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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of 2), by
+George Jacob Holyoake
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of 2)
+
+Author: George Jacob Holyoake
+
+Release Date: July 20, 2011 [EBook #36796]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYGONES WORTH REMEMBERING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BYGONES WORTH REMEMBERING
+
+By George Jacob Holyoake
+
+"Look backward only to correct an error of conduct for the next attempt"
+
+      George Meredith
+
+Volume II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. CONVERSATIONS WITH MR. GLADSTONE
+
+Were I to edit a new journal again I should call it _Open Thought_. I
+know no characteristic of man so wise, so useful, so full of promise
+of progress as this. The great volume of Nature, of Man and of Society
+opens a new page every day, and Mr. Gladstone read it. It was this which
+gave him that richness of information in which he excited the admiration
+of all who conversed with him.
+
+Were Plutarch at hand to write Historical Parallels of famous men of our
+time, he might compare Voltaire and Gladstone. Dissimilar as they were
+in nature, their points of resemblance were notable. Voltaire was
+the most conspicuous man in Europe in the eighteenth century, as Mr.
+Gladstone became in the nineteenth. Both were men of wide knowledge
+beyond all their contemporaries. Each wrote more letters than any other
+man was ever known to write. Every Court in Europe was concerned
+about the movements of each, in his day. Both were deliverers of the
+oppressed, where no one else moved on their behalf. Both attained great
+age, and were ceaselessly active to the last In decision of conviction
+they were also alike. Voltaire was as determinedly Theistic as Mr.
+Gladstone was Christian. They were alike also in the risks they
+undertook in defence of the right. Voltaire risked his life and
+Gladstone his reputation to save others. Mr. Morley relates of the
+Philosopher of Ferney, that when he made his triumphal journey through
+Paris, some one asked a woman in the street "why do so many people
+follow this man?" "Don't you know?" was the reply. "He was the deliverer
+of the Calas." No applause went to Voltaire's heart like that Mr.
+Gladstone had also golden memories of deliverance no one else moved hand
+or foot to effect, and multitudes, even nations, followed him because of
+that.
+
+On the first occasion of my going to breakfast with him he was living
+in Harley Street, in the house in which Sir Charles Lyell died. As Mr.
+Gladstone entered the room, he apologised for not greeting me earlier,
+as his servant had indistinctly given him my name. He asked me to sit
+next to him at breakfast. There were seven or eight guests. The only one
+I knew was Mr. Walter. H. James, M.P., since Lord Northbourne--probably
+present from consideration for me. One was the editor of the _Jewish
+World_ a journal opposed to Mr. Gladstone's anti-Turkish policy. Others
+were military officers and travellers of contemporary renown. It was
+a breakfast to remember--Mr. Gladstone displayed such a bright,
+unembarrassed vivacity. He told amusing anecdotes of the experiences of
+the wife of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, whose charm he said he could
+only describe by the use of the English rural term "buxom." On making a
+time-bargain with a cabman, he observed to her ladyship that "he wished
+the engagement was for life." Mr. Gladstone thought no English cabman
+would have said that. Another pleasantry was of one of Lord Lyttelton's
+sons, who was very tall and lank. He being in Birmingham and wishful to
+know the distance to a place he sought, asked a boy in the street who
+was passing, "how far it was." "Oh, not far," was the assuring but
+indefinite answer. "But can you not give me some better idea of the
+distance?" Mr. Lyttelton inquired. "Well, sir," said the lad, looking up
+at the obelisk-like interrogator before him, "if you was to fall down,
+you would be half way there."
+
+These incidents were not new to me, but I was glad to hear what was
+probably the origin of them. From Mr. Gladstone's lips they had a sort
+of historic reality which was interesting to me.
+
+Afterwards he spoke of the singular beauty of the "Dream of Gerontius"
+by Cardinal Newman, and turning to me asked if I knew of it, as though
+he thought it unlikely my reading lay in that direction. He was very
+much surprised when I said I had read it with great admiration. He said
+it was strange, as he had mentioned the poem at three or four breakfast
+tables, without finding any one who knew it.
+
+As I left, Mr. Gladstone accompanied me downstairs. On the way I
+took occasion to thank him for a paper that had appeared in the
+_Contemporary_ containing definitions of heretical forms of thought, so
+fair and accurate and actual, that Shakespeare or Bunyan, who had the
+power of possessing himself of the minds of those whose thoughts he
+expressed, might have produced. There had been nothing to compare with
+it in my time. Theological writers described heterodox tenets from their
+inferences of what they must be--never inquiring what they actually
+stood for in the minds of those who held them--whereas he had written
+with unimputative knowledge. Stopping on the first platform of the
+stairway we reached, he paused, and (holding the lapel of his coat with
+his hand, as I had seen him do in the House of Commons) he said he
+was glad I was able to think so, "for that is the quality in which you
+yourself excel." This amazed me, as I never imagined that he had ever
+taken notice of speeches or writings of mine, or formed any opinion upon
+them. Nor was he the man to say what I cite from mere courtesy.
+
+The second time I breakfasted in Harley Street was in the days of the
+Eastern question. Mr. John Morley was one of the party. Mr. Gladstone
+had again the same disengaged manner. Before his guests broke up he
+entered the room, bearing on his arm a pile of letters and telegrams,
+and apologised for leaving us as he had to attend to them. That morning
+Mr. Bright came in, and seeing me, said, "Poor Acland is dead. Of course
+there was nothing in the house, and a few of us had to subscribe to bury
+him." James Acland was the rider on a white horse who preceded Cobden
+and Bright the day before their arrival to address the farmers on the
+anti-Corn Law tour in the counties. Mr. Gladstone's grand-daughter was
+to have arrived at Harley Street that morning, but her nurse missed the
+train. When she appeared, Bright, who had suggested dolorous adventures
+to account for her non-appearance, proposed, when the child was
+announced to be upstairs, that a charge of sixpence should be made for
+each person going to see her.
+
+That morning one of the guests, who was an actor, maintained that it was
+not necessary that an actor should feel his part. Mr. Gladstone, to whom
+conviction was his inspiration--who never spoke without believing what
+he said--dissented from the actor's theory, as I had done.
+
+Towards the end of his life, I saw Mr. Gladstone twice at the Lion
+Mansion in Brighton. On one occasion he said, after speaking of Cardinal
+Newman and his brother Francis, "I remember Dr. Martineau telling me
+that there was a third brother, a man also of remarkable power, but he
+was touched somewhere here," putting his finger to his forehead. "Do you
+know whether it was so? It is so long since Dr. Martineau named it to
+me, and my impression may be wrong." I answered, "It was true. At one
+time I had correspondence with Charles Newman. He would say at times,
+'My mind is going from me for a time. Do not expect to hear from me
+until my mind returns.' In power of reasoning, he was, when he did
+reason, distinguished for boldness and vigour." Mr. Gladstone said,
+"When you write again to his brother Francis, convey to him for me the
+assurance of my esteem. I am glad you believe that the cessation in his
+correspondence was not occasioned by anything on my part or any change
+of feeling on his. I must have been mistaken if I ever described Mr.
+Francis Newman as 'a man of considerable talent.' He was much more than
+that. His powers of mind may be said to amount to genius."
+
+Mr. Gladstone asked what I would advise as a rule of policy as to the
+Anarchists who threw the bombs in the French Chambers. I answered,
+"There were serious men who came to have Anarchical views from despair
+of the improvement of society. There were also foolish Anarchists who
+think they can put the world to rights, had they a clear field before
+them. There are also a class who are quite persuaded that by killing
+people who have nothing to do with the evils they complain of, they will
+intimidate those who have. They take destruction to be a mode of
+progress. These persons are as mad as they are made, and you cannot
+legislate against insanity."
+
+I mentioned the case of a Nonconformist minister, who was so incensed by
+the injustice done to Mr. Bradlaugh that he took a revolver, loaded, to
+Palace Yard, intending to shoot the policemen who maltreated him. But
+the member for Northampton was altogether against such proceedings. The
+determined rectifier of wrong in question had a project of throwing
+a bomb from the gallery on to the floor of the House. I had great
+difficulty in dissuading him from this frightful act. He was no coward,
+and was quite prepared to sacrifice his own life. To those ebullitions
+of vengeance society in every age has been subject, and its best
+protection lies in intrepid disdain and cool precaution. The affair of
+Phoenix Park showed that the English nation did not go mad in the face
+of desperate outrage. However, Mr. Gladstone himself gave the best
+answer to his inquiry. He said, "The Spanish Government had solicited
+him to join in a federation against Anarchists. But how could we do
+that? We cannot tell what other Governments may do, and we should be
+held responsible for their acts which we might deplore."
+
+He added, "It fills me with surprise, not to say disgust, to see it said
+at times in Liberal papers that the Tories of to-day are superior
+to their class formerly. Sir Robert Peel was a man of high honour,
+patriotism, and self-respect He would never have joined in nor
+countenanced the treatment to which Mr. Bradlaugh was subjected. I never
+knew the Tories do a meaner thing. Nothing could have induced Sir Robert
+Peel to consent to that."
+
+On one occasion, after reference to out-of-the-way persons of whom I
+happened to have some knowledge, Mr. Gladstone said, "I have known many
+remarkable men. My position has brought me in contact with numbers of
+persons." Indeed, it seemed when talking to him that you were talking
+to mankind, so diversified and plentiful were the persons living in his
+memory, and who, as it were, stepped out in his conversation before you.
+The individuality, the environment of persons, all came into light.
+His conversation was like an oration in miniature. Its exactness, its
+modulation, its force of expression, its foreseeingness of all the
+issues of ideas, came at will. I never listened to conversation so easy,
+so natural, so precise, so full of colour and truth, spoken with such
+spontaneity and force.
+
+Mr. Morley, in his "Life of Gladstone," cites a letter he sent to me
+in 1875: "Differing from you, I do not believe that secular motives are
+adequate either to propel or restrain the children of our race, but I
+earnestly desire to hear the other side, and I appreciate the advantage
+of having it stated by sincere and high-minded men." This shows his
+brave open-mindedness.
+
+A few years later it came into my mind that my expressions of respect
+for persons whose Christian belief arose from honest conviction, and was
+associated with efforts for the improvement of the material condition of
+the people, might lead him to suppose that I myself inclined to belief
+in Christian tenets of faith. I therefore sent him my new book on
+"The Origin and Nature of Secularism: Showing that where Free Thought
+commonly ends Secularism begins"--saying that as I had the honour of his
+correspondence, I ought not to leave him unaware of the nature of my own
+opinions. He answered that he thought my motive a right one in sending
+the book to him, and that he had read a considerable part with general
+concurrence, though, in other parts, the views expressed were painful to
+him. But this made no difference in his friendship, which continued to
+the end of his days.
+
+An unknown aphorist of 1750, whom Mr. Bertram Dobell quotes, exclaims:
+"Freethinker! What a term of honour; or, if you will, dishonour; but
+where is he who can claim it?" Mr. Gladstone might claim it beyond any
+other eminent Christian I have known. It was he who, at the opening of
+the Liverpool College some years ago, warned the clergy that "they could
+no longer defend their tenets by railing or reticence"--a shaft that
+went through the soul of that policy of silence and defamation pursued
+by them for half a century. Mr. Gladstone was the first to see it must
+be abandoned.
+
+It is Diderot who relates that one who was searching for a path through
+a dark forest by the light of a taper, met a man who said to him,
+"Friend, if thou wouldst find thy way here, blow out thy light." The
+taper was Reason, and the man who said blow it out was a priest Mr.
+Gladstone would have said, "Take care of that taper, friend; and if you
+can convert it into a torch do so, for you will need it to see your way
+through the darkness of human life."
+
+At our last interview he said, "You and I are growing old. The day is
+nearing when we shall enter----" Here he paused, as though he was going
+to say another life, but not wishing to say what I might not concur in,
+in his sense, he--before his pause was well noticeable--added, "enter
+a changed state." What my views were he knew, as I had told him in a
+letter: "I hope there is a future life, and, if so, my not being sure of
+it will not prevent it, and I know of no better way of deserving it than
+by conscious service of humanity. The universe never filled me with
+such wonder and awe as when I knew I could not account for it. I admit
+ignorance is a privation. But to submit not to know, where knowledge
+is withheld, seems but one of the sacrifices that reverence for truth
+imposes on us."
+
+I had reason to acknowledge his noble personal courtesy, notwithstanding
+convictions of mine he must think seriously erroneous, upon which, as I
+told him, "I did not keep silence."
+
+He had the fine spirit of the Abbe Lamennais, who, writing of a book of
+mark depicting the "passive" Christian, said: "The active Christian who
+is ceaselessly fighting the enemies of humanity, without omitting
+to pardon and love them--of this type of Christian I find no trace
+whatever." Mr. Gladstone was of that type. It was his distinction that
+he applied this affectionate tolerance not only to the "enemies of
+humanity," but to the dissentients from the faith he loved so well.
+
+At our last meeting in Brighton he asked my address, and said he would
+call upon me. He wished me to know Lord Acton, whom he would ask to see
+me. An official engagement compelled Lord Acton to defer his visit, of
+which Mr. Gladstone sent me notice. It was a great loss not to converse
+with one who knew so much as Lord Acton did.
+
+Mr. Gladstone knew early what many do not know yet, that courtesy and
+even honour to adversaries do not imply coincidence in opinion. As I was
+for the right of free thought, I regarded all manifestations of it with
+interest, whether coinciding with or opposing views I hold. Shortly
+before his death I wrote to him, when Miss Helen Gladstone sent me word,
+"To-day I read to my father your letter, by which he was much touched
+and pleased, and he desired me to send you his best thanks." I shall
+always be proud to think that any words of mine gave even momentary
+pleasure to one who has given delight to millions, and will be an
+inspiration to millions more.
+
+In former times, when an eminent woman contributed to the distinction
+of her consort, he alone received the applause. In these more
+discriminating days, when the noble companionship of a wife has made her
+husband's eminence possible, honour is due to her also. Therefore, on
+drawing the resolution of condolence to Mrs. Gladstone, adopted at the
+Peterborough Co-operative Congress, we made the acknowledgment how much
+was due to the wife as well as the husband. I believe no resolution sent
+to her, but ours, did this. Sympathy is not enough where honour is due.
+In the splendid winter of Mr. Gladstone's days there was no ice in his
+heart Like the light that ever glowed in the temple of Montezuma the
+generous fire of his enthusiasm never went out. The nation mourned his
+loss with a pomp of sorrow more deep and universal than ever exalted the
+memory of a king.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. HERBERT SPENCER, THE THINKER
+
+A star of the first magnitude went out of the firmament of original
+thought by the death of Herbert Spencer. His was the most distinctive
+personality that remained with us after the death of Mr. Gladstone.
+Spencer was as great in the kingdom of science as Mr. Gladstone was in
+that of politics and ecclesiasticism. Men have to go back to Aristotle
+to find Spencer's compeer in range of thought, and to Gibbon for a
+parallel to his protracted persistence in accomplishing his great design
+of creating a philosophy of evolution. Mr. Spencer's distinction was
+that he laid down new landmarks of evolutionary guidance in all the
+dominions of human knowledge. Gibbon lived to relinquish his pen in
+triumph at the end of years of devotion to his "History of the Decline
+and Fall of the Roman Empire "--Mr. Spencer planned the history of the
+rise and growth of a mightier, a more magnificent, and more beneficent
+Empire--that of Universal Law--and for forty years he pursued his mighty
+story in every vicissitude of strength with unfaltering purpose, and
+lived to complete it amid the applause of the world and the gratitude
+of all who have the grand passion to understand Nature, and advance the
+lofty destiny of humanity.
+
+Herbert Spencer was born April 27, 1820, in the town of Derby, and died
+in his eighty-fourth year, December 8, 1903, at 5, Percival Terrace,
+Brighton, next door to his friend, Sir James Knowles, the editor of the
+_Nineteenth Century_. At the time of his birth, Derby was emerging from
+the sleepy, dreamy, stagnant, obfuscated condition in which it had lain
+since the days of the Romans.
+
+It is difficult to write of Spencer without wondering how a thinker
+of his quality should have been born in Derby--a town which had a
+determined objection to individuality in ideas. It has a Charter--its
+first act of enterprise in a thousand years--obtained by the
+solicitations of the inhabitants from Richard I., which gave them the
+power of expelling every Jew who resided in the town, or ever after
+should approach it. Centuries later, in the reigns of Queen Anne
+and George I., not a Roman Catholic, an Independent, a Baptist, an
+Israelite, nor even an un-molesting Quaker could be found in Derby.
+
+There still remains one lineal descendant of the stagnant race which
+procured the Charter of Darkness from Richard I.--Mr. Alderman W.
+Winter, who opposed in the Town Council a resolution of honour in memory
+of Spencer, who had given Derby its great distinction, because his views
+contradicted the antediluvian Scriptural account of the Creation, when
+there was no man present to observe what took place, and no man of
+science existed capable of verifying the Mosaic tradition. The only
+recorded instance of independency of opinion was that of a humble Derby
+girl, who was born blind, yet could see, like others, into the nature
+of things. She doubted the Real Presence. What could it matter what the
+poor, helpless thing thought of that? But the town burned her alive. The
+brave, unchanging girl, whose convictions were torment-proof, was only
+twenty-two years old.
+
+The only Derby man of free thought who preceded Herbert Spencer was
+William Hutton, a silk weaver, who became the historian of Derby and
+Birmingham. In sagacity, boldness and veracity he excelled. The wisdom
+of his opinions was a century in advance of his time (1770-1830).
+
+There were no photographs in the time of Mr. Spencer's parents, and
+their lineaments are little known. Mr. Spencer's uncle I knew, the Rev.
+Thomas Spencer, a clergyman of middle stature, slender, with a paternal
+Evangelical expression. But his sympathies were with Social Reform, in
+which field he was an insurgent worker for projects then unregarded or
+derided.
+
+When I first knew Mr. Herbert Spencer, he was one of the writers on
+the _Leader_ newspaper. We dined at times at the Whittington Club, then
+recently founded by Douglas Jerrold. At this period Mr. Spencer had a
+half-rustic look. He was ruddy, and gave the impression of being a
+young country gentleman of the sporting farmer type, looking as unlike
+a philosopher as Thomas Henry Buckle looked like a historian, as he
+appeared to me on my first interview with him. Mr. Spencer at that time
+would take part in discussions in a determined tone, and was persistent
+in definite statement In that he resembled William Chambers, with whom
+I was present at a deputation to Lord Derby on the question of the Paper
+Duty. Lord Derby could not bow him out, nor bow him into silence, until
+he had stated his case.
+
+In those days Mr. Spencer spoke with misgivings of his health. Mr.
+Edward Pigott, chief proprietor of the _Leader_ (afterwards Public
+Examiner of Plays) asked me to try to disabuse Mr. Spencer of his
+apprehensiveness, which was constitutional and never left his mind all
+his life, and I learned never to greet him in terms which implied that
+he was, or could be well. Coleridge complained of ailments of which no
+physical sign was apparent, and he was thought, like Mr. Spencer, to be
+an imaginary invalid. But after his death Coleridge was found to have
+a real cause of suffering, and the wonder was that he did not complain
+more.
+
+There must be a distinct susceptibility of the nerves--which Sir Michael
+Foster could explain--peculiar to some persons. I have had two or three
+friends of some literary distinction, whom I made it a rule never to
+accost, or even to know when I met them, until they had recovered from
+the inevitable shock of meeting some unexpected person, when they would
+spontaneously become genial.
+
+Mr. Spencer's high spirit was shown in this. Though he often had to
+abandon his thinking, he resumed it on his recovery. The continuity of
+his thought never ceased. One form of trouble was recurring depression,
+so difficult to sustain, which James Thompson, who oft experienced it,
+described--when a man has to endure--
+
+     "The same old solid hills and leas;
+     The same old stupid, patient trees;
+     The same old ocean, blue and green;
+     The same sky, cloudy or serene;
+     The old two dozen hours to run
+     Between the settings of the sun."
+
+Mr. Spencer was first known to London thinkers by being found the
+associate of economists like Bagot; philosophers with a turn for
+enterprise in the kingdom of speculation--as George Henry Lewes, Darwin,
+Huxley, Tyndall; and of great novelists like George Eliot. In those
+days the house of John Chapman, the publisher, was the meeting ground
+of French, Italian, German and other Continental thinkers. There, also,
+congregated illustrious Americans like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other
+unlicensed explorers in the new world of thought. There Mr. Spencer
+became known to men of mark in America, who made his fame before his
+countrymen recognised him. If it was England who "raised" Mr. Spencer,
+it was America that discovered him. Mr. George lies, a distinguished
+American friend of Mr. Spencer, sends me information of the validity
+of American admiration of him, on the authority of the _Daily Witness_:
+"Mr. Spencer's income is mainly drawn from the sale of his books in
+America, his copyrights there having yielded him 4,730 dollars in the
+last six months. A firm of publishers have paid in the last six months
+royalties amounting nearly to ten thousand dollars to Mr. Herbert
+Spencer and the heirs or executors of Darwin, Huxley and Tyndall. The
+sales of Spencer's and Darwin's books lead those of Huxley and Tyndall."
+
+During the earlier publication of his famous volumes, his expenditure
+in printing and in employing assistants in gathering facts for his
+arguments, exhausted all his means. Lord Stanley, of that day, was
+understood to have offered him an appointment, which included leisure
+for his investigations. But he declined the thoughtful offer, deeming
+the office to be of the nature of a sinecure. Wordsworth accepted such
+an appointment, and repaid the State in song, as Spencer would have
+repaid it in philosophy.
+
+I had the honour to be Mr. Spencer's outdoor friend. He asked me to make
+known the publication of his work to persons whom I knew to be friendly
+to enterprise in thought. For years I assiduously sought to be of
+service in this way.
+
+One day in 1885, being the guest, in Preston, of the Rev. William
+Sharman, he showed me a passage in one of Mr. Spencer's volumes,
+published in 1874, which I had not seen, and which surprised me much,
+in which it appeared Secularists were below Christians in their sense of
+fiduciary integrity. Mr. Sharman said, "Defective as we are supposed to
+be, you will see that Secularists are one degree lower in morality than
+the clergy." Mr. Spencer had given instances which, in his opinion,
+"showed that the cultivation of the intellect does not advance
+morality." If that were so, it would follow that it was better to remain
+ignorant--if ignorance better develops the ethical sense. The instance
+Mr. Spencer gives occurs in the "Study of Sociology" (pp. 418-19),
+"Written to show how little operative on conduct is mere teaching. Let
+me give, says Mr. Spencer, a striking fact falling under my observation:
+
+"Some twelve years ago was commenced a serial publication, limited in
+its circulation to the well educated. It was issued to subscribers,
+from each of whom was due a small sum for every four numbers. The
+notification periodically made of another subscription due received from
+some prompt attention, from others an attention less tardy than before,
+and from others no attention at all. After a lapse of ten years, a
+digest was made of the original list, when it was found that those who
+finally declined paying for what they had year after year received,
+constituted, among others, the following percentages:
+
+Christian defaulters............. 31 per cent.
+
+Secularist defaulters............ 32 per cent."
+
+I wrote to Mr. Spencer as follows:
+
+"Eastern Lodge, Brighton,
+
+"_December_ 1, 1885.
+
+"My dear Mr. Spencer,--I am like the sailor who knocked down the Jew,
+and when he was remonstrated with said, 'He did it because he had
+crucified his Lord and Saviour.' When told that that occurred 2,000
+years ago he answered, 'But I only heard of it last night.'
+
+"It was but a few days ago that your notice of Secularist fraudulency,
+made in 1874, became known to me.
+
+"From so dispassionate and analytic an authority as yourself, your
+reflection on the ethical insensibility of Secularists justifies me in
+asking your attention to certain facts. By what test did you know that
+32 per cent of defaulters were Secularists? The names I gave you were of
+persons likely to take in your work if prospectuses were sent to them.
+But many of them were not Secularists. Some of them were ministers of
+religion, others Churchmen, but having individually a taste for
+philosophical inquiry. You do not say that these persons sent in their
+names as subscribers. Yet unless they did, they cannot be justly
+described 'as regardless of an equitable claim.' Had you informed me of
+any whose names I gave you, who had not paid for the work, after
+undertaking to do so, I could have procured you the payment, for all
+whose names I gave I believe to be men of good faith.--With real regard,
+
+"George Jacob Holyoake."
+
+
+Mr. Spencer sent me the following reply:
+
+"38, Queen's Gardens, Bayswater, London, W.,
+
+"_November_ 16, 1885.
+
+"Dear Mr. Holyoake,--You ask how I happen to know of certain defaulters
+that they were Secularists. I know them as such simply because their
+names came to me through you; for, as you may remember, you obtained for
+me, when the prospectus of the 'System of Philosophy' was issued, sundry
+subscribers.
+
+"But for my own part, I would rather you did not refer to the matter.
+At any rate, if you do, do not do so by name. You will observe, if you
+turn to the 'Study of Sociology,' where the matter is referred to, that
+I have spoken of the thing impersonally, and not in reference to myself.
+Though those who knew something of the matter might suspect it referred
+to my own case, yet there is no proof that it did so; and I should be
+sorry to see myself identified by name with the matter.--Truly yours,
+
+"Herbert Spencer."
+
+
+But Mr. Spencer had identified Secularists as lacking ethical
+scrupulousness, and as I was the reputed founder of that form of
+Freethought known as Secularism, some notice became incumbent on my
+part. The brief article on "Intellectual Morality" in the _Present Day_,
+which I was editing in 1885, was my answer--the same as appears in my
+letter to Mr. Spencer, above quoted.
+
+In 1879 the great recluse meditated going to America. As I was about to
+do the same myself, I volunteered to take a berth in the same vessel
+if I could be of any service to him on the voyage. He thought,
+however, that our sailing in the same ship might cause the constructive
+interviewers out there to confuse together the opinions we represented.
+Yet my friends would not know his, nor would his friends know mine.
+But I respected his scruples, lest his views should become colourably
+identified with my own. I had myself a preference for keeping distinct
+things separate, and I sailed in another ship and never called at his
+hotel but once, when he was residing at the Falls of Niagara, which I
+thought was a curious spot (the noisiest in Canada) to choose for one
+whose need was quietude. He would take an entire flat in a hotel that he
+might be undisturbed at night. In Montreal, Mr. George Iles gave me the
+same splendid, spacious, secluded bedroom which he had assigned to Mr.
+Spencer when he was his host there. Professor von Denslow, who told me
+that he was the "champion non-sleeper of the United States," asked me to
+give a communication from him to Mr. Spencer. That was the reason of
+my single visit to him in Canada. At the farewell banquet given to Mr.
+Spencer in New York, famous speakers took part; but Henry Ward Beecher,
+in a speech shorter than any, excelled them all.
+
+After his return to England, I had several communications from him
+on the subject of Co-operation. Like Mr. Gladstone, he usually made
+searching inquiries into the details of every question on which he
+wrote. One of his letters was as follows:--
+
+"2, Lewes Crescent,
+
+"Brighton,
+
+"_January_ 6, 1897.
+
+"Dear Mr. Holyoake,--I should have called upon you before now had I not
+been so unwell. I have been kept indoors now for about three weeks. I
+write partly to say this and partly to enclose you something of interest
+as bearing upon my suggestion concerning piecework in co-operative
+combinations. The experience described by Miss Davenport-Hill bears
+indirectly, if not directly, upon them, showing as it does the
+harmonising effect of piecework.--Truly yours,
+
+"Herbert Spencer."
+
+
+Busied as he was with the recondite application of great principles,
+he had practical discernment of the possibilities of Co-operation,
+unthought of by those of us engaged in promoting co-partnership in the
+workshop. Trades unions were mostly against piecework as giving more
+active workers an advantage over the others. Mr. Spencer pointed out
+that in a co-partnership workshop the fruitfulness of piece work was an
+advantage to all. The piece-workers increase the output and profits of
+the society. The profits, being equally divided upon wages, the least
+bright and active members receive benefit from the piece-workers'
+industry.
+
+Occasionally Mr. Spencer would come to my door and invite me to drive
+with him. Another time when he had visitors--Mrs. Sidney Webb and Prof.
+Masson, whom I wished to meet again--he would, if in the winter season,
+send me a card from "2, Lewes Crescent, Jan. 24, 1897.--I _will_ send
+the carriage for you to-morrow (Sunday) at 12.40. With the hood up
+and the leather curtain down you will be quite warm.--H.S." He would
+occasionally send me grouse or pheasant for luncheon. Very pleasant were
+the amenities of philosophy.
+
+The first work of Mr. Spencer's which attracted public attention was
+"Social Statics." Like Mr. Lewes' "Biography of Philosophy," it had a
+pristine charm which fascinated young thinkers. Both authors restated
+their works, but left behind their charm. Mr. Gladstone's first address
+to the electors of Newark contains the germs of his whole and entire
+career. "Social Statics" contains the element of that philosophy which
+gave Spencer the first place among thinkers of all times. Bishop Colenso
+found the book in the library of the builder of his Mission Houses in
+South Africa. Mr. Ryder, of Bradford, Yorkshire, procured it through me
+and took it out with him. It was a book of inspiration to him.
+
+Ten years before "Social Statics" appeared I was concerned with others
+in publishing, in the "Oracle of Reason," a theory of Regular Gradation.
+Our motto, from Boitard, was an explicit statement of Evolution. Five
+out of seven of us were soon in prison, which shows that we did not
+succeed in making Evolution attractive. Intellectual photography was
+then in an infantine state. Our negatives lacked definition and our best
+impressions were indistinct. It was not until Darwin and Spencer
+arose that the art of developing the Evolutionary plates came to be
+understood.
+
+Before the days of Spencer the world of scientific thought was mostly
+without form and void. The orthodox voyagers who set out to sea steered
+by a compass which always veered to a Jewish pole, and none who sailed
+with them knew where they were. Rival theologians constructed dogmatic
+charts, increasing the confusion and peril. Guided by the pole star
+of Evolution, Spencer sailed out alone on the ocean of Speculation
+and discovered a new empire of Law--founded without blood, or the
+suppression of liberty, or the waste of wealth--where any man may dwell
+without fear or shame.
+
+The fascination of Mr. Spencer's pages to the pulpit-wearied inquirer
+was, that they took him straight to Nature. Mr. Spencer seemed to
+write with a magnifying pen which revealed objects unnoticed by other
+observers. His vision, like a telescope, descried sails at sea invisible
+to those on shore. His pages, if not poems, gleamed with the poetry of
+facts. His facts were the handmaids always at hand which explained his
+principle. His repetitions do not tire, but are fresh assurances to the
+reader that he is following a continuous argument. A pedestrian passing
+down a long street is glad to meet the recurrence of its name, that he
+may know he is still upon the same road. In Spencer's reasonings there
+are no byways left open, down which the sojourner may wander and lose
+himself. When cross-roads come in sight, fingerposts are set up telling
+him where they lead to, and directing him which to take. Mr. Spencer
+pursues a new thought, never loses sight of it, and takes care the
+reader does not. No statement goes before without the proof following
+closely after.
+
+When the reception was given to me at South Place Institute, London, in
+April, 1903, on my eighty-sixth birthday, he had been confined to his
+house from the previous August, yet he took trouble to write some words
+of personal regard to myself beyond all my expectation. To the end of
+his days--save when the weather was inclement--I used to walk up the
+hill to his door to inquire as to his health, and when I could not do
+so, Mr. Troughton would write me word. Mr. Spencer's last letter to
+me was in answer to one I had sent him on his birthday. It was so
+characteristic as to deserve quoting:
+
+"Thanks for your congratulations; but I should have liked better your
+condolences on my longevity."
+
+He wanted no twilight in his life. Like the sun in America, his wish was
+to disappear at once below the horizon--having amply given his share of
+light in his day.
+
+Like Huxley, Mr. Spencer would not have slept well in Westminster Abbey.
+He needed no consolation in death; and if he had, there was no one who
+knew enough to give it to him. His conscience was his consolation. His
+one choice was that his friend Mr. John Morley--than whom none were
+fitter--should speak at his death the last words over him. Mr. Morley
+being in Sicily, this could not be. The next in friendship and power of
+estimate--the Right Hon. Leonard Courtney--spoke in his stead, at the
+Hampstead Crematorium. Mr. Spencer had a radium mind which gave forth,
+of its own spontaneity, light and heat. None who have died could more
+appropriately repeat the proud lines of Sir Edward Dyer:--
+
+     "My mind to me a kingdom is;
+     Such perfect joy therein I find
+     As far exceeds all earthly bliss
+     That God or Nature hath assign'd."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. SINGULAR CAREER OF MR. DISRAELI
+
+I prefer the picturesque name of Disraeli which he contrived out of the
+tribal designation of "D'Israeli." Had it been possible he would have
+transmuted Benjamin into a Gentile name. Disraeli is far preferable to
+the sickly title of Beaconsfield, by which association he sought to be
+taken as the Burke of the Tories, for which his genius was too thin.
+
+Disraeli is a fossilised bygone to this generation; though in the
+political arena he was the most glittering performer of his day. Men
+admired him as the Blondin of Parliament, who could keep his feet on
+a tight-rope at any elevation. Others looked upon him as a music-hall
+Sandow who could snap into two a thicker bar of bovine ignorance than
+any other athlete of the "country party." He was capable of serving
+any party, but preferred the party who could best serve him. He was an
+example how a man, conscious of power and unhampered by scruples, could
+advance himself by strenuous devices of making himself necessary to
+those he served.
+
+The showy waistcoat and dazzling jewellery in which he first presented
+himself to the House of Commons, betrayed the primitive taste of a
+Jew of the Minories, and foreshadowed that trinket statesmanship which
+captivated his party, who thought sober, honest principles dull and
+unentertaining.
+
+Germany and England contemporaneously produced the two greatest
+adventurers of the century--Ferdinand Lassalle and Benjamin Disraeli.
+Both were Jews. Both had dark locks and faith in jewellery. Both were
+Sybarites in their pleasures; and personal ambition was the master
+passion of each. Both were consummate speakers. Both sought distinction
+in literature as a prelude to influence. Both professed devotion to
+the interests of the people by promulgating doctrines which would
+consolidate the power of the governing classes. Lassalle counselled war
+against Liberalism, Disraeli against the Whigs. Lassalle adjusted
+his views to Bismarck, as Disraeli did to Lord Derby. Both owed their
+fortunes to rich ladies of maturity. Both challenged adversaries to a
+duel, but Disraeli had the prudence to challenge Daniel O'Connell, who,
+he knew, was under a vow not to fight one, while Lassalle challenged
+Count Racowitza, and was killed.
+
+It was a triumph without parallel to bring to pass that the proud
+aristocracy of England should accept a Jew for its master. Not
+approaching erect, like a human thing, Disraeli stealthily crept,
+lizard-like, through the crevices of Parliament, to the front of the
+nation, and with the sting that nature had given him he kept his enemies
+at bay. No estimate of him can explain him, which does not take into
+account his race. An alien in the nation, he believed himself to belong
+to the sole race that God has recognised. The Jew has an industrial
+daintiness which is an affront to mankind. He, as a rule, stands
+by while the Gentile puts his hand to labour. Isolated by Christian
+ostracism, the Jew tills no ground; he follows no handicraft--a Spinoza
+here and there excepted. The Jew, as a rule, lives by wit and thrift.
+He is of every nation, but of no nationality, save his own. He takes no
+perilous initiation; he leads no forlorn hope; he neither conspires for
+freedom, nor fights for it. He profits by it, and acquiesces in it; but
+generally gives you the impression that he will aid either despotism
+or liberty, as a matter of business--as many do who are not Jews. There
+are, nevertheless, men of noble qualities among them, and as a class
+they are as good or better than Christians would be had they been
+treated for nineteen centuries as badly as Jews have been.
+
+Derision and persecution inspire a strong spirit with retaliation, and
+absolve him from scrupulous methods of compassing it. Two things the Jew
+pursues with an unappeasable passion--distinction and authority among
+believers, before whom his race has been compelled to cringe. An ancient
+people which subsists by subtlety and courage, has the heroic sense
+of high tradition, still looks forward to efface, not the indignity of
+days, but of centuries--which imparts to the Jew a lofty implacableness
+of aim, which never pauses in its purpose. How else came Mr. Disraeli
+by that form of assegai sentences, of which one thrust needed no
+repetition, and by that art which enabled him to climb on phrases to
+power?
+
+A critic, who had taken pains to inform himself, brought charges against
+D'Israeli the Elder to the effect that he had taken passages of mark
+from the books of Continental sceptics and had incorporated them as his
+own. At the same time he denounced the authors, so as to disincline the
+reader to look into their pages for the D'Israelian plagiaries. In the
+novels of D'Israeli the Younger I have come upon passages which I
+have met with elsewhere in another form. As the reader knows, Disraeli
+delivered in Parliament, as his own, a fine passage from Thiers. So
+that when Daniel O'Connell described Disraeli as "the heir-at-law of the
+impenitent thief who died on the cross," he was nearer the truth than he
+knew, for there was petty larceny in the Disraelian family.
+
+When Sir James Stansfeld entered Parliament he had that moral distrust
+of Disraeli, which Lord Salisbury, in his Cranborne days, published
+a _Review_ to warn his party against. Sir James (then Mr. Stansfeld)
+expressed a similar sentiment of distrust. Disraeli said to a friend in
+the lobby immediately after, "I will do for that educated mechanic" The
+vitriolic spite in the phrase was worthy of Vivian Grey. He kept his
+word, and caused Mr. Stansfeld's retirement from the Ministry. It was
+the nature of Disraeli to destroy any one who withstood him. At the same
+time he could be courteous and even kind to literary Chartists who, like
+Thomas Cooper and Ernest Jones, helped to frustrate the Whigs at the
+poll, which served the purpose of Tory ascendency, which was Disraeli's
+chance.
+
+In Easter, 1872, I was in Manchester when Disraeli had the greatest
+pantomime day of his life--when he played the Oriental Potentate in the
+Pomona Gardens. All the real and imaginary Tory societies that could be
+got together from surrounding counties were paraded in procession before
+him. To each he made audacious little speeches, which astonished them
+and, when made known, caused jubilancy in the city.
+
+The deputation from Chorley reminded him of Mr. Charley, member for
+Salford. He exclaimed, "Chorley and Charley are good names!" When a Tory
+sick and burial society came up he said "he hoped they were doing a good
+business, and that their future would be prosperous!" When the night
+came for his speech, the Free Trade Hall was crowded. It was said that
+2,000 persons paid a guinea each for their seats.
+
+Mr. Callander, his host, had taken, at Mr. Disraeli's request, some
+brandy to the meeting. It was he who poured some into a glass of water.
+Mr. Disraeli, on tasting it, turned to him and said in an undertone,
+"There's nothing in it." This wounded the pride of his host, who took it
+as an imputation of stinginess on his part, and he filled the next glass
+plentifully. This was the beginning of the orator's trouble. For the
+first fifteen minutes he spoke in his customary resonant voice. Then
+husky, sibilant and explosive sentences were unmistakable. Apprehensive
+reporters, sitting below him, moved aside lest the orator should fall
+upon them. Suspicious gestures set in. An umbrella was laid near the
+edge of the platform, that the speaker might keep within the umbrella
+range. For this there was a good reason, as the speaker's habit of
+raising himself on his toes endangered his balance. All the meeting
+understood the case. The orator soon lost all sense of time. He, who
+knew so well how to suit performance to occasion, was incapable of
+stopping himself. The audience had come from distant parts. At nine
+o'clock they could hear the railway bell, calling some to the trains.
