Glances at Europe. Greeley Horace

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СКАЧАТЬ every body denounces while no one justifies it abstractly; and yet it is always upheld, and I presume always will be. If the question could now be put to a direct vote, even of the tax-payers alone—"Shall or shall not a system of Common School Education for the United Kingdoms be maintained by a National Tax?"—I believe Free Schools would be triumphant. Even if such a system were matured, put in operation, and to be sustained by Voluntary Contributions alone or left to perish, I should not despair of the result.

      But there is a lion in the path, in the shape of the Priesthood of the Established Church, who insist that the children shall be indoctrinated in the dogmas of their creed, or there shall be no State system of Common Schools; and, behind these, stand the Roman Catholic Clergy, who virtually make a similar demand with regard to the children of Catholics. The unreasonableness, as well as the ruinous effects of these demands, is already palpable on our side of the Atlantic. If, when our City was meditating the Croton Water Works, the Episcopal and Catholic Priesthood had each insisted that those works should be consecrated by their own Hierarchy and by none other, or, in default of this, we should have no water-works at all, the case would be substantially parallel to this. Or if there were in some city a hundred children, whose parents were of diverse creeds, all blind with cataract, whom it was practicable to cure altogether, but not separately, and these rival Priesthoods were respectively to insist—"They shall be taught our Creed and Catechism, and no other, while the operation is going on, or there shall be no operation and no cure," that case would not be materially diverse from this. In vain does the advocate of Light say to them, "Pray, let us give the children the inestimable blessing of sight, and then you may teach your creed and catechism to all whom you can persuade to learn them," they will have the closed eyes opened according to Loyola or to Laud, or not opened at all! Do they not provoke us to say that their insisting on an impossible, a suicidal condition, is but a cloak, a blind, a fetch, and that their real object is to keep the multitude in darkness? I am thankful that we have few clergymen in America who manifest a spirit akin to that which to this day deprives half the children of these Kingdoms of any considerable school education whatever.

      I think nothing unsusceptible of mathematical demonstration, can be clearer than the imperative necessity of Universal Education, as a matter simply of Public Economy. In these densely peopled islands, where service is cheap, and where many persons qualified to teach are maintaining a precarious struggle for subsistence, a system of General Education need not cost half so much as in the United States, while wealth is so concentrated that taxes bear less hardly here, in proportion to their amount, than with us. Every dollar judiciously spent on the education of poor children, would be more than saved in the diminution of the annual cost of pauperism and crime, while the intellectual and industrial capacity of the people would be vastly increased by it. I do not see how even Clerical bigotry, formidable as it deplorably is, can long resist this consideration among a people so thrifty and saving, as are in the main the wielders of political power in this country.

      Political Reforms move slowly here. Mr. Hume's motion for Household Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Triennial Parliaments, &c. was denied a consideration, night before last, by the concerted absence from the House of nearly all the members—only twenty-one appearing when forty (out of over six hundred) are required to constitute a quorum. So the subject lost its place as a set motion, and probably will not come up again this Session. The Ministry opposed its consideration now, promising themselves to bring forward a measure for the Extension of the Franchise next Session, when it is very unlikely that they will be in a position to bring forward anything. It seems to me that the current sets strongly against their continuance in office, and that, between the hearty Reformers on one side and the out-spoken Conservatives on the other, they must soon surrender their semblance of power. Still, they are skillful in playing off one extreme against another, and may thus endure or be endured a year longer; but the probability is against this. To my mind, it seems clear that their retirement is essential to the prosecution of Liberal Reforms. So long as they remain in power, they will do, in the way of the People's Enfranchisement, as near nought as possible.

      (——"Nothing could live

       Twixt that and silence.")

      Their successors, the avowed Conservatives, will of course do nothing; but they cannot hold power long in the Britain of to-day; and whoever shall succeed them must come in on a popular tide and on the strength of pledges to specific and comprehensive Reforms which cannot well be evaded. Slow work, say you? Well, there is no quicker practicable. When the Tories shall have been in once more and gone out again, there will be another great forward movement like the Reform Bill, and I think not till then, unless the Continent shall meantime be convulsed by the throes of a general Revolution.

      I should like to see a chance for the defeat of that most absurd of all Political stupidities, the Ecclesiastical Titles Assumption Bill, but I do not. Persecution for Faith's sake is most abhorrent, yet sincerity and zeal may render it respectable; but this bill has not one redeeming feature. While it insults the Catholics, it is perfectly certain to increase their numbers and power; and it will do this without inflicting on them the least substantial injury. Cardinal Wiseman will be the local head of the Catholic Church in England, whether he is legally forbidden to be styled "Archbishop of Westminster" or not, and so of the Irish Catholic prelates. The obstacles which the ministerial bill attempts to throw in the way of bequests to the Catholic Bishops as such, will be easily evaded; these Bishops will exercise every function of the Episcopate whether this Bill shall pass or fail: and their moral power will be greatly increased by its passage. But the Ministry, which has found the general support of the Catholics, and especially of the Irish Catholic Members, very opportune at certain critical junctures, will henceforth miss that support—in fact, it has already been transformed into a most virulent and deadly hostility. Rural England was hostile to the ministry before, on account of the depressing effect of Free Trade on the agricultural interest; and now Ireland is turned against them by their own act—an act which belies the professions of Toleration in matters of Faith which have given them a great hold of the sympathies of the best men in the country throughout the last half century. I do not see how they can ride out the storm which they by this bill have aroused.

      The cause of Temperance—of Total Abstinence from all that can intoxicate—is here about twenty years behind its present position in the United States. I think there are not more absolute drunkards here than in our American cities, but the habit of drinking for drink's sake is all but universal. The Aristocracy drink almost to a man; so do the Middle Class; so do the Clergy; so alas! do the Women! There is less of Ardent Spirits imbibed than with us; but Wines are much cheaper and in very general use among the well-off; while the consumption of Ale, Beer, Porter, &c. (mainly by the Poor) is enormous. Only think of £5,000,000 or Twenty-Five Millions of Dollars, paid into the Treasury in a single year by the People of these Islands as Malt-Tax alone, while the other ingredients used in the manufacture of Malt Liquors probably swell the aggregate to Thirty Millions of Dollars. If we suppose this to be a little more than one-third of the ultimate cost of these Liquors to the consumers, that cost cannot be less than One Hundred Millions of Dollars per annum!—a sum amply sufficient, if rightly expended, to banish Pauperism and Destitution for ever from the British Isles. And yet the poor trudge wearily on, loaded to the earth with exactions and burdens of every kind, yet stupifying their brains, emptying their pockets and ruining their constitutions with these poisonous, brutalizing liquors! I see no hope for them short of a System of Popular Education which shall raise them mentally above their present low condition, followed by a few years of systematic, energetic, omnipresent Temperance Agitation. A slow work this, but is there any quicker that will be effective? The Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge would greatly contribute to the Education of the Poor, but that Reform has yet to be struggled for.

      Of Social Reform in England, the most satisfactory agency at present is the Society for improving the Dwellings of the Poor. This Society has the patronage of the Queen, is presided over (I believe) by her husband, and is liberally patronized by the better portion of the Aristocracy and the higher order of the Clergy. These, aided by wealthy or philanthropic citizens, have contributed generously, and have done a good СКАЧАТЬ