The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-09-04 00:00:00

(FROM FRASRR.)

If there be any use in man making. known his opinions
and the result of his expe once to others, we consider this class
demands public attention hove all others—we mean, of London
Society: they are a very numerous body, are very variously
connected, occasion more 'distress of mind by their conduct-to.
parents than any other body, .and stand in a position to society
which fur a timd enables them to effect much moral mischief. The
custom of the day allows them to dress after the manner of gen-
tlemen, while their conceit carries their ideas far above their
station, and is the cause bra larger number of individuals in this
class falling out of their position every year than from any other.
It may be said, that:One-fifth annually are driven out of the class.
by bad conduct, the repetition of which disqualifies them for a
situation, while others rise up to fill their places; added to
which, a change of faces in shops appears to be considered an
advantage in the present day. When we reflect that this por-
tion of one-fifth have no trade upon which, when they are cast
upon society in a state of idleness, they can fall back, and ob-
tain a livelihood, it is natural to ask what becomes of them. We .
know, at the smallest caleulation, that there are 60,090 indivi-
duals in London who do not shew any exterior signs of poverty,
but rise of a morning without knowing where to- obtain a meal
for the day. It is beyond a doubt, that none of the lower orders
put on a fashionable-cut coat, and affect airs of grace; and the
mechanic weighs too well his own worth, and supports his place.
It is his interest to be, and seem to be, what he really is—a
working man; his usefulness is his pride and gives him an in-
dependence which would make him a loser were he to change
it'for anything artificial. All the classes above the mechanic na
dobbt do, in a small 'degree, through individual improvidence
and misconduct, contribute to add to the one which subsists, as
it is said, nobody .knows how--by casualty; sometimes assisted
by the voluntary contributions of their friends, but more fre-
quently by forced funds from the public, varied in ten thousand
ways of exaction. If it be now asked from whence the bulk 'of
this body of men come, I answer, front the class of shopmen and
clerks. If we suppose the surplusage of this body compelled to
remove from London, they will carry more than half the vices of
it with them, and nearly the 'whole of our street banarobas;
leaving only the coarser and open vicious habits of the labourer
and costermonger, who support the spirit-bazaars, for the moral
legislator to compete with. That one-half of the world knows
not how the other half lives, is a common and just observation :
it is not, however, necessary that it should be known : for all
useful purposes it will be sufficient if we can ascertain and sepa-
rate the number that live by regular, from those who subsist by
irregular means. In reference to this class, not one moiety are
in constant employment; upon an average throughout the year,
there are from Sf.NV to 6000 linen-drapers' shopmen loose upon
the town, and not many years since they were calculated, by.
those who possessed the best means of information, to amount
to 8000. Youth, ignorance, and vanity, combine to make these
men lovers of pleasure to excess; and such are always lovers of
themselves in the same degree. A nation of would-be or
imaginary philosophers will be more moral, and in a better state
of security, than a country peopled by sensualists and fops.
Notwithstanding the conduct of many intellectual individuals is
far from being virtuous, yet, dividing society as nearly as we
can into two classes, it will always be apparent that the best.'
informed approximate the nearest to moral perfection. But we
must descend a little more into minutiae regardiug the class
we have in hand.

In describing this class generally as immoral, superficial ob-
servers will say that they cannot be so, from the very nature of
their employment, and their confinement. to late hours of busi-
ness. Heretofore these were restraining causes, their character
depending upon steadiness of conduct and length of service;
but, in the present day, these are qualites of minor importance,
provided the party is 'a good salesman, in their own phraseology
—one who never suffers a lady, when she once enter 4 the shop
to buy a yard of riband, to 'depart until she has made a five-
pound parcel. Those who possess this harlequin kind of pro-
perty of turning goods into money, are, as a matter of course,,
sought after by all the trade; and spoken of as geniuses in their.
way : they may be compared to jugglers, who perform their
tricks of legerdemain through the agency of confederacy.
When one of these famed hands is engaged at a shop, the whole
corps de ballet of the establishment is called up for private re-
hearsals, which sometimes last during the whole night; at which
all the juniors ire taught how to play their part—shift and ex
change pieces of goods; to remove one away that has been offered
at a low price, and bring it back as a different piece at another
charge ;—how to detain and amuse customers, cheat, and make
solemn asseverations to matter which is untrue: in'short, to
learn by rote a manual of trade that must leave the initiated
stripped of every vestige of principle, as bare as deciduous trees
at the winter solstice. Some masters, whose shops I could name,
take this duty upon themselves ; placing their men behind the
counter, and then themselves affecting to come in as troublesome
customers, and difficult to please, &c. &c. Where there are
many hands an account is kept of the amount of sales daily
made by each ; the assistants receiving stages in proportion to
the aggregate amount of sales against their names, when cast up
at stated periods.

