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From the Spectator, June 8.

THE NEW INDUSTRIAL GOSPEL.

THERE are signs about us on every side which seem to proclaim more and more clearly every day, that the old fabric of trade and commerce, the machinery by means of which the English nation has hitherto produced and distributed the various necessaries and luxuries of life, is doomed. First, and above and beneath all, lies the labour question, pressing now more importunately than ever upon us. We venture to assert that no one who has even dipped into the evidence given before the Trades' Unions' Commission, can possibly believe that the old relations of master and man will ever be restored here. The representatives of either side have, beyond all question, succeeded in producing the most damaging evidence as to the action of Masters' Unions and Men's Unions. Both sides deplore the antagonism which exists. Mr. Mault (the Secretary of the Master Builders' Association) vies with Mr. Applegarth (the Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners) in praising arbitration, and hoping for some solution in this direction. These are the two principal witnesses hitherto examined. But, on being pressed, you see at once that neither of them has any real faith in the arbitration plank. Indeed, how can the remedy work unless made compulsory? and, the moment you try to carry out the machinery of compulsion the staff breaks, and, runs into your hand. The one conclusion to which the spectator finds himself irresistibly driven is, that the present system of armed watchfulness, breaking out constantly into open war, is one infinitely disastrous for the nation, which, indeed, it behooves the nation by all lawful methods to get quit of.

But if matters have come to this pass in the sphere of productive industry, how stands the case when we come to distribution? Here, again, we have sorrowfully to confess that there is scarcely a sound spot from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot. The system of retail trade is little better than one giant mass of fraud and puffing. To justify this assertion, we would appeal to the published returns as to adulteration, and conviction for false weights and measures, on the one hand; and, on the other, to the private experience of every head of a household. The traces, upon which every housekeeper comes only too often, of a combination between trades

people and servants to rob the consumer, should be enough to convince the most sceptical that scarcely an article enters a house in our day which has not had its price enhanced by a commission to more than one person, who is violating the most ordinary principles of morality in the transaction. It is needless to cite instances of a fact so well established. Here, again, the nation is the sufferer, and must bestir itself to root out a disease which is preying upon its vitals.

That in other and higher departments of human activity the case is no better, let the annals of the Courts of Chancery and Bankruptcy witness. The machinery of both is positively clogged by the mass of business arising from the winding-up of fraudulent companies, until the astounding details almost cease to arouse indignation. The recent case of the National Savings' Bank, in which 40,000l. was spent on management and directors' fees, on a subscribed capital of 31,000l., and the collapse of which has probably spread wider ruin than the sack of a great city, is no unique specimen of what is going on, even in such departments as Insurance, in which, at any rate, one might hope that funds would be held sacred.

In a community which recognizes perfect freedom of action, of course it is impossible that such a state of things should have come to pass without a re-action, and attempts to mend matters in one direction and another. Of what has been done and is doing in the way of associations and industrial partnerships, in which possibly a remedy for strikes and locks-out may lie, we do not propose to speak to-day, but with regard to distribution a very remarkable movement has arisen, on which it would be well that public attention should be fixed just now. There, as in many other great reformations, the impulse has come from below. For twenty years and upwards the working people of the North have been organizing their co-operative stores for the purpose of bringing the producer and consumer together, restoring ready-money payments, just weights, and honest goods, and at the same time saving the profits of middlemen. The marvellous success of these stores has attracted the notice of the upper classes. The Civil Service Supply Association is only the best known of several societies which is doing for the middle and upper what the stores have done for the working classes. While the movement was confined to these latter, there was, comparatively speaking, little opposition to it. The Act under which

be now snuffed out, it deserves to be delivered over to the spoilers for another generation.

