THE COLONIZATION OF GILEAD.

 The Cologne Gazette has the following:—

 " 'Palestine for the Jews!' Among our orthodox Israelites and Christians unfriendly to the Israelites this has always been a favourite cry : ' Palestine for the Jews,' and has gained strength in proportion as the power of the present political ruler over the 'beloved land' wanes away. The English preacher, Nugee, who has interested himself in this matter, expounded on the 14th of the month, in a public lecture, a plan which of late has assumed a practical shape. The Englishman, Oliphant, has laid the plan before the Sultan. It is that the land of Gilead and Moab, embracing the whole territory of the Israelitish tribes of Gad, Reuben and Manasseh, shall be converted into a Jewish colony, the Sultan being paid in cash for the territory, a proposition which the Sultan has already favorably entertained. Still more, Goschen, the recently appointed Ambassador Extraordinary of England, at Constantinople, has expressed himself as well disposed toward the furtherance of the plan. The territory in question embraces about 1,500,000 English acres, and is at present inhabited only by nomadic tribes. The colony is to remain subject to the Turkish power, while yet its immediate Governor is to be an Israelite. In this manner Judaism is to to regain a firmer foothold in its own land, and the colony itself ultimately become a rallying point for the scatterred people of Israel, around which, it is hoped, an ever-broadening girdle of new settlements will form itself. The purchase money for the territory of the new colony is to be contributed by the free-will offerings of patriotic Israelites. Two railroads or highways are to be built, the one ascending from Jaffa to Jerusalem, the other extending from Haifa to the further side of the Jordan. Sir Moses Montefiore has already interested himself in these significant enterprises, furnishing material aid for the same. For the road to Jaffa, the Turkish Government has already made a concession, with the proviso that the work shall be commenced by next January at the farthest. Still further, the construction of a ship canal from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Akabe and the Red Sea is contemplated. Palestine is again to be re-opened, under the influence of the ideas of the nineteenth century, if only the Jews themselves are ready, with their contributions and their settlements, for their own land."

The London Times has the following:— "A negotiation is said to be on foot between the members of the house of Rothschild and the venerable Sir Moses Montefiore on the one hand, and the Ottoman Government on the other, for the cession, under certain conditions of the Holy Land. The Ottoman Government is already at its last grasp, for want of ready money. The Jewish race wish a 'habitat' of their own. As the Greeks, though a scattered people, living for the most part in Turkey, have a Greek kingdom, so the Jews wish to have a Hebrew kingdom. This, it will be remembered, is the leading idea of George Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda.' Few persons, and probably the gifted authoress herself not more than others, imagined that the dream of the Mordecai of those pages was in the least degree likely so soon to be realized. Information as to the nature of the new Jewish State, whether it is to be theocratic or royal, is uncertain, but the arrangements in reference to it are in progress. Prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves, more especially when those who believe in them are possessed of the sinews of government. The day when 'the Dispersed of Israel' are to be gathered into one is confidently looked forward to, not only by Hebrews, but by multitudes of Christians. The author of ' Alroy' would be gathered to his fathers in greater peace, were he permitted under his administration to see this day and be glad. Superstitious persons, who think that the end of the world is to be preceded by the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, will be inclined to lend serious belief to Mother Shiptons's prophecy that the earth is to see its last days in 1881."

Jewish Herald (Vic. ), 13 August 1880 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article149435852

State Socialism is being evolved.

 IT is a favorite figure of speech to describe the present state of Europe as a vast military camp, in which so many millions of men, continually under arms, are merely awaiting the signal to slaughter each other wholesale and drown the civilisation of the Old World in a sea of blood. This Turneresque "symphony in black and red" has done yeoman's duty throughout the press for a good many years, yet the sanguinary cataclysm still keeps off and the camp simile with its contingent horrors is becoming just a trifle stale. If, however, we read the signs of the times aright, it should seem that a greater peril than even war is menacing European society, and that the millions of disciplined murderers and plunderers are themselves standing over a volcanic abyss, which may at any moment yawn to engulf them all.

For weeks past the principal items reported by telegraphic agents refer to wide spread manifestations of a revolutionary character, together with other symptoms sufficiently discomposing to that class of cabinet philosophers who hug themselves in the comforting belief that the existing order of society, as developed under the various phrases of modern civilization, is the best possible — for themselves. Strikes of colliers, iron founders, and other workmen, on a scale, and with a concerted unanimity of organization hitherto unwitnessed on the continent, have simultaneously paralysed industry in centres so numerous and so remote from each other as to argue the existence of some deeper moving cause than the old grievance of low wages to the laborer and disproportionate profit to the capitalist. In Belgium, in Westphalia, in Silesia the workmen have turned out by hundreds of thousands, and although by the joint influence of substantial concessions from the masters and threats of military intervention on the part of the authorities the men have very generally returned to their respective occupations, the spirit of discontent yet smoulders, ready to break out again under the stress of a bad harvest or a severe winter. In Northern Italy, where the rural population have for years past developed special forms of disease due to exposure and deficient nutrition, the crushing imposts rendered necessary by the insane determination of Italian statesmen to prop up the young kingdom with a forest of ironclads, has led to a rebellion of the unprotected peasants, which breaks out afresh as fast as it is put down. Strikes and Jacqueries are not of course novel phenomena ; but besides the magnitude of the numbers and interests involved on the present occasion, they are marked with special peculiarities, rarely, if ever, observed before, the occurrence of which may be of service in diagnosing the evil and discovering the remedy. One of these symptoms is the sympathy with which the demands and aims of the operatives on strike are generally viewed by the burgher or middle class; another, the obvious unwillingness of the governments to proceed to extremities for the purpose of restoring order. Both these tendencies are so unlike what has been seen on other occasions, so inconsistent with the usual intolerant and arbitrary temper of the "classes" referred to, that the latter must on some ground or other have come to regard their present position as severely imperilled, if not actually untenable.

 The converse of strikes, the combinations of labor to raise wages, are those combinations of capital to raise prices, which go under the name of "corners" or "rings." They are one of the lefthanded blessings that the old world owes to the new, where they were the direct fruit of the vast accumulations of capital in unrighteous hands that followed the War of Secession. It was in the years immediately succeeding that great national convulsion that the power of the purse, developed out of the hideous frauds and corruption incidental to the great army contracts, first made itself felt as a vast and often mischievous social factor. "Rings" batten on the oppression of the working classes and the blackmailing of the whole body of consumers ; and it is therefore not strange that with their appearance in the United States other correlated social phenomena, previously unfrequent or unknown, became common. The great strikes in the coal and iron districts of Pennsylvania and Ohio were a direct result of the concentration of the vast profits of railway carriage in a few hands, and the consequent screwing up of railway freights, which form so serious an item in the cost of foundry goods, to a figure that would let neither the ironmasters nor their men to subsist. Co-operation among the aggrieved sections of the people has since done much to tone down the outrageous exactions to which the American nation has been subjected by its self-made millionaires ; but the great strikes have left a painful memento of the stressful period that gave them birth, in the evolution of a previously unrecognised social entity, the "tramp." This unclassed being, who has since acquired fixed professional characteristics, and whose presence threatens to become a permanent evil, is to America the equivalent of the mass of inveterate pauperism that underlies European society. 