In the nocturnal lectures which we have spoken of, it may be
imagined that there is little said of honour, honesty, or moral
principle of any kind; the master, therefore, is aware he can
place but little reliance upon the notions the employed may im-
bibe of the rights of meum and tuum. Arrangements are made
to meet this evil,.which arises out of the.system: no money is
allowed to be received by the shopmen; they make their bill,
and hand it over to a person appointed fur the receipt of cash.
Notwithstanding- this and every other imaginable• caution is
adopted, so vitiating is the school for young men which we have
attempted to describe, that, confining ourselves to the last thirty
years, we will undertake to prove, as far as the available tables
of the return of crime will enable us to do so, that, for every
mechanic found guilty of felony, there have been upwards of
twenty out of this &list, and ten from the drapers alone.. Theg•4'
is one house, which we need not name, that for' a very long
period never allowed an 01(1 Bailey session to pass without
bringing up two or three for trial; six or seven of whom have
actually suffered death. At length it was noticed from the
bench. One, a Scotchman, who was transported. for fourteen
years, in 1829, by the same firm, we examined as to the system
which brought so many into crime. He told us, tl‘at the system
of trade was such, that it broke down the principles of all who
entered the house; and he believed, at that moment, there was
not one in it who was not in the habit of robbing the principals
of their property. Subsequent events have proved the truth of
this statement.
A great evil arises out of the practice of shopkeepers taking
almost any smart young man upon trial, regardless of general
character, in the hopes of selecting in the end a combination of
talent and personal appearance ; conceiving, as all of there do,
that where the most handsome young men are, to that place
will the females be attracted. Shopmen are now hired upon
the principle of the mechanic ; no warning being required,
they may be paid up to any hour and discharged forthwith. In
the corivalry of the trade it is supposed that upon the tactof the
assistants depends the success of the master in contpeting with
his neighbours ; hence it is they are ever changing, in the hopes
of being better served. The evils of this practice are, Ist, the
number which obtain temporary employment induces an injuri-
ous rush of youth into the market; 2dly, as not more than one-
half at any time •can meet with employment, a vast body of
young persons are thrown loose Upon the town, at the most un-
favourable age, to become masters of their own time and
actions. Lastly, nothing can be more detrimental to society
than the existence in it of a half-educated, half-boy-and-man
class; who are constrained -to pick asp a living in a chance
manner.

After what has been said of retail-shopinen, it is but fair to state
the disadvantages under which they labour, and the grievances of
which they may reasonably complain. Every householder or head.
of a family, a few years anterior to the enlightened days of 1E64,
felt himself, by the laws of proscription, responsible for the entire
moral conduct of his household; and none would be taken as
assistants but !hose who consented to sleep upon the premises
and conform to the family rules: one of which, with most regii-
lar families was morning and evening prayers. No one thought
him,self or his property sate with a man upon the premises whose
actions and conduct were not known throughout the whole
twenty-four hours each day. Now, in every case wherein the
nature of the business will admit of the practice (and sacrifices
are made to further the arrangements), masters of families pre-
fer. in all-trades, outdoor shopmen, servants, and apprentices;
being only desirous of relieving themselves, to the greatest ex-
tent possible, from all responsibility of moral guardianship.
Tradesmen are ready enough to avail themselves, as far as their
interests are concerned, of the assistance of men, boys, and
girls, but are unwilling to spare one half hour in the day from
money-making or following pleasure to inform or morally pro-
tect the youthful classes, from whom they are constrained to
draw their assistants. The tradesman's wife, too, who has
nevea been brought up to household duties, must not be annoyed

in her pianii. practice and ,poonati daubing; she must not he
fatigued with the concerns 4.)1 a large faintly. "It is there-
fore best that all my people should be boarded out; my wife
says she kuows it will be a saving: besides, she is so de-
licate that she is not equal to the competing with and pro-
viding for a large family." Thus are excuses made for a ne-
glected duty which our ancestors considered paramount, and
prided themselves in the performance of above all others, viz. a
good regulation of the household, and exercising a moral sur-
veillance over all within the range of their control. When the
fractions of society did their duty, the whole felt, a beneficial
moral effect; but when those relax who are, from their position
in society, peculiarly and imperiously called upon to be active,
the integer will naturally become corrupted and disorganised.
All the Junior members of society are now lightly turned loose,
to revel where "riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers in
his rank den of shame." Old and young, male and female, are
seen associating with vice, through all the multiform and mul-
titudinous receptacles with which this Babylon is infested. The
master's non-responsibility for the moral education of his ap-
prentices and young men, has operated more than any other
cause to bring about the demoralising nocturnal habits of the
young men in London of the present age. The only person
who can effectually control the headstrong violence or passions
of youth and inexperience, is the one upon whom he depends
fur character, fame, and bread. Parents they generally disre-
gard, relying upon natural affection for forgiveness whenever
they think proper to return to virtue. The master, however, if
his business be performed, cares not how the leisure hours of
any of his household are passed. Until this system be reformed,
rice must progress.