66

Of those who may be inclined to sneer at the tendency apparent in so many of the leading men in our co-operative societies and associations to exalt their industrial method into a sort of religious faith, we would only ask seriously, Can we afford just now to look any honest faith in the mouth?" They have shown beyond all question that they can give their members better articles of all kinds at cheaper rates than they could ever procure them elsewhere. They have restored the tone of trade in large districts by their rigid insistance on ready-money payments. They have converted thousands of careless and improvident workmen to thrifty habits. Well, then, if over their libations of unadulterated tea and coffee (the movement, be it remarked, is very nearly allied to the Temperance movement), they go on to declare that co-operation is neither more nor less than the application of the Sermon on the Mount to trade, that it will fit into and regenerate every branch of commercial industry, that co-operators have already knocked a big hole in the English Temple of Mammon, and that the whole structure is bound to come down with a run in about eighteen months'time, and millennium to set in in good earnest, why not let them have their swing? What have we to offer them in the place of their faith, such as it is?

they were established placed limits to the amount of capital of these societies, and restrictions on their trading powers, which it was no doubt believed would render them harmless enough. But the success of the new societies founded on the same principles, but adopting the more flexible if more dangerous machinery of the Joint Stock Companies' Act, has fairly roused the trading classes to a sense of the gravity of the situation. Readers who are curious in such matters will do well to expend a few pence in the purchase of a number or two of The Grocer, a Trade Circu'ar. In its columns, they will find proof enough of the light in which all efforts to reach the wholesale markets by outsiders are regarded by the socalled "legitimate trade." In the advertising columns, they may discover what wholesale houses refuse to supply co-operative societies, and these are held up for admiration. In the last number, there is an attack on the "Birmingham Supply Association," lately founded there, giving the names of the Committee, and sneering at "gentlemen who consent to act on a shopkeeping committee." In another column retailers are exhorted to be "wise in time, and discard the samples of all wholesale houses who either supply families or co-operative stores, and trade only with houses whose business is transacted with legitimate dealers in tea." In other quarters, the same disposition is showing itself. An Agricultural Association has been started for the purpose of enabling farmers and coun- Keep business and morals apart," says the try gentlemen to purchase implements, legitimate trading community; "Render seeds, and manures of the best qualities at to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's." wholesale prices. The unlucky agricultu- "As you have done with your limited comrist, it seems, pays something like an aver- panies and false weights and measures," age of 25 per cent commission for his the co-operative fanatic retorts," and look goods, which "the legitimate dealers" look what has come of them." "Enlightened upon as their perquisite by right divine. self-interest," the political economist sugFortunately for the Association, and for the gests; and the co-operator declares that his public which it hopes to benefit, Mr. Green- creed embraces the doctrine, so far as it is ing, the manager, had taken the precaution good for any thing. "Unfettered competiof procuring before starting contracts with tion tempered in certain directions by arbia large number of wholesale houses for the tration, and councils of conciliation," supply of implements, &c. Had this not preaches the self-made man, conscious of an been done, the Association would undoubt- unbounded capacity in himself for harvestedly have been starved in its infancy, as ing the results of the toil of the brain and "the legitimate trade" is now putting forth muscle of others. But the co-operator its strength, and coercing the wholesale" spews unlimited competition out of his houses to hinder, if possible, their supplying the enemy on any terms. We call attention to these facts thus early, that our readers may be aware of the issue that has to be tried. If the public, through superstitious veneration for "old use and wont" and "legitimate trade" allows these co-op- you say to such fanatics? Illusions! Utoerative experiments in the upper classes to pia! Well, then, let them alone, and they

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mouth " as an invention of the Devil, and declares Councils of Conciliation to be an anachronism in a state of society in which all men will be fellow-workers, with the same interests, and neither strike nor lo kout will be possible any more. What can

will come down of themselves. What says the good Book? "If the thing be of men, it will come to naught;" if not, let us be satisfied with the old Rabbi's authority as to our chances of overthrowing it. We will back Gamaliel on such a point against all the indomitable Plugsons of Undershot who ever lived. All we ask, however, is a fair field, and no favour for the co-operators in the campaign about to open in the higher walks of industry.