+Ten o'clock came, when a larger portion of the audience was again
+perturbed by railway warnings. Disraeli was still speaking. Eleven
+o'clock came; the audience had further decreased then, but Disraeli was
+still declaiming hoarse sentences. It was a quarter-past eleven before
+his peroration came to an end; and many, who wished to have their
+guinea's worth of Parliamentary oratory, had to sleep in Manchester that
+night Everybody knew the speaker would have ceased two hours earlier if
+he could. His host in the chair was much disquieted. His house was some
+distance from the city, and he had invited a large party of gentlemen to
+meet the great Conservative leader at supper, which had long been
+ready. Besides, he was afraid his guest would be unable to appear at it.
+Arriving at the house Disraeli asked his host to give him champagne--"a
+bottle of fizz" was the phrase he used--which he drank with zest, when,
+to the astonishment of his host, he joined the party and was at his
+best. He delighted every one with his sallies and his satire.
+
+The next morning the city Conservatives were unwilling to speak of the
+protracted disappointment of the evening before. The Manchester papers
+gave good reports of the long speech, which contained some passages
+worthy of the speaker at any time--as when he compared the occupants
+of the front bench of the Government in the House of Commons to so many
+extinct volcanoes. As some members of Her Majesty's Government were
+known friends of Mazzini and Garibaldi, the aptitude of the simile lives
+in political memory to this day. When the _Times_ report arrived it
+was found that a considerable portion of the speech was devoted to the
+laudation of certain county families, which were not mentioned in the
+Manchester reports, and it was said that Disraeli had dictated his
+speech to Mr. Delane before he came down. But though he lost his voice
+and his memory, he never lost his wit, for he praised another set of
+families that came into his head.
+
+Only in two instances has Mr. Disraeli been publicly charged with errors
+of vintage. In his time I heard members manifestly inebriated, address
+the House of Commons. On a memorable night Mr. Gladstone said Disraeli
+had access to sources of inspiration not open to Her Majesty's
+Ministers.
+
+In the _Morning Star_ there appeared next day a passage from Disraeli's
+speech, reported in vinous forms of sibilant expression. On that
+occasion Lord John Manners carried to him, from time to time during his
+oration, five glasses of brandy and water. I saw them brought in. There
+was the great table between the two front benches, which Mr. Disraeli
+said was fortunate, as he feared Mr. Gladstone might spring upon him.
+All the while it was not protection Mr. Disraeli wanted from the table,
+but support, for he clutched it as he spoke. Sir John Macdonald, Premier
+of Canada, whom I had the honour to visit at Ottawa, not only resembled
+Disraeli in features, in the curl of his hair, but in his wit. One
+night Sir John made an extraordinary after-dinner speech, which had the
+flavour of a whole vintage in it. When Sir John found he had astonished
+the whole Dominion, he sent for the reporter, who appeared, trembling
+with apprehension. "Young man," said Sir John, "with your talent for
+reporting you have a great future before you. But take my advice--never
+report a speech in future when you are drunk."
+
+Connoisseurs in art who went to the sale of his effects at Disraelis
+Mayfair house were astonished at the Houndsditch quality of what they
+found there. Not a ray of taste was to be seen, not an article worth
+buying. The glamour of the Oriental had lain in phrases, not in art.
+
+It was the Liberals who were the champions of the Jews, and who were the
+cause of their admission to Parliament. Mr. Disraeli must have had some
+generous memory of this. Mr. Bright would cross the floor of the House
+sometimes to confer with Disraeli. There must have been elements in
+his character in which Mr. Bright had confidence. It was believed to
+be owing to his respect for Mr. Blight's judgment that he took no part
+against America, when his party did all they could to destroy the cause
+of the Union in the great Anti-Slavery War. It ought to be remembered to
+Disraeli's credit, that he made what John Stuart Mill called a "splendid
+concession" of household suffrage, although he took it back the next
+night, by the pernicious creation of the "compound householder." Still,
+Liberals owe it to him that household suffrage came to prevail when it
+did.
+
+Disraeli's attacks upon Peel were dictated by the policy of
+self-advancement. He was capable of admiring Peel, but he admired
+himself more. Standing outside English questions and interests, he was
+able to treat them with an airiness which was a political relief. Yet he
+could see that our Colonies might become "millstones round the neck
+of the Empire" if we gave them too much of Downing Street, or maybe of
+Highbury.
+
+To say Disraeli had no conscience would be to say more than any man
+has knowledge enough to say of another; but he certainly never gave the
+public the impression that he had one. He devised the scheme of giving
+the Queen the title of "Empress." Mr. Gladstone opposed it as dangerous
+to the dynasty, lowering its dignity to the level of Continental
+Emperorship, and taking from the Crown the master jewel of law, which
+has been more or less its security and glory for a thousand years.
+
+Disraeli seemed to care for the Queen's favour--nothing for the
+integrity of the Crown. He declared himself a Christian, and said in the
+presence of the Bishop of Oxford, with Voltairean mockery, that he
+was "on the side of the angels," and elsewhere described Judas as
+an accessory to the crucifixion before the act, and to that ignoble
+treachery all Christians were indebted for their salvation--an idea
+which could never have entered a Gentile mind. This was pure Voltairean
+scorn.
+
+In his last illness he was reported to have had three different kinds
+of physicians--allopath, hydropath, homoeopath; and had he chosen the
+spiritual ministration of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi,
+and Mr. Spurgeon, no one would have been surprised at his sardonic
+prudence.
+
+I had admiration, though not respect, for his career. Yet I was for
+justice being done to him. When it was thought the Tories would prevent
+his accession to the Premiership, which was his right by service, I was
+one of those who cheered him in the lobby of the House of Commons, to
+show that adversaries of his politics were against his being defrauded
+of the dignity he had won.
+
+How was it that Disraeli's standing at Court was never affected by what
+would be deemed seditious defamation of the Crown in any other person?
+When I mentioned in America the revolutionary license of his tongue in
+declaring the Queen to be physically and morally incapable of governing,
+the statement was received with incredulity. The reporters who took
+down his Aylesbury speech containing the astounding words hesitated to
+transcribe them, and one asked permission to read the passage to Mr.
+Disraeli, who assented to its correctness, and the words appeared in the
+_Standard_ and _Telegraph_ of September 27, 1871. The _Times_ and _Daily
+News_ omitted the word "morally," deeming it incredible. But it was
+said. His words were: "We cannot conceal from ourselves that Her Majesty
+is physically and morally incapacitated from performing her duties."
+This meant that Her Majesty was imbecile--a brutal thing to suggest,
+considering family traditions.
+
+At a Lord Mayor's banquet Mr. Disraeli gave an insulting and defamatory
+account of the Russian Royal Family and Government, and boasted, like
+an inebriate Jingo, of England's capacity to sustain three campaigns
+against that Power. As the Queen had a daughter-in-law a member of the
+Royal House of Russia, this wanton act of international offensiveness
+must have produced a sensation of shame and pain in the English Royal
+Family. I well remember the consternation and disapproval with which
+both speeches were regarded by the people. Whatever even Republicans may
+think of the theory of the Crown, they are against any personal outrage
+upon it. Yet Mr. Gladstone, who was always forward to sustain, by
+graceful and discerning praise, the interest of the Royal Family, and
+procure them national grants, to which Mr. Disraeli could never have
+reconciled the nation, was simply endured by Her Majesty, while to Mr.
+Disraeli ostentatious preference was shown. It was said in explanation
+that Mr. Gladstone had no "small talk" with which Mr. Disraeli
+entertained his eminent hostess. It was not "small talk," it was Tory
+talk, which the Queen rewarded.
+
+I am of Lord Actons opinion, that Mr. Disraeli was morally
+insupportable, though otherwise astonishing. The pitiless resentment
+of "Vivian Grey" towards whoever stood in his way was the prevailing
+characteristic of the triumphant Jew. Like other men of professional
+ambition, he had the charm of engaging amity to those who were for the
+time being no longer impediment to him. When showing distress at a few
+drops of rain falling, news was brought Her Majesty that Mr. Gladstone
+had returned from a voyage and addressed a crowd on the beach. Disraeli
+exclaimed with pleasant gaiety, "What a wonderful man that Gladstone
+is. Had I returned from a voyage I should be glad to go to bed. Mr.
+Gladstone leaps on shore and makes a speech."
+
+The moral of this singular career worth remembering, is that genius
+and versatility, animated by ambition without scruple, may attain
+distinction without principle. It can win national admiration, but not
+public affection. All it can accomplish is to leave behind a name of
+sinister renown. If we knew all, no doubt Lord Beaconsfield had, apart
+from the exigencies of ambition, personal qualities commanding esteem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. CHARACTERISTICS OF JOSEPH COWEN
+
+I
+
+Political readers will long remember the name of Joseph Cowen, who won
+in a single night the reputation of a national orator. All at once he
+achieved that distinction in an assembly where few attain it. After a
+time he retired to his tent and never more emerged from it. The occasion
+of his first speech in Parliament was the introduction of the Bill for
+converting the Queen into an Empress. Queen was a wholesome monarchical
+name, which implied in England supremacy under the law; while Empress,
+alien to the genius of the political constitution, is a military title
+of sinister reputation, and implies a rank outside and above the law.
+Like Imperialism, it connotes military government, which, in the opinion
+of the free and prudent, is the most odious, dangerous, and costly of
+all governments.
+
+Mr. Cowen entertained a strong repugnance to the word "Empress," which
+might become a prelude to Imperialism--as it has done.
+
+Mr. Cowen's father, who preceded him in the House of Commons, was
+scrupulous in apparel, never affecting fashion, but keeping within
+its pale. His son was not only careless of fashion--he despised it. He
+employed local tailors, from neighbourliness, and was quite content with
+their craftsmanship. He never wore what is called a "top" hat, but a
+felt one, a better shape than what is known now as a "clerical" hat It
+was thought he would abandon it when he entered Parliament, but he
+did not He commonly left it in the cloak-room. He had no wish to
+be singular. His attire was as natural to him as his skin is to an
+Ethiopian. His headgear imperilled his candidature, when that came
+about.
+
+He had been two years in Parliament before he addressed it. When he rose
+many members were standing impatient for division and crying "Divide!
+Divide!!" Mr. Cowen, being a small man, was not at once perceived, but
+his melodious, honest, and eager voice arrested attention, though his
+Northumbrian accent was unfamiliar to the House. It was as difficult to
+see the new orator as to see Curran in an Irish Court, or Thiers in the
+French Chamber. Disraeli glanced at him through his eyeglass, as though
+Mr. Cowen was one of Dean Swift's Lilliputians, and of one near him
+he asked contemptuously, as a Northern burr broke upon his ear, "What
+language is the fellow talking?"
+
+The speech had all the characteristics of an oration, historical,
+compact, and complete--though brief. In it he said three things never
+heard in Parliament before. One was that the "Divine right of kings
+perished on the scaffold with Charles I." Another was that "the
+superstition of royalty had never taken any deep hold of the English
+people." The third was to describe our august ally, the Emperor Napoleon
+III., as an "usurper." The impression the speech made upon the country
+was great. It so accorded with the popular sentiment that some persons
+paid for its appearance as an advertisement in the _Daily News_ and
+other papers of the day, and the speaker acquired the reputation of an
+orator by a single speech. Mr. Disraeli's contemptuous reception of it
+did not prevent him, at a later date, from going up to Mr. Cowen, when
+he was standing alone by a fire, and paying him some compliment which
+made a lasting impression upon him. Mr. Disraeli had discernment to
+recognise genius when he saw it, and generosity enough to respect it
+when not directed against himself. If it were, he was implacable.
+
+For years, as I well knew, Mr. Cowen spent more money for the
+advancement and vindication of Liberalism than any other English
+gentleman. He was the most generous friend of "forlorn hopes" England
+has known. How many combatants has he aided; how many has he succoured;
+how many has he saved! If the other world be human like this, what
+crowds of grateful spirits of divers climes must have rushed to the
+threshold of heaven to welcome him as he entered.
+
+Penniless, and his crew foodless, Garibaldi steered his vessel up the
+Tyne. Mr. Cowen was the only man in England Garibaldi then sought
+or confided in. Before he left the Tyne, Mr. Cowen, on behalf of
+subscribers (of whom many were pitmen), presented Garibaldi with a sword
+which cost L146. Goldwin Smith says, in his picturesque way, Henry
+III. had a "waxen heart." Mr. Cowen had an iron heart, steeled by noble
+purpose. He knew no fear, physical or mental. Not like my friend, George
+Henry Lewes, whose sense of intellectual right was so strong that he
+never saw consequences. Cowen did see them, and disregarded them; he
+"nothing knew to fear, and nothing feared to know"--neither ideas nor
+persons. How many men, not afraid of ideas, are much afraid of knowing
+those who have them? Unyielding to the high, how tender he was to the
+low!
+
+Riding home with him one night, after a stormy meeting in Newcastle,
+when we were near to Stella House (he had not gone to reside in the
+Hall then) the horse suddenly stopped. Mr. Cowen got out to see what the
+obstruction was, and he found it was one of his own workmen lying drunk
+across the road. His master roused him and said: "Tom, what a fool thou
+art! Had not the horse been the more sensible beast, thou hadst been
+killed." He would use these Scriptural pronouns in speaking to his men.
+The man could not stand, and Mr. Cowen and the coachman carried him to
+the door of another workman, called him up, and bade him let Tom lie in
+his house till morning. Then we drove on.
+
+Another time a workman came to Mr. Cowen for an advance of thirty
+shillings. Being asked what he wanted the money for, the man answered:
+"To get drunk, sir; I have not been drunk for six weeks." "Thou
+knowest," said Mr. Cowen, "I never take any drink, because I think the
+example good for thee. Thou will go to Gateshead Fair, get locked up,
+and I shall have to bail thee out. There is the money; but take my
+advice, get drunk at home, and thy wife will take care of thee." How
+many employers possess workmen having that confidence in them to put
+such a question as this workman did, without fear of losing their
+situation? No workman lied, or had need to lie, to Mr. Cowen. He had the
+tolerance and tenderness of a god.
+
+When I was ill in his house in Essex Street, Strand, he would come up
+at night and tell me of his affairs, as he did in his youth. He had for
+some time been giving his support to the Conservative side. I said to
+him, "Disraeli is dead. Do you not see that you may take his place if
+you will? It is open. His party has no successor among them.
+He had race, religion, and want of fortune against him. You have none
+of these disadvantages against you. You are rich, and you can speak
+as Disraeli never could. He had neither the tone nor the fire of
+conscience--you have both. You have the ear of the House, and the
+personal confidence of the country, as he never had. In his place you
+would fill the ear of the world." He thought for a time on what I said
+to him; then his answer was: "There is one difficulty--I am not a Tory."
+
+I saw he was leaving the side of Liberalism and that he would inevitably
+do Conservative work, and I was wishful that he should have the credit
+of it. He was under a master passion which carried him he knew not
+whither.
+
+It was my knowledge of Mr. Cowen, long before that night, that made me
+oft say that a Tyneside man had more humility and more pride than God
+had vouchsafed to any other people of the English race. Until middle
+life Mr. Cowen was as his father, immovable in principle; afterwards
+he was as his mother in implacableness. That is the explanation of his
+career.
+
+The "passion" referred to--never avowed and never obtruded, but
+which "neither slumbered nor slept"--was ambition. It might be called
+Paramountcy--that dangerous war-engendering word of Imperialism--which
+only the arrogant pronounce, and only the subjugated submit to.
+
+The Cowen family had no past but that of industry, and in Mr. Cowen's
+youth the "slings and arrows of outrageous" Toryism, shafts of
+arrogance, insolence, and contempt, flew about him. He inherited from
+his mother a proud and indomitable spirit, and resolved to create a
+Liberal force which should withstand all that--and he did. Then, when
+he came to be, as he thought, flouted by those whom he had served (the
+common experience of the noblest men), he at length resented and turned
+against himself. He had reached the heights where he had been awarded
+an imperishable place, and then descended in resentment to mingle and be
+lost in the ignominious faction whom he had defeated and despised. Those
+who had enraged him were not, as we shall see, worth his resentment
+
+It was not for "a handful of silver" he left us--for he had plenty--nor
+for "a ribbon to stick in his coat," for he would not wear one
+if offered a basketful. It was just indignation, stronger than
+self-respect.
+
+Not all at once did the desire of control assume this form. By his
+natural nobility of nature he inclined to the view that all the
+supremacy inherent in man is that of superior capacity, to which all men
+yield spontaneous allegiance.
+
+Some time elapsed before the bent of his mind became apparent. Possibly
+it was not known to himself.
+
+When a young man, he promoted and maintained two or three journals, in
+which he also wrote himself, without suggesting to others the passion
+for journalism by which he was possessed. Some years later, when proofs
+of one of his speeches which a reporter had taken down, and Mr. Cowen
+had himself corrected, passed through my hands, I was struck with the
+dexterity with which he put a word of fire into a tame sentence, infused
+colour into a pale-faced expression, and established a pulse in an
+anaemic one. It was clear that he had the genius of speech in him and
+was ambitious of distinction in it.
+
+Mr. Cowen's father was a tall, handsome man of the Saxon type, which
+goes steadily forward and never turns back. He always described himself
+as a follower of Lord Durham, and was out on the Newcastle Town Moor in
+1819, at great meetings in support of the Durham principles. His mother
+was quite different in person, both in stature and appearance;
+somewhat of the Spanish type--dark, and mentally capable of impassable
+resolution. Her son, Joseph, with whom we are here concerned, had dark,
+luminous eyes which were the admiration of London drawing-rooms--when
+he could be got to enter them. His eldest sister, Mrs. Mary Carr, was as
+tall as her father, with the complexion of her mother. I used to compare
+her to Judith, the splendid Jewess who slew Holofernes. She used to
+say her brother Joseph had her mother's spirit, and that a "Cowen never
+changed." Her brother never changed in his purpose of ascendency, but
+when inspired by resentment he could change his party to attain his
+end--as I have seen done in the House of Commons many times in my day.
+This is why I have said that in the early part of Mr. Cowen's life he
+was his father---placid but purposeful. In the second half he was his
+mother--resentful and implacable when affronted by non-compliance where
+he expected and desired concurrence. But I have known many excellent men
+who did not take dissent from their opinions in good part.
+
+How fearless Mr. Cowen was, was shown in his conduct when a dangerous
+outbreak of cholera occurred in Newcastle. People were dying in every
+street and lane, but he went out from Blaydon every morning at the
+usual time, and walked through the infected streets and passages into
+Newcastle, to his offices on the quay, being met on his way by persons
+in distress, from death in their houses, who knew they were sure
+of sympathy and assistance from him. The courage of his unfailing
+appearance in his ordinary way saved many from depression which might
+have proved fatal to them. When a wandering guest fell ill at his home,
+Stella House, Blaydon, he was sure of continued hospitality until his
+recovery. Mr. Cowen's voice of sympathy and condolence was the tenderest
+I ever heard from human lips.
+
+A poor man, who lived a good deal upon the moors, was charged with
+shooting a doctor, and would have been hanged but for Mr. Cowen
+defending him by legal aid. He thought the police had apprehended him
+because he was the most likely, in their opinion, to be guilty. He was
+poor, friendless, and often houseless. The man did not seem quite right
+in his mind. After his acquittal, Mr. Cowen took him into his employ,
+and made him his gardener. The garden was remote and solitary. I often
+passed my mornings in it, not without some personal misgiving. Mr.
+Cowen eventually enabled the man to emigrate to America, where a little
+eccentricity of demeanour does not count.
+
+In the political estrangements of Mr. Cowen, it must be owned he had
+provocations. A party of social propagandists came to Newcastle, whom
+he entertained, as they had never been entertained before, at a cost of
+hundreds of pounds, and was at great expense to give publicity to
+their objects. They left him to defray some bills they had the means of
+paying. Years later, when they came again into the district, he did no
+more for them in the former way. He had conceived a distrust of them.
+Another time he was asked by persons whom he was willing to aid, to buy
+some premises for them, as they would be prejudiced at the auction if
+they appeared in person. Mr. Cowen bought the property for L5,000. They
+changed their minds when it was bought, and left Mr. Cowen, who did not
+want it, with it upon his hands. He did not resent it, as he might have
+done, but it was an act of meanness which would have revolted the heart
+of an archangel of human susceptibility.
+
+When the British Association first came to Newcastle, Mr. Cowen spent
+more than L500 in giving publicity to their proceedings. He brought a
+railway carriage full of writers and reporters from London, that the
+proceedings of every section should be made known to the public He had
+personal notices written of all the principal men of science who came
+there, and when he asked for admission of his reporters, he was
+charged L19 for their tickets. As I was one of those engaged in the
+arrangements, I shared his indignation at this scientific greed and
+ingratitude. In all the history of the British Association, before and
+since, it never met with the enthusiasm, the liberality and publicity
+the _Newcastle Chronicle_ accorded it.
+
+In the days of the great Italian struggle, little shoals of exiles
+found their way to England. Learning where the great friend of Garibaldi
+dwelt, they found their way to Newcastle, and many were directed there
+from different parts of England. Many times he was sent for to the
+railway station, where a number of destitute exiles had arrived. He
+relieved their immediate wants and had them provided for at various
+lodgings, until they were able to get some situation elsewhere. I think
+Mr. Cowen began to tire of this, as he thought exiles were
+sometimes sent to him by persons who ought to have taken part of the
+responsibility themselves, but who seemed to consider that his was the
+purse of the Continent.
+
+Once when Mr. Cowen attended a political conference in Leeds, he
+received as he entered the room marked attention, as he was known to be
+the leader of the Liberal forces of Durham and Northumberland. But Mr.
+W. E. Forster, who was present, took no notice of him, though Mr. Cowen
+had rendered him great political service. When Mr. Bright saw Mr. Cowen
+he cordially greeted him. Immediately Mr. Forster, seeing this, stepped
+up also and offered him compliments, which Mr. Cowen received very
+coldly without returning them, and passed away to his seat. Mr. Cowen's
+impression was that as Mr. Forster had suffered him to pass by without
+recognition, he did not want to know him before that assembly; but when
+Mr. Forster saw Mr. Bright's welcome of his friend, he was willing to
+know him. Mr. Forster, as I had reason to know afterwards, was capable
+of such an action, where recognition stood in the way of his interests,*
+but it was not so on this occasion. Mr. Forster was short-sighted, and
+simply did not see Mr. Cowen when he first passed him. But it happened
+that he did see him when Mr. Bright stepped forward to speak to him, and
+there was no slight of Mr. Cowen intended. Yet from that hour Mr. Cowen
+entertained a contempt for Mr. Forster, and would neither meet him nor
+speak to him. One day Mr. Cowen and I were at a railway station, where
+Mr. Forster appeared in his volunteer uniform. We had to wait some time
+for the train. Mr. Cowen asked me to walk with him as far as we could
+from where Mr. Forster stood, that we should not pass near him. Some
+years later, at the House of Commons, Mr. Forster asked Mr. Cowen to
+walk with him in the Green Park, as he wished to speak with him. After
+two hours Mr. Cowen returned reconciled. He never told me the cause of
+it, which he should have done, as I had taken his part in the long years
+of resentment I relate the incident as showing how personal
+misconception produces political estrangement in persons and parties
+alike.
+
+     * But only where ambition was stronger than his habitual
+     sense of honour.    See chapter lxxix, "Sixty Years."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. CHARACTERISTICS OF JOSEPH COWEN
+
+II
+
+But the act which most wounded him occurred at the Elswick works of Lord
+Armstrong. Mr. Cowen was returning one day in his carriage at a time of
+political excitement. Some of the crowd threw mud upon his coach, and,
+if I remember rightly, broke the windows. Just before, when the workmen
+were on strike, they went to Mr. Cowen--as all workmen in difficulties
+did. He found they did not know their own case, nor how to put it He
+employed legal aid to look into the whole matter and make a statement of
+it. Mr. Cowen became their negotiator, and obtained a decision in their
+favour. The whole expense he incurred on their behalf was L150. Services
+of this kind, which had been oft rendered, should have saved him from
+public contumely at their hands.
+
+At that time Mr. Cowen was giving the support of his paper against
+Liberalism, which he had so long defended and commended, which was an
+incentive to the outrage. Still, the sense of gratitude for the known
+services rendered to workers, which he continued irrespective of his
+change of opinion, should have saved him from all personal disrespect.
+
+The subjection of the Liberals in Newcastle in the days of his early
+career, and the arrogant defamation with which it was assailed, were
+what determined him to create a defiant power in its self-defence.
+
+He bought the _Newcastle Chronicle_, an old Whig paper. He published
+it in Grey Street, afterwards in St. Nicholas' Buildings, and then in
+Stephenson Place, on premises now known as the _Chronicle_ Buildings.
+The printing machines at first cost L250 each, then L450. The
+_Chronicle_ Buildings were purchased for L6,000, and a similar sum was
+expended in adapting them for their new purposes. The site is the finest
+in Newcastle. The printing machines now cost L6,000 to L7,000. Each
+machine is provided in duplicate, so that if one side of the press-room
+broke down, the other side could be instantly set in motion. Once I made
+a short speech in the town, which was reported, set up, cast, and an
+edition of the paper containing the speech was on sale within little
+more than twenty minutes. The office above the great press-room, in
+which the public transact business with the paper, is the costliest,
+handsomest, Grecian interior I know of connected with any newspaper
+buildings. What perseverance and confidence must have animated Mr. Cowen
+in the enterprise, is shown in the fact that he had sunk L40,000 in it
+before it began to pay.* He made the _Chronicle_, as he intended to
+make it, the leading political power in Durham and Northumberland. The
+leaders he wrote in its columns after he left Parliament were unequalled
+in all the press of England for vividness, eloquence, and variety of
+thought. There could be no greater proof of the dominancy of Mr. Cowen's
+mind, than his establishment and devotion to the _Chronicle_.
+
+I had been a party several years to negotiating with candidates to stand
+for Newcastle, whose public expenses Mr. Cowen paid. I obtained the
+consent of the Liberals of York, that Mr. Layard, whom they considered
+pledged to them, should become a candidate at Newcastle. "Why should
+you?" I said one day to Mr. Cowen, "incur these repeated costs for the
+candidature of others, when you can command a seat in your own family
+for three generations. If you will not be a candidate, why should
+not your father?" The conversation ended by his agreeing that I might
+persuade his father to go to Parliament if I could.
+
+     * Unwilling that his father or banker should surmise how
+     much he was exhausting his personal resources, he directed
+     me at one time to borrow L500 or L1,000 in London. It was
+     advanced by a personal friend.
+
+It was in vain that I assured him that the seat was open to
+him, but he did not believe, nor wish to believe it. I several times saw
+his father at Stella Hall. He thought himself too old. I told him there
+were fifty gentlemen in the House of Commons, willing to become Prime
+Minister, and some of them waiting for the appointment, who were fifteen
+years older than he, and would be disappointed did not the chance come
+to them. He found this true when he at length entered the House. His
+objection was that he could not ask his neighbours, among whom he had
+lived all his days, to elect him. "Suppose they signed an undertaking to
+vote for you in case you came forward?" That he consented to consider.
+A requisition signed by 2,178 electors was sent to him. Then another
+difficulty arose. His son said: "I cannot support my father in the
+_Chronicle_."* Then I said, "Let me edit it during the election, and no
+line shall appear commending your father to the electors. But whatever
+pretensions his adversaries put forth, we will examine." My proposal was
+agreed to. It was alleged by the rival candidate, that the requisition
+was signed out of courtesy to a popular townsman, and did not mean that
+those who signed it had pledged their votes. To this I answered that
+when Chambers appeared on the Thames, bookmakers said, "Chambers is a
+Newcastle man, who never sells the honour of his town, but will win if
+he can." Is it to be true that a Newcastle elector would not only give
+his promise, but write it, without intending to keep it? Will he be true
+on the Thames and false on the Tyne? All the requisitionists save a
+few, whom sickness or misadventure kept from the poll, voted for Joseph
+Cowen, senior, who was elected by a large majority.
+
+     * This diffidence of appearing as the advocate of his father
+     was carried to excess. When a local paper made remarks upon
+     his father's knighthood, which ought to have been resented,
+     I set out late one night to Darlington, arriving a little
+     before midnight, and wrote a vindicatory notice, which, by
+     the friendship of Mr. H. K. Spark, was inserted in the
+     _Darlington Times_ that night. It was quoted afterwards in
+     the _Newcastle Chronicle_.
+
+The great services to the town of the new member by his arduous
+chairmanship of the Tyne Commission, would have insured his election,
+but his majority was no doubt increased by the popularity of his son.
+This did not escape the comment of local politicians, and Mr. Lowthian
+Bell said, "How is it, Mr. Cowen, that everybody votes for your father
+for your sake?" "I suppose it is," was the answer, "that while you have
+been sitting on winter nights with your feet on the rug by the fireside,
+I have been addressing pitmen's meetings in colliery villages, and
+finding my way home late at night in rain and blast; and it happens that
+they are grateful for it." This was the only time I knew Mr. Cowen to
+make a self-assertive reply.
+
+When Mr. Cowen's father was in the field, and Mr. Beaumont began his
+canvass, in one street he met with forty-nine refusals to vote for him.
+"Why will you not vote for me?" he asked. "We are going to vote for Mr.
+Coon, now," as his name was pronounced at the Tyneside. "But you have
+two votes," Mr. Beaumont said; "you can give me one." "No! if we had
+twenty votes we should give them all to Mr. Coon. When Chambers and
+Clasper make a L100 match for the honour of the Tyne, and we cannot make
+up the money, Mr. Coon always makes it up for us, and when we win and
+go to repay him, he gives it to us." This was not a patriotic reason to
+give for voting for "Mr. Coon," but it showed gratitude, as well as Mr.
+Cowen's influence, and what a hold his kindness to the people had given
+him upon their affection. Thus they voted for the father from regard for
+the son. For in those days the son had no idea of Parliament himself,
+and votes were not in his thoughts.
+
+Nothing could be more open or gentlemanly than Mr. Cowen in the contests
+to which he was a party. Mr. Somerset Beaumont was member for Newcastle,
+and he impressed Mr. Gladstone with a high sense of his capacity
+in Parliament. One morning, as Mr. Beaumont and Mr. Cowen came into
+Newcastle in the same train, Mr. Cowen said to him, "You know, Mr.
+Beaumont, we all like you personally, but you do not go far enough
+for us. We want a more Radical representative for Newcastle. We shall
+prevent your election next time if we can, but only if we have a more
+advanced candidate. Otherwise we will countenance no opposition to you."
+
+Who could foresee the day would come when--save Mr. Cowen--the noblest
+candidate Newcastle ever had (Mr. John Morley) would be opposed by Mr.
+Cowen in the interests of Toryism? Or that, after withstanding at the
+hustings when he became a candidate, and defeating furious collusions
+between Tories, Conservatives, Moderates, publicans, and all who had
+vicious interests to serve or spite to gratify, Mr. Cowen himself would
+one day be found aiding or abetting the same parties by taking their
+side against Liberalism.
+
+When in Parliament, his father had misgivings touching Mr. Gladstone,
+who, he thought, passed him at times without recognition. He had
+conducted Mr. Gladstone down the Tyne in triumph, and his son had
+assembled 200,000 persons on the Moor, who were addressed from twenty
+platforms in support of Mr. Gladstone, and provided reporters and
+published all the speeches. The cost of this was one of a hundred
+contributions he made in the interest of Liberalism. I used to explain
+that Mr. Gladstone, intent upon great questions (he was always intent
+upon something) he had to explain to the House--he, self-absorbed, would
+pass by his friends without seeing them, expecting, as he had a right to
+expect, that devotion to the great trust of the State would be taken to
+palliate his seeming inattention to friends.
+
+But Mr. Gladstone was not unmindful of the service rendered to him at
+Newcastle, and when, some time later--no one else thinking of it--I made
+representations, through Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Stansfeld--without
+knowledge of Mr. Cowen or his son--I was instructed to inform Mr. Cowen,
+sen., that a baronetcy would be placed at his acceptance. Mr. Cowen,
+jun., objected entirely on his own part. His father therefore only
+accepted a knighthood, which Her Majesty, from consideration of his
+years, kindly ordered to be gazetted, obviating his attendance at Court.
+All the same, it was Mr. Gladstone's intention to recognise the services
+of the son as well as the father.
+
+Honours were not much accessible in those days, especially in uncourtly
+quarters. My representation, in suggesting what I did, was, that as
+personal distinction was conferred upon persons who had made L100,000,
+something was due to one who may be said to have given that sum to the
+public.* His chairmanship of the Tyne Commission extended over a period
+of twenty-four years, during which the Tyne was converted from a creek
+into a navigable river.
+
+     * Sir Joseph Cowen was appointed by Act of Parliament, 1850,
+     chairman for life of the Tyne Improvement Commission, an
+     unpaid office. There was then only six feet of water on the
+     bar at low water spring tides, and twenty-one at high water.
+     In 1870 there was a depth of twenty feet at low water, and
+     thirty-five at high water; the deepening extending nine
+     miles from the bar. In twenty years ending 1870 there had
+     been raised thirty-eight million tons. In 1870 the tonnage
+     of the Tyne had risen from two and a half millions to more
+     than four and a half millions, exceeding by one million that
+     of the Thames. In 1865 there entered the Tyne port for
+     refuge 133 vessels. In 1870 558 vessels fled there from the
+     storms of the North Sea.
+
+The time and assiduity thus devoted to the service of navigation and
+trade would have added L100,000 to his fortune. That his knighthood
+might be justified in the eyes of his neighbours and his own, I supplied
+the facts which authorised it to Mr. Walker, who was then editor of the
+_Daily News_, and which appeared in his leader columns. My reason for
+taking the step I did was a sense of duty to the public, who should
+see as far as possible that those who rendered service should find
+acknowledgment of it I was of Coleridge's opinion:--
+
+     "It seems a message from the world of spirits,
+     When any man obtains that which he merits,
+     Or any merit that which he obtains."
+
+On the death of the father, his son, Mr. Joseph Cowen, was elected in
+his place, as a member for Newcastle; and Parliament being dissolved
+shortly after, he was again elected by a triumphant majority.
+
+Mr. Cowen had made more speeches at the Tyneside than any other resident
+ever did. But the town was unconscious of their merit. They were
+addressed mostly to working men, and to persons whom it was not thought
+necessary to report or take into account the speaker. When he became a
+candidate all classes of persons were among the auditors. The town was
+astonished at the relevance and fire of his orations. I mention this
+circumstance to show how a man can be famous in one half of the town and
+not known in the other.
+
+After his retirement from Parliament and platform he occasionally
+delivered orations on persons, at inaugurations, which surpassed all I
+have ever read of the kind, for aptness of phrase, variety of thought
+and vivid portraiture, which ought to be added to the record of English
+oratory.
+
+It was not reasonable in him, after the change in his political views,
+to expect that his townsmen should adopt the new opinions he had begun
+to countenance, and which he had himself taught them to distrust. But
+this is what strong leaders do who suffer the pride of power to become
+imperious. A just ambition, which is patient, and will work for results,
+can as a rule succeed. It is ambition which is impetuous, and will not
+wait longer, which lapses into reaction from disappointment. With all
+his virtues, Mr. Cowen was impetuous. To desert a party because of the
+folly or excesses of portions of its members, would oblige a man to
+change his profession in politics and his creed in religion every twelve
+months.
+
+In his earlier career it may be imagined that Mr. Cowen derived his
+principles from generous prejudices, in later days from indignant
+impulses.
+
+Many persons hold by inheritance right principles into whose foundation
+they have never inquired. Investigation, if they entered upon it, would
+confirm their convictions, but not resting on examination, their nobler
+prepossessions may be displaced by passion. We all know in religion how
+vehemently adherents will vindicate questions of which they know only
+one side, and hold it to be sinful to inquire into the other. Such
+persons, when right, are unstable and liable to variableness under
+the glamour of unknown ideas. Mr. Cowen was well informed on Liberal
+principles and never took to Conservative views, and, save in
+antagonism, did not assist them.
+
+The bent of his mind to paramountcy in ideas was shown in the
+extraordinary requirements he made, that Mr. Morley should disown the
+political friends who had invited him to Newcastle, and become the
+candidate of the _Chronicle_. Mr. Morley answered, "I will not do it,
+and that is flat" Then Mr. Cowen resolved that this refusal should
+cost him his seat, and ultimately he effected it, not from Conservative
+resentment, but from pride. Had Mr. Morley consented to this condition
+he would have remained member for Newcastle, supported with all the
+force of Mr. Cowen's splendid advocacy. Mr. Cowen always remained true
+to Home Rule for Ireland. But, as we have seen done in the case of
+others in Parliament, he assailed every one who held it not under his
+inspiration.
+
+Mr. Cowen was naturally noble, and resentment never made him mean, but
+like any one to whom compliance with his essential convictions is a
+necessity of his mind, he was apt to regard non-concurring persons
+as better out of the way. He would not destroy them, but they were no
+longer objects of his solicitude.
+
+Everybody who did not take this into account failed to understand Mr.
+Cowen's career. He sought nothing for himself--he refused everything
+offered to him, office included, and accepted no overture made to him.
+Whatever opinion he held, to whatever party he allied himself, he might,
+if he wished, have remained member for Newcastle all his life. He wanted
+no place in Parliament; all he wanted was his own way--compliance with
+his own opinions. He had no ambition in the ordinary sense--he had
+no sinister end to serve, and it was always his preference to promote
+liberty and progress, generosity and good faith in public affairs.
+
+Conforming to no conventionality, never entering society, nor accepting
+any invitation to do it, in his attention to his collieries, his ships,
+his firebrick works, manufactory, newspaper and public meetings, he
+was occupied from early morning until late at night, without rest and
+without hurry. He was never exhausted and was never still. One evening
+he lay down on his sofa, fell asleep, and none around him knew that he
+was dead.
+
+It would astonish the reader--were they all narrated--the considerable
+undertakings which he conducted and carried through at the same time.
+He was a great man of business, and had the management of heaven
+been consigned to him as a pleasure resort, he would have made it pay
+eventually. He was an apostle, not an apostate, but his apostleship was
+of his own ideas. He was no apostate of his party. Had he been in the
+celestial world when Lucifer revolted, Mr. Cowen might have aided Satan,
+from motives of resentment at being denied, by certain dissentient
+cherubim, ascendency himself. But he would never have joined the fallen
+angels, nor, as we have seen other politicians do, officially engage in
+their work, or identify himself with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. THE PERIL OF SCRUPLES
+
+An outlaw is seldom considered a pleasant person, and naturally occupies
+a dubious place in public estimation. His position is worse than that of
+an exile, who, if once allowed to return, is reinstated in society, but
+the outlaw of opinion is never pardoned. Where justice turns upon the
+hinge of the oath, there is no redress for him who has scruples as to
+taking it. He who has scruples exposes himself to unpleasant comments.
+He is counted a sort of fastidious crank. All the while it is known that
+a man without scruples is a knave, who respects nothing save his own
+interests, and will do anything likely to promote them--even to the
+commission of robbery or murder--as police-courts disclose. To be
+scrupulous is to be solicitous as to the rightfulness of a thing
+proposed to be done. It is plainly the interest of society to encourage
+those who act upon honest scruples. Scruples may be trivial or
+unfounded--they may be open to objection on that account. Nevertheless,
+the habit of being scrupulous is to be tolerated as conducive to
+integrity, without which society would be insufferable. It is therefore
+not desirable that perils should accompany scrupulousness, as I have
+often seen them do.
+
+The obligatory oath has always been detrimental to public morality.
+When one oath was imposed on all persons, it was repugnant to their
+individual sense of truth in many cases, and men, to protect their
+interests, began to tamper with veracity, and invent new meanings of the
+terms of the oath. Thus the fortunate fastidiousness of truth is broken
+down.
