The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1863-10-16

TO CnOSe VINO rule LnrOugn patronage.
An Englishman Paints England.
The following extracts are from Messrs.
HARPER's recent republication, KAY's $50
cial Condition of the English Poor" Such
story of moral rottenness explains
among many stories of misery-how it
comes to pass that Great Britain is one of
the hot-beds of that heathenism tempered
by lust, Mormonism:
TOWN SCHOOLS.
1t is impossible for the poor themselves
to bear the expenses of educating their
children efficiently, even if they were in
telligent enough to understand the value
of sound education for their children !;
and it is necessary to give them intelli-
gence, before we can make them willing
to bear any part of the expense
We have not half as many schools as
we require for the children of our towns !;
and of those we have established, great
number are either managed by teachers
who are utterly Unequal to the proper
discharge of their duties, or are SO wretch
eddy arranged, furnished and ventilated,
or so miserably conducted and supported,
as to make it certain that, in many cases,
they are doing very great harm to the
children who frequent them.
COUNTY SCHOOLS.
Few in number and inefficient in char
acter as the schools for our town laborers
are, still fewer and still more inefficient are
the schools for our peasants Even of
those which are established, the greater
part are managed by half-educated women :;
and even where men are employed as teach
ers, they are generally persons of little or
no education, who, being fit or no occu-
patton requiring skill or hard labor, were
engaged or set up as schoolmasters, as if
instructing youth were an employment re-
quiring less skill and earnest application
than any other. Hence it results-and
speak it with sorrow and with shame, but
with not less confidence in the assertion
that our peasantry are more ignorant, more
demoralized, less capable of helping them
selves, and more pauperized, than those of
any other country in Europe, if we except
Russia, Turkey, South Italy, and some
parts of the Austrian Empire.
Before the enactment of the new poor
law, We were paying annually between
$4,000, 900 and e7, OOO,OOO for the relief
of AFFECT pauperism in England and Wales
alone. Since the enacting of the new poor
law, we have been expanding in the same
cause between "a, 100000 and $4,000, 600
per annum; and, from Lady-Day, 1896, to
Lady-Day, 1S4S-or in seventeen years
we expended on the same object eS7,-
5O5,S26, without reckoning the vast sums
which have been sunk in the administra-
ton of the poor law in the different unions,
or the immense sums which have been
given away annually by charitable indi-
viduals and charitable societies.
ENGLISH HEATHENs.
Of the operatives in Lancashire, and of
the workmen in our great towns, there Is
not-and speak after considerable expe-
renee and numerous inquiries there is
not one out OF every ten who ever enters
church, and still fewer who attend reg
ularly.
have been assured by clercymen of
Lancashire who are equally removed from
blgotry and Indifference, and who are
themselves the most earnest laborers
among the poor, that the progress of Ro-
manism throughout the manufacturing
districts is very extraordinary.
They attribute it to the following causes:
lst. The astounding ignorance of the
great mass of the operatives, which rem
ders them unfit for the unimaginative and
intellectual worship of the English Church.
"a. The too great length of the services
of the English Church, and the small num-
Der of services in the week and on tbe
Sunday.
Sd. The small number of clergy in the
most thickly populated districts.
4th. The want Of an inferior order of
clergy.
II, in addition to all this, we remember
that vast numbers of the Door of our
towns cannot read or write a word. have
never entered one of our churches. and
have never heard the doctrines of Chris
tlanity; and that of the thousands of
criminals who are convicted at our as
sizes, very few have received any instruc-
ton whatever, it certainly does behoove
us to stir ourselves.
CHILD-MURDER.
announcer SAD symptom of the condition
OF the poor of our towns is the use they
make OF the "burial clubs" In some of
our towns the degradation of many of
the poor is such that parents often cause
the death OF their children, in order to
obtain the premiums from the societies.
The accounts of these "burial clubs"
and OF the extent to which infanticide is
practlced in some parts of this country,
may be found in Mr.. Chadwick's able re-
ports upon the sanitary condition of the
poor.
1t appears that in our larger provin-
clal towns the poor are in the habit of |
entering their children in what are called |
burial clubs" A small sum is paid |
every year by the parent, and this en-
titles him to receive from 93 to e5 from
the club on the death of the child. Many |