Ex J ibris C. k OG Dl N THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. VOL. I. New Edition. Price 6s. LETTERS FROM DOROTHY OSBORNE TO SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, 1652-54. Love Letters of a Bygone Age. Edited by E. A. Parky. Octavo, cloth, price £\. is. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LETTERS OF A LADY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Edited by Emily F. D. Osborn. The Correspondence of the Hon. Mrs. (Osborn between the years 1721 - 1771, -hows conspicuous ability and vigour of mind. Mrs. Osborn was a -Teat-niece of Dorothy Osborne, who married Sir William 'lemple. Being the only living near relation of the ill-fated Admiral Byng, she touk a prominent part in pleading for a commutation of his sentence. In 2 vols. 8vo. with numerous Illustrations, price £2. 2s. THE DIARIES OF SIR MOSES MONTEFIORE AND LADY MONTEFIORE. Comprising their Life and Work as recorded therein, from 1812 to 1883. Edited by the late Dr. L. Loewe. Crown 8vo. cloth, 3s. 6d. LAY SERMONS FOR PRACTICAL PEOPLE. Edited by the Rev. Freeman Wills. By the Rt. Hon. Sir John Lubbock, Baity M.P. By the Rev. Canon Barker, Rector of Marylebon--, &c. By Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson. By kev. Freeman Wills, M.A. By Edward Terry, Esq. By Herbert Gladstone, Esq., M.P. By William Lant Carpenter, Esq. By Arnold WHiTE.'Esq. By Rev. Arthur Mursell. By Miss Patteson. By Henry Arthur Jones, Esq. By Rev. R. Cynon Lewis. By Dr. Danford Thomas. By Rev. H. C. Shuttleworth. By Percy Crosse, Esq. GRIFFITH, FARRAN, OKEDEN & WELSH, London and Sydney. V-t^ U^-^ THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. A SERIES OF LETTERS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS WRITTEN BY THE REV. LORD SIDNEY GODOLPHIN OSBORNE AND PUBLISHED IN 'THE TIMES' 1844-1888 EDITED BY ARNOLD WHITE • Goodness, as that which makes men prefer their duty and their promise before their passions or their interest, and is properly the object of trust, in our language goes rather by the name of honesty ; though what we call an honest man the Romans called a good man ; and honesty in their language, as well as in French, rather signifies a composition of those qualities which generally acquire honour and esteem.' — Sir W. Temple IN TWO VOLUMES— VOLUME I. TOiffl a fjorfraif GRIFFITH, FARRAN, OKEDEN & WELSH NEWBERY HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON AND AT SYDNEY ( The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved) 7'6> BARON FERDINAND ROTHSCHILD, MP. My dear Rothschild, If the stilted Dedication of the Georgian era has rightly disappeared, the wish to associate the name of a man one likes and admires with literary zvork — even so simple as my share in these volumes — will never be old-fashioned. When that man is such a friend as yourself it is a source of unfeigned regret that the inscription of his name on this page is not an offering less unworthy his acceptance. I am, my dear Rothschild, Yours sincerely, ARNOLD WHITE. I 170 ! NOTE, In preparing these Letters for publication I have received from . Mr. Sidney Godolphin Osborne aid and counsel the value of which I gratefully acknowledge. I have also to express my thanks to the Earl of Northbrook, Viscount Portman, Baron Ferdinand de Roths- child, M.P., Mr. J. A. Froude, the Rev. A. S. Littlewood, and to Mr. Arthur Walter, for assistance in various matters relating to the contents of these volumes. Since the whole of S. G. O.'s Letters have already been printed, it may seem that their reproduction is a task free from difficulty. This is not the case. Some of the controversies in which S. G. O. was a disputant, if revived, would cause pain to the living. I have sought to ex- clude from these volumes all that could be justly distasteful to survivors, or would reflect on those societies or institutions that enjoyed in their younger days the advantage of S. G. O.'s vigorous and uncompromising criticism. At the same time, nothing has been omitted that will show the writer of these Letters as he really was— the strong, able, determined and conscientious advocate of the masses unable or afraid to speak for themselves. INTRODUCTION Sidney Godolphin Osborne was born in 1808. He was the third son of the first Lord Godolphin. His direct descent from Godolphin, the Minister of Anne, and Walpole's predecessor, mingled his blood with that of the Churchills. The founder of the House of Leeds was young Edward Osborne, who saved his master's daughter from drowning, and who shared with her, as his well-won wife, the then appreciable glories of the London Mayoralty. He was Lord Mayor in 1585, and died in 1591. Edward Osborne's descendant, Thomas, fourth Duke of Leeds, married, in 1740, Mary, the second daughter of Francis, Earl of Godolphin. Her mother was Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Churchill the great Duke of Marlborough. On his death the Countess of Godolphin, the great-great-grand- mother of Sidney Godolphin Osborne, was created by Act of Parliament Duchess of Marlborough. At her death the title and estates devolved on her nephew the Earl of Sunderland, who was the son of her younger sister Anne. On the accession of Osborne's eldest brother to the dukedom of Leeds, in 1859, he obtained the rank of a Duke's son. He took his Bachelor's degree at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1830, and having taken orders, he was appointed in due time to the Rectory of Stoke Pogis, the scene of Gray's * Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' In 1 841 he was offered, and accepted, the living of Durweston, Dorsetshire, in the gift of the late Lord Portman, and occupied x LETTERS OF S. G. O. the incumbency until 1875, when he resigned his living and settled at Lewes, where he died on May 9, 1889. He married in 1834 a daughter of Mr. Pascoe Grenfell, of Taplow Court, and thus stood in the relation of brother-in-law to Charles Kingsley, and to Mr. James Anthony Froude. A life passed in retirement, uneventful, and marked by the production of sound reflections rather than by the execution of striking deeds, affords scant material for biography. Like Swilt and Sydney Smith, Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne was in the Church of England rather than of it. His mind was not clerical ; he had no bent towards theological achievements. He never sought admission to the Church of which, as a contro- versial genius, he was so conspicuous a member. His tastes lay in the direction of surgery, medicine, and microscopic investiga- tion. Had he remained a layman, his claims to originality as pioneer of the Germ Theory of Disease would probably have been more generally conceded. As a clergyman, his investigations were regarded as the amusements of a dilettante. Osborne en- tered the Church of England, as many young men of good family have entered it, without either inclination or repugnance. Lord Godolphin's decision as to his son's career was communicated to him suddenly when young Osborne was out shooting. The latter accepted his lot without repining, but without enthusiasm. Later on, when the indelibility of Orders became the subject of his riper thoughts, he protested, with the force derived from reason and conviction, against the tie that then irrevocably bound the clergy to the Church. His satire and his logic contributed in no small measure to the subsequent release of unwilling priests from service in the temple of God. With family traditions of a line of manly and upright Englishmen, he set himself to do his duty. Pent in the narrow sphere of a rural parish in an agricul- tural county, Osborne so ordered his life by the use of one great and original talent as to impress on the public, for the period of forty-three years, right views on the current affairs of the nation. From the pulpit of the Times he delivered a long series of lay IATRODUCTION xi sermons on topics some of which are now of merely historic interest, while others are still being ground between the stones of controversy. It may be that Osborne felt the region of his influence was too restricted ; he may have fretted under the knowledge of possess- ing powers that found no scope in the cure of ploughboys' souls. However this may have been, throughout his life he flamed with indignation at wrong, at oppression, at insincerity, and his heart glowed with sympathy for the desolate and oppressed wherever they were to be found. His books were many, but they are forgotten. His letters alone deserve a more permanent place in literature. He wrote ' Gleanings in the West of Ireland ' (1850); 'Lady Eva: Her Last Days,' a tale, in 185 1 ; 'Scutari and its Hospitals,' in 1855; ' Hints to the Charitable,' and 'Hints for the Amelioration of the Moral Condition of a Village,' in 1856 ; Letters on the Education of Young Children in 1866 ; and many pamphlets urging on the public the improvement of the dwellings of the labouring classes. None of these books are remembered. They lacked the suggestiveness, the humour, the originality, the stimulation and the wit of his letters. Of these latter the materials are ample. They are to be numbered in hundreds, and the collection now printed includes the best of them. Sidney Godolphin Osborne was a fighting man. Conscience and relish for the contest constrained him to hew and hack at sin, neglect, and cruelty wherever he found them. It is no marvel that some of the blows he dealt so shrewdly were returned with vigour equal to his own. It has been observed that in the sorrows of the multitude there is a subtle property that imparts to those who brood over them acerbity and asser- tiveness of manner. Philanthropists are not seldom morose. They are persuaded of their own freedom from errors to which other men are prone. Incessant contemplation of the sins and sorrows of others seems in some natures to dim the sunlight of a genial manner, and to surround even tender and sympathetic characters with an armour of reserve. xii LETTERS OF S. G. O. If Sidney Godolphin Osborne were ever unpopular among his contemporaries, his honesty and his love of right and justice were the direct causes. In lashing vice he roused the enmity of the vicious. The extravagance and luxury of the upper classes presented to his mind so vivid a contrast to the squalor and suffering of the submerged stratum of society, his consequent warnings and denunciations necessarily roused the antipathy of dissolute and luxurious persons. Abuses are never uprooted without exciting the antagonism of vested interests. To bring home to men's bosoms the consciousness of wrong, and their own responsibility for righting that wrong, is a thankless and discouraging enterprise. The rewards of success in such a task are almost invariably conferred by posterity after appeal from the verdict of contemporary criticism. Lord Shaftesbury, Wilberforce, Cobden, William Lloyd Garrison, Livesey, and Howard, at the outset of their respective labours were all con- strained to enter the shadow of misrepresentation and abuse. It is not surprising that Sidney Godolphin Osborne, in the long period of his active life, and with the wide range of his lively sympathies, received the shafts of hatred, calumny, and aspersion from all sorts and conditions of men. At the outset of his campaign against the foul dwellings provided for agricultural labourers, his clients neither understood nor appreciated him. The farmers regarded him with suspicion, and even with hostility His relations with some of the landowners of Dorset were for a time strained by the unfaltering sincerity with which he pointed out their shortcomings, and the costly nature of the measures he insisted on their adopting. Labourers, farmers, landowners alike regarded his action as pestilent interference ; and thus he encountered a storm of his own raising none the easier to bear on account of its origin. The vindication of his motives and the justification of his action arrived in course of time. Long before his death he saw the question of the Housing of the Poor rise into the first rank of importance. No man acquainted with the history of the subject can withhold from Sidney Godolphin INTRODUCTION xiii Osborne a large share of the credit for achieving so desirable a result. The present generation is ignorant of the obloquy- directed at Osborne and at Chadwick. If their motives in seeking the welfare of the poor were bitterly aspersed, the final judgment on their aims and intentions is purified from passion ; appreciation and respect are now by universal consent fully accorded to them. Spread over a period of more than forty years, the solidity and good sense of Osborne's lay sermons never failed to com- mand the attention of thinking men. In most subjects on which he wrote he adopted that view of the case which later on received the sanction of history. In matters so diverse as Free Trade, the treatment of Ireland, the Expansion and Government of the Church of England, Education, Sanitation, the Crimean War, Hospitals, Women's Rights, Cattle plague, and Cholera — he presented to the public those principles of action and of policy now generally accepted. Indeed, his accurate judgment and clear visions of the future were sometimes amazing. His fore- cast of the social and political results of the emancipation of the agricultural labourers was so exact as to excite wonder among those of his contemporaries who were sufficiently in- terested and sufficiently intimate to watch the correspondence between prophecy and fulfilment. His clerical life, as I have said, came to him unsought. Allied with no party, and belonging to no special school of thought within the Church of England, he early conceived and consistently maintained an aversion to ritualistic observances. Antipathy to the teachings and ceremonial of Rome, expressed with the frank directness of his outspoken nature, brought him into collision with earnest and able Churchmen. He resented the sacerdotal claims of the High Church party. Regarding the claim of special authority and the spiritual ambitions of the priesthood as impudent and unfounded, his cynical treatment of these pretensions sometimes led to misunderstanding with those whose aversion to Protestantism was the key-note of xiv LETTERS OF S. C. O. their creed. With Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, Osborne was deeply antipathetic, and the expression of his dislike was seldom limited in quality or degree. He had, however, no love for things that were not done decently and in order. A striking preacher, he seldom used in the pulpit either notes or manu- script. His style was vigorous and incisive : his language plain, direct, and earnest. With infinite forbearance towards the sinner, especially the poor sinner, in his sermons he lashed vice and cruelty with whips of scorn. Repugnance to Tractarian dogma rendered him negatively Evangelical. The sympathy and persuasiveness characteristic of Evangelicalism marked his teaching, and he always dwelt fully on the practical appli- cation to daily life of the doctrines he taught. On words, phrases, sentiments, and ideals, unaccompanied by the living eloquence of a