The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-11-25 00:00:00

an upward-looking youth might thus be saved from compul-

sory idleness, who would soon find any life preferable to one

0f dependence
"IA the lessons of my own experience, short as that has been
and I would respectfully suggest to the clergy, and others
anxious to promote the cause of Church-education, and at
the same time to confer a benefit upon an individual, that the
atain which they may expend in sending, or assisting to send,

This is not mere speculation—l do but re-

YoUth of somewhat superior pretensions to this College,
will be far, far better repaid, both in the benefit really con-
ferred upon the individual, and in the furtherance of the ge-
Ileral object, than by giving advantages to a lad who is not in
allY way prepared to receive them, and of which be will never,
Perhaps, fully avail himself."

the following, too, may be interesting, as affording
a view of a portion, and a valuable portion, of the

hYstero. To the pamphlet itsel

however, we must

refer our readers

t will well repay perusal, not only
48 containing sound practical views of the subject in
band, but as being an able treatise upon the whole

Question of religious education

" The advantages, I had almost said the necessity, of
balancing the intellectual pursuits of the students by manual
labour, is sufficiently evident. It is, in the first place, the
only way in which such an institution could be supported,
except at an enormous expense; but this is the least con-
sideration. It is almost the only mode in which the hours
not occupied in study could be profitably and innocently
Passed by a promiscuous assemblage of youths, almost all of
whom have so much both to learn and unlearn. Above all,
that which is learnt in this way is itself a most valuable ac-
goirement, more especially to the schoolmaster of the poor.
IN'ot merely will it enable him to increase his own comforts
without cost, but it will make him practically acquainted
with the occupations of those whom he has to instruct, and
thus procure him an additional title to their confidence, when
" comes to act among them, not merely as their teacher,
out as their adviser and friend.

" In some places it has not been found easy to procure
Buineient employment of this kind for the students : no such
difficulty can ever occur in the Training College. The in-
dustrial occupations are so extensive as to fill all the time
thht can properly be allotted to themwi continue to
be the case when the full number of studehnts shall ll have been
completed.

" Hitherto the difficulty has been to perform the necessary
work of the establishment in a satisfactory manner without
encroaching on the hours of study, nothing being so much
be avoided as a hasty, imperfect, or slovenly performance.
The method pursued is as follows :—the several duties,
whether of the house, the farm, or the garden, are assigned
to differeNt parties, varying in number according to the need,
which are changed at stated periods, generally weekly. Over
each of these parties a monitor is appointed, care being
taken so to sort the parties that the influence of the older
and steadier youths may be continually exerted over their
Younger or less experienced associates. One youth. the
eldest of those first admitted, is over the whole. It is his
duty to arrange the labours of the day, under the superin-
tendence of the industrial master, and to inspect the different
working-parties when needful. He is also expected to hear
e°mplaints, and to settle any trifling difference which may
447 e arisen. The monitor of each party is expected to
maintain order among those whose labours he directs; and
t° speak generally, the discipline of the place is, as far as
Pcnisible, carried on by the moral influence of the youths over
eaeb other, a most watchful supervision being maintained by
the
masters. The direct interference of the principal is not
resorted to except in cases of necessity. Faults are corrected
blr admonition, and if need be, by rebuke, either private or
public, as the case may seem to require. It is sometimes
advisable to make the admonition general, without naming
tll°Be for whom it is specially intended. A journal of con-
'net is also kept, which will, it is hoped, have a beneficial
effect; and every youth is occasionally reminded that his
prospects, when he shall have left the institution, depend
upon his conduct while in it. No prominence, however, is
,Ivett to this or to any other secondary motive. Good con-
duct can only be produced, in the long-run, by a sense of
duty, or by the habit which it produces, when it becomes a
matter of course ; and this habitual sense of duty is best en-
couraged by a mode of treatment from which every appeal
t° motive, strictly so called, is excluded. I believe this to be
1101 Merely the highest, but the most practical view of the
question ; and although in such a matter the utmost that can
tlthout presumption be expected, is a partial, and, under the
'vine blessing, a growing success, yet it may with some
degree of confidence be affirmed, that it has been already
borne out by facts. The particular methods by which cheer-
ful obedience, regularity, diligence, and general good conduct,
are to be preserved in a training-establishment, more espe-
eitallY in the industrial department, cannot be detailed within
tae limits of this report. They vary with the exigency, and
are suggested in each case by the judgment, experience,
e°°d-feeling, and educational tact of those by whom the
establishment is conducted. It will be understood that the
whole rests upon a religious basis, and is referred constantly,
and expressly, yet not obtrusively, to a religious standard,
care being taken to prevent phrases and professions from
a
4tlcipating the growth of real feeling."