+
+The Christian oath is an ecclesiastical device, framed in the
+interest of the Church, to enforce, under penalty, the recognition and
+perpetuation of its tenets. He who takes the oath professes to believe
+that if he breaks it "God will blast his soul in hell for ever." This is
+the old brutal, terrifying form in which the consequence was expressed.
+It is softened now, to suit the secular humanity of the age, to
+a statement that God will hold the oath-taker responsible for its
+fulfilment. But God's method of holding any one responsible, is by
+sentencing him to "outer darkness," where there will be "wailing and
+gnashing of teeth." A very unpleasant region to dwell in. There is no
+good ground to suppose that such a sentence for such an offence would
+be passed, but the intimidation is retained. Mr. Cluer, a London
+magistrate, said lately that "if the fate of Ananias befel all who swore
+falsely in his court, the floor would be strewn with dead bodies."
+But the courts fall back upon the pristine meaning of the oath. The
+magistrate asks a little child, tendered as a witness, "whether she
+knows, if she does not tell the truth, where she will go to?" and
+whether she "has never heard of a place called hell or of its keeper,
+the devil?" If not, he publicly deplores the neglect of the child's
+education, and declares her to be incapable of telling the truth. Every
+one who took the oath, whether rich or poor, a philosopher or a
+fool, each professed to believe that the Great God of all the worlds,
+notwithstanding the infinite business He has on hand, was personally
+present in any dingy court when the oath-taker calls upon Him "to
+witness" that he speaks the truth, and if not, God, who never forgets,
+burdens His celestial memory with that fact, with a view to eternal
+retaliation, in case the oath is false. He who takes the oath and does
+not believe this, lies to begin with, whatever may be the character of
+his testimony.
+
+To take the oath in any other sense than that in which it is
+administered to you, is to deceive the court.
+
+     "He who imposes the oath, makes it.
+     Not he, who for convenience takes it."
+
+The reliance on the part of those who impose the oath, is that he who
+takes it believes the terms of it. If the taker takes it in a private
+sense of his own, the virtue has gone out of the oath, and the court is
+deceived. If the Unitarian takes the oath, not believing in an avenging
+God, he creates a new oath for himself, in which the compelling power
+of an eternal terror is absent. He, therefore, does not take the oath of
+the court, but another of his own invention; and if he made known to
+the court what he was doing, the court would not receive his testimony.
+Philosophers, who have less belief than Unitarians, take the oath. But
+in the eye of morality it is not less discreditable--perhaps more so,
+for the philosopher stands for absolute truth, while the Unitarian
+stands only for theological truth.
+
+The trouble was that he who refuses to take the oath of the court, in
+the sense of the court, became an outlaw, and that was a serious thing.
+I was myself an outlaw, until I was fifty-two years of age, without the
+power of obtaining redress where I was wronged, or of punishing fraud or
+theft from which I suffered, or of protecting the life and property
+of others, where my evidence was required. My ambition was to be a
+barrister, but legal friends assured me that the law turned upon the
+hinge of oath-taking, and that the path of the Bar would to me be a path
+of lying. It happens that I have never taken an oath. When I found
+that my belief did not coincide with that implied by the oath, I felt
+precluded from taking it.
+
+This reluctance brought me peril. When the question of a Parliamentary
+oath in Lord Randolph Churchill's days raged, a new doctrine was set
+up among some partisans of Freethought--that an Atheist might take the
+oath. That meant there was no longer any distinction in terms, or any
+meaning in principle. If an Atheist may, for the sake of some advantage
+before him, make a Christian profession, there is no reason why a
+Christian should not make an Atheistical profession if it answered his
+purpose. The apostles made quite a mistake by incurring martyrdom for
+conscience sake. Bruno, Servitus, and Tyndale need not have gone to the
+stake, had they only understood that the way to advance the truth was to
+abandon it, instead of standing to it. If a man is not to stand by the
+truth when the consequences are against him, there is an end of truth as
+a principle. It is no longer a duty to suffer for it and maintain it.
+
+It seemed to me that the friends of reason, who rejected theological
+tenets, should be as scrupulous as to the truth as partisans of
+superstition have often proved themselves to be, and that the Atheist
+should have as clear a sense of intellectual honour as the Quaker, the
+Catholic, or the Jew, who all suffered rather than take an oath contrary
+to their sense of truth. This was regarded as a reflection upon some
+excellent colleagues of mine, who thought it fatuity to allow an oath to
+stand in their way, and frustrate their career.
+
+It was brought against me that there were circumstances under which
+I should be as little scrupulous as other people. Major Bell, who had
+incurred great peril in India for the sake of honour, put a question
+to me in the Daily News purporting that, "Had I married before 1837 I
+should not have hesitated at twice invoking the Trinity as the Church
+service required? And if I had done so, should I not have perpetrated a
+piece of hypocrisy?" There is an immoral maxim that "All things are fair
+in love and war," and it is probable that I should not have hesitated to
+perpetrate that "piece of hypocrisy," as it would have been the lesser
+of two evils, but it would not, therefore, cease to be an evil. If under
+any compulsion of love or war I was induced to perpetrate "apiece of
+hypocrisy," it would never occur to me to go about saying it was not
+hypocrisy. I dislike law, custom, or persons who force me to do what I
+know to be wrong, but no person could do his worst against me, until he
+prevailed upon me to go about saying it was right.
+
+Dr. Moncure Conway asked whether, if his life was in danger in China,
+and I could save it by the Chinese oath of breaking a saucer, I would
+not do it? Certainly I would, to save Dr. Conway, if the Confucians
+would permit me, but I should not the less deceive them by pretending
+to have sworn before them in the Chinese sense. But I should regret
+the necessity, since in no country would I willingly treat truth as a
+superstition. By taking the "saucer" oath, I should obtain in Chinese
+eyes a validity for my word not really belonging to it. However I might
+excuse the act, it would still be deceit, nor ought it to be called by
+any other name. There is no virtuous vagueness in unveracity, and he who
+in peril uses it would not be justified in carrying it into common life,
+where Lord Bacon has warned us, "Truth is so useful, that we should make
+public note of any departure from that excellent habit." Major Evans
+Bell further argued that because the Prince of Wales may sign himself my
+"obedient, humble servant," while not feeling himself bound to act
+so, the terms of the oath may be likewise regarded as a form of words
+merely. Yet all "forms" which are unreal are unwise and hurtful. But
+the superscription of the Prince is known to be but a false form, and
+accepted as such, while the oath is a profession of faith. If the Prince
+went into a public court and swore in the name of God that he really was
+my "obedient, humble servant," I should think him a very shabby Prince
+if the solemnity went for nothing. As I have known Major Bell expose
+himself to what his friends believed to be fatal peril, from a noble
+sense of self-imposed duty, to which neither oath, nor contract, nor any
+conventional superscription called him, I no more imagine him than I did
+Dr. Conway, to really mean what their arguments seemed to imply.
+
+Some are for the spirit more than the form. I was for both, and I regard
+all legislation as immoral which divorces them. Referring to these
+letters, the _Daily News_ (December 23, 1881) regarded them as "marked
+by rectitude of moral judgment, which is recognised by those who most
+deplore what they think is theological aberration. Some such testimony
+as he gives was almost needed to efface the impression which recent
+events in and out of the House of Commons have made, that moral
+indifferentism is of necessity associated with religious negation."
+I was glad of those words at a time when I was fiercely assailed for
+saying what I did, in the midst of the Parliamentary contest which then
+occupied the attention of the country. My object was to assist the right
+in the contest, and to defend the Free Thought cause. Had I not spoken
+then, it would have been in vain to speak afterward. To be silent about
+principle in the hour of its application would have been fatal to its
+influence and repute, so far as it might be represented by me.
+
+As far as in my power lay, I left no uncertainty in the mind of
+Parliament as to what was wanted, in lieu of the oath. It was simply a
+"promise of honour," to declare the truth in matters of testimony, and
+observe good faith in contracts. One of my petitions to the House of
+Commons ran thus:--
+
+"Your petitioner is a person who never took an oath, as it implied
+theological convictions he did not hold. He, however, has seen persons
+of far greater knowledge than he possesses, of high social position and
+authority, and whose example men look up to, take the oath, though it
+was known to all that they held no belief corresponding thereunto--the
+opprobrium and outlawry attending the refusal of the oath being
+more than they would incur. This has led to a practice of public
+prevarication, that of persons saying a thing and not meaning it, or
+meaning something else. Nowhere is this example more disastrous than in
+your High Assembly, where anything said is conspicuous and its example
+influential on the conduct of others."
+
+Another petition so interested Professor J. E. Thorold Rogers, M.P. (who
+had held holy orders), that he had copies made of it, and sent one with
+a letter to each morning paper, saying he regarded it as expressing the
+"quintessence of political morality." The petition set forth:--
+
+"That it is at all times important that public declarations should be so
+expressed that any one making them shall be able to say what he means,
+and mean what he says. In these days, when popular instruction is being
+advanced by national schools, it is yet more desirable that no public
+declaration should be exacted, the terms of which are unmeaning or
+untrue to those who make it, inasmuch as such declaration deteriorates
+the wholesome habit of national veracity, and is of the nature of a
+fraud upon the public understanding, which becomes more repugnant as
+general intelligence increases.
+
+"Your petitioner respectfully submits that the present Parliamentary
+oath is open to these objections so long as it is obligatory upon all
+members, irrespective of whatever personal and private beliefs they may
+hold.
+
+"Your petitioner, therefore, prays, in the interests of public good
+faith, that a form of affirmation may be adopted, optional to all
+members of Parliament, instead of the present ecclesiastical oath."
+
+Francis Place once explained to me that in the Benthamite view, it was
+not warrantable to incur martyrdom unless it was clear that the public
+would be gainers by the martyr's loss. In a letter, Mr. J. S. Mill, in
+answer to questions I put to him with regard to taking an oath, wrote:--
+
+"I conceive that when a bad law has made the oath a condition to the
+performance of a public duty, it may be taken without dishonesty by a
+person who acknowledges no binding force in the religious part of the
+formality. Unless (as in your own case) he has made it the special and
+particular work of his life to testify against such formalities, and
+against the belief with which they are connected."
+
+I could not concur with this view. Personal candour is far-reaching in
+its effects, and should be cherished where we can, and as far as we can.
+Truth is to the life of the mind what air is to the life of the body.
+When the mind ceases to breathe truth, the mind is impaired or dies.
+
+It is necessary to add the grounds which actuated me in endeavours to
+put an end to the outlawry of opinion. Many beside myself helped to
+obtain a law of affirmation, but I was the only person among them all
+who had never taken an oath. Sir George Cornewall Lewis demanded in
+Parliament how the oath could be a vital grievance to Atheists, whose
+throats were furrowed with swallowing it. When summoned on the grand
+jury at Clerkenwell I refused to take the oath in the sense the court
+attached to it, and I was fined twelve guineas for not taking it. I drew
+up a paper showing the privileges given by the law to those who were
+honestly unable to swear. They were exempted from the militia, from the
+duty of acting as special constable, they could procure the acquittal
+of any thief, fraudulent person, or murderer, where their evidence was
+necessary to conviction. In some cases the thief has escaped, and the
+person robbed has been imprisoned instead, for his contumacy in not
+lying. It became known among thieves that where they could find out a
+witness against them, who disbelieved in an avenging God, the counsel
+defending the thief had only to call the attention of the court to the
+fact for the witness to be ordered "to stand down," and the thief would
+"leave the court without a stain on his character." Mr. Francis, in
+his "History of the Bank of England," relates how Turner, whose fraud
+amounted to L10,000, escaped, because the only witness who could swear
+decidedly to his handwriting, was a disbeliever in the New Testament.
+The jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty."
+
+Sir John Trelawny told me that the fly-leaves I published on the
+"Privileges of Sceptics and the Immunity of Thieves" made more
+impression upon members of Parliament than any petition sent to the
+House. These and similar services, with my lifelong refusal to take the
+oath, caused John Stuart Mill to write to me, saying: "It is a great
+triumph of freedom of opinion that the Evidence Bill should have passed
+both Houses without being seriously impaired. You may justly take to
+yourself a good share of the credit of having brought things up to that
+pass."*
+
+These instances will no doubt satisfy the reader as to the peril of
+entertaining scruples in the face of power. The earliest instance which
+concerned me was a case in Birmingham in which several thousand pounds
+were left for the establishment of a secular school which I was to
+conduct. Not being willing to take the oath, I could not prosecute my
+claim. When a son of mine was killed by the recklessness of a driver, I
+could not give evidence on the inquest because I could not be sworn.
+My private house was thrice robbed by servants who became aware of my
+inability to prosecute. When in business in Fleet Street, my property
+could be carted away, for which I had no remedy save lying in wait and
+knocking down the depredators, which would at the Mansion House have led
+to a public scandal and injured the business. Money was left to me which
+I could not claim, being an outlaw.
+
+     *  Blackheath Park, Kent, August 8, 1869.
+
+It would tire the reader to tell him all the instances of the perils
+attending scruples. Mr. Roebuck put the case in the House of Commons
+against Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Pointing his finger at Sir George,
+he asked, "What is the right honourable gentleman going to do? Two men
+go into court. One disbelieves in the oath, but he takes it. The other
+takes the peril of outlawry rather than profess a faith which he does
+not hold. You believe the liar, whom you know to be a liar, and you
+reject the evidence of the man who speaks the truth at his peril." I had
+asked Mr. Roebuck to speak when the question of affirmation was before
+the House. There were then only he, Sir John Trelawny, or Mr. Conyngham
+to whom such a question could be put It was upon Mr. Roebuck that I
+mostly relied. After his speech I thanked him for doing what no one else
+could do so well. He disclaimed any desert of thanks, saying, "I have
+only done what Jeremy Bentham taught me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. TAKING SIDES
+
+Every one of manly mind, every person of thought and determination,
+takes sides upon important questions. Those who say they are indifferent
+which side prevails, are indifferent whether good or evil comes
+uppermost. Those who are afraid to choose a side, command only the cold
+respect accorded to cowardice. Those who sit upon a fence to see which
+side is likely to prevail before they jump down, are not seeking the
+success of a principle, but their own interests. In most questions--as
+in business--there is a side of honesty and a side of fraud. Some do
+not take either separately, thinking they can better take both at
+discretion. If they profit by their dexterous duplicity, they command no
+regard. Some persons have no fervour for the right, and would rather see
+the wrong prevail than take the trouble to prevent it. They would be on
+the side of truth altogether if it gave them no discomfort, and caused
+them no outlay. They belong to the large Laodicean lukewarm class, of
+whom he who sought their allegiance said he would "spue them out of his
+mouth." Not a pleasant simile, but it is not mine. It shows that no one
+is enthusiastic about those who are undecided where decision interferes
+with advancement.
+
+If the selfish, or the politic, or the supine do not care to take sides
+with right, they have no cause to complain if the triumph of wrong
+involves them in discredit or disaster. But whatever be their fate, I am
+not concerned with them. What I am concerned with is the omission of
+all information of what may follow to him who shall take the right side.
+These consequences ought never to be out of sight.
+
+It is too often forgotten that in this world virtue has its price as
+well as vice, and neither can be bought cheap. Vice can be bought on
+the "hire system," by which a person gets into debt pleasantly--which
+introduces shiftlessness into life. Wrong is a money-lender, whose
+concealed charges and heavy interest have to be paid one day at the
+peril of ruin. Right doing may be said to pay as it goes along, which
+implies conscience, effort, and often sacrifice of some immediate
+pleasure. But independence lies that way, and no other. Right principle
+incurs no deferred obligation. Debt is a chain by which the debtor binds
+himself to someone else. The connection may be disregarded, but the
+chain can never be broken, except by restitution. Many persons are
+beguiled into doing right under the impression that it is as pleasant
+as doing wrong. This is not so, and the concealment of the fact has
+injurious consequences. When a person who has been, as it were, betrayed
+into virtue, without being instructed as to the inconvenience which
+may attend it, when he encounters them, he suspects he has been imposed
+upon, and thinks he had better give vice a turn. It was this that made
+Huxley declare that the hardest as well as the most useful lesson a man
+could learn, was to do that which he ought to do, whether he liked it
+or not. Character, which can be trusted, comes that way, and that way
+alone. He who enters on that path reaps reward daily in the pleasure and
+strength which duty imparts, while sooner or later follow advantage and
+honour. The most useful character George Eliot drew was that of Tito,
+who was wrecked because he had no sense that there was strength and
+safety in truth. The only strength he trusted to lay in his ingenuity
+and dissimulation. The world is pretty full of Titos, who all come to
+one end, and nobody mourns them.
+
+A few instances may be relevantly given in which rightness has been
+attended by disadvantages, when wrongness appeared to have none--yet
+wrongness was found to bring great unpleasantness in the end.
+
+When there were petitions before the House of Commons to change the
+oath which excluded Jews, and petitions to permit persons to make
+affirmations who had conscientious objections to taking an oath, it was
+represented to me that if both claims were kept before Parliament at the
+same time both would be rejected. The Jewish claim was the older, and
+concerned the enfranchisement of a race. I therefore caused the omission
+for several years of any petition for affirmation--though my disability
+of being unable to take the oath excluded me from justice and rendered
+me an outlaw.
+
+When the Jews had obtained their relief, Sir Julian Goldsmid, a Jew,
+became a candidate at Brighton. Mr. Matthews, a political friend of mine
+in the town, went to Sir Julian and asked whether, as Mr. Holyoake and
+those of his way of thinking had deferred their claim for affirmation
+that the Jews might become eligible for Parliament, would he vote for
+the Affirmation Bill? He said, "No! he would not" Mr. Matthews then
+wrote to ask me whether he and others who were in favour of Affirmation
+should vote for Sir Julian. I answered, "Certainly, if he in other
+respects was the best candidate before the constituency. However
+strongly we might be persuaded our own claim was just, we had no right
+to prefer it to the general interest of the State."
+
+Speaking one night with Mr. John Morley when we both happened to be
+guests of Mr. Chamberlain at Highbury, Birmingham, I remarked that
+Cobden and Bright, without intending it, had introduced more immorality
+into politics than any other politicians in my time. Mr. Morley
+naturally demanded to be informed when, and in what way. I answered,
+"When they advised electors to vote for any candidate, irrespective
+of their political opinion, who would vote against the Corn Laws. This
+incited every party to vote for its own hand--the priest for the church,
+the brewers for the barrel, and the teetotalers for the teapot, the
+anti-vaccinators for those who were against the lancet. Even women
+proposed to vote for any candidate who would give them the suffrage,
+regardless whether they put out a Ministry of Progress and put in a
+Ministry of Reaction. This was ignoring the general good in favour of a
+personal measure. The error of the great Anti-Corn Law advocates lay in
+their not making it plain to the country that when the population were
+deteriorating and dying from want of sufficient food, politics must give
+way to the claims of existence. That was the justification of Cobden and
+Bright, and had it been stated, smaller politicians with narrower aims
+could never then have pleaded their example for crowding the poll with
+rival claims in which the larger interests of the State are forgotten.
+Like Bacon's maxim that 'speaking the truth was so excellent a habit,
+that any departure from that wholesome rule should be noted.' The
+Anti-Corn Law League election policy needed noting."
+
+However many instances may be given of the kind before the reader,
+the moral will be the same. Taking sides involves some penalty which
+enthusiasts are apt to overlook, and when it arrives ruddy eagerness is
+apt to turn pale and change into ignoble prudence. Taking the side of
+honesty or fraud, unpleasantness may come. But on the side of right the
+consciousness of integrity mitigates regret and commands respect; while
+the penalties of deceit are intensified by shame and scorn. Many think
+there is safety in a judicious mixture of good faith and bad, but
+when the bad is discerned, distrust and contempt are the unevadable
+consequences. Besides, it takes more trouble to conceal a sinister life
+than to act uprightly. It is true, an evil policy often succeeds, but
+the interest of society is to take care that he who does evil shall
+be overtaken by evil. As this sentiment grows, the chances of illicit
+success continually decrease. Rascality--refined or coarse--would have
+fewer adherents if society took as much trouble to secure that the
+rightdoer shall prosper, as it takes to render the career of the knave
+precarious.
+
+The point of importance, I repeat, is--that persons should remember,
+or be taught to remember, that the course of right, like the course of
+wrong, is attended by consequences. Many who are honourably attracted by
+the right are disappointed at finding that it has its duties as well as
+its pleasures--which, had they known at first, they would have made up
+their minds to do them; but not being apprised of them, when they first
+encounter inconvenience, they think they have been deceived, falter, and
+sometimes turn from a noble course upon which they had entered.
+
+Any one would think there was no great peril to be encountered by taking
+sides with veracity. Let him avoid the sin of pretension, and see what
+will happen.
+
+The sin I referred to is not the common one of declaring that to be true
+which you know to be untrue--that has long been known by an appropriate
+name, and does not require any new epithet to denote its scandalousness.
+The sin of pretension in question consists in assuming, or declaring
+that to be true, which one does not know to be true. Years ago this
+was a very common sin, and everybody committed it. You heard it in the
+pulpit more frequently than on the stage. Nobody complained of it, or
+rebuked it, or resented it. It was not until the middle of the last
+century that public attention was drawn to it. It was Huxley who first
+raised the question of intellectual veracity, and he devised the term
+Agnostic (which merely means limitation) to express it. Limitationism
+does not mean disbelief, but the limitation of assertion to actual
+knowledge. The theist used to declare--without misgiving--the absolute
+certainty of the existence of an independent, active Entity, to whom
+Nature is second-hand, and not much at that. The anti-theist--also
+without misgiving--denied that there was such separate Potentiality.
+The Limitationist, more modest in averment, not having sufficient
+information to be positive, simply says he does not know. He does not
+say that others may not have sufficient knowledge of a primal cause of
+things; but lacking it himself, he concludes that veracity in statement
+may be a virtue where omniscience is denied. There may be belief
+founded on inference. But inference is not knowledge. The Limitationist
+withholds assertion from lack of satisfying evidence. He is neutral--not
+because he wishes not to believe, or desires to deny, but because
+serious language should be measured by the standard of proof and
+conviction.
+
+So strange did this precaution in speech seem in my time, that it
+was believed that reticence was not honest precaution, but prudent
+concealment of actual conviction, intended to evade orthodox anger.
+On problems relating to infinite existence and an unknown future, it
+requires infinite knowledge to give an affirmative answer. No one said
+he had infinite information, but everybody declaimed as though he had.
+It appeared not to have occurred to many that there was a state of the
+understanding in which lack of conviction was owing to lack of evidence.
+Where the desire to believe is hereditary, it is difficult to realise
+that there are questions upon which certainty may, to many minds, be
+unattainable, and that an honest man who felt this was bound to say so.
+An American journal, which needed forbearance from its readers for
+its own heresy, published the opinion that Huxley was a "dodger" in
+philosophy. Whereas Huxley was for integrity in thought and speech. He
+was for scientific accuracy as far as attainable. His own outspokenness
+was the glory of philosophy and science in his day. He never denied his
+convictions; he never apologised for them; he never explained them away.
+Is it over his noble tomb that we are to write, "Here lies a Dodger,"
+because he invented an honest term to denote the measured knowledge of
+honest thinkers? Dogmatism is not demonstration, but when I was young
+nobody seemed to suspect it. It used to be said that "Darwin, Huxley,
+and Spencer were not really in a state of unknowingness concerning the
+great problem of the universe"--which meant that these eminent thinkers,
+upon whose lives no shadow of unveracity ever rested, described
+themselves as Limitationists when they were not so. They were not to
+be believed upon their word. The term was a mask. Such are the social
+penalties for taking sides with veracity.
+
+The public has begun to discover that veracity of speech is not a mask,
+but a duty. None can calculate the calamities which arise in society
+from the perpetual misdirections disseminated by those who make
+assertions resting merely upon their inherited belief or prepossessions,
+with no personal knowledge upon which they are founded. This is the sin
+of pretension, which recedes before the integrity of science and reason,
+just as wild beasts recede before the march of civilisation.
+
+Few would be prepared to believe that, in my polemical days, the desire
+to avoid committing the sin of pretension was supposed to indicate
+desperation of character, of which suicide would be the natural end.
+This was a favourite argument, for a heterodox principle was held to be
+for ever confuted, if he who held it hanged himself. The best proclaimed
+champion of orthodox tenets, whom I met on many platforms, went about
+declaring that I intended suicide, and it was generally believed that
+I had committed it. The certainty of it, sooner or later, was little
+doubted, whereas it was not at all in my way.
+
+The suicide of Eugene Aram, to escape the ignominy of an inevitable
+execution, is intelligible. If Blanco White, whose dying and hopeless
+sufferings excited the sympathy even of Cardinal Newman, had done the
+same thing, it would have been condonable. Suicide proceeding from
+disease of the mind is always pitiable. When Italian prisoners were
+given belladonna by their Austrian gaolers, to cause them to betray,
+unconsciously, their comrades, some committed suicide to prevent this,
+which was honourable though deplorable. When a murderer, knowing his
+desert, becomes his own executioner, he is not censurable though
+still infamous, since it saves society the expense of terminating his
+dangerous career. But in other cases, self-slaughter, to avoid trouble
+or the performance of inconvenient duty, is cowardly and detestable.
+
+In my controversial days (which I hope are not yet ended) the clergy did
+not hesitate to say that if a man began to think for himself, he would
+end by killing himself.
+
+When I thought the doctrine had died out, an instance recurred which led
+me to address the following letter to the Rev. R. P. Downes, LLD. (May
+18, 1899), who thought the doctrine valid:--
+
+"Dear Dr. Downes,--It has been reported to me that in Wesley Place
+Chapel, Tunstall (March 20, 1899), you, when preaching on the 'Roots of
+Unbelief,' illustrated that troublesome subject by saying that 'when Mr.
+Holyoake was imprisoned at Birmingham, he attempted suicide.' This
+is not true, nor was it in Birmingham, but in Gloucester where the
+imprisonment occurred. I never attempted suicide--it was never in my
+mind to do it. I had no motive that way. I experienced no moment of
+despair. Better men than I had been imprisoned before, for being so
+imprudent as to protest against intolerance and error. Besides, I never
+liked suicide. I was always against it Blowing out your brains makes an
+ill-conditioned splatter. Cutting your throat is a detestable want
+of consideration for those who have to efface the stains. Drowning is
+disagreeable, as the water is cold and not clean. Hanging is mean and
+ignominious, and I have always heard unpleasant The French charcoal plan
+makes you sick. Indeed, every form of suicide shows want of taste; and
+worse than that, it is a cowardly thing to flee from evils you ought to
+combat, and leave others, whom you may be bound to cherish and protect,
+to struggle unaided. So you see what you allege against me is not only
+irrelevant--it implies defect of taste, which is serious in the eyes of
+society, which will condone crime more readily than vulgarity.
+
+"I am against your discourse because of its bad taste. Suicide is
+no argument against the truth of belief. Christians are continually
+committing it, and clergymen also. The Society for the Propagation of
+Christian Knowledge used to bring this argument from suicide forward in
+their tracts against heresy. But being educated gentlemen they abandoned
+it long ago, and it is now only used by the lower class of preachers. I
+do not mean to suggest that you belong to that class--only that you have
+condescended to use an argument peculiar to uncultivated reasoners.
+
+"Personally, I have great respect for several eminent preachers of
+Wesleyan persuasion, but they think it necessary to inquire into the
+truth of an accusation before they make it You must have borrowed yours
+from the Rev. Brewin Grant, with whom in his last illness I had friendly
+communications, and he had long ceased to repeat what he said in days
+when it was not thought necessary to be exact in imputations against
+adversaries.
+
+"I do not remember to have written before in refutation of the statement
+you made. No one who knows me would believe it for a moment; but as you
+are a responsible, and I understand a well-regarded, preacher, I inform
+you of the error, especially as it gives me the opportunity of putting
+on record not only my disinclination, but my dislike and contempt for
+suicide, and for those who, not being hopelessly diseased or insane,
+commit it."
+
+
+Dr. Downes sent me a gentlemanly and candid letter, owning that the
+Rev. Brewin Grant, B.A., was the authority on which he spoke, whose
+representations he would not repeat, and I have reason to believe he has
+not.
+
+Such are the vicissitudes of taking sides. He has to pay who takes the
+right, but he has honour in the end. But he pays more who takes the
+wrong side consciously, and with it comes infamy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI. THINGS WHICH WENT AS THEY WOULD
+
+I commence with Judge Hughes' first candidature. There are cases in
+which gratitude is submerged by prejudice, even among the cultivated
+classes. There was Thomas Hughes, whose statue has been deservedly
+erected in Rugby. Three years before he became a member of Parliament
+I told him he might enter the House were he so minded. And when
+opportunity arose I was able to confirm my assurance.
+
+One Friday afternoon in 1865 some Lambeth politicians of the middle and
+working classes, whom Bernal Osborne had disappointed of being their
+candidate (a vacancy having attracted him elsewhere), came to me at the
+House of Commons to inquire if I could suggest one to them. I named
+Mr. Hughes as a good fighting candidate, who had sympathy with working
+people, and who, being honest, could be trusted in what he promised, and
+being an athlete, could, like Feargus O'Connor, be depended upon on a
+turbulent platform. I was to see Mr. Hughes at once, which I did, and
+after much argument satisfied him that if he took the "occasion by the
+hand" he might succeed. He said, "he must first consult Sally"--meaning
+Mrs. Hughes. I had heard him sing "Sally in our Alley," and took his
+remark as a playful allusion to his wife as the heroine of the song.
+That he might be under no illusion, I suggested that he should not enter
+upon the contest unless he was prepared to lose L1,000.
+
+The next morning he consented. I took him to my friends of the Electoral
+Committee, by whom he was accepted. When he entered the vestibule of
+the hall of meeting I left him, lest my known opinions on other subjects
+should compromise him in the minds of some electors. This was on the
+Saturday afternoon. I saw that by issuing an address in the Monday
+morning papers he would be first in the field. On Sunday morning,
+therefore, I waited for him at the Vere Street Church door, where the
+Rev. F. D. Maurice preached, to ask him to write at once his address
+to the electors. He thought more of his soul than of his success, and
+reluctantly complied with my request. His candidature might prevent a
+Tory member being elected, and the labours of the Liberal electors for
+years being rendered futile, education put back, the Liberal Association
+discouraged, taxation of the people increased, and the moral and
+political deterioration of the borough ensue. To avert all such evils
+the candidate was loath to peril his salvation for an hour. Yet would
+it not have been a work of human holiness to do it, which would make
+his soul better worth saving? That day I had lunch at his table in Park
+Lane, while he thought the matter over. That was the first and last time
+I was asked to his house. That afternoon he brought the address to my
+home, then known as Dymoke Lodge, Oval Road, Regent's Park, and had tea
+with my family. I had collected several persons in another room ready to
+make copies of the address.
+
+I wrote letters to various editors, took a cab, and left a copy of the
+address myself, before ten o'clock, at the offices of all the chief
+newspapers published on Monday morning. The editor of the _Daily News_
+and one or two others I saw personally. All printed the address as news,
+free of expense. Next morning the Liberal electors were amazed to
+see their candidate "first in the field" before any other had time to
+appear. All the while I knew Mr. Hughes would vote against three things
+which I valued, and in favour of which I had written and spoken. He
+would vote against the ballot, against opening picture galleries and
+museums on Sunday, and against the separation of the Church from the
+State. But on the whole he was calculated to promote the interests of
+the country, and therefore I did what I could to promote his election.
+
+I wrote for the election two or three bills. The following is one:--
+
+     HUGHES  FOR  LAMBETH.
+
+     Vote for "Tom Brown."
+
+     Vote   for a Gentleman who is a friend of  the People.
+
+     Vote  for a  Churchman who will   do justice   to
+     Dissenters.
+
+     Vote for a tried Politician who will support just measures
+     and can give sensible reasons for them.
+
+     Vote for   a   distinguished writer   and   raise   the
+     character of metropolitan constituencies.
+
+     Vote for a candidate who can defend your cause in the Press
+     as well as in Parliament
+
+     Vote for a man known to be honest and who has long worked
+     for the industrious classes.
+
+     Electors of Lambeth,
+
+     Vote for Thomas Hughes.
+
+
+Mr. Hughes would have had no address out but for me. Had he spent L100
+in advertisements a day or two later he could not have purchased the
+advantage this promptitude gave him. I worked very hard all that Sunday,
+a son and daughter helping--but our souls did not count Two weeks went
+by--during which I ceaselessly promulgated his candidature--and I heard
+nothing from the candidate. As I had paid the emergency expenses of the
+Sunday copyists, found them refreshments while they wrote, and paid for
+the cab on its round to the offices, I found myself L2 "out of pocket,"
+as lawyers put it, and I sent a note to Mr. Hughes to say that amount
+would cover costs incurred. He replied in a curt note saying I should
+"find a cheque for L2 within"--giving me the impression that he regarded
+it as an extortion, which he thought it better to submit to than resent.
+He never thanked me, then or at any time, for what I did. Never in all
+his life did he refer to the service I had rendered him.
+
+A number of friends were invited to Great Ormond Street College to
+celebrate his election, but I was not one. This was not handsome
+treatment, but I thought little of it. It was not Mr. Hughes's natural,
+but his ecclesiastical self. I withstood him and his friends, the
+Christian Socialists, who sought to colour Co-operation with Church
+tenets, which would put distraction into it. Association with me was at
+that time repugnant to Mr. Hughes. Nevertheless, I continued to serve
+him whenever I could. He was a friend of Co-operation, to his cost,
+and was true to the Liberal interests of the people. My daughter, Mrs.
+Praill, and her husband gave their house as a committee-room when Mr.
+Hughes was subsequently a candidate in Marylebone, and she canvassed for
+him so assiduously that he paid her a special visit of acknowledgment.
+
+The Christian Socialist propaganda is another instance of the wilfulness
+of things which went as you did not want them to go. In those days
+not only did I fail to find favour in the eyes of Mr. Hughes--even Mr.
+Vansittart Neale, the most liberal of Christian Socialists, thought me,
+for some years, an unengaging colleague. General Maurice, in the Life of
+his eminent father (Professor Denison Maurice), relates that Mr. Maurice
+regarded me as an antagonist. This was never so. I had always respect
+for Professor Maurice because of his theological liberality. He believed
+that perdition was limited to aeons. The duration of an aeon he was not
+clear upon; but whatever its length, it was then an unusual and merciful
+limitation of eternal torture. This cost him his Professorship at
+King's College, through the enmity, it was said, of Professor Jelf. I
+endeavoured to avenge Professor Maurice by dedicating to Dr. Jelf my
+"Limits of Atheism." Elsewhere I assailed him because I had honour for
+Professor Maurice, for his powerful friendship to Co-operation. When the
+news of his death came to the Bolton Congress it was I who drew up and
+proposed the resolution of honour and sorrow which we passed.
+
+It was always the complaint against the early "Socialists"--as the
+Co-operators were then called--that they mixed up polemical controversy
+with social advocacy. The Christian Socialists strenuously made this
+objection, yet all the while they were seeking to do the same thing.
+What they rightly objected to was that the chief Co-operators gave
+irrelevant prominence to the alien question of theology, and repelled
+all persons who differed from them.
+
+All the while, what they objected to was not theology, but to a kind
+of theology not their own, and this kind, as soon as they acquired
+authority, they proceeded to introduce. They proceeded to compile a
+handbook intended to pledge the Co-operators to the Church of England,
+and I received proofs, which I still have, in which Mr. Hughes made
+an attack on all persons of Freethinking views. I objected to this
+as violating the principle on which we had long agreed, namely, of
+Co-operative neutrality in religion* and politics, as their introduction
+was the signal of disputation which diverted the attention of members
+from the advancement of Co-operation in life, trade, and labour. At
+the Leeds Congress I maintained that the congress was like Parliament,
+where, as Canning said, no question is introduced which cannot be
+discussed. If Church views were imported into the societies, Heretics
+and Nonconformists, who were the originators of the movement, would have
+the right of introducing. Personally, I preferred controversy _outside_
+Co-operation. Their tenets. Mr. Hughes was so indignant at my protest
+that he, being in the chair, refused to call upon me to move a
+resolution officially assigned to me upon another subject. At the
+meeting of the United Board for revising motions to be brought before
+Congress, I gave notice that if the Church question should be raised
+I should object to it, as it would then be in order (should the
+introduction of theology be sanctioned) for an Atheist (Agnostic was
+not a current word then) to propose the adoption of his views, and an
+Atheist, as such, might be a president. Whereupon Mr. Vansittart Neale,
+our general secretary, declared with impassioned vehemence that he hoped
+the day would never come when an Atheist would be elected president.
+Yet when, some years later, I was appointed president of the Carlisle
+Congress (1887)--though I was still considered entirely deficient in
+proper theological convictions--Mr. Hughes and Mr. Neale, who were both
+present, were most genial, and with their concurrence 100,000 copies of
+my address were printed--a distinction which befel no other president.
+
+In another instance I had to withstand Church ascendancy.
+
+I was the earliest and foremost advocate of the neutrality of
+pious opinion in Co-operation; when others who knew its value were
+silent--afraid or unwilling to give pain to the Christian Socialists,
+whom we all respected, and to whom we were all indebted for legal and
+friendly assistance.
+
+But integrity of principle is higher than friendship. Some Northumbrian
+societies, whose members were largely Nonconformists, were greatly
+indignant at the attempt to give ascendancy to Church opinions, and
+volunteered to support my protest against it But when the day of protest
+came at the Leeds Congress they all deserted me--not one raised a voice
+on my side; though they saw me browbeaten in their interest My argument
+was, that if we assented to become a Church party we might come to have
+our proceedings opened with a collect, or by prayer, to which it would
+be hypocrisy in many to pretend to assent. At the following Derby
+Congress this came to pass: Bishop Southwell, who opened the Industrial
+Exhibition, made a prayer and members of the United Board knelt round
+him. I was the only one who stood up, it being the only seemly form
+of protest there. This scene was never afterwards repeated. Bishop
+Southwell was a devout, kindly, and intellectually liberal prelate,
+but he did not know, or did not respect, as other Bishops did, the
+neutrality of Congress.
+
+For myself, I was always in favour of the individuality of the religious
+conscience in its proper place. I love the picturesqueness of personal
+conviction. It was I who first proposed that we should accept offers
+of sermons on Congress Sunday by ministers of every denomination.
+Co-operators included members of all religious persuasions, and I
+was for their opportunity of hearing favourite preachers apart from
+Co-operative proceedings.
+
+It is only necessary for the moral of these instances to pursue them.
+There is education in them and public suggestiveness which may justify
+the continuance of the subject.
+
+When the _Co-operative News_ was begun in Manchester (1871), I wrote its
+early leaders, and as its prospects were not hopeful, it was agreed that
+the _Social Economist_, which I and Mr. E. O. Greening had established
+in London in 1868, should cease in favour of the _Co-operative News_,
+as we wished to see one paper, one interest, and one party. As the
+Manchester office was too poor to purchase our journal, we agreed that
+it should be paid for when the Manchester paper succeeded, and the price
+should be what the cessation of the _Social Economist_ should be thought
+to be worth to the new paper. It was sixteen years before the fulfilment
+of their side of the bargain. The award, if I remember rightly, was
+L15, but I know the period was as long and the amount as small. The
+_Co-operative News_ had then been established many years. It was worth
+much more than L100 to the Manchester paper to have a London rival
+out of the way. It was not an encouraging transaction, and but for Mr.
+Neale, Abraham Greenwood and Mr. Crabtree it would not have ended as
+it did. But the committee were workmen without knowledge of literary
+matters. So I made no complaint, and worked with them and for their
+paper all the same. It was a mistake to discontinue the _Social
+Economist_, which had some powerful friends. Co-operation was soon
+narrowed in Manchester. Co-operative workshops were excluded from
+participation in profit. We should have kept Co-operation on a higher
+level in London.