noble life, he looked down with contempt. For he himself was rich in the possession of a working creed, and his life translated into practice the doctrines he taught to others. Early tastes assiduously trained enabled him to understand disease, and to sympathise with pain in a way seldom attained by men not brought up to medicine. His insight and resource enlarged the scope of his sympathies, and thus adorned a fine character with the most loveable of human virtues. The solemnity of his bearing when engaged in ministering to the dying is spoken of as remarkable. That matter which most unites and most divides mankind was to Sidney Godolphin Osborne a living reality. It is not seemly to probe the inner life of one who has so recently passed away. His religion was carried into his public life, for it bound him over to be better than himself. If a sobriety of tone and reserve of manner some- times repelled his casual acquaintance, the cause was to be found in the extent to which he was made the recipient of grief from far and wide. Strangers from distant places besought him to right their wrongs. They credited him with superhuman power to straighten the crookedness of their lot. His study drawers were full of the troubled histories of maimed lives. The weight INTRODUCTION xv of care thus thrust upon him left its mark. He could not always shake off the recollection of evil things, and sometimes took refuge in periods of silence which repelled the debonair advances of strangers. At other times, when in company, he became the life and soul of the party. Naturally he was a great talker. Like Macaulay and Dr. Johnson, he loved a good listener, and when he found listeners to his mind he would liberate the current of his thoughts with a wealth of allusion and exuberance of language that charmed and astonished his hearers. Full of information of a quaint and uncommon kind, he could be most entertaining. When he chose to exert his great powers he enchained the attention and enchanted the imagination of those who understood and appreciated his conversational skill. His plan of life was simple. It varied but little from day to day. The Rectory at Durweston, where he passed the active period of his life, is one of those fair and quiet spots, surrounded with elms, old lawns, and quaintly cut yews, which give a grace- ful setting to the leisure and the occupations of so many English clergy. It will be an evil day when political changes obliterate from thousands of English villages these centres of refinement and religion. They have grown into the fabric of our national life, and have given to innumerable learned and holy men the opportunity of presenting an example of simple and consistent piety to their humbler neighbours. The union of culture and simplicity spreads the contagion of refinement. The family life of our parsonages is one of the features of the Church of England least easily spared and the most unlikely to be re- placed. Sidney Godolphin Osborne was a good type of an English clergyman. His days were passed in his parish work, in correspondence, and in reading and thinking on the great social problems of the day. His recreations were those of a man in e isy circumstances. He rode well, and knew the points of a horse. When at Oxford he was known as « Galloping Osborne.' Microscopic and scientific researches occupied much of his VOL. I. a xvi LETTERS OF S. G. O. time. To them he brought the daring originality, the toil, and the industry, which made him, as a thinker, a leader of thought. The event of the day was the arrival of the Times newspaper. Keenly interested in current topics, and constantly offering to the public, through the columns of the Times, his views on social and political matters, his heart and his intellect were always engaged in the development and display of truth in relation to public affairs, especially those relative to the welfare of the poorer classes. He seldom visited his neighbours, and although glad and ready to see and entertain his friends, the formality of dinner giving was repugnant to him. To those friends whose intimacy he valued, the Rectory at Durweston was the scene of more enjoyment, real and intellectual, than is often the case with more pretentious establishments. To the charm of the host was added the genial and unaffected kindness of Lady Sidney Osborne and her daughters. Those who experienced the charm and enjoyed the welcome of the Rectory in those days, speak of the peculiar fascination then to be found within its walls. The rarity of Osborne's absences from home has already been spoken of. His chief friends were Mr. Sturt, father of Lord Alington, Lord Northbrook, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Lord Rivers, and Mr. Walter. With a large acquaintance, and a very large correspondence, he seldom went anywhere but to Crichel, Wilton, or Rushmore. As years went on, the comparative isolation in which he lived, with incessant rumination on sin, misery and op- pression, increased the sombre tone of his mind, and robbed it of the graces of less solid natures. Pessimistic he was not. But from those who knew him but slightly, his real and better self was masked by an atmosphere of silence and dejection. His kindness of heart and ready hand to help the needy and the suffering were fully known to those who were with him continually and alone. To all appearance he bore adverse criticism with indifference. He stood four-square to the winds of contumely and misrepresen- tation. But deep down, hidden from the world outside, he INTRODUCTION xv ji suffered acutely from unjust attack. When Lord Melbourne publicly taunted him with being a ' popularity-hunting parson,' the dignity of his reply showed no sensitiveness to the cruelty of the unfounded charge. He left disproof to the demonstration of his life, and suffered the calumny to die a natural death. Many years afterwards the charge was revived, with more zeal than wisdom, by a clerical henchman of Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, but by that time he was impregnable to attack founded on per- version of the known facts of his life. His classical and mathematical attainments were slender. In such pursuits he had no interest. He said of himself: ' I have not the slightest pretence to be called learned.' His somewhat unequal style was the result of deep thought, dislike of sentimental phrases, and knowing precisely what idea he wished to express. He wrote easily, and, as a rule, bestowed but little care on his literary work. The quality of the letters is variable. The best of them are models of clear, nervous English. Others are faulty, involved, and obscure, and show signs of careless work. The probability is that when he took pains he wrote well ; and when he dashed off his manuscript without deliberation or revision, he provided for his readers the usual result of easy writing. But whether he wrote well or ill, his writings are alive with sincerity and the love of truth. No one can rise from the reading of Osborne's letters and not feel that he is a better man for what he has read. Osborne was not, until later years, fond of reading, and then novels and current literature were the staple of his mental diet. But he pos- sessed rare intuition, and an extraordinary power of generalisa- tion. Vivid imagination and the habit of deep and original thought quickly convinced those with whom he was brought in contact that his was no ordinary mind. Restlessly active, and with a due sense of his own worth, he was free from personal ambition. As years gave weight to his opinions, he remained steadily aloof from political parties, although constantly in com- munication with Ministers on either side. Will LETTERS OF S. G. O. As will be seen from his letters on Ireland, he was a strong Unionist. He distrusted the capacity of the Irish for self- government, and his private letters show his rooted antipathy to the whole range of recent remedial legislation on Irish affairs. His aversion to the policy Mr. Gladstone adopted in his old age arose from no indifference to the misery of the Irish peasantry, nor from ignorance of Irish problems. He knew as few men knew the causes of the trouble, and he assessed at its proper value the contributions to the dilemma made by some of the Irish landlords. Their jointure deeds, their marriage settle- ments, and their establishments he condemned alike. Potato- o-round and peasant-breeding had their limit, and the effects of incessant subdivision of land were predicted by him with signal accuracy. In his visits to Ireland he travelled at his own expense, and he states that he never received a farthing or a favour from the Editor of the Times beyond the simple favour of making public that which he wished published. When he went to Ireland in the famine of 1849, the cases of starvation, the number, dress, and food of the paupers, especially the females, were subjects specially investigated by him with care, vigour, and discrimination. Of Protestants protestantissimus, he never failed to do justice to the Irish Roman Catholic priest- hood. He deplored, in the ripeness of his old age, that England should give impunity to the class that is banished from all other countries for political causes. He regarded with sorrow the hospitality extended to a large body of desperate men, ripe for any crime, and adepts in criminal intrigue. In the Irish troubles of 1882-6 he was strangely conversant with the designs of the Irish- American desperadoes who sought the injury of England by means of dynamite and crime. Anarchy is a disease not easily cured when once it has got hold of the patient. Osborne disbelieved in the efficacy of Mr. Gladstone's treatment, and stoutly held to the older methods of upholding law and main- taining order. He regarded the state of Ireland in the latest years of his life as philanthropic anarchy. 'The nation,' he INTRODUCTION xix wrote, ' has been made drunk by oratory, and kept drunk by newspapers.' He disbelieved in the existence of desire for Home Rule except as a stage to the confiscation of the land, and he described the Home Rule cry as the surface froth of agrarian mud. It is, perhaps, needless to say that with these views he never entered the magnetic field of Mr. Gladstone's marvellous personality. Although he himself placed the higher value on his Irish letters, it is with the English agricultural peasantry that Osborne's name will be indelibly associated. It has been de- scribed how he stood their friend at a time when the price of such advocacy was the hostility of his own class. He observed with grim satisfaction during the General Election of 1885 the part played by the later partisans of Hodge. Speeches were then made over the length and breadth of England, and ac- cepted by the public as true statements of proven facts, for which Lord Sidney Osborne thirty years before had been placed under a social ban, and had been threatened with being haled to the bar of the House of Commons. The value of his services to the farm labourers before household suffrage gave them a voice in parliamentary elections exceeded that of any of his contem- poraries. His counsel to them was always temperate. Unflag- ging zeal and dogged persistence in claiming for them better houses, higher wages, and more humane treatment, mark him as a man of iron will and lofty sense of duty to his fellow- creatures. On Free Trade and Protection, Sidney Osborne, as might be expected, supported Peel. His letter in reply to Mr. Paul Foskett is a humorous and brilliant statement in small compass of the folly of class legislation. It is difficult in these days, when the shibboleth of Free Trade is on every lip, to understand the rooted prejudice rife throughout the country for a decade after Peel had recanted the opinions of a lifetime. To the stigma of his unwelcome alliance with the farm hands, Osborne added the then unfashionable creed of untaxed food. His xx LETTERS OF S. G. O. thoughts tended to the welfare of the home, for the home is the unit of the nation. He loved England, believed in her future, and was proud of the history of his countrymen. The touchstone by which he tried new laws was their effect on the happiness of the poor man's home. If they withstood this test, he supported such measures with all the force of his nature. Failure to comply with this standard instantly produced the fighting attitude and the weapons he understood so well. Sidney Osborne was a fighting man. The zest of controversy gave a noticeable increase to the happiness of his existence. On Education he was a reformer before the need of reform was even dreamt of. Living in days when little or no public provision was made for education, he was one of the first to strike light in the universal darkness. He gained his experience and formed his opinions at a time when the name of education was regarded with suspicion and dislike.. Strikes were attributed to the levelling influence of the new training. The breaking up of privilege, obnoxious to the upper classes, was assisted by every impulse given to the process of lifting the proletariat from the ignorance in which they existed. To destroy privilege and to throw open to the people opportunities for decent life, harm- less enjoyments, and intellectual training, was to Osborne the highest pleasure of his life. For he knew that the squalor and the misery that touched his heart could only be attacked by secondary causes, and he knew that among those causes there was none more efficacious than to instil into the children the elements of a sound education. He never formed extravagant forecasts of the results of giving to the masses such education as might be within the power of the State to confer ; but such anticipations as he allowed himself to form have been fulfilled almost to the letter. On women's questions he was original and courageous. But for him it is improbable that the Contagious Diseases Acts would ever have been passed. His experience, sound sense, and high character gave a sanction to measures which have been INTRODUCTION xxi denounced with unexampled force, not only by a stream of weak and prudish sentiment, but also by men and women of high character and profound convictions. This is no place to determine whether the State, by recognising, sanctions the existence of evil. But it may be said that in all human probability the practical question will again have to be faced, thus proving that ignoring danger by no means averts it, or that the avoidance of one set of difficulties does not involve the creation of another set more difficult still. In all civilized nations— for the Zulus and the Bedaween Arabs are free from this social ulcer — in all times, in all climates, and throughout all history, men have sinned, sin, and will continue to sin. If the function of statesmen be to accept facts and not to ignore them, the welfare of posterity is no less entrusted to the care and wisdom of our rulers than the welfare of living people. If the physical deterioration of posterity be caused by the present policy, it is impossible to avoid the con- clusion that Osborne was right and his opponents were wrong on this