even purchasing landed property receives it charged with its moral as well as its legal engagements.' As has been very justly pointed out,There is a compact implied at least between the landlord and the peasantry who have been brought up on his estate, by which the latter have as good a right to protection as the lord of the soil has to make arbitrary dispositions for the future management of his property.'

.

The neglect of some of these duties by resident landlords evoked once from the Government of Ireland a declaration which, familiar as it is, cannot be too often quoted; crystallising, as it does, into a maxim the vital truth of the case, and condensing into a few sentences the causes of, and the remedy for, the miserable state of Ireland :

Property has its duties as well as its rights; to the neglect of those duties in time past is mainly to be ascribed that diseased state of society in which such crimes (murder &c.) take their rise; and it is not in the enactment or enforcement of statutes of extraordinary severity, but in the better and more faithful performance of those duties, and the more enlightened and humane exercise of those rights, that a permanent remedy for such disorders is to be sought.5

No one who reads carefully and impartially the history of Ireland during the present century, can fail to trace the unfortunate effects of absenteeism throughout that period. It is, in fact, impossible to ignore them. The absenteeism of the Protestant clergy from their parishes, consequent on their holding a plurality of livings, and the imperfect performance of their duties, did not lead more effectually to the religious demoralisation of the people under their charge, and the falling away of many from the Church, than the absence of landowners did to the political demoralisation of the people. In extensive districts in Ireland, there was no one to check the evil tendencies of the people, no one to prevent them rushing impetuously after political will-o'-the-wisps, no one to try and win them to the side of order and peace.

This is not a matter upon which one is left to speculation, for there is visible proof of the results of the two systems-the system of residence, and of absenteeism. Those parts of Ireland in the present day which are best disposed to the English Government, which are freest from political agitation, which are the most peaceful and law-abiding, and in which the people are most generally enlightened, liberal, and tolerant, are just those places where the landowners have been longest and most constantly resident, and have for generations faithfully performed the duties of their position. Those parts of Ireland where the people are most lawless, most ignorant, superstitious, poor, and backward, are the places where absenteeism has

1 See Report of Railway Commissioners in Ireland,' Parliamentary Papers. 5 See McLennan's Life of Thomas Drummond, who was Under-Secretary for Ireland at the time (1835), and by whom this paragraph was written.

thrown its blighting influence, and where the people have been left most to themselves.

Had absentees but done their duty, the result for many past years and in the present day would have been far different. Unfortunately, as it is, disturbance, crime, political agitation, and disaffection to England, these were and are the Nemesis of absenteeism, a Nemesis visited unfortunately not on the absentees, but on the kingdom itself.

Proposals to remedy absenteeism, though often talked about, have never been seriously made, because the evil is not one which can be easily reached by legislation.

Any law imposing additional taxation on absentees would but add to the burden of tenantry upon whom the tax would ultimately fall-neither could any law be made enforcing residence for a certain number of months in the year. The compulsory sale of their estates, as now demanded by Irish agitators, is a request equally beyond the pale of feasibility, and cannot be complied with. The sole hope, the sole means of effecting any improvement, any amelioration, or of awakening absentees to a sense of their duties, is through public opinion, a strong expression of which may be productive of much good.

Those who have claims upon them in England, let them, at least for a time, give greater attention to their properties in Ireland, where their presence and their example are so urgently required, and would be productive of such beneficial results. Whilst those who, without any such justification, neglect the duties of landowners, let them be entreated, even impelled, to consider the heavy responsibility resting upon them; let it be shown them that their action or inaction involves not only the welfare of their tenantry, but in no inconsiderable degree the peace and prosperity of the country; let them see that the evil their neglect entails, affects not only the present time, but also generations to come; and if they are then still unwilling to undertake the performance of the duties which their position as landowners entails on them, let them at least seek some other investment for their property than that which is fraught with so many economical and social disadvantages to Ireland, and with such lamentable political results to the kingdom at large.

HENRY L. JEPHSON.

ON THE NURSING CRISIS AT

GUY'S HOSPITAL.

I.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE justly remarks that every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity.' I hope I shall not be considered unchivalrous, if I should say that this maxim is sometimes applicable to lady champions, as well as to men. It will be admitted to be a subject of regret when good cause, that needs no more than a simple history to recommend it, is advocated by statements of which the least that can be said is that they are exaggerated, and that they suggest conclusions which are

not true.

I am led to these remarks by the perusal of an article in the last number of this Review, on 'The Present Crisis at Guy's Hospital.' The writer, whose object is to enlist the sympathies of hospital authorities and the public in general in favour of a better class of nurses for the sick, in which I entirely go with her, has weakened her argument, and raised up prejudice against her cause, from a want of fairness or want of knowledge which has prevented a liberal recognition of the labours of those who have hitherto worked in this great field.

The nursing at the large London hospitals, though by no means near perfection, and probably not far on the road to it, has been, under a high sense of duty on the part of the women engaged, and from a humble wish to carry out the instructions of the medical and surgical officers, generally good, and often very excellent.