+
+The Rochdale Jubilee is the last instance I shall cite. In 1892 was
+celebrated the jubilee of the Rochdale Society. I received no invitation
+and no official notice. The handbook published by the society, in
+commemoration of its fifty years' success, made no reference to me nor
+to the services I had rendered the society. I had written its history,
+which had been printed in America, and translated into the chief
+languages of Europe--in Spain, in Hungary, several times in France and
+Italy. I had put the name of the Pioneers into the mouth of the world,
+yet my name was never mentioned by any one. Speaking on the part of the
+Rochdale Co-operators, the President of Jubilee Congress, who knew
+the facts of my devotion to the reputation of Rochdale, was silent.
+Archdeacon Wilson was the only one who showed me public regard. The
+local press said some gracious things, but they were not Co-operators.
+I had spoken at the graves of the men who had made the fortunes of the
+store, and had written words of honour of all the political leaders of
+the town, and of those best remembered in connection with the famous
+society, which I had vindicated, without ceasing, during half a century.
+
+In the earlier struggles of the Pioneers I had looked forward to the day
+of their jubilee, when I should stand in their regard as I had done
+in their day of need. Of course, this gave me a little concern to
+find myself treated as one unknown to them. But in truth they had not
+forgotten me, though they ignored me. The new generation of Co-operators
+had abandoned, to Mr. Bright's regret, participation of profit with
+Labour, the noblest aspiration of the Pioneers. I had addressed them in
+remonstrance, in the language of Lord Byron, who was Lord of the Manor
+of Rochdale:--
+
+     "You have the Rochdale store as yet,
+     Where has the Rochdale workshop gone?
+     Of two such lessons why forget
+     The nobler and the manlier one?"
+
+Saying this cost me their cordiality and their gratitude; but I cared
+for the principle and for the future, and was consoled.
+
+In every party, the men who made it great die, and leave no immediate
+successors. But in time their example recreates them. But at the Jubilee
+of 1892, they had not re-appeared, and those who had memories and
+gratitude were dead. I spoke over the grave of Cooper, of Smithies, of
+Thomas Livesey--John Bright's schoolfellow--the great friend of the dead
+Pioneers saying:--
+
+     "They are gone, the holy ones,
+     Who trod with me this lovely vale;
+     My old star-bright companions
+     Are silent, low and pale."*
+
+The question arises, does this kind of experience justify a person in
+deserting his party?
+
+The last incident and others preceding it are given as instances of
+outrage or neglect, which in public life explain ignominious desertion
+of principle. I have known men change sides in Parliament because the
+Premier, who had defect of sight, passed them by in the lobby without
+recognition. I have seen others desert a party, which they had
+brilliantly served, because their personal ambition had not been
+recognised. Because of this I have seen a man turn heels over head in
+the presence of Parliament, and land himself in the laps of adversaries
+who had been kicking him all his life.
+
+If I did not do so, it was because I remembered that parties are like
+persons, who at one time do mean things, but at other times generous
+things.
+
+     * "History of Rochdale Pioneers, 1844-1892" (Sonnenschein).
+
+Besides, a democratic party is continually changing in its component
+members, and many come to act in the name of the movement who are
+ignorant of its earlier history and of the obligation it may be under
+to those who have served it in its struggling days. But whether affronts
+are consciously given or not, they do not count where allegiance to a
+cause is concerned. Ingratitude does not invalidate a true principle.
+When contrary winds blow, a fair-weather partisan tacks about, and will
+even sail into a different sea where the breezes are more complacent. I
+remained the friend of the cause alike in summer and winter, not because
+I was insensible to vicissitudes, but because it was a simple duty to
+remain true to a principle whose integrity was not and could not
+be affected by the caprice, the meanness, the obliviousness, or the
+malignity of its followers.
+
+Such are some of the incidents--of which others of more public interest
+may be given--of the nature of bygones which have instruction in them.
+They are not peculiar to any party. They occur continually in Parliament
+and in the Church. I have seen persons who had rendered costly service
+of long duration who, by some act of ingratitude on the part of the few,
+have turned against the whole class, which shows that, consciously or
+unconsciously, it was self-recognition they sought, or most cared for,
+rather than the service of the principle they had espoused.
+
+There is no security for the permanence of public effort, save in the
+clear conviction of its intrinsic rightfulness and conduciveness to the
+public good. The rest must be left to time and posterity. True, the debt
+is sometimes paid after the creditor is dead. But if reparation never
+comes to the living, unknown persons whose condition needs betterment
+receive it, and that is the proud and consoling thought of those
+who--unrequited--effected it. The wholesome policy of persistence is
+expressed in the noble maxim of Helvetius to which John Morley has given
+new currency: "Love men, but do not expect too much from them."
+
+Fewer persons would fall into despair if their anticipations were, like
+a commercial company, "limited." Many men expect in others perfection,
+who make no conspicuous contribution themselves to the sum of that
+excellent attribute.
+
+"Giving too little and asking too much Is not alone a fault of the
+Dutch."
+
+I do not disguise that standing by Rightness is an onerous duty. It is
+as much a merit as it is a distinction to have been, at any time, in
+the employ of Truth. But Truth, though an illustrious, is an exacting
+mistress, and that is why so many people who enter her service soon give
+notice to leave.
+
+     [With respect to this chapter, Mr. Ludlow wrote supplying
+     some particulars regarding the Christian Socialists, to
+     which it is due to him that equal publicity be given. He
+     states "that the first Council of Promoters included two
+     members, neither of whom professed to be a Christian; that
+     the first secretary of the Society for Promoting Working
+     Men's Associations was not one, during the whole of his
+     faithful service (he became one twenty years later), and
+     that his successors were, at the time we took them on, one
+     an Agnostic, the other a strong Congregationalist." This is
+     the first time these facts have been made known. But none of
+     the persons thus described had anything to do with the
+     production of the Handbook referred to and discussed at the
+     Leeds Congress of 1881. Quite apart from the theological
+     tendencies of the "Christian Socialists," the Co-operative
+     movement has been indebted to them for organisation and
+     invaluable counsel, as I have never ceased to say. They were
+     all for the participation of profits in workshops, which is
+     the essential part of higher Co-operation. There was always
+     light in their speeches, and it was the light of principle.
+     In this respect Mr. Ludlow was the first, as he is the last
+     to display it, as he alone survives that distinguished band.
+     Of Mr. Edward Vansittart Neale I have unmeasured admiration
+     and regard. To use the fine saying of Abd-el-Kader,
+     "Benefits   conferred   are   golden fetters which bind men
+     of noble mind to the giver." This is the lasting sentiment
+     of the most experienced Co-operators towards the Christian
+     Socialists.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. STORY OF THE LAMBETH PALACE GROUNDS
+
+Seed sown upon the waters, we are told, may bring forth fruit after
+many days. This chapter tells the story of seed sown on very stony soil,
+which brought forth fruit twenty-five years later.
+
+In 1878, Mr. George Anderson, an eminent consulting gas engineer, in
+whom business had not abated human sympathy, passed every morning on his
+way to his chambers in Westminster, by the Lambeth Palace grounds. He
+was struck by the contrast of the spacious and idle acres adjoining
+the Palace and the narrow, dismal streets where poor children peered in
+corners and alleys. The sheep in the Palace grounds were fat and florid,
+and the children in the street were lean and pallid. The smoke from
+works around dyed dark the fleece of the sheep.
+
+Mr. Anderson thought how much happier a sight it would be to see the
+children take the place of the sheep, and asked me if something could
+not be done.
+
+The difficulty of rescuing or of alienating nine acres of land from the
+Church, so skilled in holding, did not seem a hopeful undertaking, while
+the resentment of good vicars and expectant curates might surely be
+counted upon. Nevertheless the attempt was worth making.
+
+Before long I spent portions of some days in exploring the Palace
+grounds, and interviewing persons who had evidence to give, or interest
+to use, on behalf of a change which seemed so desirable.
+
+Eventually I brought the matter before a meeting I knew to be interested
+in ethical improvement, and read to them the draft of a memorial that I
+thought ought to be sent to the Archbishop at Lambeth Palace. Persons
+in stations low and high alike, often suffer wrong to exist which they
+might arrest, because they have not seen it to be wrong or have not been
+told that it is so. Blame of any one could not be justly expressed who
+had not personal knowledge of an evil complained of. Therefore I
+urged that we should give the Archbishop information which we thought
+justified his action, and I was authorised to send to him the memorial I
+had read.
+
+I wrote myself to his Grace, stating that I could testify as to
+the social facts detailed in the memorial I enclosed, which was as
+follows:--
+
+"May it please your Grace,--We, the evening congregation assembled in
+South Place Chapel, Finsbury--some assenting and some dissenting from
+the tenets represented by your Grace--represented as worthily as by any
+one who has occupied your high station, and with greater fairness to
+those who stand outside the Church than is shown by many prelates--we
+pray your Grace to give heed to a secular plea on behalf of certain
+little neighbours of yours whom, amid the pressure of spiritual duties,
+your Grace may have overlooked.
+
+"Crouching under the very walls of Lambeth Palace, where your Grace has
+the pleasant responsibility of illustrating the opulence and paternal
+sympathy of the legal Church of the land, lie streets as dismal,
+cheerless, and discreditable as any that God in His wrath ever permitted
+to remain unconsumed. In the houses are polluted air, squalor, dirt and
+pale-faced children. The only green thing upon which their feverish eyes
+could look is enclosed in your Grace's Palace Park, and shut out from
+their sight by dead walls. What we pray is that your Grace, in mercy and
+humanity, will substitute for those penal walls some pervious palisades
+through which children may behold the refreshing paradise of Nature,
+though they may never enter therein. In this ever-crowding metropolis,
+where field and tree belong to the extinct sights of a happier age,
+children are born and die without ever knowing their soothing charm,
+and hunger and thirst for a green thing to look upon--as sojourners in
+a desert do for the sight of shrub or water. No prayer your Grace could
+offer to heaven would be so welcome in its kindly courts, as the prayer
+of gladness and gratitude which would go up with the screams of change
+and joy from the pallid little ones, breathing the fresh air from the
+green meadows, which only a few more fortunate sheep now enjoy.
+
+"Might we pray that the gates should be open, and that the children
+themselves should be free to enter the meadows? Even the Temple Gardens
+of the City are open to little friendless people. They who give this
+gracious permission are hard-souled lawyers, usually regarded as
+representing the rigid, exacting, and unsympathetic side of human
+life--yet they show such noble tenderness to the little miserables
+who crawl round the Temple pavement, that they grant entrance to their
+splendid gardens; and half-clad cellar urchins from the purlieus of
+Drury Lane and Clare Market romp with their ragged sisters on the
+glorious grass, in the sight and scent of beauteous flowers. If lawyers
+do this, may we not ask it of one who is appointed to represent what
+we are told is the kindliness and tenderness of Christianity, and whose
+Master said, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them
+not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven'? We ask not that they should
+personally approach your Grace, but that the children of your desolate
+neighbourhood should be allowed to disport in the vacant meadows of the
+Palace--that their souls may acquire some scent of Nature which their
+lives may never know.
+
+"Let your Grace take a walk down 'Royal Street,' which flanks your
+Palace grounds, and see whether houses so pestilential ever stood in a
+street of so dainty a name? Go into the houses (as the writer of this
+memorial has) and see how a blank wall has been kept up so that no
+occupant of the rooms may look on grass or tree, and the window which
+admits light and air has been turned, by order of a former archbishop,
+the opposite way upon an outlook as wretched as the lot of the
+inhabitants. For forty years many inmates have lived and slept by the
+side of your Grace's park, without ever being allowed a glimpse of it.
+You may have no power to cancel such social outrage--but your Grace may.
+condone it by kindly and considerately according the use of the meadows
+to the poor children--doomed to burrow in these close, unwholesome
+tenements at your doors.
+
+"No one accuses your Grace of being wanting in personal kindliness. It
+must be that no one has called your attention to the unregarded misery
+under the shadow of your Palace. Should your Grace visit the forlorn
+streets and sickly homes around you, and hear the despairing words of
+the mothers when asked 'whether they would not be grateful could their
+children have a daily run in the great Archbishop's meadows?' there
+would not be wanting a plea from the gentle heart of the Lady of the
+Palace on behalf of these hapless children of these poor mothers.
+
+"Disregard not our appeal, we pray, because ours are unlicensed voices.
+Humanity is of every creed, and it will not detract from the glory of
+the Church that gratitude and praise should proceed from unaccustomed
+tongues.
+
+"Signed on behalf of the Assembly, with deference and respect.
+
+"George Jacob Holyoake.
+
+"Newcastle Chambers, Temple Bar,
+
+"November 21, 1878."
+
+
+Within two days I had the pleasure to receive a reply from the
+Archbishop.
+
+"Philpstoun House,
+
+"November 23, 1878.
+
+"Sir,--You may feel confident that the subject of the memorial which
+you have forwarded to me with your letter of the 21st will receive my
+attentive consideration. The condition of the inhabitants of the poor
+streets in Lambeth has often given me anxiety. My daughters and Mrs.
+Tait are well acquainted with many of the houses which you describe,
+and, so far as my other duties have allowed, I have taken opportunities
+of visiting some of the inmates of such houses personally. I should
+esteem it a great privilege if I were able to assist in maturing any
+scheme for improving the dwellings of the poor families to which your
+memorial alludes. Respecting the use of the open ground which surrounds
+Lambeth Palace, I have, in common with my predecessors, had the subject
+often under consideration. The plan which has been adopted and which has
+appeared on the whole the best for the interests of the neighbourhood,
+has been that now pursued for many years. The ground is freely given for
+cricket and football to as many schools and clubs as it is capable of
+containing, and, on application, liberty of entrance is accorded to
+children and others. Many school treats are also held in the grounds,
+and they are from time to time used for volunteer corps to exercise in.
+We have always been afraid that a more public opening of the grounds
+would interfere with the useful purposes to which they are at present
+turned for the benefit of the neighbourhood, and that, considering the
+somewhat limited extent of the space, no advantage could be secured by
+throwing it entirely open, which would at all compensate for the loss
+of the advantages at present enjoyed. I shall give the matter serious
+consideration, consulting with those best qualified from local
+experience to judge what is best for the neighbourhood, but my present
+impression is that more good is, on the whole, done by the arrangements
+now adopted, than by any other which I could devise.
+
+"I have the honour to be, Sir,
+
+"Your obedient humble servant,
+
+"A. C. Cantuar.
+
+"To Mr. George Jacob Holyoake."
+
+
+This correspondence I sent to the _Daily News_, always open to questions
+of interest to the people, and it received notice in various papers.
+The _Liverpool Daily Mail_ gave an effective summary of the memorial,
+saying:--
+
+"Of all strange people in the world, Mr. G. J. Holyoake and the
+Archbishop of Canterbury have been in correspondence--and not in
+unfriendly correspondence either. Mr. Holyoake, on behalf of himself and
+some friends like-minded, ventured to draw the Archbishop's attention to
+the fact that just opposite Lambeth Palace was a nest of very poor and
+squalid dwellings, in which many families were crowded together, without
+any regard for either decency or sanitary law. The only chance of
+looking upon anything green that the children of these poor people could
+have would be in the grounds that surround the Primate's dwelling, and
+these were absolutely shut off from their view by a high dead wall. In
+some cases a former Archbishop had actually ordered the windows of these
+miserable houses to be blocked up, and opened in another direction, in
+order, we suppose, that the Archiepiscopal eyes might not be offended
+by the sight of such unpleasant neighbours." The writer ended by
+expressing the hope that if the Archbishop could not open the grounds he
+might substitute "pervious palisades" for the stone walls impervious to
+the curious and wistful eyes of children. For reasons which will appear,
+the subject slumbered for four years, when I addressed the following
+letter to the editors of the _Telegraph_ and the _Times_, which appeared
+December 20, 1882:--
+
+"Sir,--On returning to England I read an announcement that the Lambeth
+Vestry had resolved to send a memorial to the Queen praying that the
+nine acres of field, now devoted to sheep, adjoining the Archbishop of
+Canterbury's Palace garden, may be appropriated to public recreation in
+that crowded and verdureless parish. Four years ago I sent a memorial
+upon this subject to the late Archbishop. It set forth that the parish
+was so densely populated that it would be an act of mercy to throw open
+the sheep fields to the poor children of the neighbourhood. It expressed
+the hope that Mrs. Tait, whose compassionate nature was known to the
+people, would plead for these little ones, who lived and died at her
+very door, as it were, seeing no green thing during all their wretched
+days. I visited poor women in the street next to the fields who brought
+fever-stricken children to the door wrapped in shawls. Their mothers
+told me how glad they should be were the gates open, that the little
+ones, whose only recreation ground was the gutter, could enter at will.
+The memorial--if I remember accurately, for I cannot refer to it as I
+write--stated that the houses which, as built, overlooked the fields,
+had had the windows bricked in by order of a former Archbishop, because
+they overlooked the garden. I was taken to the rooms and found that the
+view was closed up. The trees of the garden have well grown now, and a
+telescope could not reveal walkers therein. The late Archbishop sent me
+a kindly reply, but it did not answer my question, which was that, if
+his Grace could not consent to open the gates to his humble friends, we
+prayed that he, whose Master (in words of tenderness which had moved
+the hearts of men during nineteen centuries) had said, 'Suffer little
+children to come unto Me,' would at least substitute palisades for the
+dead walls which hid the green fields so that no little eyes could see
+the daisies in the spring. His Grace's reply was in substance the same
+as Dr. Randall Davidson's, which appeared in the _Times_ on Monday, who
+tells the public that rifle corps and cricketers are admitted to the
+fields and that 'arrangements are made for "treats" for infant and other
+schools' (whether of all denominations is not stated). How can poor
+mothers and sickly children get within these 'arrangements'? Cricketers
+are not helpless, rifle corps do not die for want of drill-grounds, as
+children in fever-dens do for want of the refreshment of verdure and
+pure air. To open the gates is the only generous and fitting thing to
+do, as the lawyers have who admit the outcasts of Drury and the adjacent
+lanes to the flowers of the Temple Gardens. Dr. Davidson says that the
+advice of those 'best qualified from local experience to judge' is that
+'no gain could be secured by throwing the fields entirely open.' Let the
+opinion be asked of workmen in the Lambeth factories and that of their
+wives. These are the 'best qualified local judges,' whose verdict would
+be instructive. Mrs. Tait's illness and death followed soon after the
+memorial in question was sent in, and I thought it not the time to press
+his Grace further when stricken with that calamity. All honour to the
+Lambeth Vestry, which proposes to pray Her Majesty to cause, if in her
+power, these vacant fields to be consigned to the Board of Works, who
+will give some gleam of a green paradise to the poor little ones of
+Lambeth. The vestry does well to appeal to the Queen, from whose kindly
+heart a thousand acts of sympathy have emanated. She has opened many
+portals, but none through which happier or more grateful groups will
+pass than through the garden gates of Lambeth Palace."
+
+Immediately a letter appeared in the _Times_ from the Rev. T. B.
+Robertson, expressed as follows:--
+
+"Sir,--Mr. Holyoake may be glad to hear that 'Lambeth Green' is open to
+schools of all denominations to hold their festivals in. I should think
+that no school was ever refused the use unless the field was previously
+engaged. The present method of utilising the field--viz., opening it to
+a large but limited number of persons (by ticket) seems about the best
+that could be devised. Mr. Holyoake asks how poor mothers and sickly
+children are to gain entrance. It is well known in the neighbourhood
+that tickets of admission are issued annually. The days for distribution
+are advertised on the gates some time previous, when those desirous of
+using the grounds can attend, and the tickets are issued till exhausted.
+No sick person has any difficulty in getting admission. I do not know
+the number of tickets issued, but I have seen when cricket clubs were
+unable to find a place to pitch their stumps. If the grounds are open
+to the public without limitation, it seems that the only way it could be
+done would be by laying it out in gardens and gravelled walks, with the
+usual park seats; but there is hardly occasion for such a place since
+the formation of the Thames Embankment, _a long strip of which runs
+immediately in front of the Palace well provided with seats_. It is
+evident that if the grounds were open to the public in general, the
+space being small--about seven acres--the cricketers and other clubs
+would have to give up their sports, and Lambeth schools and societies
+would be deprived of their only meeting-place for summer gatherings.
+
+"Yours obediently,
+
+"T. B. Robertson,
+
+"Curate of St. Mary, Lambeth.
+
+"December 22."
+
+
+The comment of the _Times_ upon this letter made it necessary to address
+a further communication to the editor. This comment occurred in a
+leader which, referring to a letter of the Lambeth Curate, says: "Mr.
+Holyoake, in a letter which we published on Wednesday, asked with some
+vehemence, what was the value of permission accorded to cricketers and
+schools, to the poor children of Lambeth; but Mr. Robertson, the Curate
+of St. Mary's, Lambeth, answers this morning, that no poor or sick
+person has any difficulty in obtaining admission for purposes of
+recreation and health, and shows that 'Lambeth Green,' as it is called,
+is in fact available to a large class of the neighbouring inhabitants.
+There is certainly force in Mr. Robertson's argument, that an unlimited
+use would defeat its own object, which is presumably to preserve the
+grounds as a playground. The large surrounding population would soon
+destroy the sylvan and park-like character of the place, and necessitate
+its laying out in the style of an ornamental pleasure garden, with
+formal walks, and turf only to be kept green by fencing."
+
+This is the old defence of exclusive enjoyment of parks and pleasure
+grounds, as the people, if admitted to them, would destroy them--which
+they do not. Why should they destroy what they value?
+
+My reply to the _Times_ appeared December 28, 1882:--
+
+"Sir,--It is the weight that you attach to the letter of the Curate of
+St Mary, Lambeth, which appeared in the _Times_ of Saturday, which makes
+it important. When I have viewed the Lambeth Palace from the railway
+which overlooks it and seen how completely the sheep fields are separate
+and apart from the Archbishop's garden, it has seemed a pity that
+the poor little children of Lambeth should not have the freedom and
+privilege of those sheep. No humane person could look into the houses
+of the crowded and cheerless streets which lie near the Palace walls
+without wishing to take the children by the hand into the Palace fields
+at once. Does the Rev. Mr. Robertson not understand the difference
+between a ticket gate and an open gate? How are poor, busy women to
+watch the gates to find out when the annual tickets of admission are
+given? And what is the chance of those families who arrive after 'the
+number issued is exhausted'? If all the persons who need admissions can
+have them, the gates might as well be thrown open. Of course, the nine
+acres would not hold all the parish; but all the parish would not go at
+once. No statement has been made which shows that the grounds have
+been occupied by tickets of admission more than forty days in the year,
+whereas there are 365 days when little people might go in. To them
+one hour in that green paradise would be more than a week jostled by
+passengers on the Embankment watching a stone wall, for the little
+people could not well overlook it. But if they could, can the Curate of
+St. Mary really think this limited recreation a sufficient substitute
+for quiet fields and flowers? The Board of Works, if the grounds come
+into their hands, may be trusted to give school treats a chance as well
+as local little children.
+
+"No one who has seen the crowds of ragged, dreary, pale-faced boys
+and girls rushing to the fields and flowers at Temple Gardens when the
+lawyers graciously open the gates to them and watched them pour out at
+evening through the Temple Gates into Fleet Street, leaping, laughing,
+and refreshed, could help thinking that it would be a gladsome sight
+to see such groups issue from the Lambeth Palace gates. I never thought
+when sending the memorial to the Archbishop that the fields should be
+divested from the see or sold away from it. I believed that the late
+Archbishop would, as the new Archbishop may, by an act of grace accord
+his little neighbours free admission, or at least exchange the dead
+walls for palisades, so that children playing around may vary the stones
+of the Embankment for a sight of sheep and grass through the bars. The
+late Canon Kingsley asked me to visit him when he came into residence at
+Westminster. My intention was to ask him and the late Dean, whom I
+had the honour to know, to judge themselves whether the matter now in
+question was not practicable, and then to speak to the Archbishop about
+it. But death carried them both away one after the other before this
+opportunity could occur. My belief remains unchanged that the late
+Archbishop would have done what is now asked had time and the state of
+his health permitted him to attend to the matter himself. It would have
+been but an extension of the unselfish and kindly uses to which he had
+long permitted the grounds to be put."
+
+From several letters I received at the time, I quote one dated Christmas
+Eve, 1882:--
+
+"Honour and thanks to you, Mr. Holyoake, for your recent and former
+letters respecting Lambeth Palace field. Very much more good could
+be got out of it than as a place for cricketing on half-holidays and
+occasional school-treats, and for desolation at other times except as
+regards an approved few.
+
+"There is no recreation ground in London that I look upon with so much
+satisfaction as a triangular inclosure of plain grass by Kennington
+Church, enjoyed commonly by the dirtiest and poorest children."
+
+But a letter of a very different character appeared in the Standard,
+December 20, 1882, entitled, "The Lambeth Palace Garden ":--
+
+"Sir,--No right-minded person can fail to be deeply impressed by Mr.
+Holyoake's touching letter in your impression of to-day. Its sentiments
+are so very beautiful and its principles so exactly popular, and in such
+perfect accordance with the blessed Liberal maxim--'What is yours is
+mine and what is mine is my own,' that I myself am overcome with delight
+at their enunciation. The pleasure of being perfectly free and easy with
+other people's property, evidently becoming so sincere and abounding,
+and the simple manner in which such liberality can be now readily
+practised without any personal self-denial or inconvenience, makes the
+principle in action perfectly commendable, and one to be duly applied
+and most carefully expanded.
+
+"With the latter view, I venture to point out that there is a very
+excellent library of books at Lambeth Palace, which, comparatively
+speaking, very few people take down or read. Do not, however, think
+me selfishly covetous or hankering after my neighbour's property if
+I venture to point out that there exist more than twenty clergymen in
+Lambeth, to whom a share or division of these scarcely used volumes
+would be a great boon. If the pictures, furniture, and cellars of wine
+could, at the same time, be benevolently divided, I should have no
+objection to receiving a share of the same under such philanthropic
+'re-arrangement'--I am, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"A Lambeth Parson.
+
+"Lambeth, December 20."
+
+
+My reply to this letter appeared in the _Standard_, December 22, 1882:--
+
+"Sir,--This morning I received a letter from a clergyman, who gives his
+name and address, and who knows Lambeth well, thanking me for the letter
+which I had addressed to you, as he takes great interest in the welfare
+of the little ones in the crowded homes around the Palace. Lest,
+however, I should be elated by such an unexpected, though welcome,
+concurrence of opinion, the same post brought me a letter to the
+same purport of that signed 'A Lambeth Parson,' which appeared in the
+_Standard_ yesterday. The letter which you printed assumes that the
+sheep fields of the Palace are private property, and that I propose to
+steal them in the name of humanity. Permit me to say that I have as much
+detestation as the Lambeth Parson can have for that sympathy for the
+people which has plunder for its motive.
+
+"The memorial I sent to his Grace the late Archbishop asked him to give
+his permission for little ones to enter his grounds. We never proposed
+to take permission, nor assumed any right to pass the gates. There never
+was a doubt in my mind, that had his Grace opportunity of looking into
+the matter for himself, he would have granted the request, for his
+kindness of heart we all knew. That he gave the use of the fields to
+what he thought equally useful purposes showed how unselfishly he used
+the grounds. If the question is raised as to private property, I would
+do what I could to promote the purchase of it (if it can rightly be
+sold) by a penny subscription from the parents of the poor children
+and others who would chiefly benefit by it. It would be an evil day
+if working people could consent that their little ones should have
+enjoyment at the price of theft.--I am, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"George Jacob Holyoake.
+
+"22, Essex Street, W.C., December 21."
+
+
+Meanwhile an important public body had taken up the question. "The
+Metropolitan Public Garden, Boulevard, and Playground Association" had,
+through its officers, Lord Brabazon, Mr. Ernest Hart, Mr. J. Tennant,
+and the Rev. Sidney Vatcher, addressed the following letter to the Prime
+Minister:--
+
+"Sir,--The undersigned 'members of the Metropolitan Public Garden,
+Boulevard, and Playground Association' desire to draw your attention to
+an article enclosed which recently appeared in a London daily paper, and
+to request that you will bring the needs of Lambeth district, as regards
+open spaces, to the notice of the future Primate, in the hope that
+his Grace may take into consideration the suggestions contained in the
+article, and with the co-operation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners
+and the Metropolitan Board of Works, take such steps as may seem to him
+most advisable for the purpose of securing in perpetuity to the poor and
+crowded population of Lambeth the use and enjoyment of the open space
+around Lambeth Palace.--We have the honour to be, sir, your most
+obedient and humble servants,
+
+"Brabazon, Chairman."
+
+Mr. Gladstone willingly gave attention to the subject, and sent the
+following reply:--
+
+"10, Downing Street, Whitehall,
+
+"_December_ 21, 1882.
+
+"My Lord,--I am directed by Mr. Gladstone to acknowledge the receipt
+of the letter which was signed by your lordship and other members of the
+Metropolitan Public Garden, etc., Association in favour of securing for
+the use of the population of the neighbourhood the grounds at present
+attached to Lambeth Palace. I have to inform your lordship that Mr.
+Gladstone has already been in communication with the vestry of Lambeth
+on this subject, and as it appears to be one of metropolitan improvement
+it is not a matter in which Mr. Gladstone can take the initiative.
+He will, however, make known your views to the prelate designated to
+succeed to the Archbishopric, and should the Metropolitan Board of Works
+intervene Mr. Gladstone will be happy to consider the matter further.--I
+am, my Lord, your obedient servant,
+
+"Horace Seymour.
+
+"The Lord Brabazon."
+
+
+Next Colonel Sir J. M'Garel Hogg, M.P., Chairman of the Metropolitan
+Board of Works, had the matter before him. It was stated that the use of
+the nine acres of ground (of which a plan was presented) depended upon
+the permission of the Archbishop. The Lambeth Vestry had sent a memorial
+to the Queen and the Government saying that the pasture and recreation
+acres might be severed from the Archbishop's residence.
+
+The following is the reply received from Mr. Gladstone:--
+
+"10, Downing Street, Whitehall,
+
+December 1882,
+
+"Sir,--Mr. Gladstone has had the honour to receive the communication
+which you have made to him on behalf of the vestry of the parish of
+Lambeth on the subject of acquiring the grounds of Lambeth Palace as a
+place of public recreation. In reply I am directed to say that as far as
+he is able to understand this important matter it seems to be a case of
+metropolitan improvement, and if, as he supposes, that is the case, the
+proper course for the vestry to take would be to bring the case before
+the Metropolitan Board of Works for their consideration. In this view
+Mr. Gladstone is not aware that Her Majesty's Government could undertake
+to interfere, but he will make known this correspondence to the person
+who may be designated to succeed the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
+he will further consider the matter should the Metropolitan Board
+intervene. Mr. Gladstone would have been glad if the vestry had supplied
+him with the particulars of the case, in regard to which he has only a
+very general knowledge.--I am, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"E. W. Hamilton.
+
+"The Vestry Clerk of Lambeth."
+
+
+Mr. Hill gave notice of the following motion:--
+
+"That an instruction be given to the Prime Minister that if the proper
+authorities are willing to hand over the Lambeth Palace grounds for the
+free use of the public, this Board will accept the charge and preserve
+the grounds as a portion of the open spaces."
+
+Then came a hopeless and defensive letter, before referred to, addressed
+both to the _Standard, Telegraph_, and the _Times_:--
+
+"Sir,--Some of the statements (including a correspondence with the
+Prime Minister) which have, during the last few days, appeared in the
+newspapers with reference to Lambeth Palace grounds, would, I think,
+lead those who are unacquainted with the circumstances to suppose that
+these grounds have been hitherto altogether closed to the public, and
+reserved for the sole use of the Archbishop and his household. Will
+you, therefore, to prevent misapprehension, kindly allow me to state the
+facts of the case?
+
+"For many years past the Archbishop of Canterbury endeavoured, in what
+seemed to him the best way, to make the grounds in question available,
+under certain restrictions, to the general public. During the summer
+months twenty-eight cricket clubs, some from the Lambeth parishes
+and some from other parts of London, have received permission to play
+cricket in the field, and similar arrangements have been made for
+football in the winter, though necessarily upon a smaller scale. The
+whole available ground has been carefully allotted for the different
+hours of each day. On certain fixed occasions the field is used for
+rifle corps' drill and exercises, and throughout the summer,
+arrangements are constantly made for 'treats' for infant and other
+schools unable to go out of London. Tickets giving admission to the
+field at all hours have been issued for some years past, in very large
+numbers, to the sick, aged, and poor of the surrounding streets; and the
+whole grounds, including the private garden, have been opened without
+restriction to the nurses and others of St. Thomas's Hospital.
+
+"His Grace frequently consulted those best qualified from local
+experience to judge what is for the advantage of the neighbourhood, and
+invariably found their opinion to coincide with his own--namely, that
+a more public opening of the ground would interfere with the useful
+purposes to which it is at present turned for the benefit of the
+neighbourhood, and that, considering the limited space, no gain could be
+secured by throwing it entirely open which would at all compensate for
+the inevitable loss of the advantages at present enjoyed.--I am, sir,
+your obedient servant,
+
+"Randall T. Davidson.
+
+"Lambeth Palace, December 16."
+
+
+On January 6, 1883, I wrote to the _Daily News_, saying:--
+
+"Sir,--Your columns have recorded the steps taken by the Lambeth Vestry
+and by Lord Brabazon (on the part of the Open Space Society, for which
+he acts) with respect to the use of the pasture acres connected with the
+Palace grounds of Lambeth. I have been asked by a clergyman, for whose
+judgment I have great respect, to write some letter which shall make it
+plain to the public that it is not the gardens of the Palace for the use
+of which any one has asked, but for the nine acres of fields outside
+the gardens, as a small recreation ground which shall be open to the
+children of Lambeth, who are numerous there, and much in need of some
+pleasant change of that scarce and pleasant kind. No one has dined at
+the Lambeth Palace, or been otherwise a visitor there, without valuing
+the gardens which surround it and which are necessary to an episcopal
+residence in London. No one wishes to interfere with or curtail the
+garden grounds. I thought the public understood this. I shall therefore
+be obliged if you can insert this explanation in your columns. Much
+better than anything I could say upon the subject are the words which
+occur in the _Family Churchman_ of December 27th, which gives the
+portraits of the new Archbishop, Dr. Benson, and the late Bishop of
+Llandaff. The editor says that 'every one knows the Archbishops of
+Canterbury have a splendid country seat at Addington, within easy
+driving distance of London. Within the same distance there are few parks
+so beautiful as Addington Palace, whilst, unlike some parks in other
+parts of the country, it is jealously closed against the public. The
+Palace park is remarkable for its romantic dells, filled with noble
+trees and an undergrowth of rhododendrons. There are, moreover, within
+the park, heights which command fine views of the surrounding country.
+It is thought, perhaps not unjustly, that the new Archbishop might well
+be content with this country place, and, whilst retaining the gardens
+at Lambeth Palace, might with graceful content see conceded to the poor,
+whose houses throng the neighbourhood, the nine acres of pasture land.'
+This is very distinct and even generous testimony on the part of the
+_Family Churchman_ to the seemliness and legitimacy of the plea put
+forward on the part of the little people of Lambeth.--Very faithfully
+yours,
+
+"George Jacob Holyoake.
+
+"22, Essex Street W.C."
+
+
+News of the Palace grounds agitation reached as far as Mentone, and
+Mr. R. French Blake, who was residing at the Hotel Splendide, sent
+an interesting letter to the _Times_--historical, defensive, and
+suggestive. He wrote on January 3, 1883, saying:--
+
+"Sir,--Attention having recently been drawn to the Lambeth Palace
+grounds and the use which the late Primate made of them for the
+recreation of the masses, it may be interesting, especially at this
+juncture, to place on record what were his views with regard to those
+historic parts of the buildings of the Palace itself which are not
+actually used as the residence of the Archbishops. These chiefly consist
+of what is known as the Lollards' Tower, and the noble Gate Tower,
+called after its founder, Archbishop Moreton. The former of these has
+recently been put into repair, and rooms in it were granted to the late
+Bishop of Lichfield and his brother, by virtue of their connection with
+the Palace library."
+
+Mr. Blake then adverts to the affair of the grounds. He says:--
+
+"Nor can I suppose that any well-informed member of the vestry could
+imagine that it is in the lawful power of a Prime Minister, or even of
+Parliament, to alienate, without consent, any portion of the Church's
+inheritance. It may be a somewhat high standard of right, which is
+referred to in the sacred writings, to 'pay for the things which we
+never took,' but in no standard of right whatsoever can the motto
+find place to 'take the things for which we never pay.' Although the
+Archbishop may have deemed that he turned to the very best account the
+ground in question, for the purposes of enjoyment and health to the
+surrounding population, he was far too wise and too charitable to
+disregard, so far as he deemed he had the power, any petition or request
+which might, if granted, add to the pleasure and happiness of others,
+and if it had been made clear to him as his duty, and an offer to
+that effect had been made to him by the Metropolitan Board of Works or
+others, I am satisfied he would have consented, not to the alienation of
+Church property, but to the sale of the field for a people's park, and
+the application of the value of the ground to mission purposes for South
+London, and such a scheme I happen to know was at one time discussed by
+some of those most intimately connected with him."
+
+Afterwards, January 13, 1883, the _Pall Mall Gazette_ remarked that "it
+is not a happy omen that the consent of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners
+is required before the well-fed donkey who disports himself in the
+Palace grounds can be joined by the ill-fed, ragged urchins who now have
+no playground but the streets." The _Daily News_ rendered further aid in
+a leader. Then a report was made that the condition of the streets,
+"to which, in his correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury,
+Mr. Holyoake had called attention, had been illustrated by the fall of
+several miserable tenements, in which a woman and several children were
+fatally buried in the ruins." The writer says there is "no hope that the
+unkindly exclusiveness of 'Cantuar' will be broken down."
+
+So the matter rested for nearly twenty years before the happy news
+came that the London County Council had come into possession of the
+ecclesiastical fields, and converted them into a holy park, where
+pale-faced mothers and sickly children may stroll or disport themselves
+at will evermore. All honour to the later agents of this merciful
+change. There is an open gleam of Nature now in the doleful district.
+Sir Hudibras exclaims:
+
+     "What perils do environ
+     Him who meddles with cold iron."
+
+Not less so if the meddlement be with ecclesiastical iron and the
+contest lasts a longer time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. SOCIAL WONDERS ACROSS THE WATER
+
+Being several times in France, twice in America and Canada, thrice in
+Italy and as many times in Holland, under circumstances which brought
+me into relation with representative people, enabled me to become
+acquainted with the ways of persons of other countries than my own.
+There I met great orators, poets, statesmen, philosophers, and
+great preachers of whom I had read--but whom to know was a greater
+inspiration. Thus I learned the art of not being surprised, and
+of regarding strangeness as a curiosity, not an offence awakening
+resentment as something unpardonable, or at least, an impropriety the
+traveller is bound to reprehend, as Mrs. Trollope and her successors
+have done on American peculiarities. On the Continent I found incidents
+to wonder at, but I confine myself in this chapter to America and
+Canada, countries we are accustomed to designate as "Across the Water,"
+as the United States and the Dominion which have imperishable interest
+to all of the British race.
+
+Notwithstanding the thousands of persons who now make sea journeys for
+the first time, I found, when it came to my turn, there was no book--nor
+is there now--on the art of being a sea passenger. I could find no
+teaching Handbook of the Ocean--what to expect under entirely new
+conditions, and what to do when they come, so as to extract out of a
+voyage the pleasure in it and increase the discomforts which occur in
+wave-life. One of the pleasures is--there is no dust at sea.
