers were a tiny
" Stars and Stripes," Lincoln, Grant, and Union
heroes. But this humble estate was soon to be
abandoned.

Simultaneously with the appearance of the para-
graph to which we have made reference came a
despatch to the lady from Mobile, and another from
Washington, notifying her that in her father's right
she was the heir to the great estate that was as yet
unclaimed. The sewing machine was gladly aban-
doned, and the locksmith threw down his tools.
Before this time, no doubt, the subjects of these
freaks of fortune are merrily laughing over their
little episode somewhere in the vicinity of &lob'le
bay, and with chastened spirits humbly enjoying the
goods that hare fallen to them.—Chicago Republtcan•