MISCELLANEOUS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 89, 18 November 1843, Page 355

MISCELLANEOUS.

Working and Un working Aristocracies. — The Working Aristocracy ; Mill owners, Manufacturers, Commanders of Working Men : alas, against them also much shall be brought in accusation ; much, — and the freest Trade in Corn, total abolition of Tariffs, and uttermost " Increase of Manufactures " and " Prosperity of Commerce," will permanently mend no jot of it. The Working Aristocracy must strike into a new path ; must understand that money alone is not the representative either of man's success in the world, or of man's duties to man ; and reform their own selves from top to bottom, if they wish England reformed. England will not be habitable long, unreformed. The Working Aristocracy — Yes, but on the threshold of all this, it is again and again to be asked, What of the Idle Aristocracy ? Again and again, what shall we say of the Idle Aristocracy, the Owners of the Soil of England ; whose recognised function is that of handsomely consuming the rents of England, shooting the partridges of England, and as an agreeable amusement (if the purchasemoney and other conveniences serve), dilet-tante-ing in Parliament and Quarter Sessions for England ? We will say mournfully, in the presence of Heaven and Earth, — that we stand speechless, stupent, and know not what to say ! That a class of men entitled to live sumptuously on the marrow of the earth ; permitted simply, nay entreated, and as yet entreated in vain, to do nothing at all in return, was never heretofore seen on the face of this Planet. That such a class is transitory, exceptional, and, unless Nature's Laws fall dea.d, cannot continue. That it has continued now a moderate while; has, for the last fifty years, been rapidly attaining its state of perfection. That it will have to find its duties and do them ; or else_that it must and will cease to be seen on the face of this Planet, which is a Working one, not an Idle one. Alas, alas, the Working Aristocracy, admonished by Trades Unions, Chartist conflagrations, above all by their own shrewd sense kept in perpetual communion with the fact of things, will assuredly reform themselves, and a working world will etill be possible : — but the fate of the Idle Aristocracy, as one reads its horoscope hitherto in Corn Laws and such like, is an abyss that fills one with despair. Yes, my rosy fox-hunting brothers, a terrible Hippocratic look reveals itself (God knows, not to my joy) through those fresh buxom countenances of yours. Through your Corn-Law Majorities, Sliding Scales, Protecting Duties, Bribery Elections and triumphant Kent-ish-fire, a thinking eye discerns ghastly images of ruin, too ghastly for words ; a hand- writing as of Mene, Mene. Men and brothers, on your Sliding Scale you seem sliding, and to have slid, — you little know whither. — Past and Pre' sent. By T. Carlyle. The One Institution. — Who can despair of Governments that passes a Soldier's Guardhouse, or meets a redcoated man on the streets ! That a body of men could be got together to kill other men when you bade them : this, a priori, does it not seem one of the impossiblest things ? Yet look, behold it : in the stolidest of Donothing Governments, that impossibility is a thing done. See it there, with buff belts, red coats on its back ; walking sentry at guardhouses, brushing white breeches in barracks ; an indisputable palpable fact. Out of grey Antiquity, amid all finance-difficulties, scaccarium-tallies, shipmonies, coat-and-conduct monies, and vicissitudes of Chance and Time, there, down to the present blessed hour, it is. Often, in these painfully decadent and painfully nascent Times, with their distresses, inarticulate gaspings and "impossibilities ;" meeting a tall Lifeguardsman in his snow-white trousers, or seeing those two statuesque Lifeguardsmen in their frowning bearskins, pipe-clayed buckskins, on their coalblack sleek-fiery quadrupeds, riding sentry at the Horse-Guards, —it strikes one with a kind of mournful interest, how, in such universal down-rushing and wrecked impotence of almost all old institutions, this oldest Fighting Institution is still so young! Fresh-corn plexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the standard, this fight-ing-man has verily been got up, and can fight. While so much has not yet got into being; while »« much has gone gradually out of it, and become an empty Semblance or Clothes-suit; and highest king's cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a costlier kind of scarecrow's blanket,— here still is a reality ! The man in horsehair wig advances, promising that he will get me "justice;" he takes me into Chancery Law-Courts, into decades, half centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon ; and does get me — disappointment, al-