+
+On my visit to America in 1879, I, at the request of Mr. Hodgson Pratt,
+undertook to inquire what were the prospects of emigrants to that
+country and Canada, which cost me labour and expense. What I found
+wanting, and did not exist, and which does not exist still, was an
+emigrant guide book informing him of the conditions of industry in
+different States, the rules of health necessary to be observed in
+different climates, and the vicissitudes to which health is liable. The
+book wanted is one on an epitome plan of the People's Blue Books, issued
+by Lord Clarendon on my suggestion, as he stated in them.
+
+When I was at Washington, Mr. Evarts, the Secretary of State, gave me a
+book, published by local authorities at Washington, with maps of every
+department of the city, marking the portion where special diseases
+prevailed. London has no such book yet. Similar information concerning
+every State and territory in America existed in official reports. But
+I found that neither the Government of Washington nor Ottawa would take
+the responsibility of giving emigrants this information in a public and
+portable form, as land agents would be in revolt at the preferential
+choice emigrants would then have before them. It was continually denied
+that such information existed. Senators in their turn said so. Possibly
+they did not know, but Mr. Henry Villard, a son-in-law of Lloyd
+Garrison, told me that when he was secretary of the Social Science
+Association he began the kind of book I sought, and that its' issue was
+discouraged.
+
+On my second visit to America in 1882, I had introductions to the
+President of the United States and to Lord Lome, the Governor of Canada,
+from his father, the Duke of Argyll, with a view of obtaining the
+publication of a protecting guide book such as I have described, under
+its authority. When I first mentioned this in New York (1879) the editor
+of the _Star_ (an Irishman) wrote friendly and applauding leaders upon
+my project. On my second visit, in 1882, this friendly editor (having
+seen in the papers that Mr. Gladstone approved of my quest) wrote
+furious leaders against it. On asking him the reason of the change of
+view, he said, "Mr. Holyoake, were Mr. Gladstone and his Cabinet in this
+room, and I could open a trap-door under their feet and let them all
+fall into hell, I would do it," using words still more venomous. Then
+I realised the fatuity of the anti-Irish policy which drives the ablest
+Irishmen into exile and maintains a body of unappeasable enemies of
+England wherever they go. Then I saw what crazy statesmanship it was in
+the English to deny self-government to the Irish people, and spend ten
+millions a year to prevent them taking care of themselves.
+
+The Irish learned to think better of Mr. Gladstone some years later.
+One night when he was sitting alone in the House of Commons writing his
+usual letter to the Queen, after debates were over, he was startled by
+a ringing cheer that filled the chamber, when looking up he found the
+Irish members, who had returned to express their gratitude to him.
+Surely no nation ever proclaimed its obligation in so romantic a way.
+The tenderest prayer put up in my time was that of W. D. Sullivan:--
+
+     "_God be good to Gladdy_,
+     Says Sandy, John and Paddy,
+     For he is a noble laddy,
+     A grand old chiel is he."
+
+I take pride in the thought that I was the first person who lectured
+upon "English Co-operation" in Montreal and Boston. It was with pride
+I spoke in Stacey Hall in Boston, from the desk at which Lloyd Garrison
+was once speaking, when he was seized by a slave-owning mob with intent
+to hang him. As I spoke I could look into the stairway on my right, down
+which he was dragged.
+
+The interviewers, the terror of most "strangers," were welcome to
+me. The engraving in Frank Leslie's paper reproduced in "Among the
+Americans," representing the interview with me in the Hoffman House, was
+probably the first picture of that process published in England (1881).
+I advocated the cultivation of the art in Great Britain, which, though
+prevalent in America, was still in a crude state there. The questions
+put to me were poor, abrupt, containing no adequate suggestion of the
+information sought The interviewer should have some conception of the
+knowledge of the person questioned, and skill in reporting his answers.
+Some whom I met put down the very opposite of what was said to them. The
+only protection against such perverters, when they came again, was to
+say the contrary to what I meant, when their rendering would be what I
+wished it to be. Some interviewers put into your mouth what they desired
+you to say. Against them there is no remedy save avoidance. On the
+whole, I found interviewers a great advantage. I had certain ideas to
+make known and information to ask for, and the skilful interviewer, in
+his alluring way, sends everything all over the land. Wise questioning
+is the fine art of daily life. "It is misunderstanding," says the
+Dutch proverb, "which brings lies to town." Everybody knows that
+misunderstandings create divisions in families and alienations in
+friendships--in parties as well as in persons--which timely inquiries
+would dissipate. Intelligent questioning elicits hidden facts--it
+increases knowledge without ostentation--it clears away obscurity,
+and renders information definite--it supersedes assumptions--it tests
+suspicions and throws light upon conjecture--it undermines error,
+without incensing those who hold it--it leads misconception to confute
+itself without the affront of direct refutation--it warns inquirers not
+to give absolute assent to anything uncorroborated, or which cannot
+be interrogated. Relevant questioning is the handmaid of accuracy, and
+makes straight the pathway of Truth.
+
+The privations of Protection, which a quick and independent-minded
+people endured, was one of the wonders I saw. In Montreal, for a writing
+pad to use on my voyage home, I had to pay seven shillings and sixpence,
+which I could have bought in London for eighteen-pence. I took to
+America a noble, full-length portrait of John Bright, just as he stood
+when addressing the House of Commons, more than half life-size--the
+greatest of Mayall's triumphs. Though it was not for sale, but a present
+to my friend, James Charlton, of Chicago, the well-known railway agent,
+the Custom House demanded a payment of 30 dols. (L6) import duty. It was
+only after much negotiations in high quarters, and in consideration
+that it was a portrait of Mr. Bright, brought as a gift to an American
+citizen, that the import duty was reduced to 6 dollars.
+
+The disadvantage of Protection is that no one can make a gift to
+America or to its citizens without being heavily taxed to discourage
+international generosity.
+
+The Mayor of Brighton, Mr. Alderman Hallet, had entrusted to me some 200
+volumes, of considerable value, on City Sanitation, greatly needed in
+America. They lay in the Custom House three months, before I discovered
+that the Smithsonian Institute could claim them under its charter.
+Otherwise I must have paid a return freight to Brighton, as America is
+protected from accepting offerings of civil or sanitary service. There
+often come to us, from that country, emissaries of Evangelism, to
+improve us in piety, but at home they levy 25 per cent, upon the
+importation of the Holy Scriptures--thus taxing the very means of
+Salvation.
+
+For a time I sent presents of books to working-class friends in America
+whom I wished to serve or to interest, who wrote to me to say that "they
+were unable to redeem them from the post-office, the import tax being
+more than they could pay," and they reminded me that "having been in
+America, I ought to know that working people could not afford to
+have imported presents made to them." Indeed, I had often noticed how
+destitute their homes were in matters of table service and all bright
+decoration, plentiful even in the houses of our miners and mechanics
+in England. American workmen would tell me that a present of cutlery or
+porcelain, if I could bring that about, would interest them greatly.
+
+On leaving New York a friend of mine, a Custom House officer, told me he
+needed a coast coat, suitable to the service he was engaged in, and that
+he would be much obliged if I would have one made for him in England.
+He would leave it to me to contrive how it could reach him. The coat he
+wanted, he said, would cost him L9 in New York. I had it made in London,
+entirely to his satisfaction, for L4 15s., but how to get it to him free
+of Custom duties was a problem. I had to wait until a friend of mine--a
+property owner in Montreal--was returning there. He went out in the
+vessel in which Princess Louise sailed. He wore it occasionally on deck
+to qualify it being regarded as a personal garment. So it arrived duty
+free at Montreal. After looking about for two or three months for a
+friend who would wear it across the frontier, it arrived, after six
+months' travelling diplomacy, at the house of my friend in New York.
+
+I did not find in America or Canada anything more wonderful, beggarly
+and humiliating than the policy of Protection. But we are not without
+counterparts in folly of another kind.
+
+Visitors to England no doubt wonder to find us, a commercial nation,
+fining the merchant of enterprise a shilling (the workman was so
+fined until late years) for every pound he expends on journeys of
+business--keeping a travelling tax to discourage trade. But John Bull
+does not profess to be over-bright, while Uncle Sam thinks himself the
+smartest man in creation. We retain in 1904 a tax Peel condemned in
+1844. But then we live under a monarchy, from which Uncle Sam is free.
+
+France used to be the one land which was hospitable to new ideas, and
+for that it is still pre-eminent in Europe. But America excels Europe
+now in this respect. Canada has not emerged from its Colonialism, and
+has no national aspiration. Voltaire found when he was in London,
+that England had fifty religions and only one sauce. America has no
+distinction in sauces, but it has more than 200 religions, and having
+no State Church there is no poison of Social Ascendency in piety, but
+equality in worship and prophesying. I found that a man might be of any
+religion he pleased--though as a matter of civility he was expected
+to be of some--and if he said he was of none, he was thought to be
+phenomenally fastidious, if not one of theirs would suit him, since
+America provided a greater variety for the visitor to choose from than
+any other country in the world.
+
+Though naturally disappointed at being unable to suit the stranger's
+taste, they were not intolerant. He was at liberty to import or invent a
+religion of his own. Let not the reader imagine that because people are
+free to believe as they please, there is no religion in America.
+
+Nearing Santa Fe in New Mexico, I passed by the adobe temple of
+Montezuma. Adobe is pronounced in three syllables--a-do-be--and is the
+Mexican name for a mud-built house, which is usually one story high; so
+that Santa Fe has been compared to a town blown down. When the Emperor
+Montezuma perished he told his followers to keep the fire burning in the
+Temple, as he would come again from the east, and they should see "his
+face bright and fair." In warfare and pestilence and decimation of their
+race, these faithful worshippers kept the fire burning night and day for
+three centuries, and it has not long been extinguished. Europe can show
+no faith so patient, enduring, and pathetic as this.
+
+The pleasantest hours of exploration I spent in Santa Fe were in the
+old church of San Miguel. Though the oldest church in America, there are
+those who would remove rather than restore it. A book lay upon an altar
+in which all who would subscribe to save it had inserted their names,
+and I added mine for five shillings.
+
+When an Englishman goes abroad, he takes with him a greater load of
+prejudices than any man of any other nation could bear, and, as a rule,
+he expresses pretty freely his opinion of things which do not conform
+to his notions, as though the inhabitants ought to have consulted his
+preferences, forgetting that in his own country he seldom shows that
+consideration to others. On fit occasion I did not withhold my opinion
+of things which seemed to me capable of improvement; but before giving
+my impressions I thought over what equivalent absurdity existed in
+England, and by comparing British instances with those before me, no one
+took offence--some were instructed or amused at finding that hardly any
+nation enjoyed a monopoly of stupidity. There is all the difference in
+the world between saying to an international host, "How badly you do
+things in your country," and saying, "We are as unsuccessful as you in
+'striking twelve all at once.'"
+
+We all know the maxim: "'Before finding fault with another, think of
+your own." But Charles Dickens, with all his brightness, forgot this
+when he wrote of America. Few nations have as yet attained perfection in
+all things--not even England.
+
+When in Boston, America, 1879, I went to the best Bible store I could
+find or be directed to, to purchase a copy of the apocryphal books of
+the Old Testament. In a church where I had to make a discourse, I wanted
+to read the dialogue between the prophet Esdras and the angel Uriel.
+The only copy I could obtain was on poor, thin paper; of small, almost
+invisible print, and meanly bound. The price was 4s. 2d. "How is it," I
+inquired, "that you ask so much in the Hub of the Universe for even
+this indifferent portion of Scripture--seeing that at the house of the
+Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, in Northumberland
+Avenue, London, a house ten times handsomer than yours, in a much more
+costly situation--I can buy the same book on good, strong paper, in
+large type, in a bright, substantial cover for exactly 3s. less than you
+ask me." "You see, sir," said the manager of the store, "we have duty
+to pay." "Duty!" I exclaimed. "Do you mean me to understand that in this
+land of Puritan Christians, you tax the means of salvation?" He did not
+like to admit that, and could not deny it, so after a confused moment he
+answered: "All books imported have to pay twenty-five per cent, duty."
+All I could say was that "it seemed to me that their protective duties
+protected sin; and, being interested in the welfare of emigrants, I must
+make a note counselling all who wish to be converted, to get that done
+before coming out; for if they arrive in America in an unconverted state
+they could not afford to be converted here." Until then I was unaware
+that Protection protected the Devil, and that he had a personal interest
+in its enactment.
+
+My article in the _Nineteenth Century_ entitled, "A Stranger in
+America," written in the uncarping spirit as to defects and ungrudgingly
+recognising the circumstances which frustrated or retarded other
+excellences in their power, was acknowledged by the press of that
+country, and was said by G. W. Smalley--the greatest American critic
+in this country then--to be "one of those articles which create
+international goodwill." Approval worth having could no further go. It
+was surprising to me that mere two-sided travelling fairness should meet
+with such assent, whereas I expected it would be regarded as tame and
+uninteresting.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH AT SEA
+
+The voyage out to America described in the last chapter included an
+instance of the extraordinary behaviour of the Established Church at
+sea, which deserves special mention as it is still repeated.
+
+There is an offensive rule on board ships that the service on Sunday
+shall be that of the Church of England, and that the preacher selected
+shall be of that persuasion.
+
+Several of the twelve ministers of religion among the passengers of the
+_Bothnia_ in 1879 were distinguished preachers, whereas the clergyman
+selected to preach to us was not at all distinguished, and made a sermon
+which I, as an Englishman, was ashamed to hear delivered before an
+audience of intelligent Americans. The preacher told a woful story of
+loss of trade and distress in England, which gave the audience the idea
+that John Bull was "up a tree." Were he up ever so high I would not have
+told it to an alien audience.
+
+The preacher said that these losses were owing to our sins--that is the
+sins of Englishmen. The devotion of the American hearers was varied
+with a smile at this announcement. It was their surpassing ingenuity and
+rivalry in trade which had affected our exports for a time. Our chief
+"sins" were uninventiveness and commercial incapacity, and the greater
+wit and ingenuity of the audience were the actual punishment the
+preacher was pleading against, and praying them to be contrite on
+account of their own success. The minister described bad trade as a
+punishment from God, as though God had made the rascally merchants who
+took out shoddy calico and ruined the markets. It was not God that had
+driven the best French and German artists and workmen into America,
+where they have enriched its manufacturers with their skill and
+industry, and enabled that country to compete with ours.
+
+The preacher's text was as wide of any mark as his sermon. It asked the
+question, "How can we sing in a strange land?" When we should arrive
+there, there would hardly be a dozen of us in the vessel who would be
+in a strange land; the great majority were going home--mostly commercial
+reapers of an English harvest who were returning home rejoicing--bearing
+their golden sheaves with them. Neither the sea nor the land were
+strange to them. Many of them were as familiar with the Atlantic as
+with the prairie. I sat at table by a Toronto dealer who had crossed
+the ocean twenty-nine times. The congregation at sea formed a very poor
+opinion of the discernment of the Established Church.
+
+On the return voyage in the _Gallia_ we had another "burning" but not
+"a shining light" of the Church of England to discourse. He was a young
+man, and it required some assurance on his part to look into the eyes
+of the intelligent Christians around him, who had three times his years,
+experience, and knowledge, and lecture them upon matters of which he was
+absolutely ignorant.
+
+This clergyman enforced the old doctrine of severity in parental
+discipline of the young, and on the wisdom of compelling children to
+unquestioning obedience, and argued that submission to a higher will was
+good for men during life. At least two-thirds of the congregation were
+American, who regard parental severity as cruelty to the young, and
+utterly uninstructive; and unquestioning obedience they hold to be
+calamitous and demoralising education. They expect reasonable obedience,
+and seek to obtain it by reason. Submission to a "higher will" as
+applied to man, is submission to arbitrary authority against which the
+whole polity of American life is a magnificent protest. The only higher
+will they recognise in worldly affairs is the will of the people,
+intelligently formed, impartially gathered, and constitutionally
+recorded--facts of which the speaker had not the remotest idea.
+
+Who can read this narrative of the ignorance and effrontery, nurtured
+by the Established Church and obtruded on passengers at sea, without
+a sense of patriotic humiliation that it is continued every Sunday in
+every ship? It is thought dangerous to be wrecked and not to have taken
+part in this pitiable exhibition.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV. ADVENTURES IN THE STREETS
+
+Were I persuaded, as many are, that each person is a subject of
+Providential care, I might count myself as one of the well-favoured. I
+should do so, did it not demand unseemly egotism to believe the Supreme
+Master of all the worlds of the Universe gave a portion of His eternal
+time to personally guide my unimportant footsteps, or snatch me from
+harm, which might befall me on doing my duty, or when I inadvertently,
+negligently, or ignorantly put myself in the way of disaster. Whatever
+may be the explanation, I have oft been saved in jeopardy.
+
+The first specific deliverance occurred when I was a young man, in the
+Baskeville Mill, Birmingham. Working at a button lathe, the kerchief
+round my neck was caught by the "chock," and I saw myself drawn swiftly
+to it. To avert being strangled, I held back my neck with what force I
+could. All would have been in vain had not a friendly Irishman, who was
+grinding spectacle glasses in an adjoining room, come to my assistance,
+by which I escaped decapitation without benefit of the clergy, or the
+merciful swiftness of the guillotine.
+
+In days when the cheap train ran very early in the morning, I set out
+before daylight from Exeter, where I had been lecturing. At the station
+at which the train stopped for an hour or two, as was the custom in days
+before the repeal of the tax on third-class passengers, we were in
+what Omar Khayyam called the "false dawn of morning." The train did
+not properly draw up to the platform, and when I stepped out I had a
+considerable fall, which sprained my ankle and went near breaking my
+neck.
+
+On my arrival in Boston, 1879, I was invited by a newspaper friend, whom
+I had brought with me into the city, to join a party of pressmen who
+were to assemble next morning at Parker House, to report upon the test
+ascent of a new elevator. It happened that Mr. Wendell Phillips visited
+me early at Adam's House, before I was up. He sat familiarly on the
+bedrail, and proposed to drive me round the city and show me the
+historic glories of Boston, which being proud to accept, I sent an
+apology for my absence to the elevator party at Parker House. That
+morning the elevator broke down, and out of five pressmen who went into
+it only four were rescued--more or less in a state of pulp. One was
+killed. But for Mr. Phillips's fortunate visit I should have been among
+them.
+
+In Kansas City, in the same year (1879), I was taken by my transatlantic
+friend, Mr. James Charlton, to see a sugar bakery, concerning which I
+was curious. The day was hot enough to singe the beard of Satan, and
+I was glad to retreat into the bakery, which, however, I found still
+hotter, and I left, intending to return at a cooler hour next morning.
+At the time I was to arrive I heard that the whole building had fallen
+in. Some were killed and many injured. This was the City of Kansas, of
+which the mayor once said: "He wished the people would let some one die
+a natural death, that a stranger might know how healthy the city was.
+Accidents, duels, and shootings prevented cases of longevity occurring."
+
+Another occasion when misadventure took place, when we--my daughter,
+Mrs. Marsh, and I--were crossing the Tesuque Valley, below Santa Fe,
+the party occupied three carriages; road, there was none, and the
+horses knew it, and when they came to a difficulty--either a ravine
+or hill--the driver would give the horses the rein, when they spread
+themselves out with good sagacity, and descended or ascended with
+success. One pair of horses broke the spring of their carriage, making
+matters unpleasant to the occupants; another pair broke the shaft,
+which, cutting them, made them mad, and they ran away. The carriage in
+which I was remained sound, and I had the pleasure for once of watching
+the misfortunes of my friends.
+
+The river was low, the sand was soft, and the distance through the
+Tesuque River was considerable, and we calculated that no horses were
+mad enough to continue their efforts to run through it, and we were
+rewarded by seeing them alter their minds in the midst of it, and
+continue their journey in a sensible manner.
+
+Returning from Guelph, which lies below Hamilton, in the Niagara corner
+of Canada, where we had been to see the famous Agricultural College, we
+were one night on the railway in what the Scotch call the "gloaming." My
+daughter remarked that the scenery outside the carriage was more fixed
+than she had before observed it, and upon inquiry it appeared that we
+were fixed too--for the train had parted in the middle, and the movable
+portion had gone peacefully on its way to Hamilton. We were left forming
+an excellent obstruction to any other train which might come down the
+line. Fortunately, the guard could see the last station we had left,
+two miles from us, and see also the train following us arrive there. We
+hoped that the stationmaster would have some knowledge of our being upon
+the line, and stop the advancing train; but when we saw it leave the
+station on its way to us we were all ordered to leave the carriages,
+which was no easy thing, as the banks right and left of us were
+steep, and the ditch at the base was deep. However, our friends, Mr.
+Littlehales and Mr. Smith, being strong of arm and active on a hill,
+very soon drew us up to a point where we could observe a collision with
+more satisfaction than when in the carriages. Fortunately, the man who
+bore the only lamp left us, and who was sent on to intercept the train,
+succeeded in doing it. Ultimately we arrived at Hamilton only two hours
+late. When we were all safely at home, one lady, who accompanied us,
+fainted--which showed admirable judgment to postpone that necessary
+operation until it was no longer an inconvenience. One lady fainted in
+the midst of the trouble, which only increased it. The excitement made
+fainting sooner or later justifiable, although an impediment, but I was
+glad to observe my daughter did not think it necessary to faint at any
+time.
+
+As we were leaving the sleepy Falls of Montmorency in the carriage,
+we looked out to see whether the Frenchman had got sight of us, fully
+expecting he would take a chaise and come after us to collect some other
+impost which we had evaded paying. The sun was in great force, and I was
+reposing in its delicious rays, thinking how delightful it was to
+ride into Quebec on such a day, when in an instant of time we were all
+dispersed about the road. In a field hard by, where a great load of
+lumber as high as a house was piled, a boy who was extracting a log set
+the upper logs rolling. This frightened the horses. They were two black
+steeds of high spirit, and therefore very mad when alarmed. Had they run
+on in their uncontrollable state, they would, if they escaped vehicles
+on the way, have arrived at a narrow bridge where unknown mischief must
+have occurred. The driver, who was a strongly built Irishman, about
+sixty, with good judgment and intrepidity, instantly threw the horses
+on to the fence, which they broke, got into the ditch, and seriously cut
+their knees. I leaped out into the ditch with a view to help my daughter
+out of the carriage; but she, nimbler than I, intending to render me the
+same service, arrived at the ditch, and assisted me out, merely asking
+"whether four quietly disposed persons being distributed over the
+Dominion at a minute's notice was a mode of travelling in Canada?"
+Mrs. Hall, who was riding with us, also escaped unhurt Her husband
+deliberately remained some time to see what the horses were going to do,
+but finding them frantic, he also abandoned the carriage.
+
+Later, in England, being Ashton way, I paid a visit to my friend the
+Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens, whose voice, in early Chartist times, was
+the most eloquent in the two counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire.
+He fought the "New Poor Law" and the "Long Timers" in the Ten Hours'
+agitation. His views were changed in many respects, but that did not
+alter my regard for his Chartist services--and there remained his varied
+affluence of language, his fitly chosen terms, his humorous statement,
+his exactness of expression and strong coherence, in which the sequence
+of his reasoning never disappeared through the crevice of a sentence.
+All this made his conversation always charming and instructive.
+
+After lecturing in the Temperance Hall and the "evening was far spent,"
+a cab was procured to take me to Mr. Stephens's at the "Hollins." A
+friend, Mr. Scott, in perfect wanton courtesy, having no presentiment
+in his mind, would accompany me. When we arrived at Stalybridge (where
+there is a real bridge), the cabman, instead of driving over it, drove
+against it. I thought, perhaps, this was the way with Ashton cabmen;
+but my friend came to a different conclusion. He said the cabman had not
+taken the "pledge" that afternoon. I was told Ashton cabmen needed to
+take it often. The driver, resenting our remonstrance, drove wildly down
+a narrow, ugly, deserted street, which he found at hand. It was all the
+same to me, who did not know one street from the other. My friend, who
+knew there was no outlet save into the river, called out violently to
+cabby to stop. The only effect was that he drove more furiously.
+Mr. Scott leaped out and seized the horse, and prevented my being
+overthrown. Before us were the remains of an old building, with the
+cellars all open, in one of which we should soon have descended. Cabby
+would have killed his horse, and probably himself, which no doubt would
+have been an advantage to Ashton.
+
+As the place was deserted I should have been found next morning curled
+up and inarticulate. We paid our dangerous driver his full fare to that
+spot, and advised him to put himself in communication with a temperance
+society. He abused us as "not being gentlemen" for stopping his cab in
+that unhandsome way.
+
+The next morning I went to the scene of the previous night's adventure.
+Had Mr. Henley, the loud, coarse-tongued member for Oxfordshire at that
+time, seen the place, he would have said we were making an "ugly rush"
+for the river. Not that we should ever have reached the river, for we
+should certainly have broken our necks in the brick vaults our driver
+was whipping his horse into.
+
+As I needed another cab on my arrival at Euston, I selected a
+quiet-looking white horse, and a Good Templar-looking cabman, first
+asking the superintendent what he thought of him. "O, he's all right,"
+was the answer, and things went pleasantly until we arrived at a narrow,
+winding street. I was thinking of my friend, Mr. Stephens, and of the
+concert which at that hour he had daily in his bedroom, when I
+was suddenly jerked off my seat and found the white horse on the
+foot-pavement. I stepped out and adjured the cabman, "By the carpet-bag
+of St Peter" (no more suitable adjuration presented itself on the
+occasion), to tell me what he was at. I said,
+
+"Are you from Ashton?" "Nothing the matter, sir. All right Jump in. Only
+my horse shied at the costermonger's carrot-cart there. She's a capital
+horse, only she's apt to shy." I answered, "Yes; and unless I change my
+mode of travelling by cabs, I shall become shy myself."
+
+Late one night, after the close of the Festive Co-operative Meeting
+in Huddersfield, a cab was fetched for me from the fair--it being fair
+time. The messenger knew it was a bad night for the whip, as he might
+be "touched in the head" by the festivities, so he said to cabby: "Now,
+though it is fair night, you must do the fair thing by this fare. He
+does not mind spreading principles, but he objects to being spread
+himself." Cabby came with alacrity. He thought he had to take some
+"boozing cuss" about the fair, with an occasional pull up at the "Spread
+Eagle." When he found me issuing from a temperance hotel, bound for
+Fernbrook, he did not conceal his disappointment by tongue or whip, and
+jerked his horse like a Bashi-Bazouk when a Montenegrin is after him.
+I cared nothing, as I had made up my mind not to say another word about
+cabs if they broke my neck. I knew we had a stout hill before us, which
+would bring things quiet The next day the hotel people, who saw the
+cabman's rage, said they thought there was mischief in store for me.
+They knew nothing of Ashton ways, and their apprehensions were original.
+
+After a pleasant sojourn in Brighton, where the November sun is bright,
+and the fogs are thin, grey and graceful, softening the glare of the
+white coast, tempering it to the sensitive sight, I returned to London
+one cold, frosty day, when snow and ice made the streets slippery. I had
+chosen a cabman whose solid, honest face was assuring, and being lumpy
+and large himself I thought he would keep his "four-wheeler" steady by
+his own weight. Being himself lame and rheumatic, he appeared one who
+would prefer quiet driving for his own sake. We went on steadily until
+we reached Pall Mall, when he turned sharply up Suffolk Street. Looking
+out, I called to my friend on the box, saying, "This is not Essex
+Street" "Beg your pardon, sir, I thought you said Suffolk Street," and
+began to turn his horse round. In that street the ground rises, and the
+carriage-way is convex and narrow, it required skill to turn the cab,
+and the cabman was wanting therein. He said his rein had caught, and
+when he thought he was pulling the horse round, the horse had taken a
+different view of his intention, and imagined he was backing him, and,
+giving me the benefit of the doubt, did back, and overturned the cab,
+and me too. Not liking collisions of late, I had, on leaving Brighton,
+wrapped myself in a railway cloak, that it might act as a sort of buffer
+in case of bumping--yet not expecting I should require it so soon.
+
+Seeing what the horse was at, and taking what survey I could of the
+situation, I found I was being driven against the window of the house in
+which Cobden died. I have my own taste as to the mode in which I should
+like to be killed. To be run over by a butcher's cart, or smashed by a
+coal train or brewer's van is not my choice; but being killed in Pall
+Mall is more eligible, yet not satisfactory.
+
+As I had long lived in Pall Mall, I knew the habits of the place.
+There is a gradation of killing in the streets of London, well-known
+to West-end cabmen. As they enter Trafalgar Square, they run over the
+passenger without ceremony. At Waterloo Place, where gentlemen wander
+about, they merely knock you down, but as they enter Club-land, which
+begins at Pall Mall West, where Judges and Cabinet Ministers and members
+of Parliament abound, they merely run at you; so I knew I was on the
+spot where death is never inflicted. Therefore I took hold of the strap
+on the opposite side of the cab to that on which I saw I should fall.
+For better being able to look after my portmanteau, I had it with me,
+and, fortunately had placed it on the side on which I fell. Placing
+myself against it when the crash came, and the glass broke, I was saved
+from my face being cut by it. My hat was crushed, and head bruised. It
+was impossible to open the door, which was then above me, and had the
+horse taken to kicking, as is the manner of these animals when in doubt,
+it would have fared ill with me. Possibly the horse was a member of the
+Peace Society, and showed no belligerent tendency; more likely he was
+tired, and glad of the opportunity of resting himself. The street, which
+seemed empty, was quickly filled, as though people sprang out of the
+ground. Two Micawbers who were looking out for anything which "turned
+up," or turned over, came and forced open the cab-door at the top, and
+dragged me up, somewhat dazed, my hat off, my grey hair dishevelled,
+my blue spectacles rather awry on my face--I was sensible of a
+newly-contrived, music-hall appearance as my shoulders peered above the
+cab. A spirit merchant near kindly invited me into his house, where some
+cold brandy and water given to me seemed more agreeable and refreshing
+than it ever did before or since. The cab had been pulled together
+somehow. My rheumatic friend on the box had been picked up not much the
+worse--possibly the fall had done his rheumatism good. I thought it a
+pity the poor fellow should lose his fare as well as his windows, and so
+continued my journey with him.
+
+On one occasion, after an enchanted evening in the suburbs of
+Kensington, a fog came on. The driver of the voiture drove into an
+enclosure of stables, and went round and round. Noticing there was a
+recurring recess, I kept the door open until we arrived at it again, and
+leapt into it as we passed again. When the driver, who was bewildered,
+came round a third time, I surprised him by shouts, and advised him to
+let his horse take us out by the way he came in. There was no house, or
+light, or person to be seen, and there was the prospect of a night in
+the cold, tempered by contingent accident.
+
+Having engaged to be surety for the son of a Hindoo judge, who was about
+to enter as a student in the Inns of Court, a new adventure befel me. I
+had accepted from his father the appointment of guardian of his son. My
+ward was a young man of many virtues, save that of punctuality. As he
+did not appear by appointment, I set out in search of him. Crossing
+Trafalgar Square I found myself suddenly confronted by two horses'
+heads. An omnibus had come down upon me. It flashed through my mind
+that, as I had often said, I was in more danger of being killed in
+the streets of London than in any foreign city or on the sea; and I
+concluded the occasion had come. I knew no more until I found myself
+lying on my back in the mud after rain, but, seeing an aperture
+between the two wheels, I made an attempt to crawl through. A crowd of
+spectators had gathered round and voices shouted to me to remain where I
+was until the wheels were drawn from me. Lying down in the mud again was
+new to me. There was nothing over me but the omnibus, and as I had never
+seen the bottom of one before, I examined it.
+
+It happened that a surgeon of the Humane Society was among the
+spectators, who assisted in raising me up, and took me to the society's
+rooms close by, where I was bathed and vaseline applied to my bruises.
+My overcoat was torn and spoiled, but I was not much hurt. The hoof
+of one horse had made black part of one arm. It appears I had fallen
+between them, and had it not been for their intelligent discrimination I
+might have been killed. I sent two bags of the fattest feeding cake
+the Co-operative Agricultural Association could supply, as a present to
+those two horses. I had no other means of showing my gratitude to them.
+I was not so grateful to the Humane Society's surgeon, who sent me in
+a bill for two guineas for attendance upon me, and threatened me with
+legal proceedings if I did not pay it. As he accompanied me to the
+National Liberal Club, whence I had set out, I sent him one guinea for
+that courtesy, and heard no more of him, and did not want to.
+
+One evening, after leaving a Co-operative Board Meeting in Leman Street,
+Whitechapel, I incautiously stepped into the roadway to hail a cab, when
+a lurry came round a corner behind me and knocked me into the mud, which
+was very prevalent that day. Some bystanders picked me up, and one,
+good-naturedly, lent me a handkerchief with which to clear my face and
+head, both being blackened and bleeding. The policeman who took charge
+of me asked me where I wanted to be taken. I answered that I was on my
+way to Fleet Street to an assembly of the Institute of Journalists to
+meet M. Zola, then on a visit to us. "I think, sir," said the reflective
+policeman, "we had better take you to the London Hospital," and another
+policeman accompanied me in a passing tram, which went by the hospital
+door. After some dreary waiting in the accident ward it was found that
+I had no rib or bone broken, but my nose and forehead were bound up with
+grim-looking plasters, and when I arrived at the hotel, four miles
+away, where I was residing, and entered the commercial room, I had the
+appearance of a prize-fighter, who had had a bad time of it in the ring.
+Knowing the second day of an accident was usually the worst, I took an
+early train home while I could move. My ribs, though not broken, were
+all painful, and I remember squealing for a fortnight on being taken out
+of bed. After my last adventure the Accident Insurance Company (though I
+had never troubled them but once) refused to accept any further premium
+from me, which I had paid twenty or thirty years, and left me to deal
+with further providential escapes from my own resources.
+
+Thinking I was safe in Brighton near my own home, I was walking up the
+Marine Parade, one quiet Sunday morning, when a gentleman on a bicycle
+rushed down a bye street and knocked me down with a bound. Seeing two
+ladies crossing the street I concluded matters were safe. The rider told
+me that he had seen the ladies and had arranged to clear them, but as I
+stepped forward he could not clear me, so gave me the preference. As I
+had always been in favour of the rights of women, I said he did rightly,
+though the result was not to my mind. He had the courtesy to accompany
+me to my door, apologising for what he had done, but left me to pay the
+bill of the physician, who was called in to examine me. When I recovered
+my proper senses I found he had not left his card. Though I advertised
+for him, he made no reappearance.
+
+Another serene Sunday morning I was crossing the Old Steine with a
+son-in-law; nothing was to be seen in motion save a small dog-cart,
+which had passed before we stepped into the road. Soon we found
+ourselves both thrown to the ground with violence. A huge dog, as
+large as the "Hound of the Baskervilles" described by Conan Doyle, had
+loitered behind and suddenly discovered his master had driven ahead, and
+he, like a Leming rat, made straight for his master, quite regardless of
+our being in his way.
+
+In these and other adventures or _mis_-adventures, I need not say I
+was never killed, though the escapes were narrow. To say they were
+providential escapes would be to come under the rebuke of Archbishop
+Whately, who, when a curate reported himself as providentially saved
+from the terrible wreck of the _Amazon_, asked: "I to understand that
+all less fortunate passengers were providentially drowned?" The belief
+that the Deity is capricious or partial in His mercies is a form of
+holy egotism which better deserves indictment than many errors of speech
+which have been so visited. I have no theory of my many exemptions from
+fatal consequences. All I can say is that, had I been a saint, I could
+not have been more fortunate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI. LIMPING THRIFT
+
+Thrift is so excellent a thing--is so much praised by moralists, so much
+commended by advisers of the people, and is of so much value to the poor
+who practise it--that it is strange to see it retarded by the caprices
+of those who take credit and receive it, for promoting the necessary
+virtues. Insurance societies continue to recommend themselves by
+praising prudence and forethought which provides for the future.
+Everybody knows that those who do not live within their income live upon
+others who trust them. Those who spend all their income forget that if
+others did as they do, there would be universal indigence. Insurance
+companies are supposed to provide inducements to thrift, whereas they
+put wanton obstacles in its way.
+
+He who takes out a policy on his life finds it a condition that if
+he commits suicide his policy will be forfeited--the assumption of
+insurance offices being that if a man insures his life he intends to cut
+his throat. Can this be true? What warrant of experience is there for
+this expectation? Is not the natural, the instinctive, the universal
+love of life security sufficient against self-slaughter? If life be
+threatened, do not the most thoughtless persons make desperate effort to
+preserve it? Is it necessary for insurance societies to come forward
+to supplement incentives of nature? Is not the fact that a man is
+provident-minded enough to think of insuring his life, proof enough that
+his object is to live?
+
+Answers to a series of questions are demanded from an insurer, which
+average persons do not possess the knowledge to answer with exactitude;
+yet failure in any fact or detail renders the policy void, although a
+person has paid premiums upon it for thirty or forty years.
+
+Elaborate legal statements which few can understand are attached to a
+policy which intimidates those who see them, from wishing to incur
+such unfathomable obligation. A few plain words in plain type would be
+sufficient for the guidance of the insured and the protection of the
+company. The uncertainty comes from permitting questions of popular
+interest to be stated by a member of the legal profession. If the terms
+of eternal salvation had been drawn up by a lawyer, not a single soul
+would be saveable, and the judgment day would be involved in everlasting
+litigation.
+
+An office known to me had judges among its directors, from which it was
+inferred by the insured that the office was straight. The holder of a
+policy in it, making a will, his solicitor on inquiry found that the
+office did not admit his birth. They had received premiums for forty
+years, still reserving this point for possible dispute after the
+policy-holder was dead, never informing him of it. When the insurance
+was effected, they saw the holder of it and could judge his age to a
+year. They saw the certificate of his birth, but gave him no assurance
+that they admitted it and it had to be presented again.
+
+In another case within my knowledge, the owner of a policy obtained a
+loan upon it, from a well-known lawyer in the City of London, who gave
+the office, as is usual, notice of it. When the loan was repaid he again
+wrote to the office saying he had executed a deed of release of his
+claim on the policy. That the office was not satisfied with this
+assurance was never communicated to the policyholder, and when many
+years later, the lawyer who advanced the loan was dead, and his son who
+succeeded him was dead, it transpired that the office did not believe
+the assurances they had received. They admitted having received the
+letter by the loan maker, but required to see the deeds relating to
+the advance and release and repayment of the loan; and they gave the
+policyholder to understand that he had better keep those deeds, as
+his executors might be required to produce them at his death. It was a
+miracle they were not destroyed. As the office had been legally notified
+that the claim on the policy had ceased, it was never imagined that
+deeds which did not relate to the office could be required by it. Under
+this intimidation the deeds have now been kept. They are fifty years
+old. This Scotland Yard practice of treating an insurer as a thief,
+detracts from the fascination of thrift.
+
+Another instance was that of a policy-holder who applied to the office
+for a loan, for which 1 per cent, more interest was demanded than his
+banker asked, and a rise of 1 per cent, in case of delay in paying
+the interest, and a charge was to be made for the office lawyer
+investigating the validity of their own policy, upon which the office
+had received premiums for forty-seven years.
+
+Directors, like the Doge of Venice, should have a lion's mouth open, of
+which they have the key, when they might hear of things done in their
+name, not conducive to the extension of thrift.
+
+No wonder thrift goes limping along, from walking in the jagged pathway
+which leads to some insurance office.
+
+There are, as I know, offices straightforward and courteous, who foster
+thrift by making it pleasant. Yet, as one who has often advocated
+thrift, I think it useful to record my astonishment at the official
+impediments to its popularity, which I have encountered. This is one
+reason why Thrift, the most self-respecting of all the goddesses that
+should be swift-footed, goes limping along.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII. MISTRUST OF MODERATION
+
+Temperance is restraint in use. Abstinence is entire avoidance, which is
+the wise policy of those who lack the strength of temperance.
