Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-11-09
SOME NOTES ON THE BRITISH
QUARTERLY

One always finds something worth
reading in the British Quarterly. The
first article is a favorable notice OF
Richard Rothe, a learned German
doctor and professor of theology, whose
mind did not harmonic with the pre-
vailing ideas of the church to which
he nominally belonged, and brought
him into trouble. Independent re-
search and thinking are apt to lead
divinity students astray like lost sheep
More quiet, and perhaps less enterprls-
ing spiritual shepherds said Rothe' s
theology was a mixture OF phantasy
and science; sometimes the one, and
sometimes the other predominated. He
was expelled from his church, but
lived a devout life, and died
strong in christian faith.
The second article treats of strikes
in England, in which Work and
Wages" Capital and Labor" are dis
cussed at considerable length, and with
characteristic ability. When the
Dowlais Iron Company was putting
out I07, 900 tons of coal week, finish
ing II 900 tons Of iron, and 1900 tons
of steel in the same time, all their
hands struck for higher wages-an ad-
vance of ten per cent. being demanded.
The proprietors are rich and said their
works should stand idle twenty years
before they would submit to any
Trades Union dictation. After hold
ing out eleven weeks, at an estimated
loss of eleven million dollars, hands that
did not belong to any Union
went to work at the old rates, to
keep from starving, and others
soon followed their example.
In two or three weeks the company
raised their wages ten per cent,
the full amount asked. The easy en-
igration of skilled workmen to Aus
tralia, America and other countries, is
an advantage which Engishmen have
that capitalists can only counteract by
the offer of better wages and more
comforts to productive industry. Arti-
sans Of all kinds are beginning to I'M
derstand this, and are able to secure
higher wages, and more consideration
as an indispensable link in the chain of
British wealth and power. But the
poor and generally stupid agricultural
laborers are just quickening to learn
that there is in aristocratic England
such a thing as relief for them.
No romance is more exciting than
would be true history Of this large
class who speak our mother tongue, if
traced back to the Heptarchy, when
they were adStricti gIebg or tied to the
soil. In many respects, their condition
is worse now than it was IN the time of
Cromwell and earlier. Then there were
large commons on which the peasant
could pasture his COW, keep a few pigs
to make his meat, and geese to give his
family feather-beds, with some feathers
to sell, and few fat geese for Christ
mas. Land monopoly has cut off
these resources of the poor and given
them no substitutes but crowded poor
house, emigration, or starvation.
With four pound loaf at one shilling
six pence (which the British Quarterly
appears to regard as an average), it is
easy to see how the farm laborer with
a wife and four children must fare on
twelve shillings a week wages. Give
each of the six members of the family a
penny's worth of bread for a meal, and
Is pence last one day, and this sum
multiplied by seven the days IN the
week. and los. Cd, Of his entire wages
(12s.) goes for bread alone. This leaves
only one shilling sixpence a week topay
house rent, for fuel, clothing, meat,
vegetables, soap, and all incidental ex-
penses. At no time. in one or two
thousand years could farm laborers have
been in a more helpless condition.
On an island Of no great area, land
monopoly is an obvious and terrible
evil which cannot last always. The
editor of the Quarterly sympathizes
with the rural peasantry, and advises
the directors of their Unions to agitate
for the right of each head of family
to half, or at least a quarter of an acre
Of arabic land for his own use. Give
to each householder a half acre as con-
templated, and he will have one-fourth
Of the surface given, with mule to
cultivate the same, by Gen. Harding,
Of this county, to each freedman on his
farm who has family to support, with
out any abatement of wages or charge
for house rent, garden patch or fire
wood Estimated in bread that a days
work will buy, our farmers pay
three or four times higher
wages than English farmers pay. EN-
igration to this continent is now, as it
has been for a hundred years, the best
remedy for the labor difficulties in
Great Britain and Ireland In this age
Of the world, with no entail nor primo
geniture, it is not easy for few fam
lies to monopolize all the land on the
American continent, and hold it as land
is held in Europe Universal suffrage
would change things there very speedi-
ly; it might be for the worse in some
respects. Every where the human race
is in an active ferment, like grain turn
ing to beer or vinegar Between grain
or fruit and vinegar, there is always
fiery alcohol, and man has reached it,
and is in the fire.
Seventeen of its double-column
pages are devoted to ''the Revolution IL