most desperation ; and one refuge : that of dismissing him and his "justice" altogether out of my head. For I have work to do ; I cannot spend my decades in mere arguing with other men about the exact wages of my work : I will work cheerfully with no wages, sooner than with, a ten-years' gangrene or Chancery Lawsuit in my heart ! He of the horsehair wig is a sort of failure; no substance, but a fond imagination of the mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing that he will save my soul— O ye eternities, of him in this place be absolute silence ! — But he of the red coat, I say, is a success and no failure ! He will veritably, if he get orders, draw out a long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact and not a shadow. Alive in this Year Forty-three, able and willing to do his work. In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of Ipres, or far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far. Catapult has given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail shirt to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch to percussion cap ; equipments, circumstances have all changed, and again changed ; but the human battle engine, in the inside of any or of each of these, ready still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size. There are Pay Offices, Woolwich Arsenals, there is a Horse-Guards, War Office, Captain-General; persuasive Sergeants, with tap of drum, recruit in markettowns and villages ; and, on the whole, I say, here is your actual drilled fighting man ; here are your actual Ninety-thousand of such, ready to go into any quarter of the world and fight ! Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was this, then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the one thing important to learn well, and bring to perfection ; this of successfully killing one another ? Truly you have learned it well, and carried the business to a high perfection. It is incalculable what, by arranging, commanding and regimenting, you can make of men. These thousand straightstanding firm-set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march, wheel, advance, retreat; and are, for your behoof, a magazine charged with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity : few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they ? Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers, thievish valets; an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the treadmill. But the persuasive sergeant came ; by tap of drum enlisted, or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them ; — and he and you have made them this ! Most potent, effectual for all work whatsoever, is wise planning, firm combining and commanding among men. — Ibid. Iron Dwelling House. — A large iron mansion has been built by Mr. W. Laycock, of Old Hall Street, in this town, the inventor of a new principle in the application of iron to building purposes. The fabric, which has been made in separate plates, is now erected for the purpose of public exhibition, previous to its transmission to Africa, where it will be used a's a palace by one of the native kings. This singular building has three floors, exclusive of an attic. The basement story is 7 feet high ; the second, 10 feet; and the third, in which is the grand suite of state apartments, is 12 feet high. ' In these his sable majesty will give his state audiences. The principal reception room, the presence chamber, is 50 feet by 30, and ornamented throughout in a style of most gorgeous magnificence. To counteract any annoyance from heat, the inventor has contrived the means of admitting a current of air, which can be regulated at pleasure, to pass through an aperture to be left between the outer plate and the inner panel. — Liverpool Albion.

Brutal. Murder of am Irish Magistrate. — The Leinster Express gives the following horrifying particulars of one of those shocking murders which are so disgracefully characteristic of the southern parts of Ireland : — " On Thursday night last, as John Gatchell, Esq. of Coolegegan, a magistrate of the King's County, was returning home from the Rev. Mr. Ridge way's, of Clonbullogue, where he had been dining, he was waylaid at Clonad, and brutally murdered. His body was found next morning on the side of the road, with the ribs completely beaten in, and his throat cut and mangled in a shocking manner; but up to the time information was received at our office it had not been ascertained whether by bullets or by a blunt cutting instrument. No clue has yet been ascertained as to the perpetrators of this horrid crime." A correspondent of Saunders's Newsletter supplies further details : the? <. writer says " John Gatchell, Esq. justice of the peace Coolegegan, whose residence is about seven miles from this town, four from Rathangan, and about five from Portalington, went to a farm about three miles from his house, and was shot dead very near the village Clonbullogue, about five o'clock yesterday evening, returning to dinner. There is a police-station there, to which the body of the unfortunate gentleman was brought. He had been lately appointed a magistrate, and used to attend the petty sessions here. He was travelling in bis gig, and fell out of it on the road. The wound was a desperate one, and must have proceeded from a very large charge. It took effect in the right breast and jugular vein ; there were seven wounds, one appeared as if from a ball, the rest from slugs. The medical gentleman who saw him thinks it must have terminated his life in a very few minutes. He was married a short time since, and had one child. The deceased was not more than thirty years of age. His mother, brother, and Bister lived with him."

Prick of Oatmeal. — A commercial latter, from Liverpool states that oatmeal is lower in price than it has been for thirty yaars. The writer adds — "It would appear as if the meane of consumption were diminished to an. scttjat totally unprecedented in this counttv," -