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Let us not delude ourselves: to this "complexion we must come at last." The greater or less gradation of velocity in the descent, is altogether purely contingent on the continuance of the governing power in its present, or in a modified shape. The pressure from without compelled Lord Grey to leave hold, after provident forecast for his family. Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, the one all voluptuous abandon and thoughtlessness, as the other all bladder-blown of self-presuming infallibility, Phœbus-like, seiz. ed the reins, in blind assurance by first giving head, more readily after to curb in the unruly half-jaded steed of Reform-in reverse of the French saying, sauter pour mieux reculer. They have not been long to learn the

"Facilis descensus averni; Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,

Hic labor, hoc opus est.'

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Their doom is fixed-the fiat has gone forth against them as hommes usès-they fall, like Lucifer, never to rise again. They may, indeed, be replaced for a moment by the impotent virility of a Normanby rouè, and the gangrenous humours of a bile-diseased Durham-for a moment only. The breed of aristocratical democrats is a cross too unnatural for long life and endurance; it is a lusus naturæ a monstrosity, moral and social-a race born only to see the light and become extinct.

The Melbourne and Russell system of administration and attempted retrogression, if founded in corruption the most extensive on the one hand, was as deeply based in the most atrocious tyranny on the other. It has been sustained by the wholesale bribery of agitators and incendiaries, both of the higher and among the more hungry middle-class section of popular leaders. Confederate with

them, it has sought to raise iron-bound ramparts of safety against the vengeance of the people at large, on whose rights it has trampled, whose hearths it has invaded, with whose wellbeing and lives it has wantonly sported. Scared with their own work of the Reform Bill, and more affrighted still by the hordes and combined vagabondage of the metropolis, through whose ready aid it was mainly carried, means were anxiously sought by the Grey Cabinet to get rid of allies no longer useful, who were troublesome and must be The real question was to dangerous. let out the bad blood without an inquest for murder. French ingenuity had forestalled and resolved the difficulty. We were present when, after the Revolution of July, 7000 superfluous heroes of the Three Glorious Days of rapine and murder, were mustered and paraded in the Place Vendôme, round the pillar of Napoleon; from whence the scape-gallows wretches, all whiskered and ghastly, were packed off by diligence and post, amidst cries of Vive la Revolution, to the frontiers of Spain and the interior of Belgium—the soil of which they fertilized with their bones, for return they did not, could not, and were not intended. The example was not lost. Some thousands of British vagrant Reformers were dispatched with Don Pedro to Portugal, and those who escaped the sword of the Miguelites perished more ingloriously afterwards of starvation. Some ten or twelve thousand of surplus Reform heroes were banded afterwards for Spain; of whom Colonel Evans, baton in hand, returned with the muster-rolls marked all dead, mutilated, or missing, shamefully slaughtered in the field, or disgracefully left to perish in a strange land. The incapacity of Evans justified the penetration with which, for the special object, he was selected; by his rashness and routs, thousands of unruly agitators were disposed of as efficiently as if by letter of instructions and plan of campaign, drawn out for the special end. It was KILLING NO MURDER the Brevet Colonel for the exploit has been rewarded with and wears a riband as deeply, glowingly red as if dyed in the blood-stained fields of Hernani, or in the purple gore of his defeated and massacred

mercenaries before the walls of St Sebastian. Hume and the Radicals Utilitarian for once were overreached. They anticipated the glorious return of a disciplined and victorious army, ready to achieve such further reform or revolution as might suit the exigences of party, however distasteful to the Ministry, with another Welling ton in the shape of laurel-browed Evans, to frown or fight down opposition. Alas! how fall the mighty ;Evans went out a triumphant Radical to return a discomfited Whig!

Had the new principle of KILLING NO MURDER stayed here its desolating progress, the country might have been consoled as by deliverance from a pestilence, however humanity must shudder over the long array of unhappy victims. But the millions remained unthinned the millions, revelling in ideal rights, rife, unruly, and boisterously clamouring for entry and possession of their share in the land of promise-the land flowing with milk and honey, newly conquered under the Reform Bill. The Solemn League and Covenant between Unions and Liberals was there the seal could not be railed from off the bond-Whig performances, in no measured tones, were demanded of Whig promises. But performance was out of the question with a prodigality so wild of spendthrift promises. The reapers would infinitely have outnumbered the ears of the golden harvest, reserved exclusively, within a ring fence, for a chosen class and for the Whig sickle, if all who had helped to plough, sow, and harrow in the seed, and were therefore bid, had come to the feast of the harvest moon. But the masses pressed and danger was imminent. The deep-mouthed voice of discontent, that could not be satisfied, must be silenced. So the coup d'etat was resolved upon against new rights, asserted by the people, old rights were presented as grievances by the Whig Grand Jury; the claim of a Reform Bill was answered with a New PoorLaw Bill-coup and contre coup were the order of the day-the ayes had it, in the so-said people's house, against the people the Poor-Law Abolition Bill was carried triumphantly-dungeons supplanted workhouses-pauperism, declared felony by Act of Par. liament, was made punishable with imprisonment for life-the iron hoof of

