The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-09-14 00:00:00

CESS MARKET,

buy in the c
iJr.

eapest market

been so constantly dinneu ,) the public ear that it u.,
fair to find admission into our national code of ethics. It
is adopted in circles and applied to transactions from
which it might have been expected that it would for ever
remain excluded, and is acted upon to an extent of sordid
oppression against which every better feeling revolts.
We are not exaggerating the case of that unhappy class
called " Daily Governesses" by stating that it is-by no
means an uncommon can for an educated and often well-
born young woman to bestow from four to five hours
a-day in teaching the children of mothers who live in
luxury and splendour, and move in what are calle3 good
circles, for a miserable yearly pittance of between eight
and twelve pounds a-year, to which in some instances is
added the privilegeof eating the midday meal with the chi'
dren.

anyof the "ladies' who are in the practice of driv-
ing such bargains with the less fortunate of their sex were to
be remonstrated with, the answer probably would be, that
there are plenty of young women, of good character lind
excellent education, to be had at the price, and that she
does not,.therefore, see why she siiould give more than it
is usual to.pay to persons of this description. In other
words, she would contend, though she might not express
it in so technical a phrase, that she has a right to " buy
in the cheapest market."

A 3 a mere question of law, of course, this is perfectly
true ; all contracts for labour and service are free, and it
is rigt that they should be so. This, however, is not
what the lady mother means. She intends her plea to
clear her in another and a higher court, the court of con-
science. It is in this court that we desire to plead the
cause of the poor victim of the depression of prices
in the governess market. We utterly deny, then,
that any human being has a right to employ the ser-
vices of another human being.at a rate at which it is
im-
possible for the party employed to make a decent and
comfortable livelihood by the largest devotion of time and
labour which human nature is in the long run ably to
sustain. Let us examine the case of the daily governess
by this rule. Giving four or five hours of her day to one
set of pupils, she could not undertake more than two sets
in a day. We question whether it would be possible for
her to make such arrangements as regards hours, as would
enable her to attend in two families. But we will assume
this, and found our budget for the daily governess on this
the most favourable assumption. It will, then, stand as
follows :
Income, two families, say at £lO

each .... .... .. „ __.
.. .. £2O a. 0
Outgoings:—
Dress, being expected always to ap-
. .

pear respectable and ladylike,--
supposing her to do all the needle-
work herself in spare hours,
and to purchase only the mate-
rials, say
Shoeleather, including walks in the
park with " the little dears," say
four pair of shoes at 6s. 6d. .... 1 6 0

Washing, at the rate of Is. 6d. a
week, the usual allowance for ser-

vants in respectable families .

3 18 0

Balance ... , ....... £4 .16 0
Oct of this sum of £4 165., or Is. 10d. a week,
the daily governess has to provide her board and
lodging. How is this possible, even supposing her to
hava the advantage of dinner in the nursery in one
of the two families she attends ? To be sure, she may
live with her own family, perhaps with a widowed mother,
and, so, not being at any expense for her lodging, may
be enabled to lay out the magnificent sum of 2d. each day
for breakfast and tea, reserving a clear Bd. for her Sunday
dinner, which, of course, she has to provide. In this case,
then, which proceeds on the favourable supposition that
the daily governess is all the year round in full employ in
two families, the children of two houses in some of our
fashionable streets or squares are being educated, partly
at the expense of the poor widow who gives her daughter
houseroom, in order that she may be a " useful member
of society," and partly at the expense of the poor gover-
ness herself, whose first and last daily meal is provided at
the starvation allowance of ld. per meal ! And this with-
out reckoning upon occasional interruptions.of employ-
ment, or attacks of sickness, but too likely to supervene
under such circumstances; and without the possibility of
making a provision for old age, or laying: by a shilling
against a rainy day.

So much foi the poor governess, who, though her skin
is as white as that of her employers, is purchased, like any
other article of commerce on the " Free Trade" principle
of "buying in the cheapest market," whose bodily strength
and mental power is placed at the disposal of the purchaser,
who is, in fact, bought up, body, soul, and spirit,—with-
out the advantage which the negro slave has, of being
provided for by her owners. It is not,
.however, the poor
governess alone that claims our sympathy. We have a
word to say as well on behalf of the poor children
whose education is thus purchased by their unna-
tural parent " in the cheapest market." What sort of
education is a daily governess placed in the circumstances
described likely to impart ? Is there a moral proba-
bility of her acting in any other spirit than that of a hire-
ling ? Must not the very vileness of the price at which
she has been hired, and the miserable state of pinching
poverty and gnawing care which is the consequence of the
inhuman bargain, remind her at every instant of her
toilsome, cheerless existence, that she is regarded merely
as a hireling, and that a hireling of the basest sort,--far
below the position of the hireling who bastes the meat
in the kitchen, or the scullery-maid who performs the
most menial offices of the house ? Is it reasonable to
expect that a person whose necessity is thus inhumanly
taken advantage of to make her sell her services at a price
insufficient to keep body and soul together, upon whom
the sense of her degradation is forced by every circum-
stance of her position, should bring to the all-important
task imposed upon her that spirit of love, that sense of
moral responsibility, that cheerfulness and elasticity of
mind, without which education sinks down, to a moral
and intellectual drudgery, a mere carding and milling of
the child's mind and heart, the very reverse of what edu-
cation ought to be ?

Do mothers ever contemplate the possibility that,through
some of those reverses of fortune which are far from un-
common, and which, under the operation of the principle
of " buying in the cheapest market," and sure to become
more and more frequent, their own daughters may be re-
duced to the same miserable condition as the daily gover-
ness, that they may in their turn become the victims of
the system introduced into the governess market, and
have to spend their live 3 in the daily drudgery of teaching,
at a price which provides them scantily with necessary
clothing, with twopence a-day for meals, and an eight-
pence extra for their Sunday's dinner, and leaves them
to chance for house-room, while they are able to work,
and to the prospect of utter destitution in failing
health or in old age ? If mothers shrink from the
thought of their daughters being doomed to so miserable
a lot, let them not take base advantage of the iniquity of
the governess market, but let them, on the principle of
doing unto others as they would wish to be done by, pay
to the person who helps them to educate their children,
not a just merely, but a liberal remuneration for services
which,
a hicfha,ir
price,wb en pbruotpperrliyeelss.jo
performed,e_h are not only worthy
of n B
ull.

CRICKET.—A cricket-match was played on Saturday,
on the ground of the Grosvenor Cricket Club, between
the Collegiate C. C., of Liverpool, and the C. C. of
St. Aidan's School. There was only one innings played
on each side, which ended in giving victory to the latter.
ON DIFFERENT KINDS OF LOVE.--(By a young lady.)
—The sweetest—a mother's love; the longest--a brother's
love ; the strongest—a woman's love; the d
love. And the sweetest, longest
" a love of a bonnet."

crest—a man's
est, dearest love

WE ARE respectfully told by the proverb that " Dress
does not make the Monk." In return, we can only state
that " If dress does not make the Monk, it frequently
makes the Monkey," as may be seen any day by walkiDi
dorm ltegeht-atreet at three e'clocki