unsavoury and difficult subject. In these times when to shout with the crowd is the easiest path to legislative or municipal office, the brave and far-sighted counsel of Sidney Osborne is as rare as it is valuable. When, after twenty years of existence, the Contagious Diseases Act was finally repealed, he predicted that it would have to be re-enacted. But the strong opposition of a host of good women makes too strong a stream of public opinion, and at present it seems unlikely that Osborne's predic- tion will be fulfilled, however desirable it may be in the interests of the country that the Act should be revived. Throughout the whole of his long life S. G. O. had a taste for criminal investigation which he himself described humour- ously as ' almost depraved.' The Ticket-of-leave System, Garot- ting, Children's Offences, Capital Punishment, and Prominent Murderers were some of the subjects that engaged his thoughts and on which he wrote at length. With his granite nature it is surprising that he was an opponent of capital punishment. Current opinion seems to be trending in the same direction. xxii LETTERS OF S. G. O. The abolition of death sentences is one of his predictions yet to be accomplished. With the enthusiasm for humanity that now extends to criminals, it is not unlikely that our children, if not we ourselves, will see the end of the system. On Emigration Lord Sidney Osborne wrote with all the good sense possible to a man whose knowledge is necessarily restricted to a portion of the subject. There are few social questions on which easy generalisations are more abundant, and there are few on which practical success is more difficult of attainment. The fact is that the needy persons fit for colonial life are so few that the organisation of a colonising system to embrace them all would contribute but little to the solution of the social problems of our time. The fact that emigration is not the panacea it is sometimes believed to be, makes it no less remedial, and of no less permanent value, in such cases as those with which it is fit to cope. To those who would learn the common sense of emigration, S. G. O.'s letters on this subject may be commended as models of sterling sense. Osborne's love of controversy was conspicuous in his dealings with matters relating to public charities. He was engaged in several encounters with missionary and philanthropic societies on the subject of their loose finance. It is needless to revive the memory of these struggles, for the societies that still exist are engaged in good work which might possibly be injured by the display of faults corrected long ago. When in the thick of the fight, S. G. O. was confronted by the flower of the army of philanthropic administrators. But throughout the whole series of controversies I cannot discover a single case of Osborne's failing to make good his public charges and allegations ; nor was he worsted in any of the literary battles on this subject in which he bore arms. Some of the evils he pointed out still live. Great names adorn doubtfully managed schemes. The finance of philanthropy and the finance of commerce still differ as charity differs from usury. As compared with the days when S. G. O. smote hip and thigh at committees, treasurers and INTRODUCTION xxiii secretaries, the systems on which the larger charitable and religious enterprises are conducted have improved, and it is among the newer and less known societies that the need for rigorous audit and improved management are still conspicuously required. The opportunity given to Osborne by the Times, for a period of nearly half a century, of speaking to educated English- men of every creed and all forms of political faith, is an instance of the discrimination and generosity traditional in the conduct of the leading journal. In well-known periods Kinglake has described the power and depravity of the Times. In later days men have rejoiced over heavy losses the Times has borne rather than suffer the enemies of our country to pursue in stealth their disloyal aims. The policy of the Times, since it possessed a policy at all, has been to stand firm for England, to denounce fraud, cant, and pretence, to protect the poor, defend just rights, and to redress real grievances. In following this policy the Times has often allied itself with the weaker side. It was in the pursuit of this policy that it created for Lord Sidney Osborne opportunities and a name which but for the Times he might never have acquired. Throughout the campaign on behalf of the Dorset labourers the Times steadily supported its correspondent. Leading articles again and again pronounced for measures of justice and of prudence, at that time supported by few men of station. The partnership of the Times in Osborne's good work was by no means confined to his earlier efforts. Throughout the series of letters by which posterity will know him, he received all the assistance the world-wide influence of the Times could confer. As a general rule the Editor bestowed on him the distinction of large type ; and the frequent complement of a leading article commenting on the views of the outspoken correspondent testified to the esteem in which S. G. O. was held at Printing House Square. The alliance between' Osborne and the Times was honourable to both. But for the paper, Osborne was unlikely to have become a recognised public authority on xxiv LETTERS OF S. G. O. social questions ; and but for Osborne, the paper would have lost a striking series of contributions on the social problems of the new era. The period of Osborne's greatest influence was the period when intellectual darkness and philistinism were most prevalent. The multitudinous wants of a nation but recently articulate were expressed by Osborne from the quiet standpoint of a man whose position in life enabled him to guide his fellow countrymen without the prejudice and bias of the politician, and to whom the vulgar arts of the demagogue were repugnant. Detachment from party was incontestably an element of strength. Perfect devotion to truth, continuity of purpose, hardness of fibre, electrical rapidity of thought, may not be qualities sufficient to constitute genius. Osborne had these qualities, and having regard to the use he made of them, and to the simplicity and retirement of his life, the unselfishness of his aims, and the just influence he acquired in the counsels of public opinion, he may fairly be described as a greater man than many of those who occupy a larger space in the annals of our time. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME CHAP. PAGE I. THE DORSETSHIRE POOR I II. FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 45 III. FAMINE IN INDIA 6l IV. EDUCATION 70 V. LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 130 VI. EMIGRATION 1 58 VII. DISEASE 184 VIII. IRELAND 223 IX. WARS 283 X. CORN LAWS 294 XL SANITATION 303 XII. CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 314 XIII. RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 374 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. CHAPTER I. THE DORSETSHIRE POOR. The earliest efforts of S. G. 0. to arouse the public conscience in regard to the deplorable condition of agricultural labourers were undertaken on behalf of the poor in Dorsetshire. A statement made by him as to the low wages given by farmers there excited the ire of Mr. G. Bankes, Member of Parliament for the County, and the latter attempted to esta- blish a charge of breach of privilege. The matter was brought before the House of Commons. Mr. Bankes was so moved to indignation at the course taken by S. G. O. that he threatened to bring in a motion for Mr. Osborne to appear at the Bar of the House. Mr. Bankes in his place in Parliament expressed the desire that the bishop of the diocese should signify to the rector of Blandford his condign displeasure at the outspoken nature of Mr. Osborne's plea for the Dorsetshire labourers. The following letters were written as a rejoinder to the attack of Mr. Bankes made in the House of Commons, being the second attack he had publicly made on Mr. Osborne. At the time Mr. Bankes made the attack, Mr. Osborne was suffering from domestic calamity, a brother having died the previous week. To Mr. Bankes. March 31, 1844. I have lately seen the report of a speech you are said to have made, in which, whilst you speak of me as an honourable and excellent personage, of whose motives you wish to say nothing derogatory, you at the same time impute to me the baseness of hiding party spirit under an appearance of philan- thropy. You choose my politics for me, and then make me the slave of them ; you say they do not differ from those of your political opponents, and then you argue, that on that account, VOL. I. l* 2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. March 31 I kept back my sympathy for the poor until the Whigs were out of office. Now, my dear Sir, I could easily prove the grounds on which you found this imputation to be false, but it is not worth my while to do so ; those who know me know you to be wrong in this matter ; those who know you can find in the very nature of your forensic displays that which will in a great measure account for your making this kind of attack. You are known to be a strong party man, you evidently aspire in this county to the first place amongst the honoured of the market- table ; far be it from me to find fault with your politics, or to wish to see you one step further than you are from the great object of your county ambition ; but I must, with others who esteem you in private life, regret to see the influence old pre- judices have still over you. Every one who does not agree with you is a witness to be browbeaten ; looking on your audi- ence as a jury, you stick at nothing to carry them with you. I really wish your manner was less artificial, because I am sure that then the matter of your speeches would come more from your heart, which I believe to be a good and kind one ; how-* ever, I quite forgive you your present attack upon myself, and I am sincerely thankful for your two admissions ; that the cottage question is a landlord's question, and that the poor law needs considerable alteration before it can be adapted to the county you represent. But there are a few observations I must make upon another part of your speech ; I do not think one man in this neighbour- hood who reads it can fail of being amused at your coyness in putting the average of wages at I is., exclusive of miscellaneous advantages. The truth is, the landlords are most of them paying gs., the farmers, some of them 8s., but many only ?s. ; doubtless, in many cases the men have more or less of the advantages you allude to ; but I can get you the names of scores of labourers who get only ys., without any any advantages whatever. There is a good deal of piece-work ; but yet you will find on inquiry that such is the general condition of the labourer, that we are obliged to assist many out of the rates who are in full work on full pay ; we have to keep all who fall sick, with scarce an exception, and to bury all who die at the expense of the rate- 1844 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 3 payers. As to the cottages, it is not, as you would have it inferred, merely the parish houses and small leaseholds that are indecently crowded and in a ruinous condition ; the cottages of many large proprietors are in the same condition ; if you wish it, I will publish a well-authenticated list of cottages that have been destroyed by large proprietors within these thirty years, over a large tract of country, and the number that have been built ; and I think I shall prove to your satisfaction, that if the parish houses and the cottages of small needy proprietors are inde- cently crowded, it is owing in a great measure to the large pro- prietors having caused the great scarcity of dwellings, by pulling down so many and putting up so few. The man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied ; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ; Where then, ah ! where, shall poverty reside, To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride ? If to some common's fenceless limits stray'd, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And e'en the bare-worn common is denied. If I did not think the public almost surfeited with the many proofs of the miserable condition of the poor which have been lately given, I would still add to the list, and I would prove to you, that if I have as yet, which I deny, given an inaccurate view of the labourers' condition, I have still facts at my disposal which cannot be disputed, enough to fill a volume, and scarce a day passes but I am furnished with more. Believe me, as I am not urged on by any party spirit, so I will not be hindered by any such imputation. As to the great vexata questio of the corn laws, I do not sufficiently understand it to have formed an opinion or attached myself to either party ; but I do know enough of the condition of the agricultural labourer to make me feel it my duty to use my every effort to draw public attention to it. The evils I deplore and seek to expose are, in my opinion, the results of a most mistaken policy ; to persevere in it, I firmly believe, will at last be the utter destruction of all that makes landed property desirable ; let the present rising generation of B 2 4 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. May 28 labourers grow up under all the evil influence of their present condition, and it needs not the spirit of prophecy to foretell the curse they will become to the country. It is not too late to rescue them from a great deal of impending evil. We are all to blame, landlords, tenants, and clergy ; the former for their indifference to the growing misery around them, the latter for not having taken a bolder line in demanding for the poor of a Christian country the sympathy that is their due. We must in future legislate for, and deal with the poor x on higher principles than those which have as yet actuated us, or all our efforts will be in vain. Let us not quarrel in the cause of charity, but rather let us each, in our own sphere, do our utmost to promote amongst the poor of our land everything that can attach them to us, and to our common religion, our common country. To the Editor of the Times. May 28, 1846. I was first informed of the attack of Mr. Bankes upon me at a time when a severe domestic affliction precluded my taking that immediate notice of it which it deserved. I now take the earliest moment decency will allow to reply to it. I am not aware, Sir, of having in any way acted so ill as to deserve Mr. Bankes's praise, or so well as to merit his censure. I was not aware that it was an offence against him, personally, to make reference to the words of young members, uttered in their maiden speeches. I wrote in ignorance that Mr. Bankes was a sort of Parliamentary duenna, whose duty it is to report on any familiarities taken out of doors with the young of the house. I can assure you, Sir, that I had not the most remote idea but that either of Mr. Bankes's colleagues could have taken good care of himself. I shall wait, yet, to be fully persuaded by experience of the fact, that his interference on their behalf is either necessary or beneficial. Had I not heard Mr. Bankes speak, — had it not fallen to my lot, on more than one occasion, to sit exposed to all the force of the pitiless pelting of his pompous declamation, when he has chosen to make me 1 the object of one of those commonplace 1 Agricultural dinner, 1843. Ditto, 1845. 