The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-26 00:00:00

JOINT-STOCK BANKS.

MORAL INCURABLES.

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The Saturday Review has an article entitled "Moral
Incurables." A recent traveller in the islands of the
Indian Archipelago, it says, has, among other things,
given a rather minute account of the condition to which
the Malay opium-smoker reduces himself ; and the
account is made more graphic than unaided words
could have made it by a photograph of one of those
unhappy creatures. The wretch, though only of middle
age, is emaciated so as to be mere skin and bone ;
the, deadness of his expression is irreproducible in words ;
in his hands is the fatal pipe ; "by his side are
seen vessels for making tea, and by copious draughts of
that stimulant he will try to revive his dead limbs by-and.
bye, when he awakes from his contemplated debauch, and
finds, as it were, his very life on the point of leaving the
body." When a man has once contracted the habit of
opium-smoking, says the traveller, it is impossible to
reform ; and, indeed, one need only look at the picture to
be quite sure of this impossibility. A reader with anything
like an imaginative turn of mind can hardly help pausing to
think of a condition of such despair; and if he is reflective
as well as imaginative, he will feel a chill in remembering
that the Malayopium-smoker is not the only, even if he is the
most degraded, kind of incurable. It is rather a useful
thing for Englishmen to think about, because the notion of
an incurable is one of those which we have supreme
difficulty in admitting to our minds. We are so convinced
—and it is a very decided piece of good fortune for us
that we are so—of the omnipotence of personal effort, and
the irresistibleness of the human will, that the existence
of facts which effort cannot touch, and of cir-
cumstances against which any force that we
think of under the name of will is totally impotent,
is either ignored, or at any rate is kept as much out
of sight as possible. That this is on the whole a
very wholesome tendency, and ends in good in the long
run, there can be hardly any doubt. But it is not good
that anything should be shirked, and it is not good, there-
fore, that we should shut our eyes to the existence of
whole bands of moral incurables—men as far beyond
redemption from this or that tyrannical habit as
the Malay opium-smoker, and whose moral case

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is not a whit less desperate. Opium-smoking is
not a favourite or popular vice among Europeans, and so
we do not get incurableness brought home to us in
that direct and concrete manner which is so much more
effective than any other. But the most unflinching optimist
will think twice before he maintains that we are free from
other vices and foibles that are hardly a shade less deadly,
mutatis mutandis ; at all events from vices and foibles which

their victims would probably count quite as deadly if they
could only see themselves as others see them. Take weakness
of purpose, for example. It is as certain as anything can be,
that after a time the habit of desiring without willing,
of purposing without striving, of wishing and designing
without executing or taking strenuous steps towards exe-
cuting, fastens upon a man and grows into his bones and

his flesh, and pulls him down to a state fully as
desperate and as deadly from a moral point of view
as the state of the Malay opium-smoker is desperate
from the moral and physical point. Practically, there is
about as little chance of rescuing the one as the other.
One advantage of recognising the incurableness of certain
disorders of character after they have had time to work
themselves into its grain is that well-disposed persons
would learn to leave the incurable alone; would let him
fare in his own way ; would neither harass him nor waste
their own energies in a bootless effort to awaken him. It
would be an uncommonly useful thing if persons given to
play the part of social missionary or amateur moralist would
hang up over their mantel-piece or bed-head a photograph
of the Malay opium-smoker, as a reminder, graphic
and perpetual, of the impotence of talking in the face of
confirmed and settled habit. If one were to see an earnest
moralist haranguing the wretched Malay, pointing out to
him the evil and folly of his ways, enforcing his moral
by reference to the dead eye, sunken cheeks, and bones
starting through the skin, we should only laugh
or wonder. It is not much less melancholy to note
the zeal with which incorrigible preachers attack and try
to stir up men as dead in their habits as habits can be.
What amount of digging and dunging will bring fruit
to a barren tree ? It was a just appreciation of the in-
vincible might with which habits and tempers take root
and thrive in men, that led theologians to insist upon a
supernatural effort of Divine grace as the essential condi-

