LAST WEEK.
The Road murder at home, and the Italian question abroad under yet another of its many aspects,—such, in a word, are the points which remained mainly under discussion Last Week. This autumn has been singularly barren of suggestions for the forthcoming session. There has not been a “recess” since the famous one of 1845, when the Irish famine was afoot, and the announcement appeared in the “Times,” which fell like a shell in the camp of the Protectionists, during which we have not had something more than an inkling of what would happen when Parliament assembled. But now, what is there to be done, or what to be talked about? Of the Reform Bill there seems to be as absolute an end as though a revisal of the settlement of 1831-2 had never been in contemplation. Mr. Bright may intend retirement from public life for aught the public have known of his proceedings during the last few months. Lord Derby, on the other hand, has been afflicted with severe illness—and it would almost seem as though ere long the marshal’s bâton of the Conservative army would be within the grasp of the first comer. We have not even had the usual crop of autumnal speeches from honourable gentlemen who go down to their constituents to render up an account of their stewardships. Lord Palmerston, to be sure, has been making a memorable progress in the Northern counties, and conciliating to himself the good-will of all men with whom he came into contact. Lord Stanley has been propounding a lecture upon education, which contained a vast amount of good sense, and consequently gave considerable offence to the education doctors. This day week the Duke of Argyll delivered an address to the Associated Mechanics’ Institute of Lancashire and Cheshire, upon the same subject. The inference as to the amount of political excitement in this country is obvious enough.
For it cannot be denied that, although the education of its children is amongst the most important affairs which can occupy the attention of a nation, here with us in England it is just the scapegoat which we drive into the wilderness when there is nothing better forthcoming. When there is nothing else to discuss—and not till then—we discuss what is called this great social problem. No doubt, as a nation, we have not discharged this particular duty to the full extent of our obligation. Whoever has practically concerned himself with the working out of any particular system which may have been established either in town or country, is soon, however, made painfully aware of the fact that the great hindrance to education in these islands is the necessity under which the children of the poor are placed of earning their own livelihood even from their earliest years. It is this which is the real stumbling-block in the way—far more than indifference—far more than religious bitterness, and the frenzies of sectarianism. The poor are well aware of the benefits which their children would derive from education, even of the most elementary kind, but as soon as the little hands can work, to work they must be set. As far as theological objections are concerned, the evil to a great extent works its own cure. Father O’Toole objects to little Romanist Paddy’s initiation in the “rudiments” in a mixed school. Of course that eminent divine is bound to provide him with “some” kind of learning in a sheepfold where Protestant wolves or ushers cannot break in and tamper with the purity of the young gentleman’s faith. All this is as it must be, but the fact remains that our great statesmen never trouble themselves much about the education of the people as long as there is any other subject upon which they can fall out with their rivals.
In point of fact, the editors of our newspapers—until the Chinese letter of Last Week—have been living upon the Italian news, the Syrian massacres, the Prince of Wales’s visit to Canada and the States, and the desperate catalogue of murders with which we have been afflicted during the last few months. Beyond this we find them having recourse to blue-books, and old official returns, from which, in some fashion or another, the essence is extracted, and, when duly spiced and perfumed, it is served up as an entirely novel article.
The legend of the Irish Brigade was a piece of unexpected good fortune, and it was made the most of. Who could have anticipated that even Ireland would have gone into crape for the few Irishmen who were scathed by the hand of the foeman during that brief campaign of Lamoricière’s? An ordinary cricket-match would have supplied well-nigh as numerous and as considerable a list of casualties; but for these Te Deums were sang, and holy men have waved their pots of incense in ecstasies of thanksgiving. It has indeed been suggested that all this incense-burning, and hymn-chanting, and scattering of laurel and cypress over half-a-dozen sprained ankles and contused knees must be taken to have represented nothing more than the extreme anxiety of the Irish Romanist Clergy to get the legion dispersed to their repective homes before they had time to marshal their grievances collectively before the faithful.
How desperate an awakening to those poor Irish peasants who were accustomed to regard the system of priestly government with what is called the “eye of faith,” must not that brief visit to the Pontifical States have proved! If the meanest hind of Tipperary or Clare could have had an idea of the condition of the Roman peasantry, and, possibly, still worse, of the poorer Roman citizens, he would have been well content to stay at home, with even the eventualities of another failure in the potato crop staring him in the face. But when to the ordinary and normal miseries of a Papal subject are added the discomforts and sufferings of a foreign mercenary hiring himself out to be drilled by Lamoricière,—to be justly execrated by the people, whom he was there to oppress,—and to be shot by Cialdini’s men, unless his discretion should outstrip his valour, it is not to be wondered at if an Irish legionary wished himself back in the juiciest recess of a Kerry bog, rather than in a Roman garrison-town. These poor wretches must have had enough to tell, if their tongues had not been stopped in a very effective way by the Irish priests at their landing. Dr. Cullen has converted