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 5 appeals to the prejudices of a country audience, which minister to little minds, by eliciting the shouts and laughter of those who, for the pure fun of the thing, enjoy such exhibitions, with- out regard to the real lowering effect they have on the exhibitor, I might have felt his late attack upon me more than I did ; but, knowing that even if the matter of his accusation had been of any importance, his manner of making it would have rendered it harmless, could anything at the time I heard of it have given me real amusement, it would have done so. I shall yet hope some future day to reap some amusement from it. I am not in any way ambitious of a bubble reputation won at the ' prison's mouth ; ' for I am perhaps more than most men partial to my home and my country pursuits ; but if I thought that my incarceration would elicit, through my friends, petitions for my release, signed only by all the Dorset Js. a-week labourers, I should not much object to this mode of ascertaining their numbers, and thus proving the truth of my assertions ; it would be a novel, but I think rather effectual, way of doing so. I can hardly, however, find it in my heart to be angry with the hon. gentleman. There is something quite touching in the way in which he waited to rush to his young relative's rescue. Again, how great his devotion to his country's good, deferring, as he did, his natural indignation, hoarding his own wrongs, until their development would not interfere with the passing of a bill for which he knew the country waited with impatience. My regard for him, however, makes me regret that the gallantry he showed in defence of the young member should be at once so seriously damaged by the way in which he flies to my bishop for protection for himself. Now, Sir, he really much overrates my power and my will to injure him, by any assaults of my poor pen ; had I the wish and the power to do so, it would be a work of supererogation ; his own party have saved me from all temptation to make so impertinent and vain an attempt. He is lost already in the political horizon ; he has his place only amongst the nebidce of his party ; he scarcely admits of defi- nition in the presence of Lord G. Bentinck, Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Colquhoun, Mr. Seymer, and many others. Mr. Seymer, the new member for the county Mr. Bankes represents, is already 6 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. May 28 obtaining a position in the estimation of the yeomanry of that county and in the House of Commons higher than any Mr. Bankes can now ever hope to attain. Mr. Bankes says, my unhappy love for notoriety is much to be pitied. I am sure he thinks so ; I know no one who ought to be more disposed to pity such a failing than the hon. member ; those who have for many years known gout, if they have any charity, feel even at the presence of a list-shoe in the room of a fellow-creature. I trust I am sufficiently grateful for his sym- pathy ; I hope it may be of use to me yet. I would, however, have him remember, that I have never yet been so fed on the food of the ' popularity hunter ' as to be in clanger of much suffer- ing when I reach the contemptible end that ever awaits that animal. It has never been my lot to have so timed my entrance into market-places and market dinners, agricultural or protection meetings, that the assembled yeomanry, recognising the step that would seem to avoid observation, the cast-down, modest (?), hurried countenance that would appear to deprecate the cheers it really loves to court, have thumped and shouted their applause of the popular member or the farmer's friend (?). I have never known the sweets of that happy provincial popularity which enables the hero of the hour to speak and act patronisingly to men as much his superiors in ability as in rank. I have never, by extravagant but well-timed flattery, so won the favour of any one particular class of my fellow-creatures that I could, assured of their noisy applause, venture attacks on the objects of my private spite, which in their cooler moments they have declared to be as unjust as unprovoked. I have never known the proud position of that provincial honour which, according to my friend Seymer, gives in its prospect a fictitious value to landed pro- perty, even in the eyes of Lombard-street millionaires, — the sitting on the quarter sessional bench to try and to sentence petty larcenists. My morbid desire for notoriety has chosen a humbler walk ; its appetite has sought food less abundant, not less gratifying, but much less easily attained ; he accuses me, I say not how justly, of unhappily seeking the applause of a class that he knows dares not openly applaud me, — of the poor, who have 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 7 nothing on earth but the thanks they dare not express to offer me. I have no dinners to attend at which I can meet my self- adopted clients, to boast to them of what I have told the country, with what I have threatened the Minister. They don't read the ' Times.' I have no accessible means of obtaining even that poor annual offering — the faint cheers of a potato-fed meeting of agricultural labourers, doing their best to honour their friend. Really, Sir, unhonoured by the squirearchy, held up to the enmity of the tenantry, denounced by the Secretary for the Home Department, threatened with pains Parliamentary and ecclesiastical by my county's representative, gaining no one thing that can minister to my comfort or my vanity from those whose cause I advocate, I cannot deny but that the desire for notoriety, which brings all this on me, must be of all unhappy things the most unhappy. Yet, Sir, I am not ashamed to own my desire that my name should be coupled with the cause of the agricultural labourer. I wish to make that cause as notorious as possible : it has been a work in which I have been engaged without ceasing for many years. I do think it an honourable ambition, to be known as an untiring advocate of a class who, until lately, have had their sad condition treated with neglect. The barrister looks for honour in his profession by an energetic, painstaking attention to the cause of the clients who fee him ; an honourable name is to be gained in the medical profession by those who devote their abilities to minister to the health of the patients who pay them ; glory and honour are to be won in the army and navy by those who perform duties, for which they receive pay, with courage and skill ; the divine looks to a deanery or a diocese as he writes the works he sells, or does the duties for which he receives his tithe ; the courtier gains honour at court in propor- tion as he there plays his part well, — he too has his salary ; the politician looks to the patronage and pay of the office at which he aims, as well as at the distinction it may confer on him ; even the county member seeks pay in the cheers of his constituents, or in a ' place ' or peerage from the Minister, — is ambition in these healthy, and is mine only mor- bid ? Is it a proof of a healthy moral tone, to aim only at 8 THE LETTERS OF S. G. May 28 good, where good is paid in coin of the realm, in rank, or in the popular applause ; and is it a proof of moral disease, to seek distinction as the advocate of those whose wrongs cannot be denied, when that distinction gives no pay beyond that of an approving conscience — confers only such a title as that which Sir J. Graham was pleased to honour me with ? Admit that I am, as Mr. Bankes would make me out to be, a vain, weak, troublesome man, toiling for popular applause, a parson so mor- bidly offensive to certain members of the House of Commons that it is advisable that that house should commit me, or my bishop reprimand me— what has this to do with the real facts of the question at issue ? I may be an improper channel for communicating to the public, that the poor of these counties are sheltered with no more regard, nay, with less regard, to decency than farm beasts ; that they are paid wages that keep them in a condition of scarcely intermittent pauperism ; that their village greens and common rights are fast being taken from them ; that every ingenuity that can avail is employed to drive them from the villages into the towns ; that they are being deprived of the right of gleaning the fields, or have to scramble with the pigs for that which Scripture and ancient usage have long given them a right to ; that to hide the effect of the scantiness of the wages paid to the labourers the boards of guardians are obliged, by a system of fraud on the law, to eke out their wages in the shape of relief to infants at the breast, or to imaginary ails of the mother, so that that nice line which ■divides a stinted from a starving diet shall not be passed ; but the question, as Lord Ashley said at Sturminster, is— Is it so ? not — Who says it is ? Did I not offer to Mr. Bankes, at a public dinner, statements to confirm my assertions, saying that he and the other county members might go, and I would go with them, from village to village, to prove my case ? Has not the member for Dorchester declared that he ' defied anything to make the case of the Dor- setshire labourers worse'? Did not Mr. Sidney Herbert tell the country that it was the unanimous opinion of the whole Cabinet ' that nothing could make the condition of the labourers worse ' ? Is not Mr. Sheridan a member for a Dorsetshire 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 9 borough, a Dorset justice, a Dorset landlord ? Did Mr. Bankes read the noble sentiments expressed on this subject by Lord De Mauley, when he took leave of the Canford estate, in Dorset ? What says Lord Mount-Edgecumbe to his tenantry? — 'The misfortune that has tended the most to cripple the efforts of your friends (which, like most so-called misfortunes, arises from a great fault) is, that the agricultural labourers have not, and do not, enjoy the comforts they, in reward for their services, are justly entitled to. Our duty as Christians, to society and to ourselves, calls upon us, each i?i our station, to remedy to the utmost of our power that disgraceful evil.' Did Mr. Bankes never hear of a meeting of landowners held some years ago, at the time of the riots, at one of the landowners' l houses in this neighbourhood, at which one - who was present informed me it was resolved to so adjust matters with the tenants that the wages might be at once raised ? I believe they were so raised for a time, and it is yet, I understand, a disputed point as to who was first instru- mental in breaking the agreement. But, Sir, enough of this very injudicious gentleman ; it is his fault more than mine that the public are to be again surfeited and disgusted with details of the condition of the Dorsetshire labourers ; let him admit at once that as proved which he knows is proved, and take the poor comfort I can give him, — that there are many counties not much better, some worse. If he is so very thin-skinned as to find it necessary to seek protection from the Speaker or the bishop from any criticisms of mine on his public conduct, will he be kind enough to inform me to whom I am to apply for pro- tection against his repeated personal attacks on myself? Really, Sir, there is as much modesty in his complaining of personality as there would be in a cuckoo talking of monotony. I, Sir, have long since decided on my course. I know my own infirmity of temper, I know my liability to err ; but I feel the cause I would uphold to be a just and holy cause. The tenantry have those who are ever ready to fight for their in- terests, — the landowners can fight their own battle, — the poor labourer has few who care to run the gauntlet of the wrath of those from whom he simply asks justice. I know well enough 1 Sir J. Smith's. * Lord Portman. io THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. May 28, 1846 that if I was content to attack the farmer only, to lay all blame at his door in this matter, I should long since have disarmed many an opponent. But, Sir, knowing the uncertainty of the tenant-farmer's tenure, the rent he has paid of late to be, in comparison with what he paid in the day of high prices, a very high one ; knowing the local burdens he has to meet, beyond the expenses of his actual farming business, — looking at all the difficulties and uncertainties of his position ; knowing also that his whole treatment of the labourer has been very much in accordance with the understanding on which he took his farm, I do, in spite of my friend Sheridan's cases, as proved against one or two of this class, firmly believe that the origin of the evil is to be found where the remedy is to be looked for, viz., in the landowners. I am sanguine enough to think I see symptoms of amend- ment in the management of landed property, which, giving to the skilful farmer of capital a sounder and better position, will also so alter the condition of the labourer that there will not exist much further ground for trespass on your good nature or the patience of your readers on the part of your obedient servant. A few weeks after the publication of the above letter the ' Times ' sent Mr. Lovesy, a barrister, as their commissioner, to investigate the actual state of the poor in Dorsetshire. He was accredited to Mr. Osborne by a letter from the editor of the ' Times,' and was furnished with all the assistance possible. Mr. Lovesy's chief instructions were to prove by personal inquiry whether Mr. Osborne or Mr. Bankes was right in their conflicting statements as to the wages paid and the con- ditions in which the poor of Dorset were living. Sir James Graham, Home Secretary in Peel's second Administration, had sneered at Mr. Osborne as a 'popularity-hunting parson.' This epithet was revived by S. G. O.'s enemies towards the end of his life. He did not rest silent under the accusation, but in a manly reply points out that the popularity alleged against him led to no tangible benefit, but involved the sacrifice of friendship with his country neighbours, and castigation by Ministers of the Crown. July 23, 1844. Personal public attacks on individuals should, I think, in the first instance at least, be left as matters to be settled between July 23, 1844 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 11 the parties themselves ; so far, therefore, as the truth, justice, or good taste of the expression ' popularity-hunting parson ' as applied to myself is concerned, I shall say nothing ; but as I am not the only parson who is taking a part in the painful task of exposing the wrongs of one of the largest classes in the com- munity, I shall not shrink from giving my humble opinion upon the