The

exulting Whiggery was at length fixed firmly on the neck of a prostrate nation. Let us, however, be just: there is one crowning charity in the new law at least the pangs of lengthened incarceration are spared to the hapless pauper, by the summary mercies of starvation diet and rigorous separation from kith and kind. portals of the living tomb, once closed on the wretch condemned, to him open no more, unless, if then even, to the passage of his mortal remains to that bourne from whence no traveller returns." The passage from time to eternity has not, however, alone been shortened, but that also from the bed of death to the grave. The poor and broken-hearted may enjoy the sad consolation of sleeping with their fathers no more; for the Bastile in which they are immured contains also within its own precincts the dark and dreary dungeons of the earth, where buried, as medically hurried, by contract with the lowest competing undertaker, he sleeps till that day when all wrongs shall be redressed-when the oppressor and the oppressed shall stand side by side, equal in all things save desert, before the Great Judge of allwhen Lord John, the New Poor-Law placeman, shall change place with poor John, the parish pauper.

Description of the horrors of the Bastile system-of the havoc it has worked, and is working-of the mortality which, more surely, more largely, although more silently than plague, pestilence, and famine conjointly, it has accomplished and is producing-description, we say, is beyond the powers of language, and will be, until a New Poor-Law vocabulary shall be constructed expressly of signs appropriate to the practical atrocities and the theoretic conjurations of which it would be the harrowing and disgusting record. A hundred volumes would not suffice the annals of its five years' career of fraud, falsehood, and infamy. Efficiently, for diabolically, does it work out the ends of its projectors and philanthropic superintendents; and whilst it spares not the aged, and spends not on the able-bodied, who are economically and indiscriminately disposed of where no more heard of, at the railwayspeed of short commons and close confinement, not less tender is the New Poor-Law in its cares for infant life, or

its prompt facilities for the ready dispatch of that life to any world but this. Take the following out of ten thousand cases similar: the good people and the excellent Lord Mayor of the city of London were, as men, magistrates, and Christians, grievously shocked and outraged in their feelings. Kind but simple-hearted souls, they have studied not the New Poor- Law-they know not its authors!

"MANSION - HOUSE. Yesterday, a young woman, named Eliza Chandler, was brought before the Lord Mayor under the following circumstances:-

"Mr Cloake, of No. 3, Liverpool Street, stated that the prisoner had been servant in his family about eight or ten days before the 30th of July, when it was found that she had delivered herself of a child, and thrown it into the water-closet. She did not look at all like a person in the family way before the discovery was made, and had an excellent character. Upon being spoken to by her mistress, she admitted that the child had been born on the Saturday, the 27th of July. The porter found the child dead. Witness did not appear to charge her with having committed any offence.

"The beadle of the ward stated that the infant appeared to be a full-grown child. He attended the inquest, which was to the effect, that the child was found dead in the privy, but there was not sufficient evidence to determine whether it was born alive or not."

"The Lord Mayor-Have you received any direction from any one to prosecute?

"Beadle-No. It was stated before the coroner that the person of whom the child was born was in custody, and the coroner said it was such a case as ought to be brought under your lordship's notice.

"The Lord Mayor-Did she make any statement before the coroner?

"Beadle-She was not brought before him, as it was considered that it might prove dangerous to her health to be exposed.

"The Lord Mayor--Has she made any communication as to who the father of the child is?

"One of the inspectors of the police stated, that she said at the station-house that the father was a journeyman baker.

"Mr Hobler observed that somebody ought to take the matter up, and that it seemed to be looked upon very lightly

indeed.

"The Lord Mayor-Since the passing of the New Poor-Law, it seems to be con

sidered that children when they are born are to be treated as kittens are treated. Unfortunate women, who are in a way to become mothers, seem to think that they are to deliver themselves as they can, and to get rid of their infants as soon as possible. This is a most frightful impression.

