Yesterday week Lord Rosebery made a rather doleful little speech
at Epsom in opening formally a new technical institute and art school, on the singular economical errors of which we have commented sufficiently in another column. He appeared to be grieved that Germany is doing so well in manufactures, and fancies that she is driving us out of the field,—of which, as we have shown, he certainly gave no ,proof at all. But a remark which he made on a much more unquestionable fact, deserves separate notice. The institu- tion, formally opened yesterday week, had long been open for working purposes, but the Committee decided not to open it iormally till they had freed it from debt, a most laudable and honourable resolution. "One of the most startling features of the amazing age in which we live," said Lord Rosebery, "is the different code of morality which obtains with regard to public enterprise and private individuals. Private individuals, if they fall into debt, are no longer put into prison, except they are fraudulent debtors, but they are visited to some extent with the moral censure of the community, though probably nobody can say that they have passed through their lives without being in that condition of wrath. But with regard to public enterprise, the facts are very different. I suppose there are none of us who do not pass a day without receiving some agonising appeal from some struggling pro- moter of a good cause who has laid out £1,000 in a building with only 2100 to meet it with. And the result is that, in the case which I am instancing, a debt of 2900, which he would have been reprimanded for incurring as an individual, is regarded as meritorious when incurred as the representative of a cause.' I am not sure that even the ecclesiastical enterprises are free from a reproach of that nature. Our clergy throw themselves boldly into the ocean and trust to the benevolence of individuals to pull them out of that dis- creditable position." Undoubtedly they do, and we think they may be justified in BO doing, for the charities of our world ought to be, partially at least, borne by those who are slot directly responsible for starting them, when they tend towards the amelioration of general social conditions, and this cannot often be said of expenditure incurred for the private advantage of private individuals.
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