justice of the treatment it seems we are now to expect. It is the fashion to use very strong terms against what is called ' popularity-hunting ' : if a man, or any party of men, should be found striving to obtain the good-will of their fellow creatures generally, or of any particular class of them, by discreditable means, or for discreditable purposes, all right-thinking men would view the attempt with contempt. But because it may be true that many men do agitate the public mind as redressors of grievances, who yet really care nothing for ' the aggrieved,' and only do so that they may obtain public influence, public appoint- ments, or places in the Government — because agitation is often used to further party interests, or to gratify private spite — is this any reason why every man who may come forward in favour of any class he believes to be oppressed is to be branded as one who does so, not that they may be relieved, but that he himself may gain some object of his desire ? Has all the agitation of the last thirty years on different public questions proceeded from motives purely patriotic on the part of the chief leaders in the various movements? Have none sought popularity only that they might gain ' place ' ? Have none changed their opinions on the public questions that gave them place, that they might retain it ? And yet shall we say that there are no honourable men amongst the leaders of the public parties and interests which exist in such perpetual conflict with each other ? Now, Sir, look at the cause of the agricultural labourers, and suppose some ' parson ' (not myself) to have become satisfied that that class are becoming daily more pauperised, that their means of obtaining support are daily diminishing, that their dwellings are generally so few in number and so limited in space that they are indecently crowded, and that they are thus ever exposed to direct evil, moral and physical ; suppose this 'parson' (not myself) to be at the same time well aware that land has 12 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 23 risen, is rising in value, that vast public associations exist, formed for the encouragement of all that skill and science can accomplish, to produce more corn from the earth, to improve every farming implement, every appurtenance of the farm for the shelter and the breeding of its live stock — suppose this purely imaginary parson to be a looker-on at all this, and at the same time from some years' experience of the real condition of the agricultural labourer, some years' connection with the execution of the laws that affect his condition, to have become satisfied that the said labourer has not merely not had his due share of attention, but has by law and by custom been so hardly dealt with that he is fast losing that position which becomes him in a Christian country — the ' rev. gentleman ' joins with many others, some reverend, some noble, some untitled, in the attempt to make the labourer's real condition public, but in doing this, it now appears he is in danger — of what ? why, of gaining popularity from the labourers : this he must avoid, it is disgraceful, and therefore unchristian to gain the poor man's love by any open proclama- tion of his wrongs. Popularity bred on this soil is unwhole- some ; the love of the hobnailed is pregnant with mischief, the blessing of the fustian-clad is a curse. Seek honour, if you will, from princes, peers, or placemen ; hunt popularity in the palace, in the abodes of the coroneted, in Downing Street, at the offices of the League, or Anti-League, at the Carlton, or at Brooks's, but beware of praise from a peasant's lips — be not well spoken of over a meal of bread and potatoes. Now, in what does the poison of this species of popularity consist — doth it lead to any one tangible, pocketable benefit ? Let this phantom parson have gained it to the full, what use is it to him ? Can any amount of it — say he is a rector — make him even a rural dean, much less an archdeacon or bishop ? Would the whole paupcr-gained-blessing power of the whole country at this moment avail to the raising of one single curate to a benefice ? But I shall be told he will gain a character for philanthropy'; this is no evil in itself, but it may be convertible into one ; what can he convert it into ? Jack Cade was not in orders ; besides, the only riband of this order the Government has to bestow, its chief officer has nobly given to Lord Ashley for his exertions in 1844 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 13 favour of the factory children. I, Sir, really cannot discover any one market to which my supposed brother could take his popularity, to make any earthly gain of it. I may be wrong, but I think, though he may not gain anything pleasant or profit- able from his country for all his pains, he may be subjected for them to some evils. If he has lived on familiar friendly terms with country squires and the yeomanry about him, don't let him be surprised if he should meet with bare civility instead of cordiality ; behind his back he may be abused as an impertinent disturber of the neighbourhood ; every annoyance short of per- sonal insult he may not unlikely meet with. If he is thought of sufficient importance county members may call him an 4 incendiary/ — Home Secretaries castigate him as a mere 1 popularity-hunting parson.' Now, Sir, one word in all sober seriousness. When a clergy- man is found seeking popularity by prostituting any one prin- ciple to its attainment, let him meet with the contempt that he deserves. If any one of those who are now contending for better treatment for the labourer is found to be a man who, in his own sphere of duty, withholds his lips, his pen, his personal efforts in any one thing he ought to do, lest the doing of it should make him unpopular, let that man be viewed with contempt, his labour in the cause be taken at its real value. But do not let us out of any fear of false imputations be checked in that plain course of duty which calls on us to come forth as far as may be as protectors of those with whom our profession so connects us from their infancy to their death. As a profession we have had our share of abuse, we may have it again, but I am convinced we shall never have deserved it less than when it comes upon us for firmly, fairly, without reference to any gain to ourselves, from no political motive, doing our best to force on those who can do much to amend it, the present sad condition of large masses of our fellow-creatures. Mr. Osborne's somewhat impetuous advocacy brought him into con- flict not only with the squires, but with the farmers. The following letter, dated August 24, 1846, elicited a letter of abuse from the farmers at Ryme denying the truth of Mr. Osborne's statements, and challenging him to meet them there. He accepted the challenge, and remarks, ' I I 4 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 24 went down there and proved my case to their teeth quite to my own satisfaction. The county press most abusive, and formers as insulting as they dare to be, but magna est Veritas et prevalebit? For evidence as to the justice of his claim for victory over these abusive farmers, he refers to the ' Times ' Commission Book. Mr. Osborne took great pains in the collection of his facts, the sifting of evidence, and statement of his conclusions. In visiting Ryme for the purpose of establishing the case set forth in the following letter, Mr. Blennerhassett of Iwerne, his brother the Rector of Ryme, Mr. Bower of Closworth, Mr. Williams a surgeon of Yetminster, the school- master, shopkeepers, and some dozen or so farmer's labourers gave him all the information he needed. S. G. O. adds in a characteristic note in reference to the oppression prevailing at Ryme : ' It is difficult to get at the truth in this sort of inquiry, but I have in the above letter erred probably on the side of under-statement ; the Duchy have done so much in the way of building that I wished to spare them any possible abuse I could.' August 24, 1846. In London, I believe, there are persons appointed to inspect the markets, and see that unwholesome food is not offered for sale. Newgate has one or more officials whose duty it is to take care that the meat of diseased or improperly killed animals is not sold as food for anything above the grade of a dog or pig. There is a clerk of the fish market, whose nose is supposed to be ever ready and keen to hunt out fish unfit for human food. It may then be fairly assumed, that our laws contemplate the pro- tection of the people's health, so far at least as they establish the principle that the sale of unwholesome food is illegal. The Act of Parliament known as the ' Vagrant Act,' makes the lodging in the open air, without ' visible means of subsistence,' penal ; here I think we may assume that the law considers every subject of the realm to have shelter and subsistence honestly within reach. There are certain laws in existence directed against the practice of master manufacturers being retailers of goods to their workmen ; the evident aim of the law being to secure to the workman liberty of choice in the market at which he purchases the necessaries of life, to protect him from anything like a compulsion to buy where he would be afraid to question the quality or price of the things he needs. Surely, Sir, if it is illccral to offer for sale unwholesome meat in London, to act the 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 15 truckmaster in Lancashire, although there may be no express enactments to that effect, it is no unfair presumption to say- that the animus of the law is against such practices wherever practised. I am this day returned from a visit to a neighbourhood, in which I found meat which would be condemned in Newgate Market, sold to the labouring poor — in which whole families are living in unroofed houses, without any but invisible means of subsistence ; the wages of at least nine out of ten of the labourers in husbandry being paid to them in the shape of goods sold to them by their masters, including meat of the above character. The parish of Ryme is situated in Dorsetshire, but only divided from Somerset by a brook ; it belongs almost entirely to the Duchy of Cornwall ; its population is about 200 ; accord- ing to the poor-rate of 1840, its acreage was 978, rented at the sum of 1,108/. ; about rather more than a third of the parish is arable. Two or three years ago a report was made to the union board of the wretched state of the cottages in this parish ; a friend favoured me with a copy of it, and means were found to bring it before the council of the Duchy. To their credit be it said, steps have been taken to in some measure mitigate the disgraceful state of the dwellings on their property ; six or eight new cottages are either built or are in progress, and some of the old hovels have been destroyed. Though I cannot say much for the substantial nature of the new buildings, they are worthy of all praise, as planned to favour the observation of the common customs of decent life ; they have good garden grounds, and are let at a moderate rent. I cannot but hope that in a few years' time the few shameful specimens of dwellings that still exist may also be destroyed, and new ones, fit for human beings, erected in their stead. It is painful, Sir, to see, that where the pro- prietary of an estate do thus, however late, endeavour to do their duty to those who till the ground on it, their tenantry should be allowed to go on in a course of treatment of the labourer which I can only characterise as most wicked and unjust. I was not content to inquire of the labourers themselves as to their con- dition, but I took no common pains to trace out the truth of their assertions, by obtaining the statements of educated persons id THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 24 \\\ the higher grades of life, who, living on the spot, were, by their professions or business, brought into a thorough acquaint- ance with the system to which I would now draw attention. In the parish of Ryme, with one or two exceptions, the wages of able-bodied married men arc 7 s. a week ; those of single men and lads, from sixteen to twenty-five or more years of age, are from 2S. 6d. to 6s. The mowing and harvest afford about two months of task work, at which about 10s. a week is earned, besides the allowance of a gallon of cider a day, but the hours then worked are from five in the morning to seven in the even- ing. The pay for mowing barley is is. 6d. an acre ; for reaping and binding wheat 6s. an acre, the men finding their own tools. When doing day work the men get about two pints of cider a day ; but this is stuff of an inferior quality ; it is made on the farms, and costs the farmer but little. At day work they are expected to be on the farm, if the light will permit, at least twelve hours a day. There are no privileges of any kind what- ever, that I could discover, afforded by the masters to the men. Thus far, Sir, I have only told of men working for the tenantry of the Prince of Wales for ten months of the year at Js. a week, having to pay is. out of it for the rent of a cottage, and there- fore, as it would appear, having only 6s. to bring home to buy food and clothing ; for the cider drunk in the field may spur them on to work harder, but it is of no use to their families at home. But now comes the worst part of my story ; they are paid almost entirely on the truck system ; for a bushel of best wheat they pay Js. the bushel, which is $6s. the quarter; for first tailings they pay 6s. the bushel, i.e. 48^. the quarter ; for second tailings $s. the bushel, i.e. 40X the quarter. If wished for, I shall be happy to supply a sample of this grist, when any judge will at once say it is charged at least is. a bushel too much. Now, Sir, I would have you bear in mind, that, having to pay is. rent, the labourer needing a bushel of grist a week, and having to pay 6s. for it, his wages being only Js., he is left wholly without money to buy anything else. In justice to the farmer, I will put the is. overcharge for the grist against the cider he gives in the field. But the farmer makes butter and cheese ; there are of these articles inferior qualities, for which 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 17 there would be no market did not the labourer prove a customer. These, then, are taken by such men as may have children or wives at work on the farm, in lieu of their wages. The cheese is made of skim-milk, is of the colour and hardness of chalk, smells perfectly sour, but is charged for at ^\d. a pound. The butter is charged at \od. a pound, is on the average good, but it does again and again occur, that firkins returned by the salesmen as unfit for the market are sold to the men at a price above the market price of good butter. In the neighbouring parish of Yetminster, a tradesman informed me of one farmer who sold his labourers soap and candles ; and here let me say I am speaking of large and apparently well-to-do farmers, renting, some of them, 400/. a year. We have found, Sir, that there is a ' tailing ' as it were of cheese and butter ; but what will the public think of a tailing of meat ? Three days before I was at Ryme a sheep with the staggers was killed, ' just afore he died,' and sold to the labourers of one of the principal farmers at ^.d. the pound. When ewes die in lambing, or as the men express it ' are killed afore they are cold dead,' the men are sold the meat at 2\d. One woman, who had some of a giddy sheep at A^d. the pound, a few days ago, said she would have no more of this ' breeding ewe mutton,' for it made her husband ill. It will happen on a dairy farm that a cow will die diseased. There is a complaint called the ' quarter evil,' which seems to me the only purveyor of beef to the poor in these parts. When an animal has time, in dying of this disease, to have its throat cut, it is retailed at 2 \d. the pound to the labourers. In one instance we had the positive evidence of the man who found it dead, that a sheep's throat was then cut ; it was not quite cold, and the meat sold as above. It may be said, are the men compelled to take these things ? They answer this question in various ways, but one, I think, will give the sense of all the rest: — 'They just tell us they can't afford the money to pay us, and therefore axes of us to take the gristing and the cheese of them ; many of us must soon get in debt to them, and then you sec, Sir, we must go on. As to the dead animals, they just says, " We can't be expected to take the whole loss ;" and they then tells us as we should take some of it off VOL. I. C 1 8 THE LETTERS OE S. G. 0. Aug. 24 their hands. There may be from twelve to a score of such sheep in the year on my master's farm. Tis the only meat we ever sees.' Knowing that there was a most respectable and humane man farming largely a few miles off, and that he is rather a fancy sheep breeder, I asked of a man what Mr. P. did with his animals that were so diseased ? The answer was, ' They be given to the dogs and pigs.' As to wages paid in money, I think you would be puzzled to find anyone man who had drawn 2/. in any one year ; by the help of clothing clubs, and an occasional job at draining out of the parish, they are alone enabled to get clothes. As a specimen of what life still is in some instances, and was generally for many years, I went into the cottage of a man who it was found had stolen some of his master's wheat. I found the woman, with two of the children, eating a few unwholesome potatoes and some bread ; a child, of nine years of age, dead, in a coffin close to them ; the only ascent to the bedroom by a broken ladder ; the roof so dilapi- dated that it rains down on the bed. They had five children, all young ; she was close to her confinement ; the husband earning ys., paying 6s. for a grist of tailings, of which I procured a sample, and defy any one to say it is worth $s. ; the whole building unfit for any human being to live in. Who can wonder that they steal their master's corn ? As to drunkenness, the whole system of payment in cider encourages it. On one side of Ryme is Yetminster, on the other side is Closworth, in Somersetshire ; in the former the cottages belong, for the most part, to the parish or to small proprietors. In the latter they are, with the whole parish, the property of a nobleman of known large landed possessions. 1 Your Com- missioner made a faint attempt to describe one place in Yetminster in. which sixty souls dwell. I went all over it. It is in all truth the very cesspool of everything in which anything human can be recognised — whole families wallowing together at night on filthy rags, in rooms in which they are so packed, and yet so little sheltered, that one's wonder is that the physical existence can survive, as it does, the necessary speedy destruc- tion of all existing moral principle. What matters it that they 1 Lord Portman. 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 19 are the refuse of the parish ? It is a refuse pregnant with an eternal life, that requires a care and a preparation for its future birth, which the circumstances of such a place utterly forbid. In a Christian land, divided by law into districts and parishes, pro- fessedly each charged with the expense of a moral apparatus, calculated to protect the bodies of the people from the assaults of hunger or violence, their souls from ignorance and heathenism, a vast — almost roofless — manufactory of misery, and nursery for vice is allowed to rear its smoke-blackened walls in the very midst of a landscape in which the eye may trace the existence of the mansions and parks of the wealthy, charged to see justice done the body ; churches, telling of the existence of an order of men whose duty it is to preach the plain truth boldly, that God will not have the poor oppressed in body or in soul. If Closworth, the other parish of which I have spoken, is, as I am informed, no worse than two-thirds of the Somerset villages, I can only say that Dorset, bad as it is, I am convinced can show few such specimens of miserable existence. It is no argu- ment to say that most of these wretched, damp, decaying, con- fined, glassless hovels are the property of little lifeholders. I admit it to be a very general case, though not true in this instance. No one can travel through these districts and not see how every atom of waste ground is seized on for the erection of these dens ; but you may go for miles, you may make what inquiry you will, and you will find that those who draw incomes from the soil not only will not, and have not, until lately in a few instances, built any cottages, but they have perseveringly pursued the system of cottage destruction. Hence it is, the the dwellings of the peasantry must be thus planted by them- selves on the wastes, or they must become the prey of those who, having little lifeholds, built cabins on them to let at exorbitant rents. The potato crop is a failure throughout the whole district ; I do not believe a third will be fit for food. This is of no small importance, for the only money the poor man can draw to purchase clothing is from the potatoes, either by their sale, or by their consumption enabling him to make shift with a grist once in two instead of every week. c 2 20 THE LETTERS OF S. G O. Sept. 10 I am well aware, Sir, that the assertions I have made above, of the treatment of the labourers on the Prince of Wales's pro- perty, will, as usual, be treated by the parties accused as gross exaggerations. I am, Sir, prepared, at any convenient notice, to meet the agent of the Duchy on the spot, and from my notes, and in the presence of the same witnesses, prove their truth. From what I have learned of the council of the Duchy's pro- ceedings, I believe them to be disposed to act most humanely and to set a most excellent example to their neighbours. I think a very little inquiry, and a very little effort on their part, may put a stop to a state of things disgraceful to so important a proprietary, though common in the case of individual pro- prietors. For my own part, I can only say that I will shrink from no inquiry into facts I assert in your columns, on 1 y claim- ing, in my own defence, an opportunity to investigate the truth of what my accusers may state. I expect no length of years, I care little how much of them I expend in this cause. Lord John Russell's first Administration was formed on the resigna- tion of Sir Robert Peel, in July 1846. On September 10, S. G. O. addresses him through the ' Times ' on behalf of the poor. September 10, 1S46. Your Lordship's position at the present moment is one calculated to excite the deepest interest in every real well-wisher to his country. Your untiring energy in any cause you may think fit to adopt is a matter of history ; your courage in attempting at any given moment whatever at that moment you may think it expedient to attempt, without any very particular regard to the consequences of a failure, has become so well known, that the public have ceased to regard anything in the w r hole range of political possibility as beyond your daring. The general uprightness of your character has borne you through many years of political strife, and left you yet one against whom the bitterest and basest of political opponents have never found ground for the imputation of one unworthy, dishonourable motive. It is well known, also, to no limited a circle, that the experience of years of public trial, of public action, has been no hindrance to the acquirement, in your case, of an increasing deep sense of responsibility to a higher Power than that of any 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 21 earthly Sovereign. There are good grounds for belief in the breasts of many that your principles of government, however bold they may be in their attempts at good, however startling they may be from their novelty, will be the attempts of one who has a higher ambition than that which only seeks to gild the name of the head of a party, or to add renown to the reign of a Sovereign. Seldom, if ever, has a Minister stepped into power under circumstances that leave him so much freedom of action as you now possess. Your greatness has indeed been thrust upon you ; your political opponents have had more to do with your call to office than your political adherents. You have scarce any op- position arrayed against you ; the so-called country party are for ever betraying that their bond of union is not so much opposi- tion to the views you hold from their dislike of those views, but because they have been adopted and carried out by one whose seeming betrayal of them they will neither forget nor forgive. It is declared that the grave consideration of your Lordship's Government will be first given to the degraded social and physical condition of the working classes ; you have made a public admission of the existence of certain physical and moral evils, pressing on that class of the community, calling for the prompt and serious attention of the Legislature. When things are at their worst, according to the proverb, there is hope of amendment. If this be true, your Lordship has taken the responsibility of Government at a moment of great social re- action ; for to those who are acquainted with things below the surface of society, it is well known things could not be much worse. I am not one of those who are ever on the look-out for instances of the direct interference of Providence in the every- day affairs of mankind ; but I cannot deny my conviction that the hand of God is at the present moment clearly manifested, working specially towards one great object — the forcing on the attention of the rulers, and the great of the earth, that there is a point beyond which He will not suffer their neglect of the wants, moral and physical, of the mass of the governed and the poor. We live in an age in which every class — but that which by its 22 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 10 labour provides the food of all the rest — are in possession of comforts and luxuries their forefathers scarcely dreamed of. There is not one single source of amusement, by day or night, to the wealthy and great, for which the most lavish expenditure of money can provide, which is not at once provided. There is no one mere sense of the body, let it be refined how it may, to meet the refined taste of which the enterprise and wealth of those whose business it is to cater for such tastes have not sought at home and abroad for food of the choicest, costliest character, and been repaid for the effort. I lately saw certain statistics concerning the cost for one year of the chaste pleasures of the Opera House, and the sums expended on the healthy moral pursuits of the turf. I fear to be accused of exaggeration, but I think in either case the gross sum exceeded the whole cost of the education of the people ;— united, there would have been sufficient to have also supported every provincial hospital in the United Kingdom. Turning from a meditation on the cost of Her Majesty's Theatre, Her Majesty's ' plates and cups,' I looked to the costly nature of the food of tens of thousands of Her Majesty's subjects. Here I felt at home ; I needed no statistics ; I could walk or ride for miles and miles, and see the truth with my own eyes. It is a lesson I have, however, not now to learn — I should have been a dunce indeed, if, with years of misery's worst pages ever open before me, I had not read and learned but too much of the details of the existence of the miserable. If your Lordship was to see a powerful man, armed with a bludgeon, beating to the ground one whom nature had formed physically as strong as himself— if a third party, stronger than either, were to wrench from the hand of the assailant his weapon, you would see in this interposition of power on the side of the powerless an act of interference praiseworthy in itself, and therefore characteristic of one deserving every good man's respect. Go through those wide districts of this land in which the labourer, by the force of oppression, has been degraded to a condition in which he is less cared for in many respects than the beast of the field, in which he passes through life a hireling, at wages that afford him the worst of bread to eke out his meal of potatoes ; see him from his birth surrounded with every possible 1846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 23 circumstance which can tend to rear him careless of the decencies, ignorant of the common comforts of civilised life ; see the pos- sessors of miles of land, the purveyors to the markets of the country of the good corn and good meat which the sweat of the labourer's brow prepares for those markets, looking coldly on that patient race to whom they owe their wealth, for whom they will afford no home much better than a hovel, no food much better than a potato. They say he is so weak or so idle that he barely earns them the ys. or 8s. they pay him for six days' hire. How came he so weak ? Is it the character of the English to work feebly or idly ? No, my Lord, you know it is not. Potato food has been the weapon which has struck him down ; and now comes in a third pozver, and blights the potato. Is it not the voice of God, saying, ' He that tills the ground and tends your flocks is worthy of the food which shall support his frame in its fullest strength ' ? I believe it is undisputed that low, unwholesome diet does tend to produce a condition of mind, as well as body, directly degrading both. The potato-fed peasantry of these districts not only are unfit for hard work — this would only be what we might expect — but they are so socially degraded, that they have been for years, and are for the most part still, content to go through life on terms implying a want of all sense of the value of customs and feelings without the existence of which man becomes a mere reproducer of his race, working to live, but content to buy life at its very cheapest price. There is a great cry for extended measures of education ; for my own part, I think it somewhat fortunate for the proprietors of estates on which the poor are treated as above that this cry did not come before. The Govern- ment will hardly vote public money for such a purpose