"Mr Hobler said that many women certainly appeared to be influenced by that opinion.

"The Lord Mayor-They deliver themselves as they please, and throw their infants into the privy or into the river, and no prosecutor appears. Is this woman to be sent to the Central Criminal Court, or to be set at large?

"The beadle said that he had received no instructions on the subject.

"The Lord Mayor--Prisoner, have you any thing to say?

"Prisoner-Nothing, my lord. "The Lord Mayor-Is the surgeon here to give evidence?

"Beadle--No, I am not aware that

he is.

"The Lord Mayor-Nobody appears to think any thing of the business, serious as it is. I, however, consider it to be my duty to commit the woman to take her trial at the Central Criminal Court. In past times the parish officers used to prosecute in cases of this kind-now it seems there are no funds with which to prosecute, and desperate offences of this description may be committed with comparative impunity. If the New Poor-Law is to be revised and altered, surely power ought to be given to the parish officers to prosecute persons guilty of disposing of their offspring in so shocking a manner. If the lives of children are to be preserved, a change of this sort must take place.

"Mr Hobler agreed with bis lordship, that an important change should be made as regarded illegitimate children. It appeared to be very extraordinary that so much money should be expended in paying those who worked the bill, and that 40s. or 50s. should be grudged where human life was concerned.

"The Lord Mayor- It is most extraordinary that commissioners, and assistant-commissioners, and clerks, should have L.54,000 per annum amongst them for carrying the New Poor-Law into effect, and yet that a parish should not be allowed as much as 20s. to prosecute, in order to prevent the practice of flinging poor children into destruction the moment they are born. There have been many destroyed since this law came into operation, more than we have ever heard of, I am convinced. Now, the matter seems to be of ordinary occurrence. In this case, if the prisoner had not been very ill, and the

mistress had not entertained suspicion of her, we would never have heard a word about it. The parties never would have thought of looking into the place where it was found. The effect of the example is really frightful; we must have the surgeon's evidence, and I shall commit the prisoner for trial, and the Court, I am sure, will, under such circumstances, most readily pay the expenses.

"His lordship then ordered that the surgeon who examined the body of the infant should be required to attend and give evidence."

It might have occurred, we think, to the Lord Mayor, that as no funds were provided by the New Poor-Law to prosecute for infanticide, it must be clearly intended by its authors that new-born children should be treated exactly as kittens are treated. There would seem something personal and unfriendly in the sneer of Mr Hobler, than whom, however, a bet. ter and more respected functionary breathes not, about the extravagant rate at which people are paid for working the New Poor-Law, whilst the merest trifle was grudged where human life was concerned-personal and unfriendly, we say, because Mr Hobler must be supposed to know that one of the chief, if not the chief, workers and projectors of the law, is the identical individual of penny-aline notoriety, who heretofore figured at his elbow, and was his debtor in many pence for lines of information charitably furnished to the quasi-presspauper, then himself the slave of a serving-man, and barely existing upon reports of rapes and robberies, last dying speeches and confessions at the gallows. Infanticide, although not specially pronounced legal, is clearly as much part and parcel of the New Poor-Law as pinch-pauper diet, and the salary of the commissioners, or of Edwin Chadwick, Esq., barrister-(!!!)-at-law.

Infanticide is the wholesale practice in China, if not the law of Confucius. More advanced in the arts and sciences of civilized life than that world of antediluvians, here the successors of a mission apostolic and almost of divine origin are found (Oh! shame) colleagued with Utilitarians, Unitarians, and Nothingarians, in a legislation by which infanticide is indirectly legalized by the absence of the customary provision for its prevention or

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punishment. The profit-and-loss cashaccount is, however, cited-the balance-sheet appealed to triumphantly, in vindication of the New PoorLaw and Whig principle of-KILLING NO MURDER. Perish for ever the wretches, who-debited on the debtor side with human life coolly immolated in rueful numbers-would salve the public as their own seared conscience, and interest public avarice by credit on the other sheet for one or more millions sterling of savings. Theirs is the infernal system of the Thugs, who affect hospitality, and sympathetically press assistance and asylum to unsuspecting travellers, in whose murder they afterwards exult exactly in proportion to the purse and the prize balance resulting. But, were the Poor-Law Abolition Commissioners honestly desirous, as they are capable, of rendering true accounts, how would the balance stand? their reports on various Unions in which imposture was attempted, as imposture is systematically practised throughout, it has not only been shown, but the disgraceful fact has by themselves, on compulsion, been openly admitted and published, that credit was taken for hundreds or thousands saved under the new system, and for rates reduced, where on the contrary thousands expended and rates laid and paid had been in excess; or where, as in Southwark, the thousands had been saved and the rates reduced solely by defying their orders aud excluding their system. flagrant have been their falsehoods—so self-convicting their forced, yet still incomplete admissions, that we stand entirely acquitted of a judgment too harsh, when we assert our conscientious impression that, in their own case, they are not worthy of credence when unsupported by testimony of a less suspicious and more unimpeachable character.