+
+How necessary entire abstinence is to many, I well know. When the drink
+passion sets in, it leads to an open grave. The drinker sees it, and
+knows it, and, with open eyes walks into it. He who realises the danger,
+would, as Charles Lamb said--
+
+     "Clench his teeth and ne'er undo them,
+     To let the deep damnation trickle through them."
+
+For such there is no salvation save entire abstinence. Thousands might
+have been saved but for the fanaticism of abstinence advocates who
+opposed in Parliament every legal mitigation of the evil, thinking
+the spectacle of it would force the legislature into prohibition. In
+discussions, lectures, articles, I advocated the policy of mitigation,
+and supported measures in Parliament calculated to that end,
+encountering thereby the strong dissent of temperance writers who, not
+intending it, connived at drunkenness as a temperance policy.
+
+Is it true that moderation is dead? Have teetotalers extinguished it as
+a rule of daily life? Bishop Hall, in his fine way, said, "Moderation
+was the silken string running through the pearl chain of all our
+virtues." Was this a mistake of the illustrious prelate? Is not
+temperance a wider virtue than total abstinence? Is there no possibility
+of establishing temperance in betting? Can no limitation be imposed
+on betting? The public know denunciatory preaching does not arrest it.
+Innumerable articles are written against it. Letters about it are not
+lacking in the editor's post-bag. Yet not a mitigation nor remedy is
+suggested, save that of prohibition, which is as yet impossible.
+
+Betting is a kind of instinct, difficult to eradicate, but possible
+to regulate. Games of hazard, as card-playing or dice, are naturally
+seductive in their way. They are useful as diversions and recreation.
+They exercise the qualities of judgment, calculation, and presence of
+mind, as well as furnish entertainment. It is only when serious stakes
+are played for that mischief and ruin begin.
+
+But the seduction of card gambling--once widely irresistible--is now
+largely limited by the growing custom of playing only for small stakes.
+Family playing or club playing, professedly for money, is held to
+be disreputable. Formerly, drinking which proceeded to the verge of
+intoxication, or went beyond it, was thought "manly." Now, where the
+effects are seen in the face, or in business, it is counted ruinous to
+social or professional reputation. Drinking is far more difficult
+of mitigation than betting, because the temptations to it occur
+much oftener. The capricious habit of going in search of luck can be
+restrained by common sense. Temperance in betting would be easier to
+effect were it not for the intemperate doctrine of total abstainers. By
+defaming moderation they rob the holy name of temperance of its charm,
+its strength and its trust. By teaching that "moderation is an inclined
+plane, polished as marble, and slippery as glass, on which whoever sets
+his foot, slips down into perdition," they destroy moderation by making
+it a terror. It brings it into contempt and distrust, and undermines
+self-confidence and self-respect. Yet it is by moderation that we live.
+Moderation in eating is an absolute condition of health--as the Indian
+proverb puts it: "Disease enters by the mouth." A man who disregards
+moderation in work, or in pleasure, or diet, seldom lives out half his
+days. He who has no moderation in judgment, in belief, in opinion, in
+politics, or piety, is futile in counsel, and dangerous in his example.
+If the disparagement of self-control has not destroyed the capacity and
+confidence of moderation in the public heart, temperance in betting is
+surely possible.
+
+Occasionally a minister of religion will ask me what I have to say about
+betting. I answer, "It is difficult to extinguish it, but possible to
+mitigate it." I give an instance from my own experience.
+
+Years ago when I was editing the _Reasoner_, Dr. Shorthouse contributed
+a series of instructive papers on the physiology of racing horses.
+Out of courtesy to him I took a ticket in a sweepstake in which he was
+concerned, but in which I felt no interest. Months after, I saw that
+the owner of the prize was unknown. My brother, knowing I had a ticket,
+found it among my papers, and I received L50. I invested the amount,
+intending to use the interest in some future speculation, if I made any,
+which was not in my way. To that L50 there is added now more than L50 of
+accumulated interest, with which I might operate if so inclined. Were
+I in the crusade against betting I should say, "Form societies for
+Temperance in Betting, of which the rules shall be--
+
+'"1.--No member may make any bet unless he is able, having regard to his
+social obligations, to lose the sum he risks, and is willing to lose it,
+if he fails to win.
+
+'"2.--When he does win anything, he shall invest it, and bet with the
+interest, and every time he wins, shall add the amount to the original
+investment, which would give him a larger sum for future recreation in
+that way."'"
+
+There is a Church of England Temperance Society which has the courage to
+believe in moderation, and which makes it a rule of honour to keep
+clear of all excess. Thousands in every walk of life have been saved to
+society under this sensible encouragement, and where an occasional act
+of excess would have been counted venial, it is regarded as revolting as
+an act of indecency.
+
+I have known men in the betting ring who made up their mind that when
+they acquired a certain sum they would retire, nor step again in the
+treacherous paths of hazard--and they kept their resolution. But very
+few are able to do this, having no trained will.
+
+I am against extremes in social conduct, save where reason shows it to
+be a necessity. If Betting Limited was approved by the public, betting
+at hazard would become as socially infamous as petty larceny. In the
+dearth of suggestions for the mitigation of an evil as serious as that
+of drunkenness, I pray forgiveness for that I have made.
+
+Previous to 1868, I assisted in establishing the _Scottish Advertiser_
+conducted by Walter Parlane. It bore the following motto, which I wrote
+for it:
+
+"Whatever trade Parliament licenses, it recognises--and so long as
+such trade is a source of public revenue, it is entitled to public
+protection."
+
+I still agree with the sentiment expressed. All I meant was a reasonable
+protection of the interest which the law had conceded to the trade.
+The predatory impudence of the monopoly privileges the trade has since
+extorted against the public interests was in no man's mind then. No one
+intended that the concession of just protection should be construed into
+extortion. As respects compensation, the temperate party refused it. I
+was not of their opinion. I agreed with them that the publicans had
+no logical claim for compensation, but I would have conceded it as
+the lesser of two evils, just as it was better to free the West Indian
+slaves by purchase than to continue their lawful subjection. If to
+maintain in full force the legalised machinery of drunkenness be only
+half as dreadful in its consequences as temperance advocates truly
+represent, it would be cheaper as well as more humane to limit it by
+graduated compensation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII. PENAL CHRISTIANITY
+
+Predatory Christianity would not be far from the mark. Christianity is
+of the nature of a penal settlement where independent-minded persons are
+made to expiate the sin of thinking for themselves. There can be no real
+goodwill in any one who is not for justice and equality. No cause can
+command respect, or can claim a hearing from others which is not based
+on absolute fairness. Many well-meaning Christians never inquire whether
+the great cause they have at heart fulfils this condition. In the past
+this omission has been a lasting cause of alienation from their views.
+
+Between 1850 and 1860 there sat in St. Bride's Vestry, London, a
+group of Christian churchwardens who twice a year sent agents to seize
+property from my house in Fleet Street, because I refused to pay tithes.
+Yet there are people who tell us without tiring, of the depravity of the
+French revolutionists and atheists who laid, or proposed to lay hands
+upon Church property. Yet these Christian officers, acting under the
+eye of an opulent rector in the wealthiest capital in the world, seized
+clocks and bales of paper on the premises of heretics, in the name
+of the Church! Did not this disqualify the Church as ministers of
+consolation? The greatest consolation is justice. Is it not spiritual
+effrontery to despoil a man, then invite him to the communion table?
+In our day by predatory acts, they confiscate Nonconformist property to
+maintain Church schools. Can it be that heaven recognised agents engaged
+in petty larceny? Are they intrusted with the keys of heaven? May the
+priest be a thief? Can a man expect to be admitted at the Golden Gate
+with a burglar's passport in his hand? There exist penal laws against
+all who do not stand on the side of faith, which Nonconformists as
+well as Churchmen connive at, profit by, and maintain. Is not this
+destructive of their spiritual pretensions? Can they preach of holiness
+and truth without a blush? No higher criticism can condemn Christianity,
+as it is self condemned by resting on predatoriness. No person who does
+not stand on the Christian side can leave property for promoting his
+views, as a Christian can for promoting his. No Christian conscience is
+touched at this disadvantage imposed upon the independent thinker. No
+sermon is preached against it. No Christian petition is ever set
+up against it. Neither the Church conscience nor the Nonconformist
+conscience is stirred by the existence of this injustice. It would cease
+if they objected to it. But they do not object to it.
+
+There are prelates, priests, clergymen, and Nonconformist ministers
+personally to be respected, who in human things I trust. But for their
+spiritual vocation, is it possible to have respect or trust? To tender
+consolation with one hand while they keep the other in my pocket is
+an act never absent from my mind. I belong to a Secular party who seek
+improvement by material means; but were there any body of Christians
+upon whom that party imposed legal disadvantages in its own interest,
+and kept them there by silence or connivance, Parliament would hear from
+me pretty frequently until the insulting privileges were annulled. Any
+pretension to having principles worthy of acceptance, or regard, or
+even respect, would be impertinence in us so long as we were unfair to
+others.
+
+I caused to be brought into Parliament a Bill in which Sir Philip
+Manfield took the leading interest, entitled:--
+
+Civil and Religious Liberty Extension.
+
+A BILL
+
+To secure the Extension of Civil and Religious Liberty.
+
+(Prepared and brought in by
+
+Mr. Manfield, Sir Henry Boscoe,
+
+Sir Geo. B. Sitwell, Mr. Picton,
+
+Mr. Illingworth, Mr. W. McLaren,
+
+Mr. H. P. Cobb, Mr. Howell,
+
+Mr. Chas. Feiiwick, Mr. Benn,
+
+Mr. Storey, and Mr. Hunter.)
+
+Ordered, by The House of Commons, to be Printed, 7 November 1893.
+
+PRINTED BY EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE,
+
+PRINTERS TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY.
+
+And to be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from
+Eyre & Spottiswood, East Harding Street, Fleet Street, B.C., and 32,
+Abingdon Street, Westminster, 8.W.; or John Menzies & Co., 19, Hanover
+Street, Edinburgh, and 90, West Nile Street, Glasgow; or Hodges, Ptoois
+6 Co., Limited, 104, Grafton Street, Dublin.
+
+[Price 1d.]
+
+[Bill 464.]
+
+
+Memorandum.
+
+This Bill comprises but a small extension of religious equality.
+Its object is to enable a man "to do what he likes with his own" for
+admittedly lawful purposes. It is affirmed by legal decisions that any
+man may believe what he pleases, speak what he pleases, publish his
+honest conviction, provided he does it in a temperate and considerate
+manner; and he may, while living, give money to maintain his views. All
+this Bill seeks is that he may, at his death, bequeath money for such
+purpose. This Bill merely proposes to extend a right which Christians
+of every denomination enjoy, but which hitherto has been denied to those
+who may conscientiously object to prevailing opinions.
+
+
+BILL TO
+
+Secure the Extension of Civil and Religions Liberty.
+
+WHEREAS
+
+1 it is expedient to remove the Disabilities under which persons suffer
+desirous of endowing, creating, and maintaining charitable and other
+Trusts for religious and ethical inquiry, so as to further extend civil
+and religious liberty:
+
+2 Nothing contained in this Act shall affect or be deemed to repeal
+or contravene in any way such parts of the Act 9 George II., cap. 36,
+relating to Mortmain as remain unrepealed, or any other Act amending
+or altering such Act; and the provisions of all such Acts now in force
+shall apply to all Trusts created under this Act.
+
+3 After the passing of this Act, notwithstanding any Act, Rule of Common
+Law, Rule of Equity, or Rule of Practice of any Court of Justice now in
+force to the contrary, it shall be lawful for any person to create and
+endow, or create or endow, any Trust for inquiry into the foundations
+and tendency of religious and ethical beliefs which from time to time
+prevail, or for the maintenance and propagation of the results of such
+inquiry. And the method of application of Bequests made for the
+purposes aforesaid shall be, on the part of those responsible for their
+administration, subject to revision at intervals of thirty years.
+
+4 Such Trust, whether created by Deed or Will, or by other instrument,
+shall be deemed a charitable Trust, and shall be administered and given
+effect to in all respects in as full and complete a manner as in the
+case of religious and charitable Trusts now recognised by Law; and the
+doctrine of _Cy-pres_ shall be applied to it when circumstances shall
+arise requiring the application of such doctrine.
+
+
+This Bill was not proceeded with. It required a member like Samuel
+Morley, of known Christianity and a conscience, to carry it through the
+House.
+
+A theory has been started that by registering an association, under the
+Friendly Societies Act, it would legalise its proceedings and virtually
+repeal all the laws confiscating bequests. No case of this kind has come
+before the higher courts. To do the Government justice, I know no case
+in which the Crown has interfered to confiscate a bequest on the ground
+of heresy in its use. Members of families, legally entitled to the
+property of a testator, may claim the money and get it. If the family
+enters no claim the bequest takes effect. In the meantime the state of
+the law prevents testators leaving property for the maintenance of their
+opinions, and Christians bring charges against philosophical thinkers
+for lack of generosity in building halls as Christians do chapels.
+The Christian reproaches the philosopher for not giving, when he has
+confiscated the bequest of the philosopher and the power of giving.
+
+Priests often mourn at the disinclination to listen to the tenets they
+proclaim, and advertise in the newspapers the melancholy fact that only
+one person in five is found on Sunday in a place of worship, and do not
+remember how many persons remain away, not so much from dislike of the
+tenets preached, as from dislike of the injustice which they would have
+to share if they belonged to any Christian communion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX. TWO SUNDAYS
+
+None of our Sunday Societies or Sunday Leagues seem ever to have thought
+of the advantages of advocating as I have long done--two Sundays--a
+Devotional Sunday and a Secular Sunday.
+
+The advocacy of two Sundays would put an end to the fear or pretence
+that anybody wants to destroy the one we have.
+
+The Policy of a Second Sunday is a necessity.
+
+It would put an end to the belief that the working classes are mad, and
+not content with working six days want to work on the seventh.
+
+It would preserve the present Sunday as a day of real rest and devotion.
+The one Sunday we now have is neither one thing nor the other. Its
+insufficiency for rest prevents it being an honest day of devotion.
+Proper recreation is out of the question. There is too little time for
+excursions out of town on the Saturday half-day holiday. Imprisonment in
+town irritates rather than refreshes--mere rest is not recreation.
+
+     "A want of occupation gives no rest
+     A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."
+
+Those who would provide recreation in the country find it not worth
+while for the precarious chance of half-day visitors. On a Secular
+Sunday recreation would be organised and be more self-respecting than it
+now can be.
+
+1. It would conduce to the public health. The manufacturing towns of
+England are mostly pandemoniums of smoke or blast-furnace fumes. The
+winds of heaven cannot clear them away in one day--less than forty-eight
+hours of cessation of fire and fume would not render the air breathable.
+
+2. With two Sundays one would be left undisturbed, devoted to repose, to
+piety, contemplation and improvement of the mind.
+
+3. It would give the preacher intelligent, fresh-minded and
+fruitful-minded hearers, instead of the listless, wearied, barren-headed
+auditors, who lower the standard of his own mind by forcing upon him the
+endeavour to speak to the level of theirs.
+
+4. A second Sunday would give the people real rest when nobody would
+frown upon them, nor preach against them, nor pray against them.
+
+5. It would be cheaper to millowners to stop their works two clear days
+than run them on short days; and there need not be fears of claims of
+further reduction of forty-eight hours a week on the part of workpeople,
+who would have a real sense of freedom from unending toil with two days'
+rest and peace. Manufacturing towns would no longer be, as now,
+penal settlements of industry. Holiness would no longer be felt to be
+wearisomeness.
+
+But for Moses, the changes here sought would have existed long ago. One
+day's rest in the week was enough for Jews who were doing nothing when
+one Sunday was prescribed to them. Had Moses foreseen the manufacturing
+system, instead of saying "six days," he would have said, "Five days
+shalt thou labour."
+
+If he deserves well of mankind who makes two blades of wheat grow where
+only one grew before; he deserves better who causes two Sundays to exist
+where only one existed before--for corn merely feeds the body, whereas
+reasonable leisure feeds the mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL. BYWAYS OF LIBERTY
+
+It is worth while recording the curious, not to say ignominious, ways
+from which justice to new thought has emerged. In the 5 and 6 Victoriae,
+cap. 38, 1842, the trial of eighteen offences were removed from
+the jurisdiction of Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions and
+transferred to the Assize Court. Persons accused were often subject to
+magisterial intolerance, ignorance and offensiveness.
+
+Among the transferred offences were forgery, bigamy, abductions of
+women. "Blasphemy and offences against religion," often of doubtful
+and delicate interpretation, were two of the subjects taken out of
+magisterial hands and placed under the decision of better-informed and
+more responsible judges. "Blasphemy" was the general title under which
+atheism, heresy, and other troubles of the questioning intellect were
+designated. "Composing, printing or publishing blasphemous libels," were
+included in the list of subjects to be dealt with in higher courts. Thus
+better chances of justice were secured to thinkers and disseminators
+of forbidden ideas. This new charter of thought, which conceded legal
+fairness to propagandism, was not the subject of a special statute, but
+was interpolated in a list, which read like an auctioneer's catalogue,
+eluded Parliamentary prejudice, which might have been fatal, had it been
+formally submitted to its notice.
+
+In the same manner the Affirmation Act, which changed the status of the
+disbeliever in theology from that of an outlaw to that of a citizen,
+crept into the Statute Book through a criminal avenue. A Bill to
+admit atheists, agnostics, or other conscientious objectors to the
+ecclesiastic oath, to make a responsible affirmation instead, was twice
+or thrice thrown out of the windows of Parliament. Sir John Trelawny
+used to say Mr. Gathorne Hardy (afterwards Lord Cranbrook) would rise
+up, as I have seen him, with a face as furiously red as one of his own
+blast furnaces at Lowmoor, and move its rejection. It was passed at
+last by the friendly device of G. W. Hastings, M.P., the founder of the
+Social Science Association, in a Bill innocently purporting to better
+"promote the discovery of truth" by enabling persons charged with
+adultery to give evidence on their own behalf.
+
+Then and there a clause was introduced which had no relation to the
+extension of the right to give evidence, but upon the exemption of an
+entirely different class of persons from the obligation of making oath.
+Adulterers appear always to be Christians, since no case is recorded in
+which any party in an adultery action professed any scruple at taking
+the oath. Yet the Bill set forth that "any person in a civil or criminal
+proceeding who shall object to make an oath," shall make a declaration
+instead. When the Bill became an Act secular affirmation became
+legalised. Thus by a clause treading upon the heels of adultery, the
+witness having heretical and unecclesiastical convictions was enabled to
+be honest without peril.
+
+In 1842, as I witnessed at the Gloucester Assizes, no barrister would
+defend any one accused of dissent from Christianity, but apologised for
+him and proclaimed his contrition for his sin of thinking for himself.
+Slave thought of the mind, chained to custom, could be defended, but not
+Free Thought, which is independent of everything save the truth. By the
+Act of 1869* atheists ceased to be outlaws, and were henceforth enabled
+to give evidence in their own defence. Wide-awake and vigilant as a
+rule, bigotry was asleep that day. Thus by circuitous and furtive paths
+the right of free thought has made its way to the front of the State.
+
+     * 32 & 33 chap. 68, Evidence Amendment Act
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI. LAWYERS' LICENCE
+
+The extraordinary legal licence of disordered and offensive imputation
+has been limited since 1842. In those days, officers of the law, who
+always professed high regard for morality and truth, had no sense of
+either, when they were drawing up theological indictments. In the affair
+at Cheltenham I delivered a lecture on Home Colonies (a proposal similar
+to the Garden Cities of to-day), to which nobody objects now. As
+I always held that discussion was the right of the audience, as
+self-defensive against the errors of lecturer or preacher, an auditor,
+availing himself of this concession, arose in the meeting and asked:
+"Since I had spoken of duty to man, why I had said nothing of duty
+to God"? My proper answer was, that having announced one subject, the
+audience would have a right to complain that I had trepanned them into
+hearing another, which they would not hear willingly. Such a reply would
+have been received with outcries, and the Christian auditor would have
+said, "I dare not answer the question--that I held opinions I was afraid
+to disclose." All the while the questioner knew that an honest answer
+might have penal consequences, which he intended to invoke. Christians
+in those days lacked winning ways. I gave a defiant answer, which caused
+my imprisonment. There was no imputation in my reply, which merely
+produced merriment.
+
+Yet my indictment said I "was a wicked, malicious, evil-disposed
+person," and that I "wickedly did compose, speak and utter, pronounce
+and publish with a loud voice, of and concerning the Holy Scriptures, to
+the high displeasure of Almighty God, and against the peace of our Lady
+the Queen." Every sentence was an outrage, and nearly every word untrue.
+I was not wicked, nor malicious, nor evil-disposed. I did not compose
+the speech--it was purely spontaneous. I never had a loud voice. I never
+referred to the Holy Scriptures, and I only disturbed the peace of our
+Lady the Queen by a ripple of laughter.
+
+I carried no arms. I was known as belonging to the "Moral Force Party"
+in politics, and was entirely unprepared to attack any person, let alone
+one Omnipotent with "force of arms." The imputations in the indictment
+were not only untrue, but contained more blasphemy than was in the mind
+of any one to utter. I called the Judge's attention to the atrocity
+of the language of the indictment He did not say there was anything
+objectionable in it, which showed that the morality of the Bench was
+not higher at that time than the morality of the magistrates. In the
+_Cheltenham Chronicle_, known in the town as the Rev. Francis Close's
+(afterwards Dean of Chichester) paper, I was described as a "miscreant"
+for the answer I had given to my auditor. Mr. Justice Erskine had no
+word of reproof for the infamous term applied to me.
+
+As I have elsewhere said, I spoke in my defence upwards of nine hours.
+The length was owing to the declaration of one of the magistrates (Mr.
+Bransby Cooper) that the Court would not hear me defend myself. Why I
+defended myself at all, was from a very different reason.
+
+No barrister in those days would defend any one charged with dissenting
+from the Christian religion. The counsel always apologised to the jury
+for the opinions of his client, which admitted his guilt. This was done
+at that very assizes at which I was tried. A Mr. Thompson, a barrister
+in Court, who we mistook for a son of General Perronet Thompson, also
+at the Bar, was engaged to defend George Adams, charged with an act
+of heresy. The false Thompson expressed contrition for Adams, without
+knowing or inquiring whether it was true that he felt it. Neither
+counsel nor magistrate nor judge seemed to think it necessary that what
+they said should be true.
+
+Thus my justification of the seeming presumption of defending myself was
+the fact that no counsel would defend us without compromising us. I
+had no taste for martyrdom. I did not want martyrdom; I did not like
+martyrdom. Martyrdom is not a thing to be sought, but a thing to be
+submitted to when it comes.
+
+This narrative shows that, in one respect, legal taste and truth have
+improved in my time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII. CHRISTIAN DAYS
+
+Many religious thinkers, ecclesiastical and Nonconformist, whose
+friendship I value, will expect from me in these autobiographic
+papers some account of the origin of opinions in which they have been
+interested. Sermons, speeches, pamphlets, even books have been devoted
+to criticism of my heresies. It is due to those who have taken so much
+trouble about me that I should explain, not what the opinions were--that
+would be irrelevant here--but how I came by them. That may be worth
+recounting, and to some serious people perhaps worth remembering.
+
+Confessions are not in my way. They imply that something it was prudent
+to conceal has to be "owned up." Of that kind I have no story to
+tell. An apologia is still less to my taste. I make no apology for
+my opinions. I do not find that persons who dissent from me, ever so
+strenuously, think of apologising to me for doing so. They do right in
+standing by their convictions without asking my leave. I hope they will
+take it in good part if I stand by mine without asking theirs.
+
+My mother did not go to the Established Church, to which her father
+belonged. She had natural piety of heart, and thought she found more
+personal religion among the Nonconformists than in the Church.
+She attended Carr's Lane Chapel, where the Rev. John Angell James
+preached--who had a great reputation in Birmingham for eloquence and
+for his evangelical writings. He was notorious in his day for denouncing
+players and ambitious preachers seeking to excel in the arts of this
+world; which caused the town people to say that he was dramatic against
+the drama and eloquent against eloquence. His name, "Angell" James,
+begat a belief that it was descriptive of himself, and that his
+doctrines were necessarily angelic. It seems absurd, but I shared this
+belief, and should not have been surprised to hear that he had some
+elementary development of wings out of sight At the same time, Mr. James
+gave me the impression of severity in piety, and my feeling towards him
+was one of awe, dreading a near approach.
+
+Some years after, I held a discussion of several nights with the Rev.
+W. J. Winks, of Leicester, who wrote to Mr. James to make inquiries
+concerning me. In 1881, some thirty-five years after the discussion,
+Mr. Winks' son showed me a letter which Mr. James wrote in reply saying:
+"Holyoake was a boy in my Sunday School five years. He then went,
+through the persuasion of a companion, to Mr. Cheadle's for a short
+time, then to the Unitarian school (I believe entered a debating
+society), and became an unbeliever. He is a good son and kind to his
+mother, who is a member of one of our Baptist churches."
+
+The Rev. Mr. Cheadle, of whom Mr. James speaks, was a Baptist minister.
+It is true I went to his church--my sister Matilda became a member
+of it--but I never joined it The ceremony of baptism there was by
+immersion. It seemed poetical to me when I read the account of baptism
+in the Jordan; but I could not make up my mind to be baptised in a tank.
+The reason, however, that I gave at the time was the stronger and
+the true one--that I did not feel good enough to make a solemn public
+profession of faith. Mr. James was misinformed; I never belonged to a
+debating society.
+
+It was very good of him to write of me so, when he must have been very
+much pained at the opinions he believed me then to hold. A man may
+speak generously privately, but he means it when he says the same thing
+publicly; and Mr. James did this. He wrote to a similar effect in the
+_British Banner_ at the time when the Rev. Brewin Grant was painting
+portraits of me in pandemonium colours.
+
+A small Sunday School Magazine came into my hands when I was quite a
+youth. It was edited by the Rev. W. J. Winks. As communications were
+invited from readers, I sent some evangelical verses to him. The first
+time of my seeing my initials in print was in Mr. Winks's magazine.
+
+After a time, partly because the place of worship was nearer home, my
+mother joined a little church in Thorpe Street, and later one in Inge
+Street. They were melancholy little meeting-houses, and, as I always
+accompanied my mother, I had time to acquire that impression of them.
+A love of art was in some measure natural to me, and I thought that the
+Temple of God should be bright, beautiful and costly. As I was taught to
+believe that He was always present there, it seemed to me that He should
+not be invited (and all our prayers did invite Him) into a mean-looking
+place. It was seeing how earnestly my mother prayed at home for the
+welfare of her family, how beautiful and patient was her trust
+in heaven, and how trouble and misery increased in the household
+notwithstanding, that unconsciously turned my heart to methods of
+secular deliverance. She had lost children. I remember the consternation
+with which she told us one Sunday night that her pastor, the Rev. Mr.
+James, had stated in his sermon his fearsome belief that there were
+"children in hell not a span long." That Mr. James believed it seemed
+to us the same as its being in the Bible. Another time he preached about
+the "sin against the Holy Ghost, which could never be forgiven, either
+in this world or the world to come." My mother's distress at the thought
+made a great impression upon me. A silent terror of Christianity
+crept into my mind. That one so pure and devout as my mother, who was
+incapable of committing sin knowingly, should be liable to commit this,
+and none of us know what it was, nor how or when consequences so awful
+were incurred, seemed to me very dreadful.
+
+The first death at home of which I was conscious, occurred at a time
+when Church rates and Easter dues were enforced and augmented by a
+summons. None of us were old enough to take the money to the public
+office, and a little sister being ill, my mother, with reluctance, had
+to go. A small crowd of householders being there on the same errand,
+she was away some hours. When she returned, my sister was dead; and the
+thought that the money extorted by the Church might have succoured, if
+not saved the poor child, made the distress greater. My mother, always
+resigned, made no religious complaint, but I remember that, in our
+blind, helpless way, the Church became to us a thing of ill-omen. It was
+not disbelief, it was dislike, that was taking possession of our minds.
+
+A man in my father's employ, who was superintendent of a Congregational
+Chapel School at Harborne, a village some three or four miles from
+Birmingham, asked me to assist as monitor in one of his classes. I was
+so young that John Collins, who preached at times in the chapel, took me
+by the hand, and I walked by his side. The distance was too far for
+my little feet, and in winter the snow found its way through my
+shoes. Collins afterwards became known as a Chartist advocate, and
+was imprisoned in Warwick Gaol with William Lovett, on the ground of
+political speeches. They jointly wrote the most intelligent scheme
+of Chartist advocacy made in their day. Elsewhere I have recounted
+incarcerations which befel many of my friends, proving that, within the
+memory of living men, the path of political and other pilgrims lay by
+the castles of giants who seized them by the way.
+
+In the Carr's Lane Sunday School I was considered an attentive,
+devout-minded boy. All the hymns we sang I knew by heart, as well as
+most parts of the Bible. The only classic of a semi-secular nature my
+mother had in her house was Milton's "Paradise Lost"; we had besides
+a few works of ponderous Nonconformist divines, of which Boston's
+"Fourfold State" was one, to which I added Baxter's "Saints' Everlasting
+Rest." I devoured whatever came in my way that was religious. Being
+thought by this time capable of teaching the little that was deemed
+necessary in an Evangelical Sunday school, I came to act as a
+small teacher at the Inge Street Chapel. These people were known as
+Paedo-Baptists--what that meant not a single worshipper knew. The point
+of doctrine which they did understand was that children should not be
+baptised when their small souls were in the jelly-fish state and knew
+nothing. When their little minds had grown and had some backbone
+of sense in them, and some understanding of religious things, the
+congregation thought that sprinkling them into spiritual fellowship
+might do them good.
+
+Though my mother admitted that adult baptism was more reasonable, she
+never listened to the doctrine of baptism by immersion. She disliked
+innovation in piety. She had great tenacity in quiet belief, and thought
+public immersion a demonstration--very bad bathing of its kind--and
+might give you a cold.
+
+Few young believers showed more religious zeal than I did in those days.
+On Sunday morning there was a prayer on rising, and one before leaving
+home. At half-past seven the teachers were invited to meet at chapel
+to pray for a blessing on the work of the day. When school commenced at
+nine o'clock the superintendent opened it with prayer, and closed it at
+eleven with another prayer. Then came the morning service of the chapel,
+at which I was present with my class. That included three prayers. At
+two o'clock school began again, opening and ending with prayers by the
+superintendent, or by some teacher who was asked "to engage" in it,
+in his stead. At the close of the school, another prayer-meeting
+of teachers was held, for a blessing on the work done that day. At
+half-past six evening service took place, which included three
+more prayers. Afterwards, devout members of the congregation held
+a prayer-meeting on behalf of the work of the church. At all these
+meetings I was present, so that, together with graces before and after
+meals three times a day, and evening prayers at time of rest, heaven
+heard from me pretty frequently on Sundays. Many times since I have
+wondered at the great patience of God towards my unconscious presumption
+in calling attention so often to my insignificant proceedings. Atonement
+ought to include the sin of prayers.
+
+Nor was this all. At chapels in Birmingham (1834), when anniversary
+sermons had been preached on Sunday by some ministers of mark, there
+would commonly be a public meeting on Monday at which they would speak,
+and to which I would go. On Tuesday evening I went to the Cherry Street
+Chapel, where the best Wesleyan preachers in the town were to be heard.
+On Wednesday I often attended the Carr's Lane sermon. Thursday would
+find me at the Bradford Street chapel, where there usually sat before
+me a beautiful youth, whose sensuous grace of motion gave me as much
+pleasure as the sermon. I remember it because it was there I first
+became conscious of the charm of human strength and proportion. I had
+the Greek love of beauty in boys--not in the Greek sense, of which I
+knew nothing.
+
+On Friday I generally went to the public prayer-meeting in Cherry
+Street, because Wesleyans were bolder and more original in their prayers
+than other Christians. In frequenting Wesleyan chapels I could not help
+noticing that their great preachers were also men of great build, of
+good width in the lower part of the face. Afterwards I found that their
+societies elsewhere were mostly composed of persons of sensuous make.
+Their preachers having strong voices, and drawing inspiration mainly
+from feeling, they had boldness of speech; and those who had imagination
+had a picturesque expression. Independents and Baptists often tried
+to solve doubts, which showed that their convictions were tempered by
+thought to some extent; but the Wesleyan knew nothing of thought--he put
+doubt away. He did not recognise that the Questioning Spirit came from
+the Angel of Truth. To the Wesleyans, inquiry is but the fair-seeming
+disguise of the devil, and to entertain it is of the nature of sin.
+These preachers, therefore, knowing nothing of the other side, were
+under none of the restrictions imposed by intelligence, and they
+denounced the sceptics with a force which seemed holy from its fervour,
+and with a ferocity which only ignorance could inspire. So long as I
+knew less than they, their influence over me continued. Yet it was not
+vigorous denunciation which first allured me to them, though it long
+detained me among them--it was the information I had received, that they
+believed in universal salvation, which had fascination for me. There was
+something generous in that idea beyond anything taught me, and my heart
+cleaved to the people who thought it true. This doctrine came to me
+with the force of a new idea, always enchanting to the young. Had I been
+reared among Roman Catholics, I should have worshipped at the church
+of _All_ Souls instead of the church of One Soul. Any Church whose name
+seemed least to exclude my neighbours would have most attracted me.
+
+All the fertility of attendance at chapels recounted did not, as the
+reader will suppose, produce any weariness in me, or make me tired
+of Christianity. The incessant Bible reading, hymns, prayer, and
+evangelical sermons of Carr's Lane, Thorpe Street, and Inge Street did
+tire me. There was no human instruction in their spiritual monotony. My
+mind aches now when I think of those days. When I took courage to visit
+various chapels, the variety of thought gave me ideas. The deacons of
+the Inge Street Chapel bade me beware that "the rolling stone gathered
+no moss."* Yet I did gather moss.
+
+     * Thomas Tusser, of the sixteenth century, to whom the
+     phrase is ascribed, said: "The stone that is rolling can
+     gather no moss."
+
+Though I was then hardly fifteen, the other teachers would gently ask me
+if I would engage in prayer in their meetings, which meant praying aloud
+among them. The idea made me tremble. I was very shy, and the sound of
+my own voice was as a thing apart from me, for which I was responsible,
+and which I could not control. Then, what should I say? To say what
+others said, to utter a few familiar scriptural phrases, diluted by
+ignorant earnestness, seemed to me, even at that time, an insipid
+offering of praise. Then it occurred to me to notice any newness of
+thought and expression I heard in week-day discourses, and with them I
+composed small prayers, which brought me some credit when I spoke them,
+as they were unlike any one else's. But only once--at a Friday night's
+church meeting--did I pray with natural freedom. Afterwards I avoided
+requests to pray, as I thought it unreal to be thinking more of the
+terms of the prayer than the simple spirit of it, and I hoped that one
+day fitting language would become natural to me.
+
+It is proof that my mind was as free from scientific inspiration as
+any saint's, since I had no misgiving as to the effect of prayer. If
+Christianity were preached for the first time now to well-to-do people,
+able to help themselves, it would be treated like Mormonism in America;
+but to the poor who have neither money nor reflection, Christianity, as
+a praying power, is a very real thing. People who have no idea that help
+will, or can, come in any other way, are glad to think that it may
+come from heaven. It had never been explained to me that low wages
+were caused by there being too many labourers in the market, or that
+ill-health is caused by poor food and hard condition. It was my daily
+habit to pray for things most necessary and always deficient, not for
+myself alone, but for others to whom in their need I would give, at any
+cost to myself--to whom, if disinterested prayers were answered, any God
+of sympathy would give. Yet, though no prayer was answered, it did not
+strike me that that method of help failed. Prayer was no remedy, yet I
+did not see its futility. Had I spent a single hour only in "dropping
+a bucket into an empty well, never drawing any water up," I should not
+have continued the operation without further inquiry. It never struck me
+that, if preachers could obtain material aid by prayer, or knew any form
+of supplication by which it could be obtained, they might grow rich in
+a day by selling copies of that priceless formula. No Church would be
+needy, no believer would be poor.
+
+In those days Christianity was a very real thing to me. What was part of
+my conviction was also part of my life. So far as I had knowledge, I was
+like the parson of Chaucer, who--
+
+     "Christ's love and his Apostles twelve
+     Taught, and _first he followed it himselve_."
+
+This I did with a zeal of spirit which neither knew nor sought any
+evasion of the letter.
+
+At this time there came to Birmingham one Rev. Tully Cribbace, a
+middle-aged man with copious dark hair, pale, thin face, and earnest,
+unceasing speech. The zealous members of many congregations went to hear
+him. He interested me greatly. He rebuked our Churches, as is the way
+with new, wandering preachers--_without appointments_--for their want of
+faith in the promise of Christ, who had said that "Whatsoever ye shall
+ask in My name, that will I do." I had the belief, I had asked in His
+name; but nothing came of it. With insufficient clothing I had gone out
+in inclement weather to worship, or to teach, trusting in that promise
+that I should be protected if no gifts of clothing came from heaven. No
+gifts did come, but illness from exposure often did. In a very anxious
+spirit I went to Mr. Cribbace's lodgings in Newhall Street, where he had
+said inquirers might call upon him. When he asked me "what I wished to
+say," I at once, not without emotion, replied, "Do you really believe,
+sir, what you said? Is it true that what we ask in faith we shall
+receive? I have great need to know that."
+
+My seemingly abrupt and distrustful question was not a reflection upon
+his veracity of speech. Mr. Cribbace quite understood that from my
+tone of inquiry. It never struck me that his threadbare dress, his
+half-famished look, and necessity of "taking up a collection" the
+previous night "to pay expenses," showed that faith was not a source of
+income to him. Yet he had told us that faith would be all that to us,
+and with a sincerity which never seemed to me more real on any human
+lips. He did not mistake the earnestness or purport of my question. He
+parried with his answer with many words, and at length said that "the
+promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for would
+be given, if God thought it for our good." Christ did not think this; He
+did not say it; He did not suggest it. Knowing how many generations of
+men to the end of the world would imperil their lives on the truth of
+His words, He could not suffer treacherous ambiguity to creep into His
+meaning by omission. His words were: "If it were not so, I would have
+told you." There was no double meaning in Christ, no reticence, no
+half-statement, leaving the hearer to find out the half-concealed words
+which contradicted the half-revealed. All this I believed of him, and
+therefore I trusted Christ's sayings.
+
+St. Chrysostom, in the prayer of the Church Litany, does not stop, but
+keeps open the gap through which this evasion crawls. "Almighty God," he
+says, "who dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in
+Thy name, Thou wilt grant _their_ requests. Fulfil _now_, O Lord, the
+desires and petitions of Thy servants, as may be most _expedient_
+for them." Christ was no juggler like St. Chrysostom. A prayer is a
+deposit--the money of despair paid into a bank; but no one would pay
+money into a bank if they were told they would get back only as much as
+was good or expedient for them.
+
+My heart sank within me as Mr. Cribbace spoke the words of evasion.
+There was nothing to be depended upon in prayer. The doctrine was a
+juggle of preachers. They might not mean it or think it straight out,
+but this is what it came to. Christ a second time repeated the words:
+"If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it." However it might be
+true in apostolic days, it was not true in ours, and the preachers knew
+it, and did not say so. Christ might as well be dead if the promise
+had passed away. Christianity had no material advantage to offer to the
+believer, whatever else it may have had.