We should imagine that there is not a solitary man
°I: woman in the United Kingdom who is not con-
vt!nced, now, that the proposed civilisation of Africa,
u 9 Model farming, and the other pet methods of the
Anti-Slavery Society, is sheer absurdity, or something
even Worse. What are the latest news which we have
15' the celebrated Niger expedition—that melancholy
4hortion of obstinate wrong-headedness ? From first
In last, disease and death have tracked its progress;
4n(-1 now the climax is before us, in the condition of
~,
that unfortunate project of the Buxtons and Macaulays
their " MODEL FARM." The exclusively humane—
the philanthropists, par excellence,—stand conimitted
before the world as the authors of a model of systematic
:kebery in the heart of that very country which they
Set out to free and to civilise ! Yes ; their model
farm, in one short year after its first formation—in the
panda
of educated Africans—has become a slave plan-
-4tioz, differing from those which Great Britain paid
twenty millions sterling, and beggared the proprietory
v. the finest colonies upon the face of the earth, to con-
-0:11 into free settlements, only in this feature, that
there the cart-whip is wielded by coloured hands, and
e enslaved labourers toil to fill the mouths of black
gentlemen instead of white men !
Surely, after this, we shall hear no more of the
cinotntic schemes of these short-sighted people. Surely
theth government of Sir Robert Peel will now cast aside
elle, trammels sought to be imposed upon them, and
"avour at length to meet the difficulties and
ter sters which present themselves in our West Indian
ex.°ies, and the degradation and wretchedness which
ti„lB,t in unhappy Africa, by common sense and prac-
'at legislation.
thTwo objects, we presume, present themselves for
ette statesman to accomplish—the cessation of slavery,
the instrument of cultivation in the tropics; and the
etriwehoration of the condition of the African in his
TO country, as a prelude to his ultimate civilisation.
thet former object we have endeavoured to attain by
an of the negroes in our own colonies ;
for every free man which we have made, we have
Theetted the chains upon the slave of another nation.
this latter object we have endeavoured to attain by
(31.:erY Niger expedition ; and we have only stultified
the selves in the eyes of the whole world, and retarded
ea ri very event which we had in view, by driving thou-
theds
effort
once-sanguine friends of humanity to abandon
the 8.. in despair. Turn then, we say, at length to
aßBi,7lBible and straightforward policy which has been

eaher and again advocated. Carry out the great
col° .rnent now in operation in our West Indian
10,0111"; throw open those noble markets to the free
ti our of Africa; and one-half of the work of civilisa-
4tid humanity will be at once accomplished.
kolas:, 4nd thus only, shall we be enabled to crush the
'`ur. elavery; thus, and thus only, we feel assured,

we shall he ellabied to set eiteetttally opoo the de-
graded condition of the negro race in their own
benighted land.

And never, perhaps, were the instrumentalities for
the successful operation of such a policy more emi-
nently propitious than at the present moment. Ruin-
ous as is the condition of every portion of our West
Indian possessions, we see, nevertheless, in the last
advices received from them, the dawning of a brighter
era in their cultivation. Vast capitals, it is true, have
been swallowed up during the past few years. Bank-
ruptcy and insolvency have engulphed the property of
hundreds of once flourishing cultivators. But these
visitations, even, have not resulted in unmixed evil.
With poverty waiting expectant at his door, the reso-
lute spirit of the British character has impelled the
planter at length to look his difficulties in the face,
and to enter upon a manly effort to retrieve past losses
and amend past mismanagement. The hope of better
things, to result from increased energy and increased
skill, has sprung up in him ; and, already, that hope
has not been all in vain. The cheering intelligence of
improved crops has already reached us ; and, if the
fostering hand of the legislature be now held out,—if
the means of cultivation—labour--be now freely sup-
plied,—we may look forward to the revival, in the
British West Indies, of that prosperity which once
constituted these noble possessions the richest gem in
England's crown, and which alone can bring about
that consummation which we aimed at when we pro-
claimed, in the face of the world, the determination of
a united people that slavery should no longer deform,
with its foUl features, the fairest portion of the inha-
bited earth!