Now what do these facts tend to? Clearly, the remodelling of civilized society on a social, or more strictly a socialist, basis. Rings as well as strikes and co-operative associations are socialistic in their tendency, for although the aim of the first is to limit production and concentrate distribution for the benefit of a few, of the second to enhance the cost of production for the benefit of the producers, and of the third to promote a healthy balance or supply and demand for the mutual benefit of a limited circle of producers and consumers, they all three in their several ways are helping to work out the practical problems that must be solved before socialism can emerge from the realm of theory into that of practical reality. Some of these problems, for instance that of the possibility of controlling by any code of fixed rules the capricious and haphazard interaction of the many complex forces that determine such apparently simple processes as production and consumption, are already in course of partial solution, and this result is due in no small degree to the experience gained and the administrative machinery perfected by monopolists in the pursuit of their nefarious ends. By the tribute which their admirable organisation enables these vultures to exact from the muddled millions on whom they prey, a clear proof is afforded of the possibility of regulating, for the benefit of all, those wider social relations that centre in the state. The standing objection to every socialistic scheme has been the denial of such a possibility ; and since, for want of evidence, that objection has hitherto been deemed unanswerable, socialism, as an economic creed, has always fared badly at the hands of political writers. At the present day, some of the bolder speculations of socialist writers are being quietly translated into practice by statesmen representing the most diverse schools of political thought ; and even semi-absolutist governments like that of the German Empire, where "social democrats," as a political party, are persecuted with a relentless severity that will be satisfied with nothing short of extermination, State Socialism is being evolved in a variety of unfamiliar but possibly useful forms. Whether we like it or not, it is evident on all hands that the framework of a wholly novel disposition of social conditions is being pieced together, bit by bit, and that it will depend on the lessons in moral endurance and mutual forbearance that have been learned during the past eighteen centuries, whether the change, when it does come, shall be peaceful, or whether it is to burst on the world in a tempest of fire and blood.

Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser (Qld. ),  1889,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146667720

The Gospel of Wealth.

 ———<>———

We publish to-day, by the special request of Mr Gladstone (says the Pall Mall Budget, of July 18), a remarkable article by Mr Andrew Carnegie, the well-known Pittsburgh ironmaster and millionaire, which appeared in the North American Review. The article had attracted the notice of Mr Gladstone, who has spoken in the highest terms with regard to it, and strongly urged its publication in this country. Mr Gladstone writes : — I have asked Mr Lloyd Bryce (North American Review) kindly to allow the republication in this country of the extremely interesting article on " Wealth,” by Mr Andrew Carnegie, which has just appeared in America ”

 THE PROBLEM OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF WEALTH.

 The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionised, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilised man then was. When visiting the Sioux; I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to day measures the change which has come with civilisation. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential, for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilisation, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Mæcenas. The “good old times" were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to-day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both —not the least so to him who serves and would sweep away civilisation with it. But whether the change be for good or ill it is upon us, beyond our power to alter, and therefore to be accepted and made the best of. It is a waste of time to criticise the inevitable.

 THE CHANGE, AND THE PRICE WE PAY FOR IT. 

It is easy to see how the change has come. One illustration will serve for almost every phase of the cause. In the manufacture of products we have the whole story. It applies to all combinations of human industry, as stimulated nod enlarged by the inventions of this scientific age. Formerly articles were manufactured at the domestic hearth or in small shops which formed part of the household. The master and his apprentices worked side by side, the latter living with the master, and therefore subject to the same conditions. When these apprentices rose to be masters, there was little or no change is their mode of life, and they, in turn, educated in the same routine succeeding apprentices. There was, substantially, social, equality, and even political equality for those engaged in industrial pursuits had then little or no political voice in the State.

 THE PRICE WE PAY IS VERY GREAT.

 But the inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was crude articles at high prices. To-day the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding this would have deemed incredible. In the commercial world similar causes have produced similar results, and the race is benefited thereby. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the farmer had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic, than the King could then obtain. The price we pay for this salutary change is, no doubt, great. We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse with them is at an end. Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition, the employer of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses homogeneity. 

THE MAN IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MONEY.

 The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organisation and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no matter where or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rate the man whose services can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration, but such as to render the question of his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the special talent required, capital soon takes wings. Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures, and that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground which such men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or commercial concern which does not earn at least interest upon its capital soon becomes bankrupt. It must either go forward or fall behind ; to stand still is impossible. It is a condition essential for its successful operation that it should be thus far profitable, and even that, in addition to interest on capital, it should make profit. It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affairs, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.

 OUR DUTY IS TO DO WHAT IS PRACTICABLE NOW.

Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are not in order, because the condition of the race is better with these than it, has been with any others which have been tried. Of the effect of any new substitutes proposed, we cannot be sure. The Socialist or Anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilisation itself rests, for civilisation took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, " If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap," and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilisation itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the right of the millionaire to his millions. To those who propose to substitute Communism for the intense Individualism the answer therefore is : The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it. But even if we admit for a moment that it might be better for the race to discard its present foundation, Individualism—that is a nobler ideal that man should labor, not for himself alone, but in and for a brotherhood of his fellows, and share with them all in common, realising Swedenborg's idea of Heaven, where, as he says, the angels derive their happiness, not from laboring for self, but for each other—even admit all this, and a sufficient answer is, That is not evolution, but revolution. It necessitates the changing of human nature itself a work of æons, even if it were good to change it, which we cannot now. It is not practicable in our day or in our age. Even if desirable theoretically, it belongs to another and long-succeeding sociological stratum. Our duty is with what is practicable now; with the next step possible in our day and generation. It is criminal to waste our energies in endeavoring to uproot, when all we can profitably or possibly accomplish is to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances. We might as well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man because he failed to reach our ideal as to favor the destruction of individualism, private property, the law of accumulation of wealth, and the law of competition; for these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit. Unequally or unjustly, perhaps, these laws sometimes operate, and perfect as they appear to the idealist, they are, nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.

 [TO BE CONTINUED ]

Tasmanian News (Hobart, Tas.), 26 August 1889 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article172872416

Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE has contributed the " Gospel of Wealth " to a London journal. He is effusively described as a " well-known Pittsburg ironmaster and millionaire." He is, in fact, an adventurous Scotsman who has made a fortune in America in one of the districts where it has been proved by tho Atlantic Monthly that the wages are paid on an extremely low scale, lower even than prevails in England. We certainly do not find fault with him for making the most of the country of his adoption, any more than we should blame him because of the land of his nativity. But Mr.ANDREW CARNEGIE, having now become an ironmaster and a millionaire, is inclined to lecture the whole world, and to tell every son of ADAM, rich or poor, exactly what he ought to do in his particular station. The wealthy are to learn their duties from him, and the poor are supposed to stand agape at the benefits he condescends to offer them. Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE is a man of wealth, and he poses before the world as if he were giving a donation to a Caledonian society and expecting the applause of the members. We have no doubt that the human race will rejoice in his patronage. But he once made a vain attempt to show Great Britain what her policy ought to be, and the effort was altogether in vain. We have some fears that the society of mankind may be equally perverse and stiff-necked.

A citizen of the United States, Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE believes in advertising, and he has contrived to get the marvellous announcement that his opinions are published " at the special " request of Mr. GLADSTONE." His views, suddenly blazoned forth upon the world under such auspices, certainly demand attention ; and we can hardly do more than state them briefly. Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE believes that there was a time in English history when the master and the workman stood together in the same social and political scale. If any students should think otherwise, if they should imagine that the master had a despotic power over his apprentices even to the extent of flogging them, then we may assume that he has missed Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S idea of the development of society. But we are certainly surprised to hear that this ideal condition of an equality between master and workman was utterly bad. Manufacturing, it seems, was badly done, and the prices were excessive. We forbear, of course, to refer to the splendid work that came from the British looms even before the introduction of steam, or to the silver work that was one of the glories of the older industrial London, or to many other things that might be noticed. We can only follow Mr. CARNEGIE in his breath-less progress to the unequal condition of the nineteenth century. At the present time we learn with gratitude that the best work is done at the cheapest possible rate, a statement that reminds us of a "selling-off advertisement." But unfortunately the equality between master and workman has disappeared. Society has to pay a very high price for the cheap articles that it enjoys. Men and women are grouped together into factories, and the old relationship between the employer and his work-people has disappeared. It seems, so far as we can gather, that Mr. CARNEGIE is not personally acquainted with all his workmen, and that to many of them the employer is a " mere myth," a man whom they never see, and whom they cannot know. The master makes a profit, and the men make their wages, and there is no bond between them. On the one side the successful Mr. CARNEGIE finds, what many industrial pioneers have never found, that wealth accumulates in the hands of the employer. On the other side, he wishes to give his patronage to the wage earners.