tion of the new life. The world at large is given to laugh
at the divines who cry out about " our miserable human
nature," and about the feebleness and fatuousness of
mortals groping after light by their own unaided effort.
And this teaching has very likely had a depressing
effect ; it has very likely done something to weaken the
needful spirit of self-reliance, and voluntary, earnestly
directed energy. To teach a man that he needs a miracle
to bring him right is, of course, to do much to discourage
him from doing his best to bring himself right. But
this is no reason why those who are not teachers but
only observers, and all men in so far as they
are observers, should blink the plain truth that
we are all of us apt to drift into mental
states out of which nothing short of downright
miracle could deliver us. And may we at this point,
without intruding too far into a domain which is not ours,
suggest that another doctrine which some theologians hold,
whatever is to be said for or against its theological truth,
has at any rate a side which is true in morals? Those who
hold that a spiritual regeneration is wrought in baptism
may at least borrow from the humbler armoury of the
experimental moralist this proposition, that men often
seem to inherit some qualities from their sires which
nothing short of preternatural intervention is at all likely
to root out. The theory of the tabula rasa is no longer
tenable in the face of established facts of physical trans-
mission, and we are bound to admit that at no
earliest moment of his existence does any man start
exactly fair. Only those who have taken the pains to
watch the process of the formation of habits in themselves
and in others know how comparatively few repetitions
of an act are quite enough to sink it irreparably into
their nature. It is not every habit that is so unpleasant
at its first inception as opium-smoking is said to be. We
are not warned off, nor tempted not to give way. On the
contrary, as all preachers since the Flood have lamented,
it is the first step which is so bright and so easy, from
getting into debt down or up to the weightiest and most
crushing sins. The Malay, it may be said, has no excuse,
for the first whiffs are nasty enough to bid him think; while
there is some excuse for the poor mortal who falls astray in the
direction of idleness, of seeking his own ease first, and other
things afterwards or not at all, of profusion of money, of
running after too gay comrades, of indulging in biting
speech, of yielding to immoderation in thought and language
and attitude ; for is there not a strong smack of what grati-
fies the old Adam in all these things? And it is this pleasant
smack which seduces men, until it has grown too attractive
to be resisted. They go on all the time with an ingenuous
idea that they can pull up if they will, and when they will.
A palsied man might as well flatter himself that, if he
only wished it strongly enough, he could forthwith plant
down as firm a foot as his stoutest neighbour. It is true that
the facility of habit works for good as well as for harm,
because a virtuous habit once formed may prove as
durable as a vicious one. Certainly, if a man were
obliged to take deliberate thought before every virtuous
act of his life, the world would become a pandemonium,
and so it is to this extent a happy dispensation that to form
habits comes tolerably easy to us. But then we must set
against this the other side, that an evil habit is fully as
likely to last as any other, because it is just as certain to
surround itself with agreeable associations. The only
reason why it is worth while to point out that there are
moral incurables, and that we are most of us incurable in
one respect or another, large or small, is that it serves to
enforce in a way that is rather neglected the very old
moral about bewaring of first steps.

Books to the value of a million and a half dollars
were imported into the United States from England last

WHOLESALE DISCHARGE OF WORKMEN FROM
GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHMENTS.—Within the last few
months 2,500 men and women have been discharged from
the Government establishments in Woolwich, represent-
iLg, with their families, 10,000 persons, who are at the
present time without any means of subsistence.
The Relief Fund Committee have received nearly
£l,OOO, about half of which has been expended in
relief. There are about 700 heads of families at present
receiving relief from the committee, at the rate of £lOO per
week

RETAINERS TO THE BAR.—Members of the bar
may as well look boldly in the face the fact that the rules
hitherto prevailing cannot long continue to prevail without
most decided modification. One of the most prominent
relates to the effect of a retainer. Is an attorney bound to
give a brief under all possible circumstances where he has
given a retainer? A correspondent, in a letter which INC
print to-day, shows the great hardship which may be en-
tailed upon a suitor by the enforcement of this rule to
the letter. Our correspondent retained a favourite leader,
a second Q.C., and a junior. Before he delivered briefs
the second Q.C. became a law officer, and by reason of his
office would take the conduct of the cause out of the hands
of the favourite. The attorney here was willing to relin-
quish the services of the law officer, but the latter took a
different view of the matter, and requested the other
counsel to refuse to appear in the case unless he was
briefed and his fee paid. This was accordingly done ; but,
a 3 our correspondent observes, had a journeyman tailor
coerced a master in a similar way it would be considered
We, equally with the rest of the profession, desire
to all rules maintained within a certain limit, but
wheic a rule works a hardship it ought to be abandoned.—
Lazy Tune:,

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 26, 1868.

HOW TITI FRENCH FATTEN POULTRY.

Any of our countrymen avno, from rheumatic gout
Dr any other ailment, may be sent to, Vichy, would
do well, as soon as they have sufficiently recovered the
use of their legs, to pay a visit to the Villa Belvedere,
where a very singular mode of fattening poultry has
for some time been successfully pursued. A
large circular building, admirably ventilated, and with
the light partially excluded, is fitted up with circular
cages, in tiers rotating on a central axis, and capable
of being elevated, depressed, or rotated, which are so
arranged that each bird has, as it were, a separate stall, con-
taining a perch. The birds are placed with their tails con-
verging to a common centre, while the lie&l of each may be
brought in front by a simple rotatory m Dvement of the cen-
tral axis. Each bird is fastened to its cell by leathern fetters,
which prevent movement except of the head and wings,
without occasioning pain. When the feeding time comes the
bird is enveloped in a wooden case, from which the head
and neck alone appear, and which is popularly known as
its paletot, by which means all unnecessary struggling is
avoided. The attendant (a young girl) seizes the head in
her left hand, and gently presses the beak, in order to
open it ; then, with her right, she introduces into the
gullet a tin tube about the size of a finger. This tube is
united to a flexible pipe, which communicates with the
dish in which the food has been placed, and from which
the desired quantity is instantaneously injected into
the stomach. The feeding process is so short, that 200
birds can be fed by one person in an hour. The food is a
liquid paste composed of Indian corn and barley saturated
with milk. It is administered three times a day in quan-
ties varying according to the condition of each bird. The
food seems to be very satisfactory, for if any chances
to fall they devour it all as soon as they are
released from their paletots. The poultry -house
is well ventilated ; but, of course, it is impossible for
any place in which 600 fowls are confined to be
free from smell. It takes about a fortnight to
fatten a bird by this method. Before being killed the
birds are left in a dark but well-ventilated chamber for
twenty-four hours without food. Each fowl is then taken
up by its feet, is wrapped up so as to prevent all
struggling, and then bled so adroitly in the throat that its
death seems almost instantaneous. The blood is then
allowed to flow from it, and &ally, after being plucked,
washed, and cleaned, it is wrapped in a damp cloth, and
is ready for sale. From forty to fifty fowls are thus killed
and sold daily.—Once a Week.