From Fraser's Magazine.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. *

Of all the figures that appear on the dark
canvas of the French Revolution, none
flashes out more strangely, to vanish as sud-
denly, than that of Charlotte Corday: yet
is the apparition one that must stir the
hearts of men for ever, filling them with
wonder and pity not unmixed with admira-
tion, irreconcilable though the great act of
her life be with law human or divine, and
deeply as public opinion in Christendom
has branded assassination with infamy.
Her present biographer, M. Chéron de Vil-
liers, claims her throughout his book with
much emphasis as a true daughter of the
Catholic Church, laying stress on certain
evidences of early piety, and of a devotion
stricter than was usual even in a conventu-
al education. He triumphantly cites as a
proof of her strict orthodoxy that she con-
stantly refused to attend the preaching of
Fauchet the constitutional bishop of Calva-
dos, and in her last moments rejected the
offices of the Abbé Lothringer, both priests
'flétris d'elle de la qualification d'intrus.'
So be it, if the Holy Catholic Church wish-
es to claim her as saint and martyr; but we
confess that her own words, letters, and de-
meanour throughout those six days from the
13th of July (the day of the murder) till
the 19th, when she submitted herself so
calmly to the executioner, seem rather to
prove her entire indifference to such mat-
ters. She had done that which she believed
herself appointed to do; she had given lib-
erty to France; and the fulfilment of her
task was not a crime to confess to any
priest; with that blood on her hands, she
was ready to go before God who had re-
quired it of her.

So at least we read her mental attitude

* Marie-Anne-Charlotte de Corday d'Armont: sa Vie, son Temps, ses Ecrits, son Proces, sa Mort. Par M. Chéron de Villiers. Paris: Amyot. 1865. FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. VI.

in those strange pages addressed to Barbaroux from the Abbaye, and dated 'the second day of the preparation for Peace.'

'Je jouis délicieusement de la paix depuis deux jours; le bonheur de mon pays fait le mien,' she says, and as she firmly believes that she has accomplished this, she is able to write jestingly of all the little incidents of her journey to Paris in the sweltering July heat, with her disagreeable companions in the diligence, and of the offer of marriage made her by one of them whom she left 'de très-mauvaise humeur.' Of the great event she gives no details, leaving Barbaroux to learn them from other sources; but she says: 'As I was really calm (vraiement de sangfroy), I suffered from the cries of some women, but those who save their country cannot notice what it costs.' The anticipations of rest in the Elysian Fields with Brutus and some ancients savour more of Plutarch's Lives than of the Breviary; but we must give a summary of the facts collected by M. Chéron de Villiers in the work before us concerning the history of this wonderful girl. M. de Villiers seems to have heard in his youth many reminiscences of the beauty, the piety, and the ardent patriotic feeling of Charlotte Corday from his grandmother Mme. Riboulet, between whom and the future heroine a girlish friendship had existed. These traditions seem to have stimulated his industry in collecting all that can be known of her antecedents, so that his book may be fairly considered exhaustive on the subject, telling us both what we are to believe and what we are not for Charlotte Corday's early years have furnished plenty of apocryphal matter to her biographers; documents being scarce, imagination has largely supplied the want. An actual authority, however, is a certain Mme. de M-née Levaillant, a resident at Caen in the year preceding the Revolution, and intimate with the Corday family. Her memoir appeared in the Revue de Deux Mondes, embodied in a paper of Casimir Perrier's, and along with it, two letters addressed by Charlotte to Mme. de MTo these M. de Villiers adds a hitherto unpublished letter to his grandmother, then Malle. Rose Fougeron du Fayot, which, as it is new, we will transcribe in its own place. These materials, however, would hardly by themselves swell the volume to its actual bulk without the addition of a memoir of Marat, a notice of the Abbé Raynal, his celebrated letter to the Assembly in 1791 given at length, and a great deal of other matter with which we are not at present concerned. 171.