Having got so far, we should naturally imagine that the " ironmaster and millionaire " of Pittsburg would seek to cultivate the acquaintance of all his workmen. This, however, is only the device, we may suppose, of aristocrats, who invite their subordinates to Christmas dinners and other festivities. At any rate, it is far from the millionaire's thoughts. He has decided to settle the whole disputes between capital and labour in one brief article. And in the pursuit of knowledge regarding human society we must follow his ideas. He has discovered that society has progressed from socialism to individualism, the meaning of which we take to be that it has advanced from the tribal to the American millionaire system. He has discovered further that even in America, the land of large fortunes and a stringent law of inheritance, too much may be made of individualism. He feels it to be his duty, therefore, in the interest of a struggling humanity, to reconcile these two things. From Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S point of view the solution is very easy. There ought, of course, to be the fullest scope for individual effort and for money-making on the part of every citizen. It would be a total mistake to distribute wealth among the masses in small sums in the shape of increased labour or cheaper products. The average man could not put the money to the same beneficial uses as Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE, who is helping on the development of humanity. On this point we confess that his arguments are convincing. He cites the example of Cooper's Institute, and asks triumphantly whether the donor could have done the same amount of good if he had spent his money among the poor in his lifetime. He refers with equal gusto to Tildon's Library, and asks whether the same benefit would have accrued to the community if the giver had distributed his wealth in small sums. He tells us that money used in charity is generally badly spent, and that we should only help those who help themselves. On the whole, we come to the very comfortable doctrine, which we should support on other grounds, that the man who has the faculty of accumulating money should be allowed to do so, because in order to accumulate he must know how to employ it in profitable industries. So far we might sympathise with Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S triumph in his own arguments. There is no necessity for distributing any man's accumulated wealth. On the contrary, it is probably employed to the better advantage of the whole community than if it were broken up.

But now Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE branches off into his theory. The man who makes money should be left undisturbed, but his family should not inherit more than a competency, whatever that may mean. The "almighty dollar " is a blessing if you live for it and accumulate it ; it is a curse if you inherit it. This is the new gospel of wealth. Increase the death duties, the probate duties, according to Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE, and society will be at peace, and the millionaire and the pauper, the economist and the socialist, will dine together. It is difficult to say what society may do, but we venture to say that Mr. ANDREW CARNEGIE'S vulgar and arrogant self-complacency is no solution of any difficulty whatever.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ), 31 August 1889 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article6275267

THROUGH PERSIA BY CARAVAN.*

 When the Shah of Persia visited London a few years ago, many enthusiastic people entertained high hopes that the monarch's experiences of Western civilisation might induce him, on returning home, to inaugurate a new era of progress in the history of a country which has so illustrious a past, and which calls up so many classic memories. Baron Reuter, it was said, had obtained certain conceptions which would enable him to lift Persia out of her chronic state of decay, and give her a fresh start after a modern and Western fashion. The snorting of the steam horse was to be heard in the romantic land of the Arabian Nights, and comfortable railway carriages were to supersede the rules and "yaboos" of the slow moving caravans. But Western influences failed to do their work. The Shah went back to Tehran taking with him an album peopled with actresses as a memento of European life, and after giving his mind to the publication of that great literary effort, his famous diary, he subsided into the usual state of indifference, satisfied if only supplies were forthcoming to minister to his pleasures. Persia remains a land of ruin and decay and to all appearance there is no Cyrus looming on the horizon who might raise it up from its degradation, and restore it to its ancient grandeur.

Mr Arthur Arnold has written a very pleasant and readable book, which bears, on the face of it, many marks of trustworthiness both in its facts and inferences. It is the fault of modern travellers that they ask us to accept very sweeping conclusions on the strength of very scanty data. Mr. Arnold records what he himself saw and heard, and, where his assertions require it, he supports them with the authority of more experienced men than himself. He and his wife (who in pluck and endurance seems another Lady Baker) started on their journey by way of the Russian capital Moscow, and Nijni Novgorod, sailing down the Volga to the Caspian, which they traversed from north to south, and landing at Enzelli, from which point they began their journey through Persia. Leaving the Caspian early in October they travelled southward by way of Teheran, Ispahan, and Shiraz reaching Bushire, on the Persian Gulf, in February.

After reading Mr Arnold's two volumes, only one conclusion is possible that the state of things in Persia is almost as bad as it can be. Oriental monarchs have ever been tyrants and despots. A halo of supernatural dignity surrounds them in the eyes of their subjects, even though the divinity of their claims asserts itself by force and the most reckless disregard of human life. In the official language of his country, the Shah of Persia is styled “ Zil-ullah" or " Shadow of God, a name which would seem to indicate a monarch ever ready to exercise justice and to maintain the right. But the reality is very different. The Shah's Government, to use Mr Freeman's language of Turkish rule, is “an organised system of brigandage," and the Shah himself is the chief brigand, who receives the largest share of the plunder. The people of Persia are as so many poor sheep who exist for the special benefit of their rulers. No shadow of a doubt ever seems to cross the minds of the Shah or the governors of his provinces as to their absolute liberty to dispose of the lives and persons, the property and rights, of everyone in Persia. And the marvellous thing about it all is that the people submit as a matter of course, in a hopeless, despairing way, as if redress for their grievous wrongs were not to be thought of. The government is carried on as though the country were to last for a few years only, the object of the rulers being their own momentary and immediate advantage. The governors, who generally receive their appointments from the Shah in consideration of large bribes, avail themselves of their opportunities to the fullest extent. They employ certain subordinates, whose duty it is to collect the taxes, a large proportion of which they greedily appropriate to themselves, after sending a sufficient sum to their Royal master, who is said to be very fond of presents." Taxation in Persia is not conducted on any nicely-balanced principles of economic science. The tax-gatherers methods are simple and direct ; his arguments are bullets and swords, and his operations are so effectively conducted that "conscience-money" would seem to him a very grim joke. His requirements are almost unlimited, and, in many provinces, the peasantry are literally robbed of everything they possess. Occasionally the right to collect the taxes of certain districts is sold to some khan for a fixed sum, which is paid to the Government, that is, to the Shah and the high officials around him, who undertake to require no accounts and to ask no questions. The result can readily be imagined. " Thrice the amount, " says Mr. Arnold, of the British Prime Minister's salary, or twice that of the President of the United States does not satisfy men of the first official rank in Persia. And while the Prince Governors in the provinces and all the high functionaries of state plunge their greedy hands thus deep into the miserable revenue, forced—often at the bayonet's point— from the poorest of peasants, the soldiery are not seldom marauders, with the excuse that they cannot obtain their pay from the Government. The creditors of the peasants and small traders are generally in the uniform of the Shah. In Persia the trade of small money-lenders is usually carried on by soldiers, for these only feel sure of the requisite power to recover their loans. The defaulter well knows that if he does not repay the soldier, his house or his store in the bazaar will be plundered of all that is worth taking by a gang of military money-lenders." Bribery, too, is universal in official life. The judgment of a governor is given, as a rule, in favour of the highest bidder. Minor officials bribe their superiors, who keep up the system until the foot of the throne is reached, and the demands of its occupant fairly satisfied. Even in the army it is the same. The soldiers shirk drill that they may engage in more profitable employment and the officers are appeased by small bribes. Those latter, in their turn, have to bribe the Minister who pays them, and so it goes on. It would be unfair, however, to say that this corruption is absolutely universal. There have been several Persian Ministers who have tried to check the evil, and to organise an honest system of collecting the revenue, but their efforts, in the face of those who have, as it were a vested right in robbery and pillage, have naturally been unsuccessful. Not long ago, the Shah was induced to have placed in every large town a " box of Justice," in which the people were asked to lodge any complaints which they had against the officials. The boxes were carefully watched, and consequently seldom used, the few who did use them finding out to their cost that silence was their best policy. In trying to punish the robbers, too, some vigorous governors, possessed of good intentions, have administered justice with more zeal than discretion. When a robbery takes place— especially if it be a robbery of a caravan of Europeans—the chief idea seems to be that some one must suffer, and no very nice discrimination is used in the choice of the victims. The order given on such an occasion varies but slightly from that of the Queen of Wonderland—" Off with somebody's head."