We have said that the encouragement to afford
immigration of labourers to the West Indies,—to ren-
der those fertile possessions the stepping-stone of the
degraded African from the darkness of barbarism to
the full light of freedom and civilisation—was never
greater than at the present moment. We say more.
The DUTY of the British Parliament and of the phi-
lanthropist—the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY of such a
course as we now advocate, and for years have advo-
cated—were never more strikingly evident than now.
We stand now, as a nation, upon the verge of a new
course of commercial legislation. A principle is
abroad, and has already made some progress, which
teaches that no branch of domestic or colonial industry,
which is not self-dependent in the struggle of competi-
tion, can be permitted to be propped up by legislatil, e,
protection. Colonies, in the eye of the new philosophy
of the day, are monopolies; and, however vast may be
their value, however important the interests perilled,
must be swept away unless they can emerge triumph-
antly from the ordeal to which they are to be sub-
mitted. Thus far, we have regarded our West Indian
colonies as entitled to a protection against the colonies
of other 'countries. Within the last two years that
protection has been preserved mainly by the consi-
deration that, in them, the great experiment of tropical
cultivation by free labour was upon trial. The West
Indies have existed, as exporting colonies, solely by the
protection thus afforded them. But we say now—we
warn alike the friends of humanity, our colonists
themselves, and the British legislature,--that no states-
man can much longer continue such protection and defy
the vast power of active hostility which is being put in
force for its removal! The British West Indies must,
we fear, long before they can under any circumstance
be prepared for it, be driven to struggle for existence
with the Brazilian and Cuban planter—the dear labour
of free men with the labour of the slave ; and the day
which witnesses their entry upon that struggle, unaided
by a previous concession of extensive immigration,
will witness also the failure of that noble effort of
Great Britain to strike the fetters from the limbs of
the African, and the conversion of the fertile posses-
sions, in which that experiment is now being tried,
into howling wildernesses !
That period of struggle is, even now, we believe,
much nearer at hand than is suspected by those most
immediately concerned. To the government of Sir
Robert Peel we say, therefore, " give to the West
Indian, before you ask him to compete with the
Brazilian and the Cuban slave-owner, the means of
competition—a supply of labour. And to the philan-
thropist we say, abstain from throwing impediment in
the way of such a measure; aid it—pray for it—
agitate for it— unless you would have the world
suppose that all your past professions of exclusive
regard for the welfare and the freedom of the African
were the offspring of hollow hypocrisy and disgusting
cant !"

Since writing the above, a report of the proceedings
of the Birmingham Anti-slavery Society, held on
Friday evening last, has come before our notice, in
which we find the following remarks of Mr. Scoble—
a gentleman with whose virulent attacks upon the pro-
prietors of the British West Indies we have before
had to do. Mr. Scoble—as reported in the Midland
Counties Herald—" concluded his address by referring
to the sanction which had recently been given by the
government to the emigration of Hill Coolies from
India to the British Colonies, and which the legislature
of Trinidad had already turned to account, by imposing
laws and restrictions on the `free' labourers thus im-
ported, which deprived them of every thing but the name
of liberty." We do not hesitate to characterise this
as an unwarrantable libel upon the legislature of
Trinidad—a libel conceived, as are the proceedings of
nine-tenths of the humanity-mongers of the Anti-
slavery Society, in bigotted hatred of the colonists
individually and as a body, and in perfect disregard of
those great principles by which they profess that their
efforts are directed.

In our report of the proceedings of the Protestant
Association, held on Monday evening, in the Music-
hall, a suggestion was made by one of the speakers,
Mr. Howard, which we feel impelled most cordially to
impress upon the consideration of the Protestant pub-
lic of this town. If it be asked of them, to what man,
above all others, do they owe the proud position which
this borough occupies in the eyes of the nation—that
its voice in the Legislature is Conservative—and that
its local council is Conservative. The answer of every
lip will be—to the Rev. Hugh Al`Neile. His eloquence,
his faithful counsel, it is, which have again and again
enabled them to bruise the head of rampant Radicalism
in our town ; which have fixed the wavering, cheered
the timed, and inspired the lethargic to press on, by
the straightforward path of principle, to the triumphs
which have thus far blessed their efforts : and we do
not overrate the character of our Protestant brethren,
when we declare our conviction, that their feelings to-
wards him is one of admiration and gratitude, worthy
of the object and of themselves.

When we see it suggested, therefore, that that feel-
ing should be recorded, by the presentation to this dis-
tinguished man, of some memorial of respectful affec-
tion from the hands of his Protestant brethren, we
cannot but earnestly pray that such a suggestion, so
honorable to its author, should not be permitted to fall
to the ground. We are confident that any testimonial,
however insignificant in value, springing from such a
source—from the affectionate gratitude of the Protes-
tants of Liverpool—would be an object of prouder
contemplation to the rev. gentleman himself, and to
those dear to him, than the highest honor, to which
his talents and character alike warrant him in aspiring,
from other hands; and, we trust, therefore, that the
opportunity of thus recording that gratitude will not
be permitted to pass by unimproved.