The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

TlMES.—Every creature, as Mr. Mill observes,
fights with his own natural weapons; and the na-
tural weapons of Reformers of the extreme Liberal
school appear to be numerous and noisy demonstra-
tions. No blame, therefore, attaches to Mr. Glad-
stone and his Lancashire constituents if they hope
to modify the Reform Bill in their own sense by the
simple expedient of an exo.ursion train to the me-
tropolis and a muster at Carlton-gardens. There
is an old saying, indeed, about using one's head to
save one's heels, .and if these two hundred gentle-
men had stayed at home and spent a few minutes
in toning down their address into something like
courtesy and common sense, they might have saved
their railway fares and, to some extent, the credit
of their cause. Excepting the presentation of an
address, the first four lines of which contain four
distinct and separate items of invective and a de-
claration of continued confidence which was evi-

deafly not felt, the multitude had nothing to say
did not even know the precise object of their visits,
tion, and could only reiterate in shriller tone than
ever that " something must be done." Indeed,
never was there such a cry of despair, and if frantic
words can be taken to indicate the ruin and despera-
tion of a once great party, then the Liberals are
done for altogether, and realise their sad condition
with painful sagacity. Not a morsel of comfort
could they obtain at Carlton-gardens. Mr. Glad-
stone only tells them that English gentlemen have
lately taken to the unprecedented folly and crime of
thinking for themselves, and that, through this
abuse of private judgment, his party has become
less and less in his hands, till it resembles that he
first had to deal with about as much as a squirrel
running up a tree does a fox getting ahead of its
pursuers. The party gets less and less, and Mr.
Gladstone appears to be under the impression that
the minimum is not yet attained. He did not even
suggest how the remnant was to be held together.
The deputation was still more without resource.
hey abused the House of Commons in terms
which must be sweet to their foes, but which had
the effect of driving out of the room at least one
gentleman at the preliminary meeting. More peti-
tions and more meetings are all that Mr. Bright
himself can devise for the .emergency. But the mem-
bers of the deputation aver that even at Manchester
the people will not sign petitions—will not meet,
will do nothing at all, and nobody can make them
do anything. They say that petitions are a farce,
which, of course, everybody knows ; and the mild
suggestion of one of the company that some simple
forms of petition should be sent all over the coun-
try, to have as many names tacked to them as pos-
sible, is not calculated to remove that impression.
In the extremity of despair a gentleman predicts
that the passage of the bill, which he now takes for
granted, will be the commencement of a new and
terrible agitation, vastly worse than any we have
yet known, though why people who cannot be agi-
tated now will be easily agitated then he does not
say. His prediction is a threat, and nothing more.
But what ii the precise point upon which these two
hundred Manchester gentlemen have rushed up to
re-assure their Parliamentary leader and to promize
an agitation of unprecedented fury and effect? It
is one of the finest and most curious matters that
ever raised a night's debate in this country. Is the
British householder to be put to the smallest con-
ceivable trouble and cost in the acquisition of that
suffrage which all these discussions assume to be a pos-
session of the grk!atestdignity, value and importance?
We say the smallest conceivable, because it really is
so on the grand scale of the talk we hear every day.
In the great majority of cases two or three shillings
will be all the difference between the full rate and
the composition rate, and matters will probably be so
arranged that five minutes will suffice for the pro-
cess of paying the full rate, even if this is not under-
taken by the landlord or somebody else who makes
it his business. It is confessed, however, that
this very trilling cost and this possible trouble will
be sufficient to prevent several hundred thousand
so-called compound householders from acquiring
the franchise. There is hardly one of them who

would not spend the money and give a whole day
to an outing, or a bit of amusement of any kind, or
for the pleasure of spending Monday in doing
nothing at all. But they won't, we are told, give

this for the franchise. This is not only admitted, it
is even maintained with great earnestness as the very
basis of the case against the Reform Bill as it now

stands. One member of the depntation declared
that he was the only one of 2,000 £lO householders

in his town compounded for by their landlords who
availed himself of the act by which he was enabled
to pay.his rate in his own name and be admitted to
the register. His inference is that the several [tun-
_

red thousand householders under £lO now to be

❑vested with a potential franchise will show the

same indifferenc to this inestiunktb'e boon.