The results of such a system of Government may be easily guessed. Persia is going steadily backwards, while those who alone are influential throughout the country watch the process of retrogression with the most absolute complacency. The peasantry are utterly unable to make way against robbers and tax-gatherers, who seem to be omnipresent in bad years as well as good. Large tracts of the country are barren and rocky, but even in those districts which are admirably suited for cultivation of the most productive kind, agriculture is much neglected. The same plough which scraped the soil in the days of Constantine, and the much earlier days of Herodotus, is still used by the Persian farmer, to whom the more effective English implement would appear indeed a gift from Allah. Nor is Mr. Arnold's account of life in the villages and towns of a more cheerful description. The sanitary arrangements are thoroughly bad, and the amount of perfectly avoidable suffering and discomfort is almost incredible. A great deal of the ophthalmia which prevails during the oppressively hot summer might be avoided by a free use of water, but the Persian method of obeying the injunctions of the Koran respecting ablutions has no special bearing upon cleanliness. In the winter, too, when the cold is extreme and life a prolonged shiver, the wretched people live in the most uncomfortable houses where doors and windows are of the rudest manufacture. Both Teheran and Ispahan are poor places—cities of mud— with no grand buildings upon which to rest the eye and with absolutely none of that gorgeous splendour which is generally associated in the popular mind with the capitals of the East. "From one end of Persia to the other," says Mr Arnold, " this miserable condition of decay, dilapidation, and ruin is characteristic of all public edifices—the mosques palaces bridges—everything. It is probably correct to say that this invariable condition is a consequence of the universal corruption of the Government. The work of maintenance and repair belongs to the Executive Government, and the funds which should be thus expended pass into the rapacious pockets of the governors of the country. The gross neglect of useful public works in Persia recalled to my mind a passage in which Adam Smith refers to this as one of the worst symptoms of the worst administration. He nearly describes the state of things in Persia in the following passage, which had reference to the condition of the bye roads in France about the middle of the 18th century, with the difference that in Persia no one delights in expenditure of any sort for the public advantage. Expenditure is never made except with a view to private plunder. "The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applause not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But to execute a number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. Under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost entirely neglected.' "

But notwithstanding all these depressing indications of bad government, travel in Persia is not altogether devoid of some counterbalancing charms. The traveller, it is true, has to depend upon his servants' skill and honesty to the fullest extent. If they fail him, his chances of comfort are very small, for the wayside caravanserai are not as our wayside inns, while the Chapar-Kanah is an hotel a little less miserable than a bush shanty. But where the servants are honest and the cook a success, as seems to have been the case with Mr. and Mrs Arnold, two English people can travel through Persia with the average amount of grumbling. The social life of the country presents many features of interest, and when the traveller can forget facts and look at everything he sees from the artistic point of view, there still lingers in the towns the spirit of the Arabian Nights. Old friends out of the wonderful tales are still to be got in the busy bazaars, haggling over a bargain in that masterly fashion peculiar to the East, or wrapt in what seems to be the deepest contemplation. There is the stalwart porter, the hamal, ready to obey the summons of the mysterious lady, whenever she may appear—the " Hadji," too, in gorgeous turban, cloak and tunic, whom all salute as one who has made his pilgrimage to far-famed Mecca—and the priest or moollah, riding forth on his white donkey and conscious of the power which belongs to his caste. There are still the two great mysteries of Persian life— (we wonder why Mr Wilkie Collins has never turned them to account)— " the veiled lady and the walled up house."

"No Giaour," Mr Arnold writes, “ can see even the eyes of a Persian woman of the middle and superior classes. She moves through the streets and bazaars on her white donkey, or on foot, in complete disguise. Even her husband would not recognise her. She is covered—as I described the women of Resht—from head to foot in the loose chudder of indigo, or black dyed cotton or silk. Over her face there is the long white veil, tied across the chudder, where that envelope covers all but the visage. The legs are hidden in long trousers of cotton or silk of the same colour as the chudder, which are not worn in the house. In all her outdoor life she is a moving mystery. She may be young or old, white or black, fair or ugly on a mission of sin, or upon an errand of mercy, no one knows who she is as she shuffles along upon shoes which are difficult to keep upon her feet, as the upper leather ends far before the heel. She raises at some mud walled house an iron knocker upon a door like that of a fortification, is admitted, the door is closed, and what goes on within that house, what is the fate of the women, the children and the slaves, no one outside can know. There is no window from which they can communicate with the outer world— it is a despotism within a despotism. Each one of these walled houses is the seat of despotic sovereignty—established and confirmed by the greatest power in Persia—that of the Koran." So much for the towns. In journeying down the country from north to south, the travellers greatly enjoyed the scenery, which was as varied as it was grand and beautiful. Persia, according to Mr. Arnold, is the land of magnificent distances. In the summer they saw the mountains of the north, which are rich in metallic ores, glow with a rare and gorgeous beauty in the light of the morning and evening sun, while in winter they passed across the vast heights of the south, where the prospect was bleak and desolate as a scene in the Polar regions. They had a hurried look at the ruins of Persepolis—tombs and halls of the great kings who helped to mould the history of the world—but all that Mr Arnold says on the subject, and much more, may be found in the Five Great Monarchies of Professor Rawlinson.