So

From this hateful exhibition of depraved principle and ossification of heart, let us hasten to escape. Fortunately, we have now only to request attention to figures, and to leave the New Poor-Law Commissioners to fill up the blanks. Against their wilfully deceptive account of savings effected, let them furnish a bill of particulars of the charges shifted now on parish rates, other than poor's rates as before, or rendered necessary to carry the

New Poor-Law into effect, or thereout resulting.

1. Amount of coroner's and jury's fees and expenses formerly charged on poor's rates.

2. Expenses of criminal trials resulting from inquests.

3. Savings by the toleration of infanticide.

4. Commissioners' salaries and expenses.

5. A levy of 5000 regular troops to enforce the law.

6. A standing Rural Police of 25,000 men, with commissioners, &c., to overawe the people, and guard workhouse prisons.

7. The cost of new barracks, to be constructed against Union work. houses.

For the end will be, that every Union workhouse must have its barracks, so that the country will at length present something in appearance like the Owenite parallelograms of social life; with the difference, that the barrack fortress is built to keep in check the workhouse prison and pauper felonry.

Such is the state of the country, as represented in the special department of Lord John Russell. We shall conclude with requesting the earnest attention they are well deserving of, to the illustrations so apposite and happily afforded by Mr D'Israeli of the latent objects of the intended working, or the destructive tendency of the Rural Police Bill to constitutional liberty. There is nothing speculative about his observations;-official documents prepared under the eyes of the Government, and by its own paid officials, are referred to, and his argu. ment is founded upon the system as now practically, although partially, in operation in Cheshire and elsewhere.

"Mr D'Israeli rose and said,-He had opposed this bill on its original stages, although he had offered no factious opposi tion. Now that the measure had arrived at its last stage, he thought he was justified in entering his protest against it, and dividing the House against its passing. Her Majesty's Government, and those who supported this measure, seemed to have taken up the view that the first and sole duty of a police was to maintain order; but he (Mr D'Israeli) apprehended that in a free country like England, there was a co-ordinate duty for a police, and that was not merely to maintain order, but to respect liberty. He could not bring himself to be

lieve that the rural police, as it was proposed to constitute the body by this bill, and as it had been brought into operation in some districts already, could fulfil both these duties. He wished to call the attention of the House to a document which seemed to have been studiously kept out of sight in the course of the discussion on this bill-the Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry into the State of the Constabulary Force of the country. There were some curious details in the evidence annexed to that report, which he thought it was the duty of the House not to overlook, clearly showing what must be the character of a rural police formed upon the principles of this bill. It was proved that the practice of the police, in those rural districts where the force had been called into existence, was to enter cottages and order lights to be extinguished, because, according to one of the witnesses examined, cottagers had no right to have lights to serve as signals to poachers and marauders. It was also proved to be their practice in other districts to enter cottages in the daytime, and see if there was mutton boiling in the pot on the fire, because a sheep might have been killed in the neighbourhood. He asked the House if these practices were sanctioned, what would become of the celebrated national dogma, that every Englishman's house was his castle? It might be said that these were very salutary regulations, and referred only to the labouring classes; but he (Mr D'Israeli) looked upon their rights as equally sacred with those of the rest of the community. Another part of the evidence was to the effect that the magistrates of Chelmsford regretted extremely that trampers, as they were called, were not exposed to be arrested for hiring beds in lodging-houses, whereas, if they only slept in the open air, they might be apprehended; but they congratulated themselves that the police under their direction had entered houses and examined beds to ascertain the character of the occupants. How was this to be reconciled with the sanctity of private dwellings, which had always been considered a very important principle of our social arrangements? He could not support this bill when he looked to the hurried and unsatisfactory manner in which, at the end of the session, this and other measures of police had been introduced. Although there might be a variation in the circumstances of the cases to meet which they were brought forward, yet when he con sidered the manner in which they had been introduced, he must believe that there was an identity of purpose and a similarity of principle in all. The Birmingham Police Bill, on its introduction, was founded

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