without a searching inquiry into the circumstances which surround those it seeks to educate ; they have now some little time in which they may prepare for the ordeal of that examination into the condition of those who labour on their estates. Even Dr. Hook would hardly wish that his plan should be as a pearl cast before swine. His scheme is professedly adapted to meet the wants of all classes ; but even his inventive faculties have not shown how those who are content to live on the food of the pig, adopting 24 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 10 many of that animal's habits, are to be made sensible of the value of the Government instruction in all knowledge but that one knowledge which teaches the elevation hereafter of the patient Lazari of the earth, giving the poor man hopes of a home where even he shall never know pain and sorrow again. If your Lordship has come into power at a moment when the hand of Providence is hurrying the solution of the problem how a poor man is to earn bread instead of potatoes, you have also before you unmistakeable evidence of the necessity of leaning more to divine than to human principles in legislating for the poor. The cold-blooded dogmas of that school which founded the New Poor Law system have received the fullest and most open refutation. We were told that wages would rise, the labourer would be intellectually elevated ; that the new work- houses would be schools for morality, as well as well-regulated refuges for the destitute ; that all jobbing would cease ; that charity would receive a fresh impulse, and industry be excited to seek fresh rewards ; chapter and verse were quoted to prove the soundness of the new theory ; but these quotations were from authors who, to say the least of them, professed no great respect for the only book from which chapter and verse about the treatment of the poor have much authority, The New Poor Law has only worked well where it has worked in opposition to the chief principles of its founders, in defiance of the rules of the Commissioners. In Somerset House, we have seen that those who were to direct and counsel all the other boards were them- selves for ever engaged in unseemly wrangling with each other — a body divided in opinion wherever union was valuable, but united in the one common purpose of degrading those of their officials in private in whom, in public, they professed all con- fidence. Your Lordship knows now but too well, that the dis- closures which have already been made of the condition of the poor in many of the union-houses have only gone to prove what the original opponents of the bill foretold — that the working in the detail of a measure advocated by arguments cruel and selfish would only be so much evidence of cruelty and oppres- sion. We have now, my Lord, to look to you and your Govern- 1S46 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 25 ment for that change in the treatment of the poor which can with safety no longer be delayed. It will need all your wilful- ness of purpose to boldly urge those reforms, social and political, which shall recognise and exact a more liberal and Christian treatment of the poor. It is no longer safe to leave to the press the daily work of proving that while gaols profess and attempt the reformation of the criminal, workhouses imprison to con- taminate the destitute. The public mind is getting restless under the almost daily exposure of the moral and physical degradation of the labourers in many of the purely agricultural counties. Wrongs exposed, but unredressed, betray weakness in the law or negligence in those whose duty it is to enforce it ; there is danger to the State in either assumption. By a speedy redress of the wrongs of the poor may your Lordship prove worthy of your high office in this Christian country. On December 23 Mr. Osborne returns to the charge against Mr. Bankes. The strength of his indignation is blended with kindly humour. December 23, 1846. Within these few weeks your columns contained the report of a speech of Mr. G. Bankes, made at the Sturminster Agricul- tural meeting, in which he compared the lot of the English with that of the Irish landlord : the latter, he said, were shot at from behind stone walls ; the former, from behind the columns of a newspaper. He seemed inclined to argue that the attempted assassination was equally criminal in either case. I presume, Sir, he had not himself altogether escaped from wounds inflicted by the instrumentality of some paper-hidden adversary ; I can conceive it possible that he had been rather badly hit more than once ; and yet, was he not full of life and vigour ? — was he not worth in value, for all county purposes, a hundred marked Irish landlords ? Paddy in his way either kills outright or drives right out of the country the landlord who gives him offence. Lead frightens or destroys ; paper bullets seem really to have the effect of giving more life, more local activity. Mr. Bankes was pleased to say that the ' Times ' honoured the county of Dorset with two commissioners — one itinerant, and only an occasional visitant ; the other, a resident. Disdaining to attack 26 THE LETTERS OF S. G O. Dec. 22 cither in their absence, he only gave his audience to understand that if either had been present, he should have had something to say to than. The admiring yeomanry roared their applause ; they felt, they knew, indeed, the crushing power of their tool's eloquence ; they only wished either commissioner had been present. O, how they would have cheered their learned ban-dog to grapple with and munch and crunch his prey ! — themselves had boasted all they had intended to have done ; it was hard, very hard, they they should have no opportunity to prove their hate of the power that had exposed their own misdeeds, had ventured to attack the leader of that gentle but yet very simple class who so kindly call them annually ' the gallant ' — ' the noble yeomanry.' Your humble servant, Sir, was duly informed, that he was the individual pointed out as the resident commissioner connected with your journal. He was congratulated on the perils, by blanket, by staircase, by window, and by Bankes, which he had escaped by his non-attendance at Sturminster. The wrath of great men, we know, is terrible : great amongst the Coverleys of Dorset is G. Bankes ; all mobs are dangerous, the yeomanry seemed most mobbishly inclined ; certain leading articles in your columns had only added fuel to the flame ; to own to the taking in your paper had become offensive; to occasionally contribute to it was still more so ; to be suspected of any positive connection with it was cause sufficient to place the individual in all the jeopardy to peace of life, if not to personal safety, to which the worst traitor in society could become obnoxious. Blandford Agricultural Society was about to have its annual dinner ; a member— nay, I confess to it, hitherto an annual giver of premiums, an annual speaker at the said dinner, what was I to do ? The shop windows at this season are full of blankets, we dine up two pair of stairs, I have usually sat close to a window ; it was said that Bankes was coming in full appetite ; he had been kept for a whole fortnight from attacking the smallest living thing ; they had even, it is said, kept the ' Times ' from him, lest he should have expended one grain of wrath on that paper when there was the chance of his meeting with an individual stamped by his own veracious tongue as a commissioner of that journal. My friends felt for ,846 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 27 me, and advised me to get behind my influenza, and thus escape the impending storm. This I did not choose to do ; I am not ashamed to own my obligation to you for the kindness with which you have allowed me so much space in which I could plead for the poor, denounce those who oppressed them, and expose the evils that weigh them down. Whilst I was ready to give the lie direct to the insinuation conveyed in the use of the term 'commissioner,' I was prepared to defend my right to avail myself of the opportunities you have ever so readily afforded me of conveying to the public facts I thought it expedient to make public. I had ascertained that Mr. Bankes did not pretend to say that I was a paid writer, but I knew that it was broadly asserted by many that this was the case, and that his use of the term ' commissioner ' would be gladly laid hold of as a sort of proof of the fact. This letter put Mr. Bankes on his mettle. He accordingly published a pamphlet, written evidently for the farmers. This pamphlet consisted of speeches made by him at agricultural dinners in Dorsetshire, with certain remarks prefixed, professing to be a rejoinder to an article in the 'Times,' and to S. G. O.'s letter of December 23. Mr. Osborne characterises the pamphlet as 'vulgar, false, and pompous,' and he quietly adds, ' But that was natural to the writer.' The Potato crop failed throughout Ireland in 1846. The sufferings of the people attracted much public attention, and the first parliamentary grant in relief of the Irish people was made in that year. Like many people since 1846, S. G. O. considered that undue attention was devoted by Parliament and the public to Irish distress and to Irish affairs. On February 3, 1847, he writes to ask when the turn is coming for the English labourers, and what particular point of famine is to be reached before public attention is given to the English question. As in farmer letters, he takes the Dorsetshire labourer for his text. February 3, 1847. I had hoped to see no occasion to trespass on your indul- gence by any further reference to the condition of the Dorset- shire labourers. I have been told that there is that in their present condition which makes it somewhat dangerous to say anything about it. I admit this to be the case ; but I am con- vinced that there is more danger in being silent. What is being 2S THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 3 done for Ireland is very notorious ; and, to make it more so, every congregation in the country is to be formally informed from the pulpit that more money is yet wanted, — that the people there must be helped, for they are starving. Our poor are most charitable, — they will scarce turn a beggar from their door unhelped, though a halfpenny to them is as a crown to many of us ; they will grudge no help to the Irish, — they will give freely, if they have anything to give. But, Sir, there is some reason to expect that by the time they know what Govern- ment has voted, the Church collected, and the charitable sub- scribed for the starving Irish, they may find themselves in a condition forcing on them the questions : ' When is our turn to come ? At what particular point of famine is help to be offered us labouring English ? We have not begun, perhaps, to die for want of food ; our strong men have not yet been brought so low that they stagger in their walk ; our children as yet get fed once at least every day ; but, if we are wanting in these first features of the work of actual famine, will any deny that we so closely border on them that the insufficiency and bad nature of our food are so lowering us, that we are, as it were, in the natural and almost inevitable path which leads to diseases, certain to hurry many of us to the grave ? ' I do not expect, Sir, that many of our poor will starve to death, because we have a machinery with funds and officials for the purpose of stepping in between them and actual death from want of food ; there is an eleventh hour of suffering, at which the law's charity relents and feeds ; our paupers don't die because they have no food ; but, without being, I hope, a rash alarmist, I think I can see cause of apprehension that thousands, if things go on as at present, will sicken to eventual death, from a too long struggle with life on an insufficiency of food. I do not want any one reader of this letter to forget the Irish, but I want to cause a moment's thought on the state of some of the English. A Dorsetshire farmer of some notoriety, 1 a great local authority, gave it in evidence before a Poor Law Commissioner : ' We generally reckon a busJiel of wheat, with is. added to it, the wages of a labourer." 1 Accordingly, I have 1 Jem Burgess. 2 Austin's Report. 1 847 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 29 again and again found that where a labourer has been so far blessed as to have a master who pays 8s. a week, he has, if that master retailed him wheat, paid Js. a bushel for it ; where not so blessed, but only receiving the common Js. a week wages, I have found him sometimes favoured with a grist at 6s. Labour- ing men are apt to have wives and families — a bushel of wheat won't feed a very large family — is. won't go far in soap and candles, fuel, tea, &c. How then do they live, get clothed, and housed ? Occasional jobs at ' tut-work ' — i.e. opportunity to sweat a little more and a little longer in the week for a little extra pay ; extra earnings at harvest, the earnings of the wife and children— these are sources of extra industrial revenue. To these add union assistance in and after births, union medi- cine before and coffins after deaths, union allowance in sicKness, and a bread allowance to the fortunate possessor of any crippled or sufficiently ailing to be medically-attended child ; these, with the additional computation of what is called ' help from gentle- folk,' constitute their accidental sources of revenue ; still, no possible calculating power could ever yet so reckon up all these incomings as to find a return giving a bare sufficiency of food and clothing to the family of a labourer, — such a sufficiency as would be allotted to convicts by the Government, or to paupers in union-houses by the Poor Law Commissioners. The most skilful physiologist, aided by the most accurate of political economists, could not, out of all these earnings, with all these ' helps,' purchase a sufficient substance of food, of the quality that would sustain in health the lives of a family of five members, leaving sufficient means to clothe them to be decent, to pay the rent of any place that would be fit for human habitation : and yet they do live and work, and actually worked the soil, sowed, reaped, and placed in the rickyard the wheat now fetching some 20/. a load ! How is this riddle of life to be solved ? With one word — potato. Potato food has formed near three-fifths of their' subsistence ; the farmers let them ground, some at reasonable, some at extortionate rents, to grow this food. Many of them arc tenants of allotment ground, at least half of which has hitherto been allotted to the growth of the potato. All who had no opportunity to grow bought, as the staple of their food, 3o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 3 potatoes, at, on an average of the last few years, about $s. the bag. They are no longer to be bought, scarcely at any price ; those that were grown last year for the most part rotted ; at this moment there are few to be found in any cottage ; a few weeks more, and there will be none. Even, then, if the wages continued as a bushel of