There are two questions raised by Mr. Arnold in his book to which we must refer before closing this notice. The first is part of a subject which in these days has become chronic—the relation of Russia and England in the East, the reference in this case being especially to Persia. It seems to be a settled idea in the Shah's dominions that Russia and England must of necessity be rivals, and the disposition of the Persian Government is shown by the fact that while there is a preference for England, the representations of Russia on any subject are listened to with marked attention. The reason is not far to seek. Russia has quietly appropriated all the country on the eastern side of the Caspian, and to the south of her possessions in that quarter lies one of the richest and best provinces of Persia, which could be occupied very easily by a Russian army. The Shah does well, therefore, to cultivate friendly relations with that other "shadow of God," Czar Alexander, whose name in the East is associated with a great and mighty potentate. From recent rumours which have reached us, it is not impossible that we may hear something more of Russian influence in Persia and see some of its results. The army of the Shah is not a very effective one, but it would be useful as an ally. Mr. Arnold alludes particularly to the question of commerce. The English entrance to the country is by Bushire on the Persian Gulf, the Russian entrance is by way of the Caspian, to which the railway from St. Petersburg is almost complete ; but as Ispahan, the central point of trade, is much more easily got at from the north than from the south, Russia has it, for the most part, all her own way. This in itself would be no great calamity, except in the eyes of those whose national and commercial creed is summed up in a single phrase—" British interests"—a phrase which is all-powerful at the present moment. The fact is, however, that the policy of Russia, in matters of trade, is eminently short-sighted and selfish. She holds to the worn-out policy of protection, and, having the command of many markets, she forces upon her semi-barbarous neighbours hardware and cotton manufactures of a vastly inferior kind to those of England. On his way down from St Petersburg, Mr Arnold saw that strange sight—the great fair of Nijni Novgorod— and there discovered that Russia supplied the Asiatics with thousands of such articles as knives locks, tools, &c, all of a most inferior kind and all dearer than the same articles of English manufacture— such policy being dictated by the " mistaken belief that this provision of inferior articles to the many for the benefit of the few, is advantageous to the general welfare of the Russian Empire." This of course applies to Persia as well as to other Eastern countries. Mr. Arnold thinks however, that the influence of Russia might be greatly counteracted by our employing a new route. He adopts the suggestion that English goods, instead of being conveyed over a dangerous and difficult road from Bushire viâ Shiraz to Ispahan, should be sent in light steamers up the famed waters of the Tigris and Euphrates as far as Mohommerah, thence by the River Karun to Shuster, and on by mule trains to Ispahan. The gain on the land journey would be about 230 miles a very large distance in a country where railways are unknown. The suggestion, Mr Arnold thinks is a good one both for Persian and British interests. As regards railways, he is doubtful whether they would pay, and whether the Shah's Government could be depended on in the event of concessions being made.

The other point to which we referred is the relation of Mohammedanism to civilisation, —not to ironclads and telegraph wires, bonds and breechloaders but to "the extension of civil rights—the co-existence of the supremacy of law with the liberty of individuals to develop and employ their faculties for their own utmost happiness and advantage." In Persia the Koran is all powerful, as it is in Turkey, and the priests of Islam have more influence than the Government. The Christians are under many disadvantages, and it may be safely asserted that in neither Persia nor Turkey do they enjoy anything like security for life and property. Mr Arnold's statement of the case is exceedingly moderate. The Christians in Turkey more particularly are, he says, often dishonest, not seldom drunken, and of very inferior political capacity. Their priests, like the priests of the Eastern Church generally, are ignorant and bigoted, often immoral. But their vices are such as ages of oppression would produce anywhere, and such, moreover, as religious and political liberty would to a great extent remove. Their religion is a religion of toleration and freedom, when rightly understood and honestly applied. With Islam it is different. The Koran is unmistakably and essentially intolerant, while many of its motives for good conduct on the part of those who believe in it are of the most doubtful character. Mr Arnold, after saying that he has no wish to produce "an impression very favourable to the Christians of Turkey and Persia," closes his interesting book with the following passage :—"For this much I am always prepared to contend ; they do possess and their masters do not possess, a religion which admits of progressive developments and interpretations. The progress of humanity may for all time be illumined by the morals of the gospel of Christ. It is nothing to show that Mahommedanism is more successful in proselytising Eastern peoples than the harshly dogmatic, unchristian 'Christianity' of some dogmatic preachers. We may develope and interpret Christ's teaching as universal, for all sorts and conditions of men, and without distinction of sex. The purest doctrines of liberty entered the world by the mouth of Christ. Mahommedanism is a democracy for men, and not for all men, but only for such as are not slaves; and with these last and lowest the whole sex of women is indirectly placed. The religion of Islam is opposed to progress, and must decline with the irresistible advance of civilisation."

* Through Persia by Caravan. By Arthur Arnold. In two volumes. London : Tinsley Brothers. 1877.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ),  1877http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5929242

The Everlasting Negro.

 GENTLEMEN who visit clubs and drink sherry cobbler— who read mongrel reviews, always contemptuous of substantial liberty and human rights— may sneer at the " everlasting negro," whose race inhabits one of the largest sections of the globe—who himself never wandered into Europe or obtruded his presence. By a series of crimes unexampled in human wrong, carried off under the Christian flag, and after running the gauntlet of a passage fatal to millions, he stood a barbarian slave for sale, as did the ancestors of Britons in the Roman market.

The bondsman of ancient days oppressed was nevertheless commonly regarded as a man ; but the blacks have been treated only as beasts of burden, and with an injustice inexpressibly unjust. When liberated, they have been expected to display all the docility of affectionate service—to rise at once into all the chaste relations of married life, for which the law itself disqualified them until a period within our own recollection in the British dominions—a law which still survives in all its virulence in the statute-book of America.

The " everlasting negro " is now an offence to his oppressors. He is their perpetual remorse and accusation, and nothing but the gentleness of his nature prevents him from being their terror and their scourge. There are, however, circumstances which break down all forbearance and rouse the dark passions that slumber in every breast, or rather those natural resentments which have often rescued nations from thraldom and constituted part of the animating power of the patriot who has vindicated his country and his race. We confess ourselves to be among THE FANATICS whose sympathies all turn towards this oppressed race— who look upon their oppression with inexpressible detestation— who believe in retributive judgment— and that a day of wrath is reserved for every nation, by which moral laws are violated, and especially where they are violated under legal sanction merely for the purpose of gain.

What has come upon America now has been foretold by her own moralists and statesmen. These " fanatics " predicted that slavery would debase the national character— would ruin the national constitution —would kindle the flames of civil war —and would perhaps one day arm the oppressed against the oppressors. Is there anything wonderful in such predictions or in their accomplishment? The oldest Book in the world tells us of a people who were bondsmen in the land of Egypt. Their masters set the example of that kind of "chivalry" which has been adopted, improved, and aggravated by the American people. Warnings were followed by visitations, and these by heavier, until by and bye the first-born of Egypt had to make atonement for the first-born of Israel. The horror of the increase of the Hebrews upon the Egyptian mind was solaced by the destruction of the Hebrew children. The Hebrew children nevertheless increased as under the power of oppression the African race seems everywhere to multiply. All, however, was in vain. Warnings and plagues lost their terror, and even hardened with their aggravation, until by and bye the "everlasting" Hebrews became the terror of the Egyptians, and thrust them out. But reanimated by their covetousness as well as their contempt, the hosts of Egypt pursued — they overtook — they almost captured—when, descending into the bed of ocean, its waters covered them and they were seen no more.

These are lessons for all time. They are lessons for that great nation now agonizing in the struggle between two great principles— whether these are inscribed upon their flag or not—and the " everlasting negro," as he is called, will rise, perhaps, amidst their ruins and their impoverishment and desolation.

The cry of " fanaticism " does not alarm us. King WILLIAM THE FOURTH, when he first appeared as the Duke of Clarence in the House of Lords, treated the nation to a speech in which the word " fanatics" was prominent.

