The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-05-30
SPIRIT OF TEE RRnss.
Editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-CompiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
LIFE AT MANCHESTER.

y
dignation which is sweeping over the whole
country in connection with the Greek massa-
cres. Apart from the natural pity and terror
which is aroused by the destruction of human
life, and the appeal to vengeance from our
brothers blood, we blush with indignation that
such deed could have been done in q Chris
tian land. We have been many long year
teaching the tottering steps of the infant
State of Europe to walk, and this is what has
come of it. And now it is proposed, perhaps
seriously, that we should treat the fractious,
or incapable, Greek brat with serious disci-
pline, and send him to school in real earnest.
We are ready with tutors and governors.
There are able and competent administrators,
military and political, prepared, and no doubt
willing, to instruct the child of neglect and
mismanagement. Indian generals with
out employment, and Indian financiers
en- congo, are to be had for
the asking. The successful captains who
could or could not hunt down Mana Sahib or
Tantia Topee, and the able civil servants who
have in succession, whether with or without
success, produced the wonderful series of
Indian budgets, would not refuse active ser
vice and salary in Greece. Sir William This
or Sir Charles That are just the men, it is
hinted to stamp out brigandage in Attica
and to set the exchequer of the Pireus all
straight. Anyhow, Greece as it is, political,
moral, and social, Is disgrace to Christen-
dom. We admit it ALL But when we come
to look at home, and go back hundred aud
fifty years to the social condition of this en-
pire-and the Greece of to-day is not un-
fairly to be contrasted with the Great Britain
of the beginning of the eighteenth century
seme ugly memories present themselves
The Catherans of the North, Hounsow
Heath, Finchley Common, and Maidenhead
Thicket, have their records of robbery and
blood. Even London streets of that day
were not so much better than Oropos of this.
But we may go further, or rather come nearer
to the question. Greek brigandage and
Italian brigandage are very horrid things; but
anyhow they are traditional. They seem to
be regulated by sort of hideous etiquette,
and to be adjusted into system, if not sane
toned, at least acknowledged, by long and
inveterate abuse of right. But if we look at
Greek brigandage from what they call the
standpoint of outsiders and bystanders, the
question may perhaps proftsbly occur to
some of us, how the general critic and stu
dent of current and extant humanity
would estimate certain domestic
facts of the social history of the Great
Britain of the present day? For instance,
what would he think of Misunderstanding in
Ireland? what of numbering a small trades
man because he was thought to be enhancing
OF reducing the price of butter and eggs
what of Sitting mans nose up because he
was agent to somebody whom somebody else
denounced what of the state Of Lordon at
this moment as regards the security of pro-
psrty what of the open hire by an associa-
tion of assassins at the cheap figure of five or
ten pounds per victim Given the relative
proportions of the civilization, education,
law, and public authority of Greece against
England, and taking into consideration the
very remarkable facts that landlord murder
in Ireland and Broadheadism in England are
new things, and are both of them novelties
in human wickedness, and therefore in
some sense products of our present
and living civilization, whereas bri-
gandage survives as part of
ancient barbarism not yet grubbed up we
very much suspect that an impartial critic or
philosophic historian of civilization would be
tempted to pronounce that, crime for crime,
place for place, and time and circumstances
for time and circumstances, Broadhead's
crime was of the two more hideous and more
disgraceful to us than the arrangements of
the brigand captains are to Greece. Our
blood boils with indignation that the Home
Secretary, or whatever he is, at Athens, can
not or will not detect the murderers of our
poor fellow-countrymen in Attica; and at this
very moment Mr.. Secretary Bruce-so he
says in his place in Parliament-has received
no complaint that the Manchester ma
gistrates have not done their duty, either
in preventing or detecting the perpetrators
of the outrages on MIR. Johnson, or in pro-
tecting that gentlemans life and property
for the last twelve months. Indeed, the
Town Clerk OF Manchester rather takes
credit, not for preventing the outrage but
for considering it at ALL That is to say, au-
thority in its most official impersonation
owns that the state of things at Manchester
mere matter of systematic arson and MUIR
der directed against tradesman only because
he carries on his business in way displeas-
ing to an organized band of brigands, calling
themselves Trade Unionists Sis beyond the
control of the ordinary administration of the
law of England.
Let us see what this attack on Mr.. johnson
is; and first let us describe who this Mr..
johnson is. He is builder, engaged in very
extensive business. At Manchester a Unionist
ordinance existed prohibiting the shaping of
building stone at the quarries, and the
consequent use of cut stone on
the site Of new buildings; another
ukase forbad the use of machinery
In the manufacture of bricks, and we believe
there was similar decree issued by the Man
chester bricklayers limiting the hours of
labor. In fact, here was the working-man at
work introducing all sorts of restrictions into
particular trade, coercing employers of
labor, and, in short, prohibiting certain
manufacture-that of new buildings-by
making, or trying to make, profit in that
trade impossible. The natural and unavoid-
able result of the success of this policy of
trade unionism would be of course the simple
annihilation of special and hitherto profit
able trade. Against these tyrannical re-
strictions, and against these attempts to
earn his bread, Mr.. Johnsan rebelled; and
nf Of cUao -