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ENGLAND REVISITED.

Is an article under this title in ' millan'B Magazine ' for October, Professor Goldwin Smith says :—" Nothing seems more certain that the largest portion ot the newly 'made wealth has gone to tic class which lives by wages, and that this class has suffered" least by dfpression. Profits have fallen and wages 1 aye risen, as political economy, now so much depiseed, said th-it they v ould. Low profits and reduced rents to the people mean cheap clothing and cheap bread. Articles of popular consumption are very cheap while the range ot popular consumption is evidently growing larger. Economic laws have done, and are doing, what the labour agitator w.ints to do by industrial war. The thrifty artisan, so far as I can see, is just as well off here as he is in the United States, saving that the line is harder and sharper here between the employing class and the employed. That 'the rich are always growing richer, and the poor poorer,' seems to be the reverse of the truth. With population the positive amount of poverty from various causes must increase. The low quarters of London are still wretched ; the people, no doubt, multiply with the recklessness of misery, while to aggravate their case and render any attempt to improve their habitations futile, there is a perpetual influx into the overcrowded district of wanderers from without, not only Irish, but Germans and Polish Jews. The wheels of the vast machine, alas, often grind cruelly, and in the land of political freedom there is practical slavery as well as suffering. John Woolman, the American Quaker, visiting England in the last century, was shocked by the sacrifice of the postboy's life and health to fast travelling. I had a talk with an old cabman, and true, I fear, as well as sad, was his tale of precarious earnings, dear and narrow lodiugs, days passed on the driving box in the wet, rheumatism, and the workhouse at the last. He said some of the men preferred the night work, though the harder because otherwise they could never see their wives and children. If there is not another world for cabby, his horse may perhaps be almost as well off. Yet these men are rarely uncivil, and they bring to Scotland Yard things innumerable that have been left in the cabs. There is a set of population towards the cities. London, that prodigious tumour, still grows. In some of the rural districts population has decreased. This tendency seems not healchy. It prevails in America too, and this is ascribed by Conservatives to education, which makes the people disdain manual labour, and long to exchange the dulness of the farm for the excitements and pleasures of the city. I suspect, at all events, that Mr Chamberlain, in educating the people, and at the same time seeking to make them tillers of the son is playing one head against the other. Wealth, of course, brings ltfxury, the apparatus of which is always growing vaster and more elaborate. In case of a pinch England has three margins to draw upon— waste, which is still greater here than in France, though not so great as in America ; the cost of distribution, which is excessive ; and luxnry. Among luxuries are not to be counted the healthy amusements which are made more than ever necessary by the pressure and tension of commercial lite. In travelling I have been struck with the number of cricket matches and local festivities of all kinds that wore going on. The bycicle, too, js evidently a most happy invention ; it must not only give healthy pleasure to city youth, but take it away from city pleasures which arc not so healthy. England has roads suited for the bicycle, which America has not. Excursionism, Avhich began with the Exhibition of 1831, has now assumed immense proportions, and though it is in some decrees indicative of restlessness, and tends to become a mania, it mutt bo, on the whole, a vast addition to the enjoyments of the people, nnd civilising at the sumo time. It denotes increased leisure, in which respect, as m that of wages, the working clHHses have unquestionably gained With luxury may be coupled, as nrihiugout of the sumo moral conditions, combined with tho electric and telegraphic state of the world, the passion for excitement, which seems to threaten tho sobriety and steadiness of English charactor ho much as its fortitude is threatened by luxury. It is liHTing a eihister effect on politics. The first duty of a political louder is to excite aud amu*e, and ho who eun do thin may mount without wisdom or character to the high places ot *b« State,"

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WT18861227.2.10

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2258, 27 December 1886, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
784

ENGLAND REVISITED. Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2258, 27 December 1886, Page 2

ENGLAND REVISITED. Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2258, 27 December 1886, Page 2

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