“Fanatics" was the word applied to those of whom PITT became the legislative leader—who denounced the slave trade of Africa, and put down the accursed thing. WILLIAM THE SAILOR thought the British navy was nourished by the slave trade, and that we should ruin our maritime power if we did not rob Africa of her children. We are old enough to remember the same cry of " fanaticism " against all who were for the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. Who has not read the eloquent denunciations of Lord BROUGHAM, when the missionary SMITH was condemned to death by the "chivalry" of Demarara. It was the fanatics of those times, with whom we rejoice to have been associated, who won the emancipation, we will not say of the African, but of the British Empire, from the thraldom of that system, long supported by our British "chivalry;" defended too often by our ministers of religion, who invented all those commonplaces by which the South at present defends the oppression of the negro race, and which now read to every Englishman like blasphemy. Let any one who doubts this look back to the discussions upon the subject, and they will find that the articles in our leading journals and reviews are, to our national disgrace, simply reproductions of those which, with less criminality because with less experience, were issued by the enemies of man during the heat of our glorious struggle. All who believe the negro race destined to Christian civilisation and the enjoyments of human rights, are treated from day to day with " the everlasting negro." Caricaturists distort his features to hideous proportions in order to play upon the antipathy of race for which Englishmen are renowned. His religious sentiments— the great barrier to his resentment and the balm of his affliction— furnish topics of ridicule, because he expresses the emotions of his heart in the broken language of his down-trodden people. Every philosophical mind acquainted with the history of humanity is aware that uneducated men of all races express with vivacity all their emotions, and that between this fervour of utterance and no feeling at all there are in their case but few intermediate stages. The TROLLOPE'S, and men of that class who talk upon this subject, pander to the base spirit which is as incapable of philosophical appreciation as of Christian sympathy. Why should the negro, because his utterance of his religious feeling is loud and unclassical, be represented as a mere ape, while the same manifestations are seen in every part of the world where religious sentiment is expressed by uneducated men. The result of our over-civilization is not only to disguise the feelings, but to make the outer expression the very reverse often of the inward sentiment. But these are refinements from which the negro race are necessarily remote. We are, however, at the beginning of the end. The idle literature which is opposed to the grandest movements of our times will pass to the trunkmakers, while those who are strenuous for the assertion of human liberty will be remembered as benefactors of their own as well as the African race. The curse of slavery sinks deeply. It embraces all who touch it. It demonises their character ; it makes them not only insensible, but opposed to the claims of right. And yet strange enough the very men who are loudest in their declamations about the brutal instincts of the negro the moment the slave becomes free, expected from such a population as Jamaica the chastity which they do not find in the counties of their own country or on the Continent. Statistics prove this. What is still more humiliating is that the demoralisation of the blacks with respect to their social relations, has not only been regularly organised by slave-holders as a property interest, but promoted— never discouraged by the licentious habits of the whites themselves. Can we in the face of a creole population, everywhere advancing upon the distinct races, pretend that the African is licentious, and the African alone? The rights of these millions of human beings appear to us to be the grand charge upon the sympathy and effort of all mankind. To secure them we have in our own country made a sacrifice, paltry as it now turns out compared with the penalties exacted by Providence in America. We talk of the £20,000,000 we paid for the emancipation of slaves as though we had laid the slave under a lasting obligation. Let it be remembered that this £20,000,000 went to the slave-holder and not to the slave. It was not the price paid by a nation for the ransom of brethren from the hands of aliens ; but the price settled among themselves in composition of a common wrong. That price was well, and, in some of its aspects, nobly paid. Happy for England that it was so. Her prosperity has never been retarded for an hour. The ruin of the sugar plantations, long watered with tears and blood, in Jamaica is a small deduction from the great national account. Had the question been in the hands of the slave owners this price would never have been paid, but the weight of bondage would have been increased with every effort to destroy it. America has had the power of resistance and the will, and now war is exacting not only the first born of the population but millions sufficient to pay the price of every slave under the Stars and Stripes. These are events which can only be interpreted one way, and supercilious and heartless sneers at the oppressed will not retard their Avenger for an hour.

It was the judicial condemnation of JOHN SMITH, who was sentenced to death, that finally destroyed the slavery party of Great Britain. It was the execution of JOHN BROWN, for his ill-judged effort— that of a man driven mad by years of family and personal oppression, but whose heart was full of the noblest aspiration— that ushered the great war now raging in America. It is said that his last act upon earth just before he ascended the scaffold, which was to ensure his name the everlasting remembrance of Africa— was to take from the arms of a negress her infant child and leave upon its brow the last kiss of human affection ; thus signifying the cause for which he suffered before he yielded up his great indignant and heroic spirit.

Sydney Morning Herald 5 Jan 1863, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13072006

Girls in Clothing Factories

 Whenever public attention is directed in any way to the earnings of the women and girls employed in clothing factories, astonishment is expressed that persons of ordinary intelligence should prefer a life of drudgery and hard living on low wages to the easier work, comparative independence, and better pay of domestic service. The strike of needle-women who were working for Messrs. BEATH, SCHIESS, and Co. has again brought the subject into prominence, and our columns show that the public mind is once more greatly exercised in the endeavour to account for what is regarded by many as a strange perversity. All householders know the difficulty of obtaining servants, and the restraints they have to place upon themselves in a variety of ways in order to keep them. So valuable are really good household servants that they can command almost any terms or indulgences. So far from experiencing any difficulty in obtaining situations, competent domestics are run after, and can exercise a wide discretion in choosing a home; while the most inefficient BRIDGET that ever afflicted a family or caused the heart of the British matron to wax hot within her, can always find people willing to give liberal remuneration for very imperfect service and a capacity for destruction almost superhuman. According to the latest reports of the labour market the following are the rates of wages which household servants are receiving:— General servants, from £30 to £40 per annum, housemaids, £30 to £45 per annum, female cooks, for private families £40 to £60, for hotels £50 to £100 per annum, nurses, £25 to £40 per annum, laundresses, £40 to £52 ; cooks and laundresses, £35 to £50. These are the nominal payments at the present time, but the following significant statement is attached to the list :— " In fact, wages are altogether a secondary consideration, and girls can obtain almost any wages they like to demand."

Let us now contrast the position of the seamstress with that of the domestic servant. We have seen that the latter can take her pick of a score of situations whenever she feels inclined to shift her quarters, and can always command board, lodging, and liberal payment. How is it with the former? Let a few particulars furnished by Messrs. BEATH, SCHIESS, and Co and some of their employés tell. It is alleged that before the reductions first class coatmakers could earn 30s a week but that is an amount reached by only one woman in 50. Vestmakers could make 20s a week, trousersmakers about 16s, and buttonhole hands from 17s to 20s. These sums must be reduced by 20 per cent, or one fifth, in order to arrive at the possible weekly earnings under the new scale. To give some idea of the quantity of work that has to be done in order to realise the amounts mentioned, we give the rates per article :—Paget coats, 3s 5d for plain and 4s 2d for bound, trousers 10d per pair, vests, 8d. Knickerbocker hands are said to be wretchedly paid, the best of them only being able to earn 12s to 15s. per week, while the majority do not average more than 10s. But these starvation figures do not reveal the whole situation. The pittances received by the different workers are not made during the regular factory hours. In order to earn the totals which are flourished in the face of the public whenever inquiry is made into the system of white slavery existing in our midst, women must take work home with them, and sit up sewing every night until 10 or 11 o'clock. It is evident that there is very little comfort or freedom about such a life as this. It is impossible to imagine anything more wretched, wearisome, monotonous and unhealthy :—

Band and gusset, and seam,

Seam, and gusset and band,

Till the heart is sick and the brain

benumb'd,

 As well as the weary hand."

It is not to be supposed, however that the majority of the seamstresses thus toil from morning to night, "sewing at once, with a double thread, a shroud  as well as a" coat, vest, or other article of apparel. It is only those, as a rule, who are entirely dependent on their own exertions for the support of themselves and others, who "stitch, stitch, stitch," from cock crow "till the stars shine through  the roof," and make the "show" salaries which the managers parade as a complete answer to all who say that factory women are underpaid. A large number of girls live with their parents, and most of them only work in factory hours These, no doubt, enjoy a great deal of liberty and leisure—more, probably, than is altogether good for them—but they buy both at a sacrifice of pay which must bring their earnings down to a sum not sufficient to cover the cost of board, lodging, and clothes. Girls so employed no doubt contribute something to the family exchequer, but they work at a trade which will not enable them to be self supporting except on conditions which make life a burden. The position seems to be as follows:—If a woman wants to make a bare living by sewing, she must work much harder, and enjoy far less freedom, than a household servant. If she wants more liberty and easier employment than the average domestic, she cannot make enough to render her independent of others.

