Memoir and Letters of Francis W. NewmanSieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Religion
Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman
Sieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Newman, Francis William, 1805-1897
These local powers "must be to the central like planets round a sun....
All unforeseen business would fall to the central power, which in all
cases would undertake: public defence, communications with foreign Powers,
principal highways, shores and harbours, Crown lands, national money and
weights, and national taxes.... Our impending Church and State question
will be solved in this island, with least convulsion, if local variety of
sentiment be allowed free play." [Footnote: Perhaps then we should be rid
of the anomaly which allows a Prime Minister, of whatever religious
denomination, to choose Bishops for the Anglican Church.] Newman proceeds
thus to describe further his suggestions with regard to the working of the
provincial courts: "Each electoral district to send one member to the
Provincial Chamber; household franchise, of course, would be the rule, and
I trust women householders would not be arbitrarily excluded." They would
deal directly, and on the spot, with local pauperism in the provincial
courts. That, in itself, would be one great gain. For pauperism cannot
effectively be dealt with except by local legislation. Some system such as
Ruskin's, with powerful local legislation, could not fail to end the
trouble which is at the present moment making a tremendous drain on the
pockets of the law-abiding citizen of this country, in that system of
workhouses, which besides being subversive of the very idea of home-life
amongst our poor, degrades the non-worker, and rankles as a lasting shame
in the hearts of those whom misfortune alone has driven to that last
resource of the unfortunate. Were one able to follow the example set us,
among cities, by Leipsic (where the word pauperism is absolutely non-
existent), we should have effectually turned the corner out of the ill-
kept vagrant road into which Henry VIII first led us, when "pauperism"
began to be a sore in the midst of England's healthy body of citizens.
Now, it is a self-evident fact that "pauperism," which is a living drag on
our social wheel, can _not_ be dealt with other than by rigorous local
government. Cases could then be dealt with personally; the whole area
would not be too gigantic for this; but, of course, it is a moral
impossibility to generalize in dealing with this subject.
After all, this is not, as Francis Newman insists, a new departure in any
way. He points to other countries to show that as a fact, centralization
has been gradually establishing itself in England, though in other times
decentralization was a very potent force in our midst, and a success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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