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Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of 2)

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Title: Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of 2)

Author: George Jacob Holyoake


        
Release date: July 20, 2011 [eBook #36796]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36796

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BYGONES WORTH REMEMBERING, VOL. 2 (OF 2) ***




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

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