Still, there is the puzzling fact, which we cannot ignore, notwithstanding the advantages of domestic service and the drawbacks of factory work, that thousands of girls choose the latter. How is this to be accounted for ? No doubt the distaste evinced by Australian girls for household duties is the result of many causes. For some mysterious reason, they have decided that sewing for starvation wages is a more " genteel "— hateful word—employment than scrubbing floors or cooking dinners. How the notion originated that there is something degrading connected with the discharge of domestic duties, we are at a loss to understand. Ever since mankind has had a history, the best and noblest women have felt proud to keep houses in order and to do the work of the home. If the refined and highly educated see nothing degrading in busying themselves about domestic matters, surely the ordinary sewing machine girl need not consider such things as beneath her dignity. The idea is simply the offspring of silly vanity, and should be got rid of as soon as possible. These factory girls in nine cases out of ten wed men who are not able to allow them a servant, consequently they come at last to the " degradation " to avoid which they have probably sacrificed substantial advantages, but as they do not bring experience or training to the work they are compelled at length to undertake, they cannot make the best of the situation, and frequently bring unhappiness into their married life through their want of skill in womanly occupations. One of the reasons why girls are said to dislike domestic service is that the confinement it entails does not allow of those acquaintances being formed amongst members of the other sex which frequently result in matrimony. Our own opinion is that household servants in Victoria have plenty of time and opportunity for courtship, &c., and certainly their training fits them to be far better wives than those who are supposed to have greater chances of entering into conjugal relations. The demand for household servants is great, and the supply of female labour is abundant. The question is—Can anything be done to overcome the objections which at present restrain women from selling their labour in the form which is most wanted? We shall endeavour to answer this query at some future time.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ), 1882 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11563202

Bow Street Lessons.

 There are few subjects more curious than the relations between detective police-officers and those whom, for want of a better word we may perhaps call their prey ; but there is something even more curious in the contrast between the opinions entertained about both classes by the lower section of London society and by that upper portion which takes so many of its ideas from literature. The crowd which daily surrounds Sir James Ingham's police court regularly receives with cheers a series of convicts in their prison dress who admit themselves to have been guilty of one of tho most impudent of modern frauds, and the same mob is said to be kept with difficulty from roughly handling four as yet unconvicted detectives and a solicitor associated with them. But everybody who reads a novel is aware that until the other day it was difficult to get to the end of the third volume without coming upon a detective officer who walked among criminals like the lady among Comus and his crew — chaining them, however, to their seat instead of being chained himself. The literary apotheosis of the detective appears to have been of French origin. A great French novelist, who had employed supernatural agency with great effect in his earlier books, found afterwards a substitute for it in the administration of French justice and in the secrets of Parisian medicine. In several of Balzac's romances the police agent or the doctor is as much a wizard as ever was Michael Scott. The forces by which he acts are absolutely mysterious and inscrutable. Other French writers since Balzac have so worn threadbare the subject of police investigation that its interest is nearly gone ; but we have seen it remarked by French writers of another stamp that Balzac and Gaboriau have caused sensible mischief to the community by encouraging the tyranny of French inquisitorial procedure before trial. Dickens is the undoubted parent of the fictitious English detective characterised by a number of homely virtues and a never failing sagacity, but he probably got the hint from France. A crowd of copyists have vulgarised the type, and one eminent writer tried to reverse current notions by creating a detective who was positively stupid, but on the whole nobody till the other day thought it was possible to bring a charge against the morality or incorruptibility of detective policemen. It would be very unjust to the officers whose case is under investigation to assert that any such charge has as yet been established, but much which is undisputed in the evidence shows that the literary conception of detectives and of their relations with criminals has been singularly wide of the truth.

 The view taken of policemen, and especially of detective policemen, by classes which have not yet risen to the perusal of Dickens is manifestly of a wholly different kind from that of the novelist. Probably we should pretty accurately express the fact by saying that these classes look upon a policeman much as those socially above them look upon an executioner, A moment's thought will show that this distaste for policemen is extremely natural. A poor man may be perfectly honest, but he necessarily lives in much closer contact with dishonesty than a rich man. If a scandal arises in a family belonging to the class conventionally known as respectable, it is very rarely through a breach of the sixth or the eighth commandment. But it must constantly, or not unfrequently, happen to a working man that somebody nearly connected with him gets into " trouble." Thus the intervention of the law, to investigate, try, and punish theft for violence seems to him an evil, though it be an intelligible and necessary evil. It may be true that, as some political writers have contended, the poor man receives a greater amount of protection from the law than the rich; but the arguments by which the conclusion is reached are not by any means obvious, and certainly not obvious enough to make the agents of the law a popular class of men. Possibly, too, that ready obligingness which has made the English policeman the admiration of travelling foreigners fails him not a little in poor neighbourhoods, where the drunken rowdy with a bludgeon is apt to lie in wait for him. However that may be, if the ordinary policeman (as Colonel Henderson's Report broadly hints) is not by any means a popular personage among the lower class of Londoners, the detective police man may well be believed to have their strong detestation. Not only does he seem an adversary, but an adversary who never fights fairly. All the labyrinthine contrivances and ingenious disguises which charm the novel-reader must seem to the criminal classes like explosive bullets in war, and to those necessarily in some degree of contact with criminals like so much foul play. In higher spheres of society one of the most heinous of offences is to cheat at cards ; but there are men who have never been forgiven for successfully worming themselves into the confidence of the person they wished to expose. In point of fact the agent of justice is always unpopular when the justice is of such a kind that we or our associates may conceivably come into contact with it; and when this agent works by means which (but for their object) would be gross deceptions, he is quite sure to be heartily hated. The true reason why the French agent de surete and the English detective have at some time or other interested us so profoundly in books is that their proceedings are so far removed from us. But to the class which furnishes the crowd that surrounds the police court the frauds of Kurr and Benson are rather brilliant samples of the offences into which a friend or a connection may be betrayed. These frauds like all others of similar distinction, were traced to their authors by the wiles of detective policemen ; and now a gallant attempt is being made to get the biter bit.

 Besides suggesting these contradictions of opinion in that miscellaneous body called the British public, the inquiry before Sir James Ingham throws a great deal of light on some portions of British character not always understood. Have any of us quite realized the depth of the interest which (as these proceedings show) great multitudes of Englishmen take in gambling and betting ? It would be foolish to suppose that the taste is confined to the parts of English society which had their weaknesses exposed in the police-court. Common rumor must be unusually mendacious if the loss or gain of great sums on games of chance, or of mixed chance and skill, is rarer than it was among men who no doubt can on the whole afford to lose their money ; in fact, there is no reasonable doubt that Englishmen gamble very nearly as much as they ever did, though there is a larger element of skill in the games on which they stake their ventures. But comparatively few of us have been aware how widely the passion for gambling spreads among the classes on whose tastes and sympathies a whole flood of light has been thrown by the case of the detectives. It would seem as if the great mass of Englishmen below the decorous dissenting portion of the middle class cared for nothing so heartily as a race and a bet. One cannot help asking oneself what has been the real effect on national morality of the series of enactments by which the Legislature, apparently in all honesty, has aimed at suppressing what it must think a great public and private vice. So far as the upper classes are concerned, the merely mechanical apparatus of gambling has ceased to exist, or, if it exists, hides in the darkest corners. The rouge-et-noir, roulette, and hazard tables have disappeared ; dice are all but unknown. The public gaming-room, kept for the profit of its owner, has dropped out of English recollection. A gentleman started on the road to ruin must confine him self to his own or his friend's house, or to the club in which he has the interest of a quasi-partner. And he can only lose his money by backing his own or somebody else's skill at cards, or by venturing to have an opinion on the law of heredity as manifested in racehorses, But perhaps he contrives to lose in this way quite as much as his grandfather lost after the fashion of that time. As respects the part of the population which cannot by any straining of language be included in the upper classes, the organization of gambling by betting agencies seems to have been effectually put down or prevented by the law ; and this we suspect to have been the sole clear gain from a long course of legislation. It is rather more difficult for the city clerk or apprentice to lose money than it would be if gambling were legal, and he is now better protected than he once was against the rapacity of persons who,like the convicts just examined, have sharper wits than his. But in one great object, perhaps the greatest of its objects, the law has wholly failed. It has not succeeded, as many penal laws have succeeded, in creating a popular sentiment adverse to the practice, at which it is aimed. The Englishmen of our day strongly reprobate duelling, and their disapproval dates from the time when the law against it was really enforced. But though the whole law against gambling seems to be put in force, neither the British public nor, as would appear, the British, police can be brought to regard it as seriously immoral. — Pall Mall Budget.