Marie-Anne-Charlotte de Corday d'Ar- carried in triumph on a pike. A collision mont, for she bore all these names, and was between de Belzunce's regiment and the familiarly known as Marie Corday, though populace brought about this catastrophe, history has selected Charlotte as her dis- which sank deep into Marie's heart, and tinguishing appellation, was the daughter strengthened the detestation with which she of a poor though noble Norman family, and regarded those who incited the people to in the female line she could claim the great commit such horrors in the name of liberty, Corneille as an ancestor, a fact not without and to soil the sacred cause with a thousand significance in forming her character in the crimes. Mme. Riboulet witnessed her inheroic mould. Losing her mother early, tense suffering at this time, silent and selfher father's exceedingly narrow means in- controlled as were her love and grief; and duced him to leave her for a few years in she had no doubt that in this event might be the care of her uncle the Abbé Corday, found the key to the stern resolve that curé of Vicques; and at fourteen she and followed, nor have we. Mme. de Belzunce a younger sister were by the kindness of survived her nephew barely a year; and Mme. de Belzunce received into the during the short period which yet interAbbaye aux Dames at Caen. There Marie vened before the suppression of convents in enjoyed the best education, and more liber- 1790 Mme. de Pontécoulant ruled in the ty than usually falls to the lot of pension- Abbaye aux Dames. This abbess also had naires in a convent. She was brought up a nephew, M. Gustave Doulcet de Pontéalong with Malle. Alexandrine Forbin the coulant, whose name appears in connection niece of the abbess, and allowed free inter- with Marie Corday's in the closing scene of course with all the old friends of her family. her life. When the convent was closed to Among them was this Mme. de M, then them, the demoiselles de Corday returned Mdlle. Levaillant, whose earliest recollec- to their father's roof at Argentan; but tion of 'la petite Marie Corday' was seeing the child fall and hurt herself severely, and then refuse to complain or even acknowledge that she was hurt. Cette petite fille est dure à elle-méme; elle ne se plaint jamais.' At the time that she entered the Abbaye aux Dames, she is described as 'une jeune personne accomplie, soumise, laborieuse, bonne et prévenante envers tous, avec un goût pour les lectures sérieuses peu habituel à une femme.' Corneille, J. J. Rousseau, and the Abbé Raynal, were, we know from herself, her favourite modern authors. The Abbé, indeed, she always speaks of as 'mon maître,' and from him she drew the saying on ne doit pas la vérité à ses tyrans with which she justified the artifice which gained her access to her victim. Much given to reverie, she brooded in solitude over the ideas of antique virtue described in the works of these men, and dreaming of Sparta and Rome she became an ardent republican in heart even before the Revolution. No lover of modern days ever made any impression on her affections, says Mme. de M; but here this lady and Mme. Riboulet are at variance. The latter, Marie's more immediate contemporary and confidante, assures us that Henri de Belzunce, the nephew of the abbess, saw her frequently during the years 1787-89, and was passionately attached to her; that she returned his affection and looked forward to marriage with him. In 1789, he was murdered in the streets of Caen, his body atrociously mutilated, and his head

poverty there had deepened rather than otherwise, and Marie took the resolution in June 1791 of claiming the hospitality of a distant relative, an old Mme. de Bretteville, a widow of some substance, who lived alone in a large house in Caen, known as Grand Manoir. Here for two years more the enthusiastic girl lived, watching the progress of events. The society she mixed in was small, and principally royalist in their views. Eléonore de Faudoas became her attached friend, and in two years' time both royalist and republican died on the same scaffold. Mme. de M- describes Marie as having now developed into an exceedingly beautiful woman, and, whatever discrepancies may exist between the different portraits of her (Siccardi's being considered the best), there can be no doubt that hers was a very noble beauty, grave and intellectual in expression' as well as exquisite in form and colouring; while the remarkable sweetness and harmony of her voice in speaking was a charm that remained long in the memory of those who had heard it. The letter to her dear Rose du Fayot (Madame Riboulet) is dated from Grand Manoir, the 28th of January, 1793 :

Vous savez l'affreuse nouvelle, ma bonne Rose: votre cœur comme mon cœur en a tresFrance livrée aux misérables qui nous ont desja saillé d'indignation: voilà donc notre pauvre fait tant de mal. Dieu sait où cela s'arrêtera. Moi, qui connés vos bons sentiments, je puys vous en dire ce que je pense. Je frémis d'horreur et d'indignation. Tout ce qu'on peut rêver d'affreux se trouve dans l'avenir que nous pré

MARIE DE CORDAY.

