The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-11-12 00:00:00

MENTAL EXERCISE.—The great means by which the
mental, moral, and physical powers are to be improved is
by exercise. This has been well set forth in a modern
work on education, with an extract from which, and an
earnest prayer for the divine blessing on your labours, I
shall close these rem' ks :—" The law of exercise is of
universal application. It is a fundamental law of nature,
that all the capacities of man are enlarged and strength-
ened by being used. From the energies of a muscle up to
the highest faculty, intellectual or moral, repeated exer-
cise of the function increases its intensity. Inseparable
from the very idea of exercising the faculties, and of course
from the practice of that exercise, is the requisition of ex-
ercising each faculty upon the objects which nature points
out as related to it. Muscular strength is to be gained
by familiarizing the muscles with the resistance of exter-
nal forces, and by the habit of conquering mechanical
difficulties, varied to exercise all the muscles, which
amount to several hundreds in the human frame. The
senses are improved by long and particular training, ap-
plying each to its object—sight, by habitual looking at
distant or minute objects; hearing, by accurate practice
in the perception of sounds; taste, in the discriminating
use of the palate. In the same manner, the observing fa-
culties are rendered acute and diversified by the constant
practice of observation of details in existing objects, their
qualities, and of passing events. The same law extends
to the moral world. For the exercise of justice, the child
must be made aware of his own and his neighbour's right,
and be habituated practically to respect them in all con-
tingencies. For the exercise of benevolence, the habit of
repressing the selfish feelings, and of actually doing good,
kind, compassionate, and generous things, not by fits, but
as a steady unvarying principle of action, will be found
indispensable."—Miss Mayo.
'LORD ELDON'S DESPATCH OF BUSINESS.—Through
the only 10 years of Lord Hardwicke's Chancellorship
whereof we have any exact records, the annual average of
the matters despatched in the Court of Chancery was
4,220 ; while through the first ten years of the present
century, the annual average of the matters despatched was
6,081, being an excess of almost one-half. And this in-
crease of business and of despatch in Lord Eldon's time
was a progressive one. The last three of the 10 before-
mentioned years of Lord Hardwicke give an average of
4,230, or 14 beyond the average of the seven years by
which they were preceded; but the last three of the
before-mentioned years of Lord Eldon's give an average
of 6,948, being 1.238 beyond the average of the seven
years preceding them, and 2,718 beyond the average of
the last three of the 10 recorded years of Lord Hard-
wicke. Again, comparing the years 1752 3-4 with the
years 1819, 1820-1, we find the result of the tables as
between Lord Hardwicke and Lord Eldon to be, that—
Lord Hardwicke despatched business equal to 2,390 heavy
matters ; and that Lord Eldon, in a like space, despatched
business equal to 2,598 like matters, being an excess of
209 in Lord Eldon's favour. And, further, Mr. Twiss
proceeds,—lt results, that Lord Eldon not only despatched
in the Court of Chancery, during his three years, an
amount of 2,598 heavy matters, being 208 more than were
despatched in the same length of time by Lord Hard-
wicke, but moreover that Lord Edon effected this in only
455 days—or, if 61 days be deducted as before for politi-
cal and other duties, only 394 days—while his predecessor,
in clearing the smaller amount of 2,390 like matters in
the Court of Chancery, consumed 508 days—or, 61 days
being equally deducted, as in Lord Eldon's time, 417 days
—and Lord Eldon's real superiority, therefore, when cal-
culated, as it ought to be, with reference to the number
of days actually available for the Court of Chancery in
the course of each respective period of three years, is not
merely to the amount of 208 heavy matters beyond Lord
Hardwicke, but at the rate of 348 such matters, which
would be a superiority in Lord Eldon's favour of about
14 percent.—Lift of Lord Eldon.
WRONGS OF THE LABOURING CLASSES.—An extra-
ordinary degree of public attention is at present drawn to
the state of the labouring classes. The whole press of
the country, in every phase of political opinion, joins in
proclaiming their wrongs and the necessity for some re-
medies. "It were needless," says the Morning Chroni-
cle, " to adduce examples of the pressing nature of these
evils. Bishops furnish them in their charges ; country
gentlemen quote them in their speeches ; city orators cite
them at their public meetings; newspapers give them at
full length from day to day. Such a state of things can-
not go on. Commerce is prosperous; trade is thriving;
the revenue flourishes • yet look at the condition of our
labouring people." What a throng of deeds of cruelty
and injustice has even the last ten days produced ! In
the metropolis, and in our great towns, we see, almost
every day, coroners' inquests on men and women, either
dying of want or committing suicide out of mere despe-
ration. At this instant, in the wealthy parish of Mary-
lebone, such an investigation is going on. Meanwhile,
our slopsellers persist in giving their fivefarihings for the
work of a shirt, and sixpence for embroidering a shawl
with eighty flowers ! And if we turn to the country, what
meets us there ? In one county, we find a poor fellow
who had brought up thirteen children, and inhabited one
cottage for twenty years, sent to gaol, under a sentence
which almost amounts to perpetual imprisonment, because
found with a hare. In the next county, we see another
man quietly sentenced to three months' hard labour, for
being found with a gun; though whether lie was intend-
ing to shoot crows or rabbits, no one could tell ! In a
third case, a poor man was sentenced to ten years' trans-
portation, having confessed, that, when almost starved,
he was tempted by a neighbour to assist in stealing a
sheep. Now we are not arguing for impunity in such
cases as these. No offence ought to pass without notice.
But what we press upon our readers' attention is this,—
that here are three men, in the adjoining counties of
Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxford,—all tempted
into crime by want and wretchedness, and all instantly
punished with rigour, though in each case it was a first
offence, and though in each case the cost of maintaining
them and their families, at the public cost, in prisons and
workhouses, would inevitably amount to a far larger sum
than would have rendered them all happy and comfortable
in honest industry. But, in truth, the manner in which
the game-laws are now carried out, looks like infatuation.
Sir Harry Verney declared, a few days back, at a meeting
of the magistrates of Buckinghamshire, his conviction,
that the game of that county ronsumed one-fourth of the
produce of the soil. And a correspondent of the Globe
declares, that " a few weeks back the principal occupier
in an adjoining parish declared to me that the game cost
the occupiers of the parish more than the poor did, and
they were numerous." In fact, if we were to take the

average consumption of the fruits of the earth by the game
at less than half what Sir Harry Verney estimates it at,
it would still be true, of the whole kingdom, that the
landed proprietors actually bestow more upon their bares
and partridges, than they do upon their poor !—Church-
man's Monthly Review.