It is therefore a quite improper aspersion on this class of women, so to write as that the fair inference would be that they are generally immoral and intemperate, and that they are not actuated, as most other persons are, by a reasonable sense of the responsibility of their work.

The writer, speaking of hospital sisters and nurses, says :—

In the evening, by arrangement with the matron, who was a kind of upper servant or housekeeper, the lower order of nurse, or scrubber, was left in charge of the patients, while the old-fashioned head nurse went out to take her hardly-earned

holiday, too often, alas! in the nearest public house. She came back at the regulation hour, more or less the worse for drink as the case might be, and went to bed, to sleep off the effects of it; no inquiry was made as to her condition, since it was nobody's business, as long as she satisfied the medical men by the work which came under their notice, to ask how her hours off duty were spent, or what her own moral condition might be.

I am far from saying (she adds) that every nurse under the old system was drunken or dissolute, but I do say that, as a rule, their moral character was unsatisfactory.

So much for this writer's statement. It would seem to any one unacquainted with the subject that the author of these serious accusations was a person of large experience on the subject she treats of, for nothing less than this would warrant so wholesale a condemnation. The reader may therefore be surprised when I say that these charges rest upon the most limited and superficial experience of the system condemned, the writer having been but a few weeks in the hospital as a learner of the rudiments of nursing. In contradiction of her statements I can affirm that a residence of fifteen years within the walls of Guy's Hospital, and an unusually intimate acquaintance with what took place within the wards, have left upon my mind a quite contrary impression, and I have no reason to believe that there has been a deterioration of the sisters and nurses since my day. I am constrained to say that this sort of writing about them comes near to 'evil-speaking.' It is possible, and to my conviction probable, however, that this lady may have other inspirations than such as would naturally spring up in her young mind. However this may be, it cannot be necessary to do an injustice, and to excite prejudice, in order to promote such a good cause as the better selection and training of nurses.

I agree with Miss Lonsdale and her friends that hitherto there has been but little selection of proper persons to become nurses, and it is a matter for congratulation that the authorities of our large hospitals are alive to the pressing importance of this matter, and are willing to make arrangements for both the selection and the training of such women. Any action in this direction will be not only in the interest of the patients of the hospital themselves, but also in the interest of the public at large.

It would therefore naturally be a matter of surprise that any opposition to this useful movement should arise from the medical and surgical staff of the hospital, yet much antagonistic feeling has been excited by it, and is still felt, I believe, not only at Guy's, but also in other hospitals. Though I have no immediate relation to the work my colleagues carry on at Guy's, I have not been indifferent to the objections they have felt to the new order of nursing which has been introduced there, nor to the feeling of irritation which has been occasioned by many incidents connected with this change.

Miss Lonsdale supposes that the objections of the medical and

surgical staff arise from several causes, but, as I infer from what she says, none of them of an honourable character. According to this lady they are, an indifference to the nursing improvement, or rather a preference for a low intellectual and moral standard in nurses, jealousy of refined intelligence and repugnance to its presence, ignorance of what nursing should be, and a desire to conceal 'practices and experiments indulged in in the wards,' &c. I may leave it to the public to judge how far such an indictment as this is likely to be true against a large body of highly educated gentlemen, the physicians and surgeons of a large hospital containing hundreds of patients-a hospital hitherto considered an honour to our country, whose Medical School has produced a long list of distinguished physicians and surgeons, whose pupils, numbered by thousands, are now practising in every part of the world, vindicating at home and abroad, in public and private practice, the honour of their profession, and justly proud of being Guy's men.

Such imputations, coming from a spokesman of the new system, naturally raise the greatest objections to it. This writer exposes indeed, in the article in question, the very grounds of this great opposition; and no wonder, for what physician or surgeon would care to have much to do with ladies who begin by so misunderstanding them and their work? If the coming class of nurses are to have no more respect for the medical and surgical staff than is here shown, I am afraid the opposition to them will not be very shortlived, and the establishment of a nursing school, which I have so long been looking for, will not be soon realised.

The ladies who ask the suffrages of the profession for promoting the art of nursing to a higher grade than it holds at present, must not hope to introduce this movement by condemning, in such terms as I have quoted, honest and worthy persons who have hitherto done the work. Nor can they do it by acting as if the objections on the part of the profession were of that unworthy character which this writer supposes.

The true and I believe the chief objection which medical men have felt against the new order of nursing is that it introduces a new element between them and their patients. It has been naturally a recognised if not expressed principle, both in hospital and private practice, that in the treatment of the patient everything is to be subordinate to the purpose of the physician or surgeon; not that the medical man should have to consider mere domestic matters, but that these should co-operate with, and be entirely subject to, the details of nursing. But ' a doctor,' says Miss Lonsdale, 'is no more necessarily a judge of the details of nursing than a nurse is acquainted with the properties and effects of the administration of certain drugs.' This is the claim of the new nursing system. It is preposterous and absurd. Every medical man, if not the public in general, will feel this to be so.

6