parent de tels évènements. Il est bien manifeste | was a pretext for asking for an interview at que rien de plus malheureux ne pouvait nous the Hôtel de l'Intendance, which she obarrivé. J'en suys presque réduite à envier le tained. On this, as on every other occasion, sort de ceux de nos parens qui ont quitté le sol when she saw Barbaroux, it was rememde la patrie, tant je désespère pour nous de voir bered that Marie was attended, as befitted a revenir cette tranquillité que j'avés espérée il n'y a pas lontems. Tous ces hommes qui demoiselle, by an old servant of Mme. Brettedevaient nous donner la liberté l'ont assassinée; ville's. Calumny was not slow to put an ce ne sont que des bourreaux. Pleurons sur le injurious construction on these interviews, sort de notre France. Je vous sais bien mal- but in history the name of Charlotte Corday, heureuse, et je ne voudrais pas faire couler encor as of Joan d'Arc, however it fared with vos larmes par le récit de nos douleurs. Tous them amid the strife of tongues in their own mes amis sont persécutés ma tante est l'objet day, must stand for ever pure and spotless de toute sorte de tracasseries depuis qu'on a sçu among women. Barbaroux undertook to qu'elle avait donné asyle à Delphin quand il a write to his colleague in the Convention, passé en Angleterre. J'en faisés autant que lui Lauze de Perret, then in Paris, on the si je pouvés, mais Dieu nous retient ici pour affairs of Mdlle. Forbin, and invited Mdlle. d'autres destinées. . . . Nous sommes ici en proye aux brigans; nous en voyons de toutes Corday to return in a few days. She did les couleurs; ils ne laissent personne tranquille, so, and the result of one or two more interça en serait à prendre cette république en hor- views was that Marie volunteered to go in reur si on ne savait que les forfaits des humains person to Paris to see De Perret, and to n'atteignent pas les cieux. Bref, après le coup accelerate the transaction of Mdlle. Forbin's horrible qui vient d'épouvanter l'univers, plaig- business; also to take charge of letters of nés-moi, ma bonne Rose, comme je vous plaius political importance from the Girondist vous-même, parcequ'il n'y a pas un cœur sensible et généreux qui ne doive répandre des that she has had long conversations with Bardeputies to their party in Paris. It is plain larmes de sang. Je vous dys bien des choses de la part de tout le monde, on vous aime tou- baroux on the state of France, that he has jours bien. found in her an intelligence that can grasp the situation, and an agent whom he cau trust, for her offer is accepted, and she is told that the despatches will be ready for her in eight days. She has listened to Barbaroux' description of the men who are carrying all before them in Paris, and there can be no doubt, that when she asked to be the bearer of letters to the capital, where the ostensible object of her visit was furthering a hopeless legal claim on the part of a suspecte,' the resolution to kill Marat had been formed. It is equally certain that no hint of her resolve ever passed her lips, She reads with avidity all the journals and that Barbaroux was entirely ignorant and pamphlets that she can obtain, and of it. To Pétion, who was present at the daily she hears of fresh excesses, more blood last interview, and who spoke to her rather flowing in the streets; Marat claiming five ironically, her reply was, ' Vous me jugez hundred thousand heads for the guillotine, aujourd'hui sans me connaître, citoyen Péand styling himself and his journal L'Ami tion, un jour vous saurez qui je suis.' There da Peuple; the struggle between the Mon- were signs in those last days, which those tagne and the Gironde inclining each day who remembered them afterwards knew to towards the triumph of the former, till be marks of deep emotion in her controlled Marat is victorious and the Girondist chiefs, nature, when she took what she felt to be eighteen in number, are in flight. Caen is an eternal farewell of the few friends left in their place of refuge. Among them are Caen. On the 6th of July, she visits one Buzot, Duchâtel, Guadet, Pétion, Salles, relative, Mme. Gautier de Villiers, at VerValady, and Barbaroux at their head. son; the lady is occupied in household cares Marie, who saw in these men the party of with her servants, but reading some trouble moderation, the only hope of France, eager in Marie's eyes, she dismisses them. 'Je ly sought for an introduction to Barbaroux, viens te dire adieu : j'ai un voyage à faire.' and a petition to present to the Convention To all questions her answers are evasive, in favour of her old friend Mdlle. Forbin, Chanoinesse of Troyes, who in the alienation of church property had suffered losses,

Her orthography and grammar are doubtful; but her expressions are forcible, and read by the light of after events some of them are very significant. 'On ne meurt qu'une fois, she says, speaking of some terrible scenes that had been enacted, 'et ce qui me rassure contre les horreurs de notre situation c'est que personne ne perdra en me perdant.' And again: Je n'ai jamais compté la vie que par l'utilité dont elle pouvait

être.'

her mind evidently entirely pre-occupied ; suddenly she snatches a handful of peas in their shells from the heap before Mme. de

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