The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

r
IRON THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTZADAIN
GLOBE.—There are two things which we consider
Government bound to secure to the inhabitants of our
towns. These two things are air and water. There
are abundance of other things which we consider them
in no manner bound to secure. It is natural that
those other things (including swarms of functionaries,
with concomitant swarms of fees, besides 1,0001. a
year salaries) should be the things provided by the
Metropolitan Buildings Bill now passing through Par-
liament ; and that air and water aforesaid should
be'the two little things not provided. These, we presume
are amongst the hopes which the Duke of Buccleuch
holds out for next session. Air and water are beggarly
elements ; salaries and fees are much more substantial
objects to a practical ise•svernment—they are the manna
in the wilderness which the " hungry Jews" of their ma-
jority have yet to traverse; and if, as Coningsby
tells us, no business is done on a grand
scale but Jews have a finger in it—the more
Jews are in requisition, the more manna must be
so too. We cannot, however, help thinking that the
art of carving fees and salaries out of all human con-
cerns is one which requires a tact more delicate than
this Government seems to exercise. It is needful, no
doubt, that fees and salaries should be multiplied—te
conserve Conservative majorities. The old way of doing
this was to create salaries without functions, and con-
fer pensions without (published) claims. But sinecures
have lost the odour of sanctity ; and pensions have
become restricted, and raisonnies. What was to
be done ? What remained but to evoke the foreign
genius of functionarism? Sydney Smith enumerated
the acts of life (and death) subjecting Britons to be
taxed. If we do not look better out, we shall soon hate
every act liable to be regulated. Now it is a matter of
taste ; but we, for our part, had infinitely rather
be taxed simply than taxed and teased tee. Such,
however, is the tendency of things, in this day of
cant and twaddling. Our laissez-faire principle—our
premiere amours, and to which we are faithful still—is
unanimously doomed by the senate of beasts of prey,
as the jackass that drew the judgment down. That is,
at all events, to be an instant victim—and sacrificing
priests are to be instituted, at 1,000/. a-year salaries,
with lots of other pickings, in the shape of fees.
Air anti water !—give us air and water, because
public regulation alone can do it—air, meaning thereby
pure air, and not sulphuretted hydrogen—water.
meaning thereby pure water, and not the rinsings of
the gas-works and the choked church-yards. These
things authority can do, and alone can do—and there-
fore is bound to do. A variety of other things it can-
not make people do—because they involve dispropor-
tionate cost to the objects. We, for our part, shouldlike to see the work-people housed in Palladian palaces.
It would improve their taste, and elevate their views of
art. When the Jacobins took Lyons, they set the work-
people to live in some of the fine houses, and pull down
the rest. They were more at home in their work, though
a work of stupid destruction, than in their residences.
But most assuredly we grudge the working classes no
improvement of their houses that can be effected.
Above all things, we demand, for their sake and the pub-
lic, that air and water shall be secured to their dwellings
by act of authority. The former may be done by pre-
scribing conditions of space between rows of town-build-
ings. This is unquestionably within the competence of
the public administration. The latter may be done by
public machinery likewise, where necessary. Such pre-
parations as we see making for two ornamental
fountains may be made as easily fur the pur-
pose of supplying whole districts with a necessary of
life ; and it would only be necessary, perhaps, for autho-
rity to set up a standard by example in one or two
places, to spur private companies into efficiency and
cheapness. Mr. Hawkesley's evidence, quoted by Lord
Normanby last Friday, affords an instance of how much
may be sometimes done by a joint-stock company, in the
case of the Treat waterworks, for the supply of the town
of Nottingham. The line we should draw for public
agency and regulation in such matters is the distinct one
of universal and evident public objects. It is a public
object, paramount to all private proprietary interests, that
buildings should not be huddled together in large towns
in such a manner as to render ventilation and drainage
impossible. Attention to these should be imposed in
all buildings. But it is not a public object to secure an
arbitrary degree of solidity to private dwellings, nor to
prescribe the dimensions of their apartments. These
matters must, it appears to us, be left to be regulated
by the means of the parties, or their expectations of re-
turn for their outlay. If the erection of houses of less
than prescribed solidity or dimensions is prohibited, and
if the number of houses erected is thereby limited,
what is gained, except the crowding of the labouring,
people more densely in those existing ? In these