Herald (Melbourne, Vic. ), 1877 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article244523168

The Troubles of Turkey

 LITTLE as we may understand of the Salonica affair, it is not difficult to see some things in it which lie at the root of most of the troubles of Turkey. For one thing, the quarrel at the Gulf of Salonica was a religious quarrel between Christians and Mahomedans ; for another it was a religious quarrel which reached its serious stage principally through the inability of the authorities to quell the fury of a fanatical mob. And, in addition to these, there is the restraint that is put upon Turkish license and upon Mahommedan fury by the menace of foreign Powers. These are the things which have contributed most to make the Eastern Question as we have it to-day.

Let us take these things, in the order in which we have stated them. The riot at Salonica was a religious riot, and the rebellion in the Herzegovina is a rebellion that has religion at the root of it. It is not only a rebellion of Christians against Mohammedans, but it is a struggle that has arisen out of the religious prejudices which separate the Christians and the Mohammedans so widely from each other. It is a mistake to suppose that the Hersegovinian quarrel is principally a quarrel of races, or that it is simply a rebellion against an alien rule. Strange as it may appear, it is not against the rule of the SULTAN chiefly that the insurgent provinces of Turkey are protecting, and it is worthy of remark that most of those who are fighting against each other in the Hersegovina are of the same race. The contending parties are one, so far as blood and nationality are concerned. The divisions from which their quarrels have arisen have grown out of the fact that while the populace in the insurgent provinces have adhered to the immemorial traditions of Christianity, a section of the people at the time of the Turkish Conquest, adopted, and have continued to adhere to, the Turkish faith.

Faiths, as we all know, can be the savagest of things on convenient occasions, but the Mohammedan faith is essentially and confessedly an implacable one. The battles of the Crescent have often been fought and won by the aid of the scimitar. The religion of the Turks is, in some of its phases, at least, both a religion of hatred and a religion of conquest. There are Mohammedans who not only refuse to eat with a Christian dog, but who would, if it were in their power, decline to fight with him even, lest if they should fight on the same battle field their ashes should be polluted by contact with those of an infidel.

In the Herzegovina this flame of religious detestation is fed by the strength of a social ascendancy. The Christians in these parts of the SULTAN'S Empire are the populace, while the Mohammedans form an oligarchical tyranny. The cruelty of such a tyranny may well be imagined, but the facts of it are even beyond what an ordinary imagination would be able to picture. In the Turkish Empire, an it exists at present, the Christian is not and never can be a citizen. He has no rights, no country, and no home. The essential principle of Turkish rule, it has been truly said, is the government of unarmed Christian communities by armed Mohammedans. The Christian is the victim of a diabolical system of forced labour, which in the hands of his Mohammedan masters renders him liable to be compelled at any time to leave his farm and his home to drudge for his enemies. Notwithstanding this, the unfortunate Rayah is held responsible in good seasons and in bad ones, not only to pay the most cruel of taxes, whether he has the means of doing it or not, but is bound on the spot to pay for those of others who may come short, and in default is summarily bound to a post and beaten until he finds some means of appeasing the cupidity of his masters. Outrageous as the thought of such brutality as this may be to us, it is in the eyes of a Turk of the good old times too good a lot for Christian dogs. Things of this sort have been going on in the Turkish provinces for years and decades, and the world has not been aware of them or has given them no heed. The progress of events has, however, carried daylight into the extremities of the Ottoman Empire, and the long persecuted Rayahs of Bosnia and Hersegovina have risen not only to protest against the tyrannies and the butcheries of their Mohammedan tyrants, but to demand as a reality what has been so long and so vainly given them as a promise, namely, that the social and civil rights of Christians shall be equal with those of Mussulmans themselves. The war which is being fought out within the Empire of Turkey is therefore but an outstanding phase of the great contest for religious equality which, in one form or another, is the standing warfare of this generation.

But we were also told that the riot of Salonica arose out of the inability of the Turkish authorities to quell the rage of the Mohammedan populace. This inability is the next cause of all the Turkish quarrels in existence The Christians of Herzegovina, in asking for social rights and religious equality, are asking for what the Government of the SULTAN has not the capacity to give them. These things were promised most explicitly by the treaty of 1856, and the promise has been repeated at one time and another from that day to this. But the things have not been granted, and are not likely to be. The reason of this does not lie altogether in the insincerity of the SULTAN or in the corruption of his officials. The insincerity and the corruption may be true enough, but if the SULTAN were perfectly sincere, and his Government a model of honesty, the result would in all probability be exactly the same. The Turkish Government has no power over the Mohammedan fanatics who have driven the mild-mannered Rayahs to desperation. And if the facts were otherwise, it the SULTAN were really able to grant that protection to the Christians which he has so often promised, he could only do so by alienating and enraging the governing classes in the insurgent provinces. In attempting to initiate reforms the Turkish authorities have already come into serious collision with their Mohammedan fanatics. The reason is simple enough. The granting of civil rights to Christians would mean their ceasing to be the tools of Mussulman authority, and the victims of Mussulman cruelty ; and for this the local Mohammedan authorities are in no way prepared. The enemies of the Christians in the districts where insurrection prevails are the governing classes. They are the landlords and the judges, who demand that their rights shall not be infringed, and that that their enemies shall not be conciliated. In making this demand they have hitherto prevailed, and are likely to prevail in future, unless some power stronger than the one which exists at Constantinople interferes. In reference to Hezegovina as to Salonica the Turkish authorities are intrenched behind a non possimus.

But the third difficulty in Turkey arises out of the fact that the day has come in which the Turks cannot kill a consul or two without getting a score of ironclads at their doors. In other words, the fact that Turkey is propped up by foreign Powers compels her to bear, without a protest, the humiliation of submitting to be told by other people what she must do and how far she must go. These are conditions which Turkey is obliged to accept, but to which she cannot adjust herself. Turkey is essentially a military State, and it belongs to a military State to dispose of rebels by soldiers and not by diplomatic arguments. But since Turkey now exists by foreign guarantees this is just what she cannot do. In the good old times it might have been possible for the Turk's to have made short work of the Herzegovinian rebellion. One or two hundred thousand drilled murderers might have been marched at once into the unruly districts, in which case the rebels might soon have been brought to their senses or been swept out of existence altogether. But as it is, when Turkey takes a step she is liable to be called to order by the six great Powers of Europe, and the result of this is that, since she has ceased to have the power of doing things in her own way, she has apparently ceased to have the power of doing anything at all. The three causes we have named lie at the root therefore of much of the troubles of Turkey. The Eastern question is, however, a large one, and we shall take an early opportunity of returning to it.

The Sydney Morning Herald 1876  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13375664