HICS OF BLACKGUARDISM.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 48, 24 April 1863, Page 3

HICS OF BLACKGUARDISM.

ma *" 'm 9hy Beview, 10th January.) scessaryf s hound," says a fable which sugjrary or atft j gource> «< once re viled the swine ly form. i creature, sunk in filth and sloth, appear ,y^ ancestor was the wild b-ar of urs was the savage cur who gnawad stter re- g^t^t. 0 eaCQ w hat the .P rO JJ, c . r . man, our master, has made us.'" in aadi- 7er yefc wM ft society, perlt at a , i wem jg n t; not justify the apologue ! "* ?P? . ere is generally a class of men, of icn MM Ug ciasaes, whose occupation, though ;ion yr\\i neceßßary to society, ia bura regis- _ Qc ideiita of repulsivene3s to most of Jills, ana i influential section among us. The B T* *v '■ executioner has sunk to this mark, b tor tne r , rtain o f me dia3val society it knerwue, r i on orable-j and its lapse in estimaadvise* ' , progress of general refinement, xi. vJ» ■nT process abhorrent which has for them by infliction of human suffering or the -^ human life. If, indeed, it had been mptfrom j itseT y } to commit all painful operaenclosing «> t]ie digcoyery o f BUCQ anodynes as Tm *^ ' a t^ t0 an^ 9 °f purely mechanical * penal^ f ; og merely under the directions of ... . ■; nan, and to reserve to the latter the ■"" - . p ®" -d ling and painless remedies, it ma nsmission ; • * ht or any ; '

be questioned whether the former class would no have sunk,.iii a similar way, to the level of a carnifex. Even asitis, with all the reputation of science to' back him-i-and science has risen in esteem, in modern times, somewhat in proportion as the handicraft of cruelty has fallen, it is dbjibt-ful-whether there are not many middle aged single ladies who would shrink from a dentist as a general acquaintance. The individual feels much where society is little better than neutral. It is the individual who feels alike the painful remedy and the eventual relief from dentistry and surgery, arm who sets off the latter against the former. It is society, on the contrary, which experiences relief when a malefactor is executed, and of this relief every individual has an infinitesimally fractional share. But each, in his individual capacity, feels that a human neck has been dislocated, and ft solemn sense of the ordinary sanctity of human life would make his gorge rise at being asked to dine with that valuable public functionary who practically vindicates the majesty of law inits last resort. The fee 1 ings with which other lower members of the executive of justice, even in civil, to say nothing of penal, cases, are regardad, are somewhat similar. The " bum-bailiff" has never been a popular character. And here we find an example that comes home to the point. For the executioners, whatever may have been the case in earlier time-!, are now so few that they can scarcely form an appreciable class. Ho who attaches either person or goods for debt acts, albeit under civil process, in a penal character ; and, next to human life, sanctity attaches among us to the liberty of the person and the security of the home ; and of such functionaries, in a State where such arrests and seizures are legal, thero will always be a sufficiently large number to fasten public attention as a class, and provoke the prejudices of the many who owe at all times, and of the many more who owe at some time more than they can pay. Persons who follow callings of a filthy or repulsive character come in for a modified share of the stigma. Tax gatherers are known to have an ugly screw in their hands, and the sympathy of the public is still on the side of the screwed and against the screwer. A great poet's feelings towards " the Exciseman" have besn recorded in a well-known lyric, and he struck a deep chord in the popular bosom when he so immortalised his hate. It is tacitly imputed to all these functionaries, that they discharge their duties more efficiently as they divest themselves of some of the tenderer feelings of humanity; and that if their calling does not find them, in common parlance "brutes," it leaves them so. And this animosity of society has been embodied in a tx-adition which regards butchers as disqualified from serving on a jury in cases of life and death.

It would be easy to show that the feeling against such persons, however, in a certain sense, natural, leads to a practical injustice. We are at present rather concerred to show that it is mischievous. The direct consequence is that, losing self respect through a feeling of the prejudice under which they labor, they lose with it the surest ordinary safeguard of morality, view themselves as pariahs, and become an antaognistic, and to a certain extent a dangerous, class. Banded together, as it were in self defence, against |social disesteem, they accept, with little effort at resistance, or perhaps with a hardy defiance, the temptations mc;» dent to their callings. They feel as Shylock felt, and justify it as Shylock did. They are thrust out from "respectable" society, and ally themselves with what is directly vicious, as having a common enemy. Thus a moral sink of society is formed by a confluence of elements, and good people hold their noses, shut their eye 3, and turn away. This seems directly applicable to the case of prize fighters ; and it might, we think, be easily shown that they have sunk into a lower moral state in proportion as the general feeling of society has been tinged with humanitarianism. That there is any thing necessarily brutalising in the compound of skill and hardihood which their busines3 requires in the necessary training, or in the combat itself, can never be shown. That a prize fight is technically a breach of the peace, has nothing to do with the real question ; save that, by making a thing unlawful, we degrade those who practice it, and so far tend to produce the evils alleged above. The power of enduring suffering, and of witnessing it, without giving way, is surely an attribute of manliness, and may be reckoned even as a physical basis of the Christian character. Self-defence, and the power of protecting the weak and defenceless are surely social faculties worth cultivating at all times. To know what musclas to exert, and to have those muscles ready for use, against the grip of the garotter or the assault of the bully, is a C3mparatively cheap protection of the individual, and no superfluous benefit even to modern society. And whatever may be said of the natural tendencies of Englishmen, we cannot but think that these powers would generally droop and dwindle in the total absence of all public and practical test, even as the average of mathematical cultivation would fall, if the wranglers' list, and all similar machinery, were summarily abolished. The knowledge that " sometime we must box without the muffle," is the best security for earnestness in the pursuit of that command over physical force, of which the champion's belt is the highest guarantee- Fencing has sunk to an elegant accomplishment since society ceased to carry swords. Society will never cease to carry the weapons of nature, and it is desirable that it should be able to carry them with the best effects. Nor is the training of a man to do the best with his limbs and weight without its moral side. It involves a command of temper too ; and this will often alone secure the use of the bodily advantages of which it is the steward. This enables a man to realise practically both the advantages conveyed in the double caution of Polonious to his son : —