matters there is great virtue in active examples, and
accomplished results. If building speculators take
short-sighted views of their own interests, and source
of profits—if they build in such a manner as to
sacrifice the security, of their own tenements and
rents, and to diminish the prospects of the solvency of
their tenants by impairing their health and. character—
there is an easy way of teaching them " philosophy by
example." In this point of view, we agree with Lord
Normanby with regard to the benefits which may
be looked for from the sort of 'normal school of
builders, which is commencing its operations. " There
was a society," observed the Noble Marquis, "going
on, sanctioned by the Government, and to which
he was a subscriber, formed for the purpose of furnish-
ing at least specimens of better buildings for the poor.
He trusted that when this society gad erected houses for
the use of the working class, with the requisite sanatory
conditions, the demonstration would be afforded that
residence in such wretched dwellings as are now occu-
pied by the poor was no necessary and inevitable con-
diton of poverty."
STANDARD.—We cannot envy the feeling of the
political Dissenters, when they come to reflect seriously
upon the influence of their proceedings upon the general
interests of religion. Let us, however, here make a neces-
sary distinction ; in the class of Dissenters—whether po-
litical or peaceable— we do not include Romanists or Soci-
nians. These sects are Dissenters, no doubt, but they are
something more ; they are enemies, not merely to the
constitution and the forms of the Established Church,
but to the Christian doctrine itself as we receive it, the
first having a quasi polytheist religion of their own, the
latter denying the fundamental truth of Christianity.
These sects must therefore contemplate, not with
indifference, but with high gratification, what-
ever of evil is inflicted by angry schism upon
that religious faith which we and the ortho-
dox Dissenters hold in common. We must,
however, repeat it, that the. feelings with which a
sincere Christian must observe the influence upon the
general interests of religion of the course taken by many
orthodox Dissenters, aided by Romanists and Socinians
(and surely such aid ought to have been a warn-
ing), cannot be enviable. Nothing, indeed, except
the words of the apostle, can place in a more striking
light the guilt of schism than what we have lately
witnessed. The poor are deprived in youth of
the blessings of religious education—why? Because
the Dissenters will be contented with no national
scheme of instruction, by which the Church shall not
compromise its character and its ugefulness. Why are
so many of the poor confined in union workhouses
deprived of the consolations of religion? Because, not-
withstanding the earnest admonitions of the Govern-
ment, the Dissenters of the guardian boards in the
unions to which these workhouses belong, sternly
withhold the 'consolations of which surely none stand.
more in need than the destitute and .miserable poor.
This is the effect of schism, the young are left in ignor-
ance and sin, the old are condemned to close their days
in sorrow and in darkness, because Dissenters hate an
Established Church. We are sorry to be obliged to use
so harsh a word as hate, but we cannot help seeing that the
feeling of the political Dissenters goes far beyond mere
alienation. Compare the'sluggish, lukewarm opposition
offered by Dissenters to the late Bill for wresting from
them even their own chapels and charitable foundations,
to be applied to unchristian uses—compare this slow
and feeble resistance with the zeal, that we may not
call it fury, with which they oppose every effort
to extend the blessings of religion through the agency
of the Church ; and it is impossible to doubt that
to those inspired by such zeal or fury the Church
is an object of implacable and rancorous hatred.'
There arc some, we know, who rejoice at this mani-
festation of sectarian bitterness and folly, and point
with exultation to its effect in rapidly thinning, the
ranks 'of Dissent ; but we cannot sympathise
with their joy. We wish as much as any can to see all
classes return within the fold of the Church; but we
cannot be gratified by the improvement of one clan
which is made at the expense and by the deterioration of
another. We do not wish that some Dissenters should

exhibit unchristian bitterness and irratiCZ,i—ex;;;;-
gance, in order that other Dissenters may become
Churchmen. Quite the reverse; let Dissenters .be like
Baxter and Calamy, Watts and Doddridge, and they can
hardly be too numerous, for there is still unhappily a large
fund in the indifferent from which they may largely
augment their number without any encroachment upon
the Church. The misfortune,, however, is that in our
day Dissenters do not seek to raise the irreligious and
indifferent and heretical to the level of orthodox Chris-

tianity, in order to recruit their number they descend
into the mire of these miserable .classes, to. court alli-
ances and to swell their forces against the Church. Ro-
m'anist, Socirgan, Socialist, Atheist, any one is welcomed
with the right hand .of fellowship, if only he will declare
against the Christian establishment.