The in-

!erenee is sound. Indeed, it is quite evident i hlt
he great mass of the people will not interest them-
. .

selves in politics, unless it be some matter in which
they are specially concerned, and which is generally

a matter not between them and the Government,
but between one class and another. For Parlia-

mentary reform they cannot be got even to sign

petitions brought to their very doors, or to attend
meetings, unless they are to hear a first-rate speaker.
Nor will they pay a shilling or two, or give five
minutes, for the privilege of British citizenship.
Everybody knows this, and everybody knows that
when this class of voters does take an interest in

contested elections it is for particular and personal
reasons more or less creditable, but not for the
grand reasons assumed in all the stilted talk we are
compelled to listen to and to print in this contro-
versy. Mr. Gladstone, who had possibly been stu-
dying with some advantage the declining figures of
the Liberal side in the divisions, no sooner finds

half Manchester in his dining-room than he re-
turns to his old possession, and positively rages
about the " disfranchisement of the compound
Householders." He is forced to admit, for it is
impossible to disguise, that every one of them may
obtain the franchise at the cost of a few shillings

_
and five minutes. Nay, one great point of the argu-
ment against personal ratepaying is, that the thing
will be done wholesale for the compound house-
holders, without their ever knowing anything about
it. But that they are not enfranchised by this bill
he stoutly and furiously maintains ; and his argu-
ments is, that if you limited the franchise to one-
legged men, you would be virtually disfranchising
two-legged men, inasmuch as you would clog the
franchise with the penalty of amputation. But
what must be his estimate of the people whose cause
he is undertaking, when he intimates that they will
no more give half-a-crown and five minutes for the
franchise than they will sacrifice a leg for it, and
they ought therefore to have the franchise without
the cost of half-a-crown or five minutes? We can-
not remember a single instance of a point so exag-
gerated, or a statesman so carried off his legs by the
impetus of a party. 'I he question of enfranchisement
and disfranchisement is made to depend on the impo-
sition of about as much trouble as is necessary to do
one of the most ordinary affairs of daily life, the
arran ement for a meal, the purchase of a garment,
or t e sending a short message. If there is to be
th , smallest trouble about it, Mr. Gladstone says
the people are disfranchised, or, what is worse, they
are delivered into the hands of the bad men who

happen to feelsome littleinterest in politics, and who
accordingly will do the cost and trouble for their
neighbours. But it is quite evident that,- if a man
will not walk to the end of his street or pay half-a-