" Beware of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being

in, Bear it, thatth 1 opposer may beware of thee."

Not only has the estimate which peacemongers hold of the military profession many points in common with the general estimate of the priaering, but even the practice of the Bar has often come in for similar strictures to those which are urged against the latter. It is said that the barrister does his utmost to browbeat the opposite witnesses, to abuse snd villify, or at least deorecate and insinuate unworthy motives against his adversary's client ; that his immediate object is not truth, but victory ; that he manipulates evidence, gives a false color to facts, warps the meaning of plain words, wrests the law to his side, appeals to the known bias or probable prejudice of the jury, and seeks to sophisticate the judge. And it is urged with great plausibility that such practices must deaden the mind to the value of truth, and tend to make justice a game of chance, or, at best, of unscrupulous skill. We believe that the great security against our Bar sinking to the level which such arguments imply, lies in the social esteem which the Bar enjoys. Litigation is, relatively, an evil, however necessary it may be. And more exasperation, rancour, and unchftritableness is probably stirred up in a single term in connection with it, than ha 3 accompanied all the prize fights that ever yet were fought. Social esteem keeps the barrister up, and lets the prize-fighter down. The ruffianism, the spells of wild inebriety alternating with the severity of training, and all the concomitant "blackguradism" which marks the lower members, and, perhaps, the larger, of professional "fighting men," have no root in their profession as such. It is the result of the degradation in which they are held, and of the social ban under which they are laid. There is no reason whatever why two men should not, as they shake hands first, go to work In a spirit of perfect chivalry, and enter the ring with the temper and the conscience of Bayard himself. It is the abhorrence of the " respectable" which makes them what they are. Society shuts its doors against them ; but the bars of the lower grade of public-house are open, and there they are accordingly found. They are, in form of law, criminals, and make good their position by lawless lives. It is tLe old case of the Public :n and the Pharisee. Society secures a little good of a lower soft, and has not the faith and the charity to venture for a higher one. The temper which we call " Pharisaism," for the sake of a distinctive term, is an element in all society which, having made some progress in civilisation, finds it less trouble to throw up barriers thtiu to pioneer paths for further progress. As regards human life and limb more mischief to them is certainly done in a season's fox-hunting than in a year's fights. Nay, a calm review of facts will lead to the conclusion that prize fighting tends to cconmize them. 1 1 lays down rules for that which ndeed an evil, a quarrelsome disposition to hurt a neighbor; and, though its own battles may be conducted without a particle of ill-will, it extends a beneficial influence to the really brutal battles into which our lower population are apt to rush. It tends to minimize the mischief of a fight, and thus to protect what it seems at first sight to endanger. It hardly ever happens that fair fights are fatal ; it constantly happens that deadly blows are given when men fight in defiance of the rules of the ring,, and without its. safeguards. We could hardly hope to alter in less than a generation the aTerage character ot prize-fighters ; but the first step towards any future amelioration would certainly be the removal of the stigma of illegality, which is proved' to nugatory as regards

the stopping of fights, and only effectual in degrading those who conduct them. If one influential section- of society had its way, the stage-, which falls under its Severest anathema, would degrade the actor and the actress just as the prize ring does him who makes it his calling now. But, a3 regards the stage, society on the whole has decided that there i« a clear advantage in keeping it rcspeciable. Withdraw that support, and — we will not say that acttfeesseß would become the most degraded of their ccx, but — none but those already so degraded would accept the pr6feK-ion of the stage. All who had a character ., to lose would shrink away. An interesting paper in the Spectator (No £36), shows a very different tone both in cham pions and in the public who witnessed their performances a century and a half ago. We have no doubt that Dick Steele really went to "Hock-ley-Jn-the-Hole" and saw something like the combai between " Sergeant Miller" and the redoubtad " Timothy Buck. Steele certainly was a man r.i'-.ber notsd for a ready tenderness of feeling, and as fir rr! Pc •. ible removed from the popalar characLsr of a " brute." The fight, as he represents it, was conductad with swords, which must be allowed to have darters from which our prizelin^isfree. It is clear, however, that unless the tone he gives the affair be wholly false and artificial — a supposition which we have the best teason3 for rejecting^-the whole proceeding, rhough confessedly a diversion of "the lower order of Britons," yet enjoyed a far higher social and moral character than could be accorded to a prize-fight of our modern day, and that the champions were men respected in their station of society. Change of manners has annulled that respect, and all else has changed with it.