+
+Mr. Cribbace spoke the truth now; I could see that. Never did that
+morning pass from my mind. That answer did not make me disbelieve, but I
+was never again the same Christian I had been before. The foundation on
+which every forlorn, helpless, uninformed, trusting believer rests had
+slipped--slipped away from under my feet. Whatever Christianity might
+be, it was no dependence in human need. The hard, material world was not
+touched by prayer. How else it could be moved I then knew not.
+
+For myself, I did not think about the terms of the Bible, but believed
+them. If there was an exception, it related to the saying of Christ that
+every "idle word" men should speak should be recorded against them. If
+"idle words" were to go down, then angry or wicked words would also be
+recorded. At night, as I made my last prayer, I tried to think over
+what I had said or done which might have been added to that serious
+catalogue, and thus I suffered more than my fair share of alarm. I did
+not know then that the rich have a much smaller account against them
+above than the poor, and that they fare better than the indigent in
+heaven, as they do on earth. A gentleman has his house and grounds, no
+one he dislikes can enter his home. His neighbour cannot much annoy him;
+he is at a distance from him. If he has a feud with his annoyer, he does
+not meet him above once a year, perhaps at a county ball, and there he
+can "cut" him; while a poor man lives in a house where he has several
+fellow-lodgers, who have done him a shabby turn, and whom he meets four
+or five times a day on the stairs. Evil thoughts come into his heart,
+evil words escape his lips, and he himself employs a recording angel
+all his time in taking down his offences, while the rich man has,
+peradventure, only a single note made against his name once a week.
+
+It was after I had been some time at the Mechanics' Institution--which
+was quite a new world of thought to me--that I was asked if I would
+conduct a class at the New Meeting Unitarian Sunday school. The rooms
+in which the Mechanics' Institution was held were those of the Sunday
+school of the Old Meeting-house, no other being obtainable. Since
+anything I knew had been taught me by these generous believers, it
+seemed to me natural that they should invite me to assist in one of
+their schools, and that I should comply. My consenting was not because
+I shared their tenets. The Rev. Mr. Crompton, whose sister subsequently
+became Mrs. George Dawson, asked me after a time what my view was as to
+the unity of Deity. My answer was that I believed in three Deities.
+I had never thought of the possibility of all this great world being
+managed by _one_ Being. My preference for the acquaintance of Unitarians
+was that there was so much more to be learned among them than among any
+other religious body I had known. My invitation to their school was to
+teach Euclid to one class, and the simpler elements of logic to another.
+These were subjects never thought of in the Evangelical Sunday schools
+to which I had belonged. The need of human knowledge had become very
+clear to me. I could see that young men of my age trained in Unitarian
+schools were very superior to Evangelical youths, who had merely
+spiritual information. Devoutness I knew to be goodness; but I could
+see it was not power. My personal piety did not conceal from me my
+inferiority to those better informed. This made me grateful to the
+Unitarians, who cared on Sundays for human as well as spiritual things;
+and I thought it a duty to help them, as far as my humble attainments
+might enable me.
+
+As soon as this was known in the Inge Street church, to which I was
+considered to belong, the elders spake unto me thereupon. I was invited
+to a prayer-meeting, which I readily consented to attend, when I found
+that all the prayers were directed against me--were mere solicitations
+to heaven to divert my heart from continuing to attend the Unitarian
+schools. It would be wronging my sincere and well-meaning friends
+of that time, to recount the deterrents they used and the fears they
+expressed. Religion refined by human intelligence was regarded then as a
+form of sin. At the end I did not dissent from their view, but I made
+no promise to do what they wished. It seemed to me a sin that any youths
+should be as ignorant as I had been, and I refuse to give them such
+knowledge as I had acquired. In this matter of teaching I said it
+was right to do as the Unitarians did, but wrong to believe as they
+believed. This opinion I held all the while I was a teacher in their
+Sunday school.
+
+Had these prayerful friends of mine succeeded in their object of
+persuading me from association with these larger believers, they would
+have shut the door of freedom, effort and improvement for me. My lot
+would have been to spend my days inviting others, with much earnestness,
+to cherish like incapacity. Yet I have no word of disrespect for their
+honest-hearted endeavour to advise me, as they thought, for the best.
+It was the desire of knowledge which saved me from their dangerous
+temptation.
+
+The Meeting-house to whose Sunday school I went, was the one where Dr.
+Priestley formerly preached. It was my duty on a Sunday to accompany my
+class into chapel during the morning service. The scholars' seats were
+near the gallery stairs. The other teachers sat at the end of the forms,
+farthest from the stairs. I always chose the end nearest the stairs.
+When invited to sit elsewhere I never explained the reason why I did
+not. My reason was my belief that the wickedness of the preacher, in
+addressing only one Deity, would one day be resented by heaven, and that
+the roof would fall in upon the congregation. As I did not share their
+faith, I thought I ought not to partake of their fate; and I thought
+that by being near the stairs I could escape--if I saw anything
+uncomfortable in the behaviour of the ceiling, which I frequently
+watched. Being the person who would first understand what was about to
+happen, I concluded that my descent would be unimpeded by the flying and
+unsuspecting congregation. It seems to me only yesterday that I sat
+calculating my chance of escape as Mr. Kentish's sonorous and
+instructive sermon was proceeding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII. NEW CONVICTIONS WHICH CAME UNSOUGHT
+
+These singular instances of bygone experience of a religious student,
+of which few similar have ever been given, must be suggestive--perhaps
+instructive--to religious teachers in church and chapel, engaged in
+inculcating their views. How much happier had been my life had there
+then existed that tolerance of social effort, that regard of social
+needs, that consideration of individual aspiration, which happily now
+prevail. This chapter will conclude what Herbert Spencer would call the
+"natural history" of a mind, or, as Lord Westbury would say, "what I am
+pleased to call my mind."
+
+One evening, at the Mechanics' Institution, Birmingham, I was told that
+Robert Owen, who had unexpectedly arrived in town, was likely to speak
+in Well Lane, Allison Street, and was asked "would I go?" Mistaking
+the name for Robert Hall, I said I would. Of Robert Owen I had scarcely
+heard; of the Rev. Robert Hall (who had denounced all deflectors from
+the Baptist standard with brilliant bitterness) I had heard, admired
+(and do still), and much desired to see. Great was my disappointment
+when I discovered the mistake. As Mr. Owen passed me on entering the
+room, I--a mere youth--looked at the aged philosopher (who had been
+working for human welfare long before I was born) with an impertinent
+pity. I felt also some real terror for his future, as I thought what
+a "wicked old man" he must be. I had been assured by Robert Hall that
+morality without faith was of no avail in the eye of God.
+
+Eventually it became known at the works where I was employed that I had
+been to hear Robert Owen, and remarks were made. In those days (1837-8)
+advocates of social reform were called "Socialists." Some of the remarks
+made against them were unjust Some "Socialists" were fellow-students at
+the Mechanics' Institution. These commentators made the usual mistake of
+concluding that the social thinkers in question must hold the opinions
+it was inferred that they held. At that time I did not understand this
+way of reasoning, though no doubt I used it myself, as those among whom
+I was reared knew no better. Everybody was sure that an opponent must
+mean what you inferred he meant, and charged against him the inference
+as a fact--never thinking of inquiring whether it was so. If I was not
+misled by those confident arguments, it was because I knew that the
+persons accused were leal and kind in daily life. Out of mere love
+of fairness I defended them to my working associates, as far as my
+knowledge went. Being told that "I did not know what their principles
+were" caused me to read their pamphlets and to hear some lectures. For
+a year or more I used the knowledge thus gained against the uninformed
+impressions of their aspersers around me.
+
+Well do I remember that one day, as I passed two workmen in the
+mill-yard, one said to the other, "That is young Holyoake the sceptic."
+They did not know that "sceptic" merely meant a doubter in search of
+evidence. They used the word in the brutal sense of one who disbelieved
+the truth, knowing it to be the truth. The term startled me, as I
+neither believed nor assumed to believe what I had reported as the
+opinions of my friends. For myself, I had no thought of holding their
+opinions. The heresy supposed to be included in them was, indeed, my
+aversion. Then I made the resolution to examine their principles, with a
+view to show what arguments I could myself bring against them. Great
+was my dismay when, after months of thought, I found that the questioned
+tenets seemed, on the whole, to be true. These tenets were that wise
+material circumstances were likely to have a better influence on men
+than bad ones; and that, men having general qualities which they have
+inherited, the treatment of the worst should be tempered by compassion
+for their ill-fortune. Then it concerned me no more what any one said of
+me. It was as though I had passed into a new country, leaving behind
+me the barren land of supplication for a land of self-effort and
+improvement; and entered into the fruitful kingdom of material
+endeavour, where help and hope dwelt. Heretofore doubt and perturbation
+as to whether I was of the "elect" had oft agitated me. Now, I had no
+bonds in the death of my disproved opinions--no struggle, no misgivings.
+Without wish or effort of mine, I was delivered by reason alone from the
+prison-house in which I had dwelt with its many terrors. Not all at once
+did the terrors go. They long hovered about the mind like evil spirits
+tempting me to distrust the truth written in the Book of Nature, of
+which I believed God to be the author.
+
+Some time before this change in my opinion occurred I had taken in, out
+of my slender savings, the beautiful Diamond edition of the Rev.
+Mr. Stebbing's Bible in parts. The type was very fine, the outline
+illustrations seemed to me very beautiful; they affect me with
+admiration still. It was the first book with marks of art about it that
+I had possessed. I had it bound in morocco, with silver clasps. It was
+quite a wonder in the workshop when I took it there. To possess many
+things I never cared, but if I had only one, and it had some beauty and
+finish in it, it was to me as though I had a light in my room at night,
+and the thought of it made me glad in the dark. A fellow-workman of
+sincere piety, whom I respected very much, coveted this Bible, and
+induced me to sell it to him, which I did, as I had it in my mind to get
+another bound in a yet daintier way.
+
+Simple and natural as was this transaction, it was misconstrued. It was
+said I had "sold" my Bible, as though it was my act instead of being
+the act of another. Next it was reported that I had "burnt" it. Thus I
+became a founder of myths without knowing it. Nevertheless, it gave me
+pain--for nothing was more alien to my mind, my taste and reverence,
+than the act imputed to me. But what made a greater impression upon me,
+it being inconceivable, and unforeseen, was that he who induced me to
+part with my valued volume never came forward to say so. The inspiration
+of Christianism I had taken to be personal truth which could be
+trusted. In the noblest minds it is so still. But for the first time I
+found a Christian could be mean.
+
+It was about this period that a poor woman I knew drew near to death
+from consumption. At times I visited and read the Scriptures to her. One
+night I asked her if she would like some one to pray with her. As she
+wished it, I induced one with whom I had been a Sunday school teacher to
+come with me one evening and pray by her side.
+
+The consolation was very precious to her, and that is why I sought it
+for her. At no time did it seem to me that everybody should be of one
+opinion, since honesty of life consists in living and dying in that
+opinion of the truth of which you are convinced. This man whom I took
+with me was a workman, poor, mean, and utterly uninformed. In religious
+sympathy he inclined to the Ranters, who are not at all melodious
+Christians. Yet heaven might respect his prayer as much as a bishop's,
+for he had given up his night, after a hard day's labour, to afford what
+humble consolation he could to this poor woman.
+
+One sentiment that had always possessed me was a pleasure in vengeance.
+I had quite a distinct passion of hatred where I was wronged, and had
+no means of resistance or redress. A man in my father's employ did
+something very unfair to me when I was quite a youth, and during nine
+years that I worked by his side I did not forget it or forgive it. The
+Lord's prayer taught me that I should "forgive those who trespassed
+against me," and at times I thought I had forgiven him, but I never had.
+Christian as I was, the revengeful lines of Byron long influenced me:--
+
+     "If we do but watch the hour,
+     There never yet was human power,
+     That could evade, if unforgiven,
+     The patient search and vigil long
+     Of him who treasures up a wrong."
+
+No sermon, no prayer, no belief, no Divine command, rendered me neutral
+towards those I disliked. Neither authority nor precept had force which
+gave no reason for amity. But when I came to understand Coleridge's
+saying that "human affairs are a process," I could see that patience and
+wise adaptation of condition was the true method of improvement, since
+the tendency to nobleness or baseness was alike an inheritance nurtured
+by environment. If tempest of the human kind came, precaution and not
+anger--which means ignorance taken by surprise--was the remedy. Pity
+takes the place of resentment. Clearly, vengeance did but add to the
+misfortune of destiny.
+
+I oft pondered Hooker's saying, that "anger is the sinew of the soul,
+and he that lacketh it hath a maimed mind." Nevertheless, I am content
+to be without that "sinew." Anger is rather the epilepsy of the
+understanding than the dictate of reason. I had come to see that there
+are no bad weeds in Nature--but much bad gardening. The reasons of amity
+had become clear to me, and that Helvetius was right. We should "go on
+loving men, but not expecting too much from them." Even Hooker could not
+win me back to the profitless pursuits of anger and retaliation.
+
+These bygone days left their instruction with me evermore. In them I
+learned consideration for others. Whatever my convictions, I was always
+the same to my mother. The wish to change her views never entered my
+mind. She had chosen her own. I respected her choice, and she respected
+mine. In after years, when I visited Birmingham, I would read the Bible
+to her. She liked to hear my voice again as she had heard it in earlier
+days. When her eyes became dim by time I would send her large type
+editions of the New Testament, and of religious works which dwelt upon
+the human tenderness of Christ. The piety of parents should be sacred
+in the eyes of children. Convictions are the food of the soul, which
+perisheth on any other diet than that which can be assimilated by the
+conscience.
+
+One of the bygones which had popularity in my day was silence,
+where explicitness was needed. Nothing is more grateful to the young
+understanding than clear, definite outlines. _The Spectator_ (July 23,
+1891) said that "Dean Stanley could not at any time have exactly defined
+what his own theology really was." George Dawson, who charmed so many
+audiences and was under no official restraint, never attempted it.
+Emerson, who criticised everybody who had an opinion, never disclosed
+his. Carlyle, who filled the air with adjurations to sincerity of
+conviction, carefully concealed his own. They who take credit for
+advising the public what to believe should avow their own belief. Otway,
+crossing the street to Dryden's house, wrote upon his door: "Here lives
+Dryden, a poet and a wit." Seeing these words as he came out, Dryden
+wrote under them: "Written by Otway opposite," which might mean: "This
+is but a partial and friendly estimate written by my neighbour who lives
+over the way, opposite to me"; or, it might mean that "It is written by
+Otway--the very 'opposite' of 'a poet and a wit.'" Janus sentences
+are the very grace of satire, because they offer a mitigating or a
+complimentary construction; but in questions of conscience, ethics, or
+politics, uncertainty is an evil--an evil worth remembering where it can
+be avoided.
+
+"Socialists" were liable to indictment who officiated in a place not
+licensed as a place of worship. Such a license could be obtained on
+making a declaration on oath that their discourses were founded on
+belief in the cardinal tenets of the Church. Two social speakers were
+summoned to swear this. One was the father of the late Robert Buchanan.
+He and his colleague did so swear to avoid penalties, though they swore
+the contrary of the truth. I joined with other colleagues in protesting
+against this humiliation and ignominy. And in another way imprisonment
+came to all of us. Silence or the oath was the alternative from which
+there was no escape. The question then arose, "Was the existence of
+Deity so certainly known to men that inability to affirm it justified
+exclusion from citizenship?" Thus it was of the first moment to inquire
+whether it was so or not, and what was regarded as an atheistical
+investigation became a political necessity in self-defence. Was there
+such conclusive knowledge of the Unknowable as to warrant the law in
+making the possession of it a condition of justice and civil equality?
+Thus the refutation of Theism became a form of self-defence, and without
+foreseeing it, or intending it, or wishing it, I was, without any act of
+my own, engaged in it.
+
+This narrative concerns those who deplore the rise and popularity of
+independent thinkers, alien to received doctrine. Few persons are aware
+how or why agnostic advocacy was welcomed and extended. Surely this is
+worth remembering. The tenet bore statute fruit, for the Affirmation Act
+came out of it.
+
+It will be a satisfaction to students of spiritual progress to know that
+the extension and legalisation of the rights of conscience, brought no
+irreverence with it. The sense that the nature of Deity was beyond the
+capacity of dogmatism to define, created a feeling of profound humility
+in the mind; the incapacity which disabled me from asserting the
+infinite premises of Theism rendered denial an equal temerity. What
+tongue can speak, what eye can see, what imagination can conceive the
+marvels of the Inscrutable? I think of Deity as I think of Time, which
+is with us daily. Who can explain to us that mystery? Time--noiseless,
+impalpable, yet absolute--marshals the everlasting procession of nature.
+It touches us in the present with the hand of Eternity, and we know it
+only by finding that we were changed as it passed by us.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV. DIFFICULTY OF KNOWING MEN
+
+Events of the mind as well as of travel may be worth remembering.
+Columbus, high on a peak of Darien, saw an unexpected sight--never to
+be forgotten. Of another kind, as far as surprise was concerned, though
+infinitely less important in other respects, was my first reading of a
+passage of Pascal, which more than any other revealed to me a new world
+of human life. The passage was the well-known exclamation:--
+
+"What an enigma is man? What a strange, chaotic and contradictory being?
+Judge of all things, feeble earth-worm, depository of the Truth, mass of
+uncertainty, glory and butt of the universe, incomprehensible monster!
+In truth, what is man in the midst of Nature? A cypher in respect to the
+infinite; all, in comparison with nonentity: a mean betwixt nothing and
+all."
+
+Everybody knows that not only in different nations, but in the same
+nation, mankind present a strange variety of qualities and passions.
+The English are outspoken, the Scotch reticent, the Irish uncertain, the
+American alert, the French ceremonial. Even our English counties have
+their special ways of action. London is confident, Birmingham dogged,
+Manchester resolute, New-castle-on-Tyne has greater modesty and greater
+pride than any other place. Yes; every one agrees with Pascal that man
+is a bewildering creature. He is proud and abject, generous and mean,
+defiant and craven, standing up for inflexible truth, and lying in his
+daily life. As Byron says, "Man is half dust, half deity." If we go far
+enough in our search we find people of all qualities. Everybody sees
+these characteristics of countries and classes. Everybody recognises
+these conflicting elements of character in a race; but what amazed me
+was to perceive that they are to be found in _each_ person in varying
+proportion and force--they are all there. The varieties of the race are
+to be found in the same individual. No man who understands this
+ever looks upon society as he did before. Not knowing this fact, not
+calculating upon it, error, distrust, disappointment, estrangement, grow
+up needlessly.
+
+Twice within the public recollection, two political parties in England
+have been formed, and made furious by a common ignorance. During the
+great Slave War in America, the Southern planter was held up as a
+gentleman of polished manners, of cultivated tastes, a paternal master
+and courteous host By others he was described as selfish, sensual,
+tyrannical, with whom any guest who betrayed sympathy with slaves had an
+unpleasant time. Both accounts were true. The same model gentleman who
+showered upon you courtly attentions would tar and feather you if he
+found you display emotion when you heard the shriek of the slave under
+the whip. Later, Parliament, the press, and the Church were divided upon
+the character of the Turk. One party said he was tolerant, picturesque,
+abounding in concessions and hospitality. The other party described him
+as subtle, evasive, treacherous, vicious, and cruel. No one seemed to
+recognise that all the while he was both these things. He was an
+adept in personal deference, generous in professions, evasive and
+treacherous--in short, "Abdul the Damned." To those from whom the Sultan
+had anything to hope, his graciousness was superb--to those at his mercy
+he was rapacious and murderous.
+
+The Circassians will offer their daughters to the Turk--they send
+their virgin beauty into the market of lust, and then fight for the
+purchasers. The Hindoos seem a gentle, unresisting, rice-minded people;
+yet have such capacity of heroic and vigilant reticence, that though we
+have been masters of India for one hundred and fifty years, it is said
+by experienced officials, we do not know the real mind of a single man.
+The Zulus have savage instincts and habits; but they are honest, speak
+the truth, and despise a man who is angry or excited.
+
+Thiers, the great French statesman, had trust in individuals, but
+despised the masses. Yet the masses pulled down the Bastile, where only
+gentlemen were imprisoned and not themselves. The masses were moved by a
+generous dislike of oppression as strongly as Thiers himself.
+
+President Washington, looking only at the corruption of classes he came
+in contact with, predicted evil to the future of American society. Yet,
+one hundred years after, a latent nobleness of sentiment appeared, which
+gave a million of lives in order that black men with large feet, as was
+scornfully said, should be free.
+
+Because oppression had made, for years, assassination frequent in
+Italy, many thought every man carried a stiletto, and did not know that
+Italians are more patient and cooler-headed on great occasions than
+Englishmen or Frenchmen.
+
+The Irish do not conceal that they are our enemies, and ruin every
+English movement in which they mingle, yet who have such brightness,
+drollery of imagination as they? Or who will stand by a friend of their
+country at the peril of their lives without hesitation as they do?
+
+The Scotch display in contest a sort of divine ferocity, such as we read
+of in the Old Testament. Their battle song at Flodden ran thus:--
+
+     "Burn their women, lean and ugly,
+     Burn their children, great and small,
+     In the hut and in the palace,
+     Prince and peasant--burn them all.
+
+     Plunge them in the swelling torrents
+     With their gear and with their goods;
+     Spare--while breath remains--no Saxon,
+     Drown them in the roaring floods."
+
+The Irish could not excel this rage of hell. Yet the same race gave us
+Burns and Sir Walter Scott, which no seer would have predicted or any
+would believe. The Scotch have deliberate generosity. Though narrow in
+piety they are broad in politics and have veracity in their bones.
+
+It concerns us to notice that in every _individual_ there is the same
+variety of qualities which exist in the race. Not to understand this is
+to misunderstand everybody with whom we come in contact. Take the
+case of a man in whom personal ambition predominates. That implies
+the existence of other qualities which may be even estimable, though
+subordinated to ends of power. William, the Norman Conqueror, had a
+gracious manner to any who lent themselves to further his ends; but, as
+Tennyson tells us, he was "stark as Death to those who crossed him."
+The first Napoleon gave thrones to generals who would occupy them in his
+interest, or as his instruments. The third Napoleon was very courteous
+even to workmen, so long as he believed they would be on his side in
+the streets; but their throats were not safe in the corridor outside his
+audience chamber, if he distrusted them.
+
+This unexpected blandishment confused the strong brain of John Arthur
+Roebuck, who, under the influence of Bonapartean courtesy, forgot that
+he had become Emperor by perjury and murder. A man caring above all
+things for power will give anything to acquire it or hold it. If any one
+will help him even to plunder others, he will share the plunder with a
+liberal hand among his confederates, who proclaim him as a most amiable,
+generous, and disinterested gentleman. To them he is so. The political
+world and private life also abounds in men who, like Byron's captain,
+was the "best-mannered gentleman who ever scuttled a ship or cut a
+throat."
+
+There are very few who say as Byron elsewhere wrote:--
+
+     "I wish men to be free,
+     From Kings or mobs--from you or me."
+
+The point of importance is that in judging a man we should accustom
+ourselves to see all about him, and, while we hate the evil, not shut
+our eyes to what there may be of good in the same person.
+
+For objects of popularity men will encounter peril in promoting measures
+of public utility, and though they care more for themselves than for the
+public, the public profit by their ambition. Provided it is understood
+that these advocates are not to be depended upon any longer than it
+answers their purpose, nobody is discouraged when they take up with
+something else, which better serves their ends.
+
+Men like Mr. Gladstone have a passion for conscience in politics; or,
+like Mr. Bright, have a passion for justice in public affairs; or,
+like Mr. Mill, have a passion for truth; or, like Mr. Cobden, who had
+a passion for national prosperity founded on freedom and peace--will
+encounter labour and obloquy with courage, and regard applause only as
+a happy accident, caring mainly for the consciousness of duty done.
+However, this class of men are not numerous, but command honour when
+known.
+
+Men of the average sort very much resemble fishes, except that they are
+less quiet and not so graceful in their movements. There is the Pholas
+Dactylus, which resembles a small, animated sausage with a pudding head.
+His plan of life is to bore a perfectly tubular passage in the soft sand
+rock on the sea-side, and lie there with his cunning head at the mouth
+of his dwelling and snap up the smaller creatures who wander heedlessly
+by. Sometimes a near relative has made a dwelling-place at right angles
+to the direction in which he has elected to make his residence. He does
+not consult the rights or convenience of any one, but bores straight
+through his father or his mother-in-law. There are many persons who
+do the same thing. There is the subtle and picturesque devil fish, who
+hides himself in the sedge and opens his mouth like a railway tunnel.
+With the fishing-rod which Nature attaches to his nose, the end of which
+is contrived like a bait, he switches the bright water until fish run
+forward, when he draws it cleverly up, and the foolish, impetuous, and
+unobservant creatures rush down his cavernous and treacherous throat He
+offers a bait, not to feed them, but to feed himself. If people had
+only eyes to see, there are devil fish about in the sedges of daily
+life--political, clerical, and social. There is the octopus, with its
+long, aimless arms, as silent and lifeless as seaweed. It lies about as
+idle, as soft, as flexible, and as easy as error, or intemperance, or
+dishonesty. But let any edible thing approach it, and every limb starts
+into energy, every fibre is alive, every muscle contracts, and the thing
+seized dies in its inextricable and iron arms. People abound of the
+octopus species, and it is prudent to avoid them. However, the bad are
+not so many as are supposed. Yet, when we consider that, upon a moderate
+calculation, a fool a day is born--and doubtless a knave a day to keep
+him company--there must be some dubious people about.
+
+A common mistake is that of taking offence at some unpleasant quality,
+and never looking to see whether there be not others for which we may
+tolerate and even respect a man. A person is often judged by a single
+quality, and sometimes by a single word. Persons who have lived long
+years in amity take offence at one expression. It may be uttered in
+passion; it may be spoken in mere lightness of heart, with no intention
+and no idea of offending--yet it enters into the foolish blood of those
+who hear it, and poisons the mind evermore. Nevertheless every man who
+reflects knows that those are fortunate and even miraculously skilful
+people, who can always say exactly what they intend to say, and no more.
+What resource of language--what insight of the minds of others--what
+mastery of phrases--what subtlety of discrimination--what perspicuity
+of statement must he possess who can express his every idea with such
+unerring accuracy that no word shall be redundant, or deficient, or
+ambiguous; and that another shall understand the speaker precisely as he
+understands himself! Yet by a chance phrase what friendships have been
+severed--what enmity has arisen--what estrangements, even in households,
+have occurred from these small and incidental causes? All memory of the
+tenderness, the kindness, the patient and generous service of years
+is often obliterated by a single word! The error people make is--that
+everything said is intended. Yet out of the many qualities every man
+has, and by which any man may be moved, a single passion may go mad in
+a mind unwatchful. Not only hatred or anger, but love will go mad and
+commit murder, which is often but the insanity of a minute. Yet nobody
+remembers that all are liable to insanity of speech.
+
+What a wonderful thing is perfection! It must be very rare. Yet some
+people are always looking for it in others who never offer any example
+of it in themselves. It is not, however, to be had anywhere. All we are
+entitled to look for is that the good in any individual shall in some
+general way predominate over the bad. We have need to be thankful if we
+find this. The late George Peabody was not a mean man, though he would
+stand in the rain at Charing Cross, waiting for a cheap omnibus to the
+City. There was a threepenny one waiting, but one with a twopenny fare
+would come up soon--Mr. Peabody would wait for it Making money was the
+habit of his mind, and he made it in the street as well as the office,
+and having made it, gave it away with a more than royal hand.
+
+One Sunday I rode in a Miles Platting tram car, amid decorous,
+well-dressed chapel-going people--several of them young and active. A
+child fell out of the tram, whose mother was too feeble to follow it. No
+one moved, save a woman of repulsive expression, with whom any one might
+suppose her neighbours had a bad time. She seemed the least desirable
+person to know of all the passengers; yet this woman, on seeing the
+child lying in the road, at once leapt out of the tram, brought the
+child back and put it tenderly into its mother's arms. Intrepid humanity
+may dwell in a very rough exterior.
+
+There goes a man with a hard, forbidding face, and a headachy
+Evangelical complexion. Like the man mentioned in the last paper, he is
+not an alluring person to know--those at his fireside have a dreary time
+of it. His children have joyless Sundays. He is a street preacher.
+His voice is harsh and painful. He howls "glad tidings" at the street
+corner. He is wanting in the first elements of reverence--those of
+modesty and taste. Yet this same man has kindness and generosity in his
+heart After his hard day's work is done he will give the evening,
+which others spend in pleasure, to try and save some casual soul in the
+street.
+
+Though we continually forget it, we know that men are full of mixed
+qualities and unequal passions. Ignorance of this renders one of the
+noblest passages of Shakespeare dangerous if misapplied:
+
+     "To thine own self be true,
+     And it must follow as the night the day,
+     Thou canst not then be false to any man."
+
+But what is a man's "own self"? It all lies there. Tell the liar, the
+thief, the forger, or the ruffian to be true to himself, and any one
+knows what will follow. Polonius knew the heart of Laertes, and to him
+he could say, "to thine own self be true." We must be sure of the nature
+of him whom we advise to follow himself.*
+
+     * Cicero appears to have thought of this when he said:
+     "Every roan ought carefully to follow out his peculiar
+     character, provided it is only peculiar, and not vicious,"
+
+What is or what can be the object of education but to strengthen by
+precept, habit and environment the better qualities of human nature;
+and to divert, repress, or subordinate where we cannot extinguish
+hereditary, unethical tendencies? Though we deny--or do not steadily
+see--that nations as well as individuals have capacities for good
+as well as evil, we admit it when we attempt to create international
+influences, which shall promote civilisation.
+
+If any would avoid the disappointment of ignorance and the alarms of
+the foolish, let him learn to look with unamazed expectancy at what will
+appear on the ocean of Society. Do not look in men for the qualities you
+want to find, or for qualities you imagine they ought to have, but look
+with unexpectant eyes for what you can find. Do not expect perfection,
+but a few good points only, and be glad if you find them, and be
+tolerant of what is absent. Of him of this way of thinking it may be
+said, as was said of Charles Lamb: "He did not merely love his friends
+in spite of their errors, he loved them errors and all." Whoever remains
+under the delusion that nations and men possess only special qualities,
+and not all qualities in different stages of development, will hate
+them foolishly, praise them without reason, and will never know men.
+But whoever understands the trend of things in this ever-changing,
+uncontrollable world, where
+
+     "Our fate comes to us from afar,
+     Where others made us what we are,"
+
+will utter the prayer of Sadi, the Persian poet: "O God! have pity on
+the wicked, for Thou hast done everything for the good in having made
+them good." A prayer worth remembering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV. IDEAS FOR THE YOUNG
+
+There are people who live many years and never grow old. We call
+them "young patriarchs." Limit not the golden dreams of youth, which,
+however, would be none the worse for a touch of the patriarch in them.
+There is sense in youth, and it will assimilate the experience of age if
+displayed before rather than thrust upon it. Youth should be incited to
+think for itself, and to select from the wisdom it finds in the world.
+Then the question comes--what is safe to take? That is the time for
+words of suggestion. Every one has read of the fox, who seeing a crow
+with a piece of cheese in her bill, told her "she had a splendid voice,
+and did herself an injustice by not singing." The credulous crow began
+a note, dropped the piece of cheese, with which the fox ran away. This
+trick is always being played. Among young persons there are a great
+number of crows. A youth is given a situation where advancement goes
+with assiduity. A fox-headed comrade or clerk below him tells him his
+"work is beneath his talents, and he ought to get something better."
+Discontent breeds negligence. He loses his place, when the treacherous
+prompter, whom he took to be his friend, slips into his situation, and
+finds it quite satisfactory.
+
+In public affairs, in which youth seldom takes part, many are confused
+by pretences which they understand when too late. A person puts forward
+an excellent project, and finds it assailed and disparaged by some one
+he thought would support it. Discouraged by opposition, he comes
+to doubt the validity of the enterprise he had in hand. When he has
+abandoned it he finds it taken up by the very person who denounced it,
+and who claims credit for what he has opposed. All the while he has
+thought highly of the scheme, but wanted to have the credit of it
+himself, and therefore defamed it until he could get it into his own
+hands. This sort of thing is done in Parliament as well as in business.
+It is only by listening to the experience of others that youth can
+acquire wariness and guard against serious mistakes.
+
+The young on entering life are often dismayed by dolorous speeches by
+persons who have never comprehended the nature of the world in which
+they find themselves. People are told "a great crisis in public affairs
+is at hand." There never was a time in the history of the world when a
+"crisis" was not at hand. Nature works by crises. Progress is made up of
+crises through which mankind has passed. Again there breaks forth upon
+the ears of inexperienced youth the alarming information that society is
+"in a transition state." Every critic, every preacher, every politician,
+is always saying this. Yet there never was a time when society was
+not in a "transition state." According to the Genesian legend, Adam
+discovered this in his day, when, a few weeks after his advent, he found
+himself outside the gates of Paradise, and all the world and all
+the creatures in it thrown into a state of unending perturbation and
+discomfort which has not ceased to this day. The eternal condition of
+human life is change, and he who is wise learns early to adapt himself
+to it. As Dr. Arnold said, there is nothing so dangerous as standing
+still when all the world is moving.
+
+The young are bewildered by being left under the impression that they
+should learn everything. Whereas all they need is to know thoroughly
+what their line of duty in life requires them to know. No man can read
+all the books in the British Museum, were arrangements made for his
+sleeping there. No one is expected to eat all he finds in the market,
+but only so much as makes a reasonable meal. Lord Sherbrooke translated
+from the Greek guiding lines of Homer who said of a learner of his
+day:--
+
+     "He could not reap, he could not sow,
+     Nor was he wise at all:
+     For very many arts he knew,
+     But badly knew them all."
+
+The conditions of personal advancement can only be learned by observing
+the steps of those who have succeeded. Disraeli, whose success was the
+wonder of his time, owed it to following the shrewd maxim that he who
+wants to advance must make himself necessary to those whom he has the
+opportunity of serving. This can be done in any station in life by
+skill, assiduity and trustworthiness.
+
+Practical thoroughness is an essential quality which gives great
+advantage in life. Spurgeon had a great appreciation of it A servant
+girl applied to him for a situation on the ground that she "had got
+religion." "Yes," said the great pulpit orator, "that is a very good
+thing if it takes a useful turn; but do you sweep under the mats?" he
+asked, cleanliness being a sign of godliness in the eyes of the sensible
+preacher.
+
+Cleanliness is possible to the very poorest--walls which have no paper
+might have whitewash. Children should never see dirt anywhere. They
+should never come upon it lying out of sight. Fever and death lurk in
+neglected corners. Children may be in rags, but if they are clean rags
+and the children are clean, they are, however poor, respectable. When I
+first went to speak in Glasgow, it was in a solemn old hall, up a wynd.
+The place was in the Candleriggs. Everybody knows what a dark, clammy,
+pasty, muddy, depressing thoroughfare is the Candleriggs in wintry
+weather.
+
+The passage leading to the lecture hall and the steps which had to be
+ascended were all murky and dirty; as in those days the passage leading
+to the publishing house of the Chambers Brothers was, as I have seen it,
+an incentive to sickness. My payment for lecturing was not much, but out
+of it I gave half a crown to an active woman I found in the wynd to
+wash down the stairs and the passage leading to the Candleriggs, and
+the space as wide as the passage along the causeway to the curb-stone.
+People passing along might see signs of cleanliness leading to the hall.
+
+I never forget what the woman said to some of the assembly as they
+passed by her: "I don't know what this man (or "mon") is, who you have
+to lecture to you to-day, but at least he has clean principles." That
+was precisely the impression I wanted to create. My tenets might be
+poor, my arguments badly clothed, but to present them in a clean state
+was in my power.
+
+Do not readily be deterred from a good cause because you will be told
+it is unprofitable, but take sides with it if need be. You will find
+persons born with a passion of putting the world to rights. A very good
+passion for the world, but now and then a very bad thing for him who is
+moved by it They have no engagement to undertake that work, no salary is
+allotted for it, nor even any income coming in to pay expenses "out of
+pocket," as the prudent, open-eyed lawyer puts it. Nevertheless, it may
+be well to follow the Jewish rule of giving a tithe of your time to the
+public service. There are a large amount of tithes contributed in other
+ways which are not half so beneficial to mankind. Many whose names
+now are luminous in history, whose fame is on every tongue, have been
+personally known to the old. The magical notes of great singers the
+living can never know, the triumphs of the great masters of speech in
+Parliament and on the platform, whom it was an education to hear--only
+the old can recount. What they looked like, and how they played their
+memorable parts, are the enchanting secrets of the old, who tell to the
+young what passed in a world unknown to them, and which has made them
+what they are. The purport of this chapter is to stimulate individuality
+and self-reliance. Disraeli's maxim of self-advancement was to make
+himself necessary by service in the sphere in which he found himself. In
+public affairs committees are not, as a rule, suggestive; they can amend
+what is submitted to them; they originate nothing, and generally take
+the soul out of any proposal brought before then. If they advance
+business it is when some individual provides a plan to which their
+consent may be of importance. Individual ideas have been the immemorial
+source of progress. A committee of one will often effect more than a
+committee of ten; but the committee of ten will multiply the force of
+the one, and lend to it influence and authority. Seeing that ideas
+come from individuals, a young person cannot do better in life than
+by considering himself a committee of one, and ponder himself on every
+matter of importance. This gives a habit of resourceful thought--renders
+him cautious in action, and educates him in responsibility. In daily
+life a man has continually to decide things for himself without the aid
+of a committee. It is thus that self-trust becomes his strength.
+
+If youth could see but a little with the eyes of their seniors, some
+pleasures would seem less alluring, and they would avoid doing some
+things which they will regret all their lives. Now and then some young
+eye will glance at a page of bygone lore and see a gleam of inspiration,
+like a torch in a forest, which reveals a bear in a bush which he had
+chosen for a picnic, or discovers a bog which he had taken to be solid
+ground. Proverbs come around the young observer, so fair seeming he
+trusts them on sight, and does not know they are only in part guiding
+and in part elusive, and have limitations which may betray him into
+confident and futile extremes. Even professors will beguile him with
+statements which he doubts not are true, and finds, all too late, that
+they are false.
+
+He will hear forebodings which fill him with alarm at some new
+undertaking, not knowing that they are but the sounds of the footfalls
+of Progress, which every generation has heard, the ignorant with terror,
+and the wise with gladness. Only the relation of bygone experiences can
+save the young from perilous illusions. Of course, youth is always asked
+to look at things with the eyes of age, but they never do. They never
+can do it, because the eyes of the old look at things with the light
+of experience which, in the nature of things, youth is without.
+Nevertheless, the experience of others may be good reading for them.
+
+If in the generous eagerness of youth the heart inclines to a forlorn
+hope, take it up notwithstanding its difficulties, for if youth does
+not, older people are not likely to attempt it. The older are mostly too
+prudent to do any good in the way of new enterprise. This is where youth
+has its uses and its priceless advantage. However, it is well not to let
+enthusiasm, noble as it may be, blind the devotee. Take care that the
+cause espoused is sound. Take heed of the Japanese maxim,
+
+     "The lid, if the pot be broken,
+     It is no use mending."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI. EXPERIENCES ON THE WARPATH
+
+The late Archbishop of Canterbury spoke derisively of agitators. The
+Rev. Stewart Headlam asked whether "Paul, and even our Lord Himself,
+were not agitators." Mr. Headlam might have asked, where would the
+Archbishop be but for that superb, irrepressible agitator Luther? The
+agitator is a public advocate who speaks when others are silent. Mr.
+C. D. Collet, of whom I here write, was an agitator who understood his
+business.