crown extra for the possession of the franchise, he
must be at somebody's mercy or disposal ; and it is
quite as well he should be, for no Reform Bill or
Constitution that can be imagined will ever mike
him a really free, independent, and self-governing
man ;. and this Reform Bill meets his case as well as
any other would.
THE " WESTMINSTER GAZETTE" ON ENGLAND'S
CHlLDREN.—Englishmen have of late years re-
ceived some severe lessons, which, though they
may prove useful for the future, are not pleasant,
nor conducive to the keeping up of our insular
pride and self-satisfaction. The day is gone,
at all events for the present, in which England
in Continental politics took her stand on the side
of right, and fought for the maintenance of order,
of religion, and of the f apacy • her hand is with-
drawn from the affairs, and her voice is almost
excluded from the councils, of Europe. But
though this may be galling to pride, it is not so
real a cause for genuine humiliation and sorrow as
the revelations of the internal corruptions and
plague-spots in the very vitals of the nation.
Where is the religion so much boasted of for
the last three hundred years as being the pure
reformed Christian faith, shining through the land
with the brightness of Gospel truth, and extinguish-
ing all Popish darkness'? It is broken and pounded
to fragments. The masses have no belief at all ;
Evangelicals, and Ritualists, or whatever name
they like to be called by, are seeking in their
several ways to restore what is lost, while the
other ureat party, known as hroad Church, pro-
fesses to be only seeking after or arriving at
enlightenment. And what has befallen—another
great boast of the Englishman—his commercial
greatness ? Fraud and swindling ; false weights
and adulteration of goods have shamed and dis-
graced it to an extent that cannot be soon re-
covered. But there are other things which have
to be acknowledged, and,. let us hope, rectified also.
And among them there is nothing which calls for
more serious attention than the wants of England's
children. We have had horrible revelations of the
iniquities and miseries of the workhouse, where
husband and wife are separated from each other,
and from their children, and all are consigned to
an atmosphere of vice and misery. 'Not long since
a mother killed her child because she could not
endure to be parted from it in the-workhouse, or
that it should live as she knew it must ;'and it is but
recently recorded how an old' man murdered his
aged wife and tried to kill himself in order to avoid
the hated place. These are but striking instances
of the dread and horror which the people with
good reason have of what England has provided
br her helpless poor and ' their children. And
now we have another revelation of the way in
which England's children are treated. A sixth
report of the Children's Employment Commission
has been printed, revealing a system of the degra-
dation and pollution of the souls and bodies of
children which even the workhousecan scarcely
equal. It deals with "agricultural gangs," a system
under which children and young persons are em-
ployed in severalof the Eastern Counties. In these
counties there appears to be a great lack of cottage
accommodation, considerably increased by land-
lords actually pulling down many of what cottages
there were, in order so far to get rid of poor-rates.
This leads to a scarcity of hands for labour, and
to meet the want the gang system is provided.
This system consists in bodies of women and young
children being collected by a gang-master under
whom they work in the fields, and to whom a per-
centage on the number of hands he provides is paid.
Early in the morning he will colect his gang,
which includes children from six, and even five
years old, as well as boys growing into young men,
with girls and women of every age. They some-
times have several miles to walk before they reach
their work. A mother states that her little girl, six
years of age, walked eight miles to her work, then
worked from 8 till 5.30, and received for such
a day's work but 4d. The words of the poor
mother are, " She was that tired that her sisters
had to carry her the best part of the way home."
A clergyman states that if the children are idle
or careless, they are urged to work by oaths and
curses, or an occasional kick, or are beaten with a
stick, sometimes so as to inflict upon them perma-
nent injury. The masters are reported, as a rule,
to be men of bad characters, "of indolent and drink-
ing habits," and often worse than this. On the
road they are given to encourage the singing of ob-
scene songs, and the use of foul language ; or, if
they are not so disposed themselves, they cannot
prevent it in the gang. We cannot enter further
into the details of the depravity and sin that abound
in these gangs, but the testimonies of clergymen
and parents tell a miserable tale of the general and
utter corruption of the children when they become
little more than boys and girls. "If I had a bairn,"
says a man who had formerly been a gang-master,
" I would rather let it go on bread and water than
work in a gang." Another labourer said he would
prefer even the workhouse for his girls. A la-
bourer's wife said to the Commissioners, " The
gangs are not fit to be met on the road by any re-
spectable people. They will insult any one, and
swear and behave ondecent,' " which another
woman supplements with the words, " Girls don't
ought to go with boys." These extracts give but
a bare idea of all that the report reveals. And it is
not the first time the evil has been made known.
In 1843 a report was laid before Parliament " On
the Employment of Women and Children in Agri-
culture," but it led to no result. Englishmen have
been ready enough to exclaim against anything they
could find amiss in other nations ; travellers and
tourists take notes of whatever seems amiss, and
publish it to their admiring countrymen as proofs
of the degenerate, unenlightened, or some other
such state of foreigners. Peasants who are busy
in their fields, but not in gangs under a brutal
gang-master • who go to Mass, and kneel in
prayer at the sound of the Angelus bell ; who
listen to the instructions of,their priests, and lead
simple, virtuous lives—these are scorned as priest-
ridden, ignorant, uneducated boors. The Govern-
ment which cares more for the true welfare of its
people than for railways, telegraphs, and postage
stamps, is sneered at as " paternal" and as being
behind the age, while applause is lavished on the
State that robs the Church, dissolves the monas-
teries, which are the true Christian workhouses ;
ruins the people with taxes ; corrupts their morals,
and gives them all the other benefits of what is