+
+Agitation for the public welfare is a feature of civilisation. In a
+despotic land it works by what means it can. In a free country it seeks
+its ends by agencies within the limits of law. The mastery of the means
+left open for procuring needful change, the right use, and the full use
+of these facilities, constitute the business of an agitator.
+
+For more than fifty years I was associated with Mr. Collet in public
+affairs, and I never knew any one more discerning than he in choosing
+a public cause, or on promoting it with greater plenitude of resource.
+Many a time he has come to my house at midnight to discuss some new
+point he thought important. A good secretary is the inspirer of the
+movement he represents. Mr. Collet habitually sought the opinion of
+those for whom he acted. Every letter and every document was laid before
+them. On points of policy or terms of expression he deferred to the
+views of others, not only with acquiescence, but willingness. During the
+more than twenty-four years in which I was chairman of the Travelling
+Tax Abolition Committee and he was secretary, I remember no instance to
+the contrary of his ready deference. His fertility of suggestion was a
+constant advantage. Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden (who had an instinct of
+fitness) would select the most suitable for the purpose in hand. In
+early life Mr. Collet had studied for the law, and retained a passion
+for it which proved very useful where Acts of Parliament were the
+barricades which had to be stormed.
+
+Mr. Collet was educated at Bruce Castle School, conducted by the father
+of Sir Rowland Hill. Collet's political convictions were shown by his
+becoming secretary for the People's Charter Union, intended to restore
+the Chartist movement (then mainly under Irish influence) to English
+hands. In 1848, he and W. J. Linton were sent as deputies to Paris, as
+bearers of English congratulations on the establishment of the Republic.
+Afterwards he fell himself under the fascination of an Oriental-minded
+diplomat, David Urquhart, and became a romantic Privy Council loyalist.
+Mr. Urquhart was Irish, eloquent, dogmatic, and infallible--at least,
+he put down with ostentatious insolence any one who ventured to demur
+to anything he said. If the astounded questioner pleaded that he was
+ignorant of the facts adduced, he was told his ignorance was a crime.
+Mr. Urquhart believed that all wisdom lay in treaties and Blue Books,
+and that the first duty of every politician was to insist on beheading
+Lord Palmerston, who had betrayed England to Russia. How Mr. Collet--a
+lover of freedom and inquiry--could be subjugated by doctrines which, if
+not conceived in madness, were commanded by arts akin to madness, is the
+greatest mystery of conversion I have known. I have seen Mr. Bright come
+out of the House of Commons, and observing Mr. Collet, would advance and
+offer his hand, when Mr. Collet would put his hands behind him, saying
+"he could not take the hand of a man who knew Lord Palmerston was
+an impostor and ought to know he was a traitor, and still maintained
+political relations with him." Yet Mr. Collet had great and well-founded
+regard for Mr. Bright.
+
+It was an intrepid undertaking to attempt a repeal of taxes which for
+143 years had fettered, as they were designed to do, knowledge from
+reaching the people. The history of this achievement was given in the
+_Weekly Times and Echo_, While these taxes were in force, neither
+cheap newspapers nor cheap books could exist. Since their repeal great
+newspapers and great publishing houses have arisen. While these Acts
+were in force every newspaper proprietor was treated as a blasphemer and
+a writer of sedition, and compelled to give securities of L300 against
+the exercise of his infamous tendencies; every paper-maker was regarded
+as a thief, and the officers of the Excise dogged every step of his
+business with hampering, exacting, and humiliating suspicion. Every
+reader found with an unstamped paper in his possession was liable to
+a fine of L20. The policy of our agitation was to observe scrupulous
+fairness to every Government with which we came in contact, and to heads
+of departments with whom unceasing war was waged. Their personal honour
+was never confused with the mischievous Acts they were compelled to
+enforce. Our rule was steadfastness in fairness and courtesy. The
+cardinal principle of agitation Collet maintained was that the most
+effectual way to obtain the repeal of a bad law was to insist upon it
+being carried out, when its effect would soon be resented by those
+who maintain its application to others. Charles Dickens' "Household
+Narrative of Current Events," published weekly, was a violation of the
+Act which required news to be a month old when published on unstamped
+paper. Dickens was not selected from malice, for he was friendly to the
+freedom of the press, but from policy, as an Act carried out which would
+ruin a popular favourite like Dickens, would excite indignation against
+it. A clamour was raised by friends in Parliament against the supineness
+of the Inland Revenue Board, for tolerating a wealthy metropolitan
+offender, while it prosecuted and relentlessly ruined small men in the
+provinces for doing the same thing. Bright called attention in the House
+to the Electric Telegraph Company, who were advertising every night in
+the lobbies news, not an hour old, on unstamped paper, in violation of
+the law.
+
+It took thirty years of supplication to get art galleries open on
+Sunday, when the application of the law to the privilege of the rich
+would have opened them in ten years. The rich are allowed to violate
+the law against working on Sundays, for which the poor man is fined
+and imprisoned. An intelligent committee on the Balfour-Chamberlain
+principle of Retaliation would soon put an end to the laws which hamper
+the progress.
+
+Professor Alexander Bain, remarkable for his fruitfulness in philosophic
+device, asked my opinion on a project of constructing a barometer of
+personal character, which varies by time and event. Everybody is aware
+of somebody who has changed, but few notice that every one is changing
+daily, for better or for worse. What Bain wanted was to contrive some
+instrument by which these variations could be denoted.
+
+No doubt men must be judged on the balance of their ascertained merits.
+Bishop Butler's maxim that "Probability is the guide of life," implies
+proportion, and is the rule whereby character is to be judged. For years
+I conceived a strong dislike of Sir Robert Peel, because, as Secretary
+of State, he refused the petition of Mrs. Carlile to be allowed to leave
+the prison (where she ought never to have been sent) before the time of
+her accouchement Peel's refusal was unfeeling and brutal. Yet in after
+life it was seen that Sir Robert possessed great qualities, and made
+great sacrifices in promoting the public good; and I learned to hold in
+honour one whom I had hated for half a century.
+
+For many years I entertained an indifferent estimate of Sir William
+Harcourt. It began when my friend Mr. E. J. H. Craufurd, M.P.,
+challenged him to a duel, which he declined--justifiably it might be, as
+he was a larger man than his antagonist, and offered a wider surface
+for bullets. Declining was meritorious in my eyes, as duels had then a
+political prestige, and there was courage in refusing. The cause of the
+challenge I thought well founded. In the earlier years of Sir William's
+Parliamentary life I had many opportunities of observing him, and
+thought he appeared as more contented with himself than any man is
+entitled to be on this side of the Millennium. When member for Oxford as
+a Liberal, he declared against payment of members of Parliament on the
+ground of expense. The expense would have been one halfpenny a year to
+each elector. This seemed to me so insincere that I ceased to count
+him as a Liberal who could be trusted. Yet all the while he had great
+qualities as a combatant of the highest order, in the battles of
+Liberalism, who sacrificed himself, lost all prospect of higher
+distinction, and incurred the undying rage of the rich (who have
+Canning's "ignorant impatience" of taxation) by instituting death
+duties, services which entitled him to honour and regard.
+
+I heard Lord Salisbury's acrid, sneering, insulting, contemptuous
+speeches in the House of Commons against working men seeking the
+franchise. What gave this man the right to speak with bitterness and
+scorn of the people whose industry kept him in the opulence he so little
+deserved? Some friends of mine, who had personal intercourse with him,
+described him as a fair-spoken gentleman. All the while, and to the end
+of his days, he had the cantankerous tongue in diplomacy which brought
+contempt and distrust upon Englishmen abroad, while his jests at Irish
+members of Parliament, whom his Government had subjected to humiliation
+in prison, denoted, thought many, the innate savagery of his order,
+when secure from public retribution--which people should remember who
+continue its impunity. Difference of opinion is to be respected, but it
+is difficult even for philosophy to condone scorn. If recklessness in
+language be the mark of inferiority in workmen, what is it in those of
+high position who compromise a nation by their ungoverned tongues?
+
+Among things bygone are certain ideas of popular influence which have
+had their day--some too long a day, judging from their effects. The
+general misconceptions in them still linger in some minds, and it may be
+useful to recall a prominent one.
+
+The madness of thoroughness are two words I have never seen brought
+together, yet they are allied oftener than most persons suppose.
+Thoroughness, in things which concern others, has limits. Justness is
+greater than thoroughness. There is great fascination in being thorough.
+A man should be thorough as far as he can. This implies that he must
+have regard to the rights and reasonable convenience of others, which is
+the natural limit of all the virtues. Sometimes a politician will adopt
+the word "thorough" as his motto, forgetful that it was the motto of
+Strafford, who was a despot on principle, and who perished through the
+terror which his success inspired. Cromwell was thorough in merciless
+massacres, which have made his name hateful in Irish memory for three
+centuries, perpetuating the distrust of English rule. Vigour is a
+notable attribute, but unless it stops short of rigour, it jeopardises
+itself.
+
+Thorough means the entire carrying out of a principle to its end. This
+can rarely be done in human affairs. When a person finds he cannot do
+all he would, he commonly does nothing, whereas his duty is to do what
+he can--to continue to assert and maintain the principle he thinks
+right, and persist in its application to the extent of his power. To
+suspend endeavour at the point where persistence would imperil the just
+right of others, is the true compromise in which there is no shame,
+as Mr. John Morley, in his wise book on "Compromise," has shown.
+Temperance--a word of infinite wholesomeness in every department of
+life, because it means use and restraint--has been retarded and
+rendered repellent to thousands by the "thorough" partisans who have
+put prohibition into it Can absolute prohibition be enforced universally
+where conviction is opposed, without omnipresent tyranny, which makes
+it hateful instead of welcome? Even truth itself, the golden element
+of trust and progress, has to be limited by relevance, timeliness and
+utility. He who would speak everything he knows or believes to be true,
+to all persons, at all times, in every place, would soon become the most
+intolerable person in every society, and make lying itself a relief. A
+man should stand by the truth and act upon it, wherever he can, and he
+should be known by his fidelity to it But that is a very different thing
+from obtruding it in unseemly ways, in season and out of season, which
+has ruined many a noble cause. The law limits its exaction of truth to
+evidence necessary for justice. There are cases, such as occurred during
+the Civil War of emancipation in America, where slave-hunters would
+demand of the man, who had seen a fugitive slave, pass by, "which way he
+had run." The humane bystander questioned, would point in the opposite
+direction. Had he pointed truly, it would have cost the slave his life.
+This was lying for humanity, and it would be lying to call it by any
+other name, for it _was_ lying. Thoroughness would have murdered the
+fugitive.
+
+The thoroughness of the Puritans brought upon the English nation the
+calamities of the Restoration. Richelieu, in France, was thorough in his
+policy of centralisation. He was a butcher on principle, and his name
+became a symbol of murder. He circumvented everything, and pursued every
+one with implacable ferocity, who was likely to withstand him. He put
+to death persons high and low, he destroyed municipalism in France, and
+changed the character of political society for the worse. The French
+Revolutionists did but tread in the footsteps of the political priest.
+They were all thorough, and as a consequence they died by each other's
+hands, and ruined liberty in France and in Europe. The gospel of
+thoroughness was preached by Carlyle and demoralised Continental
+Liberals. In the revolution of 1848 they spared lives all round. They
+even abolished the punishment of death.
+
+But when Louis Napoleon applied the doctrine of "thorough" to the
+greatest citizens of Paris, and shot, imprisoned, or exiled statesmen,
+philosophers and poets, Madame Pulzsky said to me, the "Republicans
+thought their leniency a mistake, and if they had power again they
+would cut everybody's throat who stood in the way of liberty." As usual,
+thoroughness had begotten ferocity.
+
+Carlyle's eminent disciples of thoroughness justified the massacre and
+torture of the blacks in Jamaica, for which Tennyson, Kingsley, and
+others defended Governor Eyre. Lord Cardwell, in the House of Commons,
+admitted in my hearing that there had been "unnecessary executions."
+"Unnecessary executions" are murders--but in thoroughness unnecessary
+executions are not counted. Wherever we have heard of pitilessness
+in military policy, or in speeches in our Parliament, we see
+exemplifications of the gospel of Thoroughness, which is madness if not
+limited by justice and forbearance.
+
+Conventional thoroughness dwells in extremes. If political economy was
+thoroughly carried out, there might be great wealth, but no happiness.
+Enjoyment is waste, since it involves expenditure. The Inquisition,
+which made religion a name of terror, was but thoroughness in piety.
+Pope, himself a Catholic, warned us that--
+
+     "For virtue's self may too much zeal be had.
+     The worst of madness is a saint run mad."
+
+Fanatics forget (they would not be fanatics if they remembered) that in
+public affairs, true thoroughness is limited by the rights of others.
+There is no permanent progress without this consideration. The best of
+eggs will harden if boiled too much. The mariner who takes no account of
+the rocks, wrecks his ship--which it is not profitable to forget.
+
+It is natural that those who crave practical knowledge of the unseen
+world should look about the universe for some chink, through which they
+can see what goes on there, and believe they have met with truants
+who have made disclosures to them. I have no commerce of that kind to
+relate. It is hard to think that when Jupiter is silent--when the Head
+of the Gods speaketh not--that He allows angels with traitor tongues to
+betray to men the mysteries of the world He has Himself concealed.
+Can it be that He permits wayward ghosts to creep over the boundary of
+another world and babble His secrets at will? This would imply
+great lack of discipline at the outposts of paradise. There is great
+fascination in clandestine communication with the kingdom of the dead.
+I own that noises of the night, not heard in the day, seem supernatural.
+The wind sounds like the rush of the disembodied--hinges creak with
+human emotion--winds moan against window panes like persons in pain.
+Creatures of the air and earth flit or leap in pursuit of prey, like the
+shadows of ghosts or the furtive steps of murdered souls. Are they more
+than
+
+     "The sounds sent down at night
+     By birds of passage in their flight"?
+
+For believing less where others believe more, for expressing decision of
+opinion which the reader may resent, I do but follow in the footsteps of
+Confucius, who, as stated by Allen Upward, "declared that a principle
+of belief or even a rule of morality binding on himself need not bind a
+disciple whose own conscience did not enjoin it on him." Confucius, says
+his expositor, thus "reached a height to which mankind have hardly yet
+lifted their eyes, and announced a freedom compared with which ours is
+an empty name."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII. LOOKING BACKWARDS
+
+It seems to me that I cannot more appropriately conclude these chapters
+of bygone events within my own experience, than by a summary of those
+of the past condition of industry which suggest a tone of manly
+cheerfulness and confidence in the future, not yet common among the
+people. Changes of condition are not estimated as they pass, and when
+they have passed, many never look back to calculate their magnificence
+or insignificance. This chapter is an attempt to show the change of the
+environment of a great class of a character to decrease apprehension
+and augment hope. The question answered herein is: "Did things go better
+before our time?"
+
+When this question is put to me I answer "No." Things did not go better
+before my time--nor that of the working class who were contemporaries
+of my earlier years. My answer is given from the working class point of
+view, founded on a personal experience extending as far back as 1824,
+when I first became familiar with workshops. Many are still under the
+impression that things are as bad as they well can be, whereas they
+have been much worse than they are now. When I first took an interest in
+public affairs, agitators among the people were as despondent as frogs
+who were supposed to croak because they were neglected.
+
+They spoke in weeping tones. There were tears even in the songs of
+Ebenezer Elliot, the Corn-Law Rhymer,* and not without cause, for the
+angels would have been pessimists, had they been in the condition of
+the people in those days. I myself worked among men who had Unitarian
+masters--who were above the average of employers--even they were as
+sheep-dogs who kept the wolf away, but bit the sheep if they turned
+aside. But Trades Unions have changed this now, and sometimes bite their
+masters (employers they are called now), which is not more commendable.
+Still, multitudes of working people, who ought to be in the front ranks
+as claimants for redress still needed, yet hang back with handkerchief
+to their eyes, oppressed with a feeling of hopelessness, because they
+are unaware of what has been won for them, of what has been conceded to
+them, and what the trend of progress is bringing nearer to them.
+
+     * Thomas Cooper--himself a Chartist poet--published (1841)
+     in Elliot's days a hymn by William Jones--a Leicester poet--
+     of which the first verse began thus:
+
+          "Come my fellow-slaves of Britain.
+          Rest, awhile, the weary limb;
+          Pour your plaints, ye bosom-smitten,
+          In a sad and solemn hymn."
+
+Of course if there has been no betterment in the condition of the
+people, despair is excusable--but if there has, despair is as unseemly
+as unnecessary. Every age has its needs and its improvements to make,
+but a knowledge of what has been accomplished should take despair out of
+workmen's minds. To this end I write of changes which have taken place
+in my time.
+
+I was born in tinder-box days. I remember having to strike a light in my
+grandfather's garden for his early pipe, when we arrived there at five
+o'clock in the morning. At times my fingers bled as I missed the steel
+with the jagged flint. Then the timber proved damp where the futile
+spark fell, and when ignition came a brimstone match filled the air with
+satanic fumes. He would have been thought as much a visionary as Joanna
+Southcott, who said the time would come when small, quick-lighting
+lucifers would be as plentiful and as cheap as blades of grass. How
+tardy was change in olden time! Flint and steel had been in use four
+hundred years. Philip the Good put it into the collar of the Golden
+Fleece (1429). It was not till 1833 that phosphorus matches were
+introduced. The safety match of the present day did not appear until
+1845. The consumption of matches is now about eight per day for each
+person. To produce eight lights, by a tinder-box, would take a quarter
+of an hour With the lucifer match eight lights can be had in two
+minutes, occupying only twelve hours a year, while the tinder box
+process consumes ninety hours. Thus the lucifer saves nearly eighty
+hours annually, which, to the workman, would mean an addition of nearly
+eight working days to the year.
+
+In tinder-box days the nimble night burglar heard the flint and steel
+going, and had time to pack up his booty and reach the next parish,
+before the owner descended the stairs with his flickering candle. Does
+any one now fully appreciate the morality of light? Extinguish the gas
+in the streets of London and a thousand extra policemen would do less to
+prevent outrage and robbery than the ever-burning, order-keeping street
+light. Light is a police force--neither ghosts nor burglars like it.
+Thieves flee before it as errors flee the mind when the light of truth
+bursts on the understanding of the ignorant.
+
+Seventy years ago the evenings were wasted in a million houses of the
+poor. After sundown the household lived in gloom. Children who could
+read, read, as I did, by the flickering light of the fire, which often
+limited for life the power of seeing. Now the pauper reads by a better
+light than the squire did in days when squires were county gods. Now old
+men see years after the period when their forefathers were blind.
+
+Then a social tyranny prevailed, unpleasant to the rich and costly to
+the poor, which regarded the beard as an outrage. I remember when only
+four men in Birmingham had courage to wear beards. They were followers
+of Joanna Southcott. They did it in imitation of the apostles, and were
+jeered at in the streets by ignorant Christians. George Frederick Muntz,
+one of the two first members elected in Birmingham, was the first member
+who ventured to wear a beard in the House of Commons; and he would have
+been insulted had not he been a powerful man and carried a heavy Malacca
+cane, which he was known to apply to any one who offered him a personal
+affront. Only military officers were allowed to wear a moustache; among
+them--no one, not even Wellington, was hero enough to wear a beard. The
+Rev. Edmund R. Larken, of Burton Rectory, near Lincoln, was the first
+clergyman (that was as late as 1852) who appeared in the pulpit with a
+beard, but he shaved the upper lip as an apology for the audacity of his
+chin; George Dawson was the first Nonconformist preacher who delivered
+a sermon in a full-blown moustache and beard, which was taken in both
+cases as an unmistakable sign of latitudinarianism in doctrine. In the
+bank clerk or the workman it was worse. It was flat insubordination not
+to shave. The penalty was prompt dismissal. As though there were not
+fetters about hard to bear, people made fetters for themselves. Such was
+the daintiness of ignorance that a man could not eat, dress, nor even
+think as he pleased. He was even compelled to shave by public opinion.
+
+When Mr. Joseph Cowen was first a candidate for Parliament, he wore, as
+was his custom, a felt hat (then called a "wide-awake"). He was believed
+to be an Italian conspirator, and suspected of holding opinions lacking
+in orthodox requirements. Yet all his reputed heresies of acts and
+tenets put together did not cost him so many votes as the form and
+texture of his hat. He was elected--but his headgear would have ruined
+utterly a less brilliant candidate than he This social intolerance now
+shows its silly and shameless head no more. A wise Tolerance is the
+Angel, which stands at the portal of Progress, and opens the door of the
+Temple.
+
+Dr. Church, of Birmingham, was the first person who, in my youth,
+contrived a bicycle, and rode upon it in the town, which excited
+more consternation than a Southcottean with his beard. He was an able
+physician, but his harmless innovation cost him his practice. Patients
+refused to be cured by a doctor who rode a horse which had no head, and
+ate no oats. Now a parson may ride to church on a bicycle and people
+think none the worse of his sermon; and, scandal of scandals, women
+are permitted to cycle, although it involves a new convenience of dress
+formerly sharply resented.
+
+In these days of public wash-houses, public laundries, and water supply,
+few know the discomfort of a washing day in a workman's home, or of the
+feuds of a party pump. One pump in a yard had to serve several families.
+Quarrels arose as to who should first have the use of it. Sir Edwin
+Chadwick told me that more dissensions arose over party pumps in a day
+than a dozen preachers could reconcile in a week. Now the poorest house
+has a water tap, which might be called moral, seeing the ill-feeling it
+prevents. So long as washing had to be done at home, it took place in
+the kitchen, which was also the dining-room of a poor family. When the
+husband came home to his meals, damp clothes were hanging on lines over
+his head, and dripping on to his plate. The children were in the way,
+and sometimes the wrong child had its ears boxed because, in the steam,
+the mother could not see which was which. This would give rise to
+further expressions which kept the Recording Angel, of whom Sterne tells
+us, very busy, whom the public wash-houses set free for other, though
+scarcely less repugnant duty.
+
+In that day sleeping rooms led to deplorable additions to the register
+of "idle words." The introduction of iron bedsteads began a new era of
+midnight morality. As a wandering speaker I dreaded the wooden bedstead
+of cottage, lodging-house or inn. Fleas I did not much care for, and
+had no ill-will towards them. They were too little to be responsible for
+what they did; while the malodorous bug is big enough to know better.
+Once in Windsor I selected an inn with a white portico, having an air
+of pastoral cleanliness. The four-poster in my room, with its white
+curtains, was a further assurance of repose. The Boers were not more
+skilful in attack and retreat than the enemies I found in the field.
+Lighted candles did not drive them from the kopje pillow where they
+fought. In Sheffield, in 1840, I asked the landlady for an uninhabited
+room. A cleaner looking, white-washed chamber never greeted my eyes.
+But I soon found that a whole battalion of red-coated cannibals were
+stationed there, on active service. Wooden bedsteads in the houses of
+the poor were the fortresses of the enemy, which then possessed the
+land. Iron bedsteads have ended this, and given to the workman two hours
+more sleep at night than was possible before that merciful invention. A
+gain of two hours for seven nights amounted to a day's holiday a
+week. Besides, these nocturnal irritations were a fruitful source of
+tenemental sin, from which iron bedsteads have saved residents and
+wayfarers.
+
+Of all the benefits that have come to the working class in my time,
+those of travel are among the greatest. Transit by steam has changed
+the character of man, and the facilities of the world. Nothing brings
+toleration into the mind like seeing new lands, new people, new usages.
+They who travel soon discover that other people have genius, manners,
+and taste. The traveller loses on his way prejudices of which none could
+divest him at home, and he brings back in his luggage new ideas never
+contained in it before. Think what the sea-terror of the emigrant
+used to be, as he thought of the dreadful voyage over the tempestuous
+billows. The first emigrants to America were six months in the
+_Mayflower_. Now a workman can go from Manchester into the heart of
+America or Canada in a fortnight. The deadly depression which weighed
+on the heart of home-sick emigrants occurs no more, since he can return
+almost at will. A mechanic can now travel farther than a king could
+a century ago. When I first went to Brighton, third-class passengers
+travelled in an open cattle truck, exposed to wind and rain. For years
+the London and North-Western Railway shunted the third-class passengers
+at Blisworth for two hours, while the gentlemen's trains went by. Now
+workmen travel in better carriages than gentlemen did half a century
+ago. In Newcastle-on-Tyne I have entered a third-class carriage at a
+quarter to five in the morning. It was like Noah's Ark. The windows were
+openings which in storm were closed by wooden shutters to keep out wind
+and rain, when all was darkness. It did not arrive in London till nine
+o'clock in the evening, being sixteen hours on the journey. Now the
+workman can leave New-castle at ten o'clock in the morning, and be in
+London in the afternoon.
+
+Does any one think what advantage has come to the poor by the extension
+of dentistry? Teeth are life-givers. They increase comeliness, comfort,
+health and length of years--advantages now shared more or less by the
+poorer classes--once confined to the wealthy alone. Formerly the sight
+of dental instruments struck terror in the heart of the patient Now,
+fear arises when few instruments are seen, as the more numerous they
+are and the more skilfully they are made, the assurance of less pain
+is given. The simple instruments which formerly alarmed give confidence
+now, which means that the patient is wiser than of yore.
+
+Within the days of this generation what shrieks were heard in
+the hospital, which have been silenced for ever by a discovery of
+pain-arresting chloroform! No prayer could still the agony of the knife.
+The wise surgeon is greater than the priest. If any one would know
+what pain was in our time, let him read Dr. John Brown's "Rab and his
+Friends," which sent a pang of dangerous horror into the heart of every
+woman who read it. Now the meanest hospital gives the poorest patient
+who enters it a better chance of life than the wealthy could once
+command.
+
+It was said formerly:--
+
+     "The world is a market full of streets,
+     And Death is a merchant whom every one meets,
+     If life were a thing which money could buy--
+     The poor could not live, and the rich would not die."
+
+Now the poor man can deal with death, and buy life on very reasonable
+terms, if he has commonsense enough to observe half the precepts given
+him by generous physicians on temperance and prudence.
+
+Not long since no man was tolerated who sought to cure an ailment, or
+prolong human life in any new way. Even persons so eminent as Harriet
+Martineau, Dr. Elliotson, and Sir Bulwer Lytton were subjected to public
+ridicule and resentment because they suffered themselves to be restored
+to health by mesmerism or hydropathy. But in these libertine and
+happier days any one who pleases may follow Mesmer, Pressnitz, or even
+Hahnemann, and attain health by any means open to him, and is no longer
+expected to die according to the direction of antediluvian doctors.
+
+Until late years the poor man's stomach was regarded as the waste-paper
+basket of the State, into which anything might be thrown that did not
+agree with well-to-do digestion. Now, the Indian proverb is taken to be
+worth heeding--that "Disease enters by the mouth," and the health of
+the people is counted as part of the wealth of the nation. Pestilence
+is subjected to conditions. Diseases are checked at will, which formerly
+had an inscrutable power of defiance. The sanitation of towns is now a
+public care. True, officers of health have mostly only official noses,
+but they can be made sensible of nuisances by intelligent occupiers.
+Economists, less regarded than they ought to be, have proved that it
+is cheaper to prevent pestilence than bury the dead. Besides, disease,
+which has no manners, is apt to attack respectable people.
+
+What are workshops now to what they once were? Any hole or stifling
+room was thought good enough for a man to work in. They, indeed, abound
+still, but are now regarded as discreditable. Many mills and factories
+are palaces now compared with what they were. Considering how many
+millions of men and women are compelled to pass half their lives in some
+den of industry or other, it is of no mean importance that improvement
+has set in in workshops.
+
+Co-operative factories have arisen, light, spacious and clean, supplied
+with cool air in summer and warm air in winter. In my youth men were
+paid late on Saturday night; poor nailers trudged miles into Birmingham,
+with their week's work in bags on their backs, who were to be seen
+hanging about merchants' doors up to ten and eleven o'clock to get
+payment for their goods. The markets were closing or closed when the
+poor workers reached them. It was midnight, or Sunday morning, before
+they arrived at home. Twelve or more hours a day was the ordinary
+working period. Wages, piece-work and day-work, were cut down at will.
+I did not know then that these were "the good old times" of which, in
+after years, I should hear so much.
+
+The great toil of other days in many trades is but exercise now, as
+exhaustion is limited by mechanical contrivances. A pressman in my
+employ has worked at a hand-press twenty-four hours continuously, before
+publishing day. Now a gas engine does all the labour. Machinery is the
+deliverer which never tires and never grows pale.
+
+The humiliation of the farm labourer is over. He used to sing:
+
+     "Mr Smith is a very good man,
+     He lets us ride in his harvest van,
+     He gives us food and he gives us ale,
+     We pray his heart may never fail."
+
+There is nothing to be said against Mr. Smith, who was evidently a
+kindly farmer of his time. Yet to what incredible humiliation his
+"pastors and masters" had brought poor Hodge, who could sing these
+lines, as though he had reached the Diamond Jubilee of his life when
+he rode in somebody else's cart, and had cheese and beer. Now the farm
+workers of a co-operative way of thinking have learned how to ride in
+their own vans, to possess the crop with which they are loaded, and to
+provide themselves with a harvest supper.
+
+In my time the mechanic had no personal credit for his work, whatever
+might be his skill. Now in industrial exhibitions the name of the
+artificer is attached to his work, and he is part of the character
+of the firm which employs him. He has, also, now--if co-operation
+prevails--a prospect of participating in the profits of his own
+industry. Half a century ago employers were proud of showing their
+machinery to a visitor--never their men. Now they show their work-people
+as well--whose condition and contentment is the first pride of great
+firms.
+
+Above all knowledge is a supreme improvement, which has come to workmen.
+They never asked for it, the ignorant never do ask for knowledge, and do
+not like those who propose it to them. Brougham first turned aside their
+repugnance by telling them what Bacon knew, that "knowledge is power."
+Now they realise the other half of the great saying, Dr. Creighton, the
+late Bishop of London, supplied, that "ignorance is impotence." They
+can see that the instructed son of the gentleman has power, brightness,
+confidence, and alertness; while the poor man's child, untrained,
+incapable, dull in comparison, often abject, is unconscious of his own
+powers which lie latent within him. If an educated and an ignorant child
+were sold by weight, the intelligent child would fetch more per pound
+avoirdupois than the ignorant one. Now education can be largely had for
+working men's children for nothing. Even scholarships and degrees are
+open to the clever sort. Moreover, how smooth science has made the early
+days of instruction, formerly made jagged with the rod.
+
+Sir Edwin Chadwick showed that the child mind could not profitably be
+kept learning more than an hour at a time, and recreation must intervene
+before a second hour can be usefully spent. What a mercy and advantage
+to thousands of poor children this has been! Even the dreary schoolroom
+of the last generation is disappearing. A schoolroom should be spacious
+and bright, and board schools are beginning to be made so now. I have
+seen a board school in a dismal court in Whitechapel which looked like
+an alley of hell. All thoughts for pleasant impressions in the child
+mind, which make learning alluring, were formerly uncared for. Happier
+now is the lot of poor children than any former generation knew.
+
+Within my time no knowledge of public affairs was possible to the
+people, save in a second-hand way from sixpenny newspapers a month old.
+Now a workman can read in the morning telegrams from all parts of the
+world in a halfpenny paper, hours before his employer is out of bed. If
+a pestilence broke out in the next street to the man's dwelling, the law
+compelled him to wait a month for the penny paper, the only one he
+could afford to buy, before he became aware of his danger, and it often
+happened that some of his family never lived to read of their risk.
+
+The sons of working people are now welcomed in the army, and their
+record there has commanded the admiration of the onlooking world. But
+they are not flogged as they once were, at the will of any arrogant
+dandy who had bought his mastership over them. Intelligence has awakened
+manliness and self-respect in common men, and the recruiting-sergeant
+has to go about without the lash under his coat. The working man further
+knows now that there is a better future for his sons in the public
+service, in army or navy, than ever existed before our time. Even the
+emigrant ship has regulations for the comfort of steerage passengers,
+unknown until recent years. People always professed great regard for
+"Poor Jack," but until Mr. Plimsoll arose, they left him to drown.
+
+Until a few years ago millions of home-born Englishmen were kept without
+votes, like the Uitlanders of South Africa, and no one sent an army
+into the country to put down the "corrupt oligarchy," as Mr. Chamberlain
+called those who withheld redress. But it has come, though in a limping,
+limited way. Carlylean depredators of Parliament decried the value of
+workmen possessing "a hundred thousandth part in the national palavers."
+But we no longer hear workmen at election times referred to as the
+"swinish multitude" who can now send representatives of their own
+order into the House of Commons. If the claims of labour are not much
+considered, they are no longer contemned. It is always easier for the
+rider than the horse. The people are always being ridden, but it is much
+easier for the horse now than it ever was before.
+
+Sir Michael Foster, in a recent Presidential Address to the British
+Association, said that, "the appliances of science have, as it were,
+covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that not for
+the rich only but also for the poor." It is not, however, every kind of
+progress, everywhere, in every department of human knowledge, in which
+the reader is here concerned, but merely with such things as Esdras
+says, which have "passed by us in daily life," and which every ordinary
+Englishman has observed or knows.
+
+If the question be asked whether the condition of the working class
+has improved in proportion to that of the middle and upper class of
+our time, the answer must be it has not. But that is not the question
+considered here. The question is, "Are the working class to-day better
+off than their fathers were?" The answer already given is Yes. Let the
+reader think what, in a general way, the new advantages are. The press
+is free, and articulate with a million voices--formerly dumb. Now a poor
+man can buy a better library for a few shillings than Solomon with
+all his gold and glory could in his day; or than the middle class man
+possessed fifty years ago. Toleration--not only of ideas but of action,
+is enlarged, and that means much--social freedom is greater, and that
+means more. The days of children are happier, schoolrooms are more
+cheerful, and one day they will be educated so as to fit them for
+self-dependence and the duties of daily life. Another change is that
+the pride in ignorance, which makes for impotence, is decreasing, is
+no longer much thought of among those whose ignorance was their only
+attainment.
+
+Not less have the material conditions of life improved. Food is
+purer--health is surer--life itself is safer and lasts longer. Comfort
+has crept into a million houses where it never found its way before.
+Security can be better depended upon. The emigrant terror has gone.
+Instead of sailing out on hearsay to an unknown land and finding himself
+in the wrong one, or in the wrong part of the right country, as has
+happened to thousands, the emigrant can now obtain official information,
+which may guide him rightly. Towns are brighter, there are more public
+buildings which do the human eye good to look upon. Means of recreation
+are continually being multiplied. Opportunity of change from town to
+country, or coast, fall now to the poorest Not in cattle trucks any
+more. Life is better worth living. Pain none could escape is evadable
+now. Parks are multiplied and given as possessions to the people.
+Paintings and sculpture are now to be seen on the Sunday by workmen,
+which their forefathers never saw, being barred from them on the only
+day when they could see them.
+
+By a device within the memory of most, house owning has become possible
+to those whose fathers never thought it possible. Temperance, once a
+melancholy word, is now a popular resource of health and economy. The
+fortune of industry is higher in many ways. Into how many firesides does
+it bring gladness to know that in barrack, or camp, or ship, the son is
+better treated than heretofore.
+
+Can any of the middle-aged doubt that some things are better now
+than before their time? Now two hundred workshops exist on the
+labour co-partnership principle. Forty years ago those commenced,
+failed--failed through lack of intelligence on the part of workers. The
+quality of workmen to be found everywhere in our day did not exist then.
+Sixteen years ago there were found more than a dozen workshops owned
+and conducted by working men. There are more than a hundred now; and
+hundreds in which the workers receive an addition to their wages,
+undreamt of in the last generation. In this, and in other respects,
+things go better than they did. Though there is still need of
+enlargement, the means of self-defence are not altogether wanting.
+Co-operation has arisen--a new force for the self-extrication of the
+lowest. Without charity, or patronage, or asking anything from the
+State, it puts into each man's hand the "means to cancel his captivity."
+
+The rich man may vote twenty times where the poor man can vote only
+once. Still, the one voter counts for something where the unfranchised
+counted for nothing.
+
+Political as well as civil freedom has come in a measure to those who
+dwell in cottages and lodgings. For one minute every seven years the
+workman is free. He can choose his political masters at the poll, and
+neither his neighbour, his employer, nor his priest, has the knowledge
+to harm him on that account. One minute of liberty in seven years is not
+much, but there is no free country in the world where that minute is so
+well secured as in England. If any one would measure the present by the
+past, let him recall the lines:--
+
+     "Allah! Allah!" cried the stranger,
+     "Wondrous sights the traveller sees,
+     But the latest is the greatest,
+     Where the drones control the bees."
+
+They do it still, but not to the extent they did. The control of wisdom,
+when the drones have it, is all very well, but it is the other sort of
+control which is now happily to some extent controllable by the bees.
+The manners of the rich are better. Their sympathy with the people has
+increased. Their power of doing ill is no longer absolute. Employers
+think more of the condition of those who labour for them. The better
+sort still throw crumbs to Lazarus. But now Dives is expected to explain
+why it is that Lazarus cannot get crumbs himself.
+
+In ways still untold the labour class is gradually attaining to social
+equality with the idle class and to that independence hitherto the
+privilege of those who do nothing. The workman's power of self-defence
+grows--his influence extends--his rights enlarge. Injury suffered in
+industry is beginning to be compensated; even old-age pensions are in
+the air, though not as yet anywhere else. Notwithstanding, "John Brown's
+soul goes marching on." But it must be owned its shoes are a little down
+at the heels. Nevertheless, though there is yet much to be done--more
+liberty to win, more improvements to attain, and more than all, if it be
+possible, permanences of prosperity to secure--I agree with Sydney
+Smith--
+
+     "For olden times let others prate,
+     I deem it lucky I was born so late."
+
+There is a foolish praise of the past and a foolish depreciation of the
+present The past had its evils, the present has fewer. The past had its
+promise, the present great realisations. It is not assumed in what has
+been said that all the advantages recounted were originated and acquired
+by working men alone. Many came by the concessions of those who had the
+power of withholding them. More concessions will not lack acknowledgment
+"Just gifts" to men who have honour in their hearts, "bind the
+recipients to the giver for ever."
+
+The Chinese put the feet of children in a boot and the foot never grows
+larger. There are boots of the mind as well as of the feet, that are
+worn by the young of all nations, which have no expansion in them, and
+which cramp the understanding of those grown up. This prevents many from
+comprehending the changes by which they benefit or realising the facts
+of their daily life. Considering what the men of labour have done
+for themselves and what has been won for them by their advocates, and
+conceded to them from time to time by others, despair and the counsels
+of outrage which spring from it, are unseemly, unnecessary, and
+ungrateful. This is the moral of this story.
+
+A doleful publicist should be superannuated. He is already obsolete.
+Whoever despairs of a cause in whose success he once exulted, should
+fall out of the ranks, where some ambulance waits to carry away the sick
+or dispirited. He has no business to utter his discouraging wail in the
+ears of the constant and confident, marching to the front, where the
+battle of progress is being fought.
+
+Since so much has been accomplished in half a century, when there were
+few advantages to begin with--what may not be gained in the next fifty
+years with the larger means now at command and the confidence great
+successes of the past should inspire! If working people adhere to the
+policy of advancing their own honest interests without destroying others
+as rightfully engaged in seeking theirs, the workers may make their own
+future what they will. They may then acquire power sufficient, as the
+_Times_ once said: "To turn a reform mill which would grind down an
+abuse a day."
+
+
+
+NOTE.
+
+The last chapter is reprinted from the _Fortnightly Review_ by courtesy
+of the Editor, and a similar acknowledgment is due to the Editor of
+the _Weekly Times and Echo_, in whose pages several of the preceding
+chapters appeared.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of
+2), by George Jacob Holyoake
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