wheat and is. per week, the subtraction of three-fifths of the food of the family by this dispensation of Providence would bring them to the verge of starvation ; but, Sir, to our shame be it said, when we know this, — when we know, also, that every other article of domestic cottage consumption has risen in a serious degree, the ' We,' that is the ruling powers of this county, the yeomanry, as the farmers are called, are in many places paying the same wages they paid when wheat was ys. the bushel — i.e. 8s., or ys. a week ; nozv it is 10s. the bushel, in few places have they risen more than one shilling. When pressed by their land- lords, some of them certainly did agree to continue to sell the wheat at the old price ; however, I fear this is coming to an end, and I now hear of many who have raised wages one shil- ling; and stopped selling by retail, so that the ' We's ' law of a bushel of wheat and a shilling, starving in principle at all times, is thus shelved at the only time when it could benefit the labourer in the least degree — a time when the farmer could best afford to benefit him — a time of high prices on very moderate rents. It is my firm belief that even were wages raised half-a- crown a week, and wheat could be had at gs. the bushel, the loss of the potato and the present rise in value in such articles as candles, soap, tea, salt, &c, would leave the Dorsetshire labourer now even worse off than he was at ys. a week, with his grist at 6s. We were puzzled to know how he lived then ; it was a ' battle of life ' with him then ; potato-armed, he won an existence ; without this poor weapon, if left unhelped, want will beat him, if not to the grave, to a condition of irretrievable pauperism, begetting, naturally enough, a spirit of dangerous sullen dis- content. I fear we should find it a hopeless task to try and make him believe that the ' We ' had so felt for him, that mem- bers of that body had been known (' We's ' county member says 1 847 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 31 he knows it to be the fact *) to bring their corn to the market at a sacrifice for the good of the poor : he would still growl out his discontent that the food he worked to produce had been sent to feed the distant starving, purchased by the national funds, or the national charity ; whilst he was left on the spot by his fortunate employer to struggle for existence, enabled to support it only on the bitter-won bread of the union. Now, Sir, let us look forward. In the first place, suppose it were advisable that the ground hitherto cultivated for a potato crop should be again this year so cultivated ; is it not notorious than in hundreds of parishes there is no stock for seed left ? Supposing each family to be possessed of seed, their credit is come to an end at the shops ; even gs. a week, with wheat at 10s. a bushel, cannot support them ; they will be compelled to cook what they would otherwise plant. It is then come to this : the source of income which has been reckoned in as making up wages — i.e. the potato-ground or allotment — is lost to them. There is no probability, that I can see, of their re- gaining this element of subsistence for years to come ; I see it already announced that the forced potatoes of this year are diseased worse than they were last year. I am thankful to say that there is yet in this county a good deal of corn unthrashed ; but let us remember we are near more than one port, easy of access to Government steamers. The almsholders for Ireland have large funds, — who is to compete with them in the market ? Their business is to arrest death ; the very urgency of their purpose holds them out to the corndealers as customers who can and will give the highest price. Other countries will com- pete with us for our foreign importations ; it is my firm belief that the great draught on our home stocks will be for shipping to the Irish ; in six weeks from the present time our peasantry will have exhausted every possible shift ; turnips and horse- beans will have failed them ; they will have nothing to sell, nothing to pawn ; the rates will rise, to the utter restriction of much local charity now at work ; the ablebodied must be relieved, the workhouses will not hold them. If we have kept our stock of corn from the clutches of the jobbers, buying to send 1 Vide Bankes's speech. 3^ THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. .3 it away from us, the demand will be so great that the price will be beyond the power of the labourer to buy enough to sustain life. One of the first steps will be the discharge of the single men, because, forsooth, it is said they can make a shift or go to the 1 house.' Then will come an attempt to give bread allowance to cvcr\ r child beyond three. One union has tried to get some- thing like this permitted where the wages paid are 8s. and more, stating that where the wages are only js. they will only give the offer of the ' house.' What a confession, by the by, of the real state of things ! I say nothing of the chances of what the next harvest may be ; let it be the best in prospect ever known, I assert, that unless wages are raised considerably, and very gene- rally, — unless some precautions are taken to secure the holding a certain amount of corn within the county for the supply of our own poor, in not many weeks hence our difficulties will be most serious, and they will be of a nature to force on us that official investigation we deserve, as to why, with excellent soil, excellent markets, no excess of population, every evidence of wealth in our owners, of active enjoyment of the pleasures of life amongst the tenantry, we have reduced our poor to live for the most part on potatoes ; have housed them, till of late years, in many places in hovels, and in very many do so now ; have given an understood sanction, at the time corn was low, to the rule that is. and a bushel of wheat were fair wages ; have, when it rose in price, not given even the value of a bushel of wheat without the shilling. Your correspondent from Shaftesbury, signing ' Rector,' has borne his testimony to the commencement of the sad drama. Within these last ten days I have received from many quarters proof of the same extensive misery ; our poor are patient in suffering, but patience has its bounds. I entreat, Sir, through your indulgence, the attention of all concerned to this warning of coming evil. That it will bring on me more odium than ever, I expect, — that my motives will be questioned, my asser- tions denied, I have little doubt. So let it be ; I am content to be condemned as an officious, dangerous meddler with the peace of this county, — I am content to have my statements set down as exaggerations ; my conscience is at case, and will find 1847 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 33 its relief in the comforting assurance that I have from many that I have done good, and that I should be wrong indeed if I now hesitated to make one more attempt to ward off evils I have long prophesied ; and, alas ! now see the too near accom- plishment of. My Maker knows I feel for and would do all I could for the Irish ; but I have a duty at my own door to perform. I admit the danger of giving a premature alarm, but I believe there is instant cause for the alarm I would give. Many noble acts of private charity are being done around me, but there are many parishes where poverty pines unknown to the rich. There is neither justice nor policy in forcing on the rates or on the rich the gratuitous support of those whose wages have been advanced perhaps in the best of cases 2s., while their expenses have risen in the proportion of 4s., — who are yet threatened with the sight of the food they helped to harvest sold at an enormous price to feed others, worse off, it is true, than themselves, but whose fate they have cause to fear, and feel, as they fear it, that they have in no degree deserved it. On January 1, 1849, Mr. Bankes appears once more. S. G. O. treats him as a butt. His raillery, however, sparkles with the humour we do not now find in the 'Times' correspondence, and is too characteristic to omit. January 1, 1849. It has been said of the late celebrated comic actor Liston, that when he was silent and serious it was next to impossible to look at him and not feel disposed to laugh ; that whenever he spoke, the most hypochondriacal of Puritans must have laughed. At our late annual Blandford agricultural diversions we have had proof that the wonderful serio-comic power possessed by that eminent comedian is a property not lost to the world. I have just perused the speech or part spoken by our great county actor Mr. Bankes, with its accompanying and oft-repeated ' Laughter,' 'Much laughter,' 'Prolonged laughter:' the performance must really have been one of the highest character in its own way. When Grimaldi used to come on the stage as acanarybird in full plumage, well can I recollect the ecstasy of every schoolboy who looked upon him. When he shook his wings, there was VOL. I. D 34 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. r laughter ; when he began to clean his breast-feathers with his beak, there was much laughter ; when he took up the gigantic piece of groundsel in his claw, and then began to peck it with true canary relish, the laughter was tremendous and prolonged. It might have been the day before the dreaded annual visit to the dentist ; it might have been the very last night of the holidays ; all of the future or the present was merged in the one delicious sense of schoolboy enjoyment of fun, adapted to schoolboy age. Corn is very low in the market ; there are floating visions of large expected imports ; even potato failure has failed to keep up high prices ; there had been a large failure of a much-trusted corn-dealer — the dividend expected very small — the chief suf- ferers were some of the chief supporters of the annual agricul- tural diversions, in which the county members are expected to act the pleasing parts of the Christmas drama ; — yet, in spite of all this, as soon as the county members were on, and the funny one at his part, all was forgotten ; tailings might have sunk to best wheat price, and that only have been 10/. the load ; the whole millerarchy of the neighbourhood might have been that day in the ' Gazette ' — all was forgotten. The man who knew how to please them best was on the stage — this year it was not mere empty applause, the result of habit, strong port, and a love of hard words ; no, it was one continued stage of scarcely inter- mittent merriment ; had they suddenly awoke from a dream and found that protection still existed, and Peel had been a mere phantom, it is scarcely conceivable that this audience could have laughed more. What was it all about ? They were men, not children — grown-up men, men of business. Where did the actor manage to hit their risible organism ? It must have been his manner, not the matter of his part, which had this wonderful effect. I will venture to say that you might read the part spoken by this fortunate performer to a very poor man of the most jovial dis- position within five minutes of his hearing that he had been left a large legacy ; you might read it to a young barrister with a real brief before him, endorsed to him ; you might place it before a working London curate within an hour of his appoint- ment to a valuable rectory ; the Pope might read it the day after 1 849 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 35 he gets back to Rome in safety — I do not believe one soul amongst them would be able to force a laugh at any one point contained in it, and yet the whole room, I am told, shook with the sound of laughter. I say again he must have looked his fun — it must have been his manner. To tell farmers that they may hope to compete with milder climates because the electric light had been invented — that they had only to get a sun of 10-acre or 100-acre power — is, I admit, a sort of fun ; but it is rather akin to that of the school- boy who recommended chilblain ointment to the legless Green- wich pensioner. Old Tarpaulin cursed his impudence, but did not laugh. Then he talked of Noah's system of agriculture and coprolites ; even those who believed that the ark was illuminated by a stuff called copro-light laughed, and perhaps not more foolishly than those who understood him and did the same thing ; but surely this must have been the effect of the wine, or some- thing in his style of acting. The idea was hardly brilliant enough in itself to have so excited an audience, naturally in no risible mood. At last I found a point for the effect of which I can in some degree account. He ridiculed the Sanitary Commission, and fired a sneer at certain new buildings recommended by that commission as necessary accompaniments to labourers' cottages. The funny man called them ' sentry-boxes.' I can quite account for the triumph of this clever sally. An electric light of 100-acre power, a real living Noachian lizard, would hardly be greater curiosities than these ' sentry-boxes ' were till the last few years in many of our villages, and are still in some of them. The Christmas pantomimes always consider new inventions as fair game for caricature. We have a story current here, which runs thus : — Two well-to-do yeomen were riding through a cer- tain village in which the proprietor has thought fit to erect as many of these ' sentry-boxes ' as appeared to him were wanted. The friends pulled up their horses to look at the bricklayers at their novel work. One then thus spoke to the other — ' I tell you what it is, J — ■ — ; they will be giving them horses to ride to work on next.' What trousers and petticoats were to the New Zealanders, when the first missionaries introduced those novelties >) 2 36 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Jan. I these new buildings, introduced, as it would appear, by the Sanitary Commission, are to the audience at the Blandford agricultural diversions. Something too good — decency run mad. Electric light for ripening the crops ! Coprolite manure! s for the labourers ! What next ? No wonder they laughed at the moralmaniaof the Sanitary Commission ; and yet, strange to say, they had that very day given coats to labourers they thought worthy of honour ; really treated them as if they were men as capable of decent ideas as themselves. With the excep- tion of his jokes directed to yourself, Sir, at the conclusion of his speech, I really cannot find one other point of attraction, however faint, and yet he left the stage followed by ' prolonged applause ! ' That he is an able public actor I at once admit — that he has great weight with a Dorset audience no one can deny ; but why he should go out of his way only to prove with how small a measure of wit he can convulse his admirers I cannot under- stand ; nor can I understand an able and clever man, as he is, taking a time like the present to ridicule the Sanitary Commis- sion —to make statements calculated to check emigration. It is true I have lately seen it gravely asserted in a report, the handi- work of one of our county sages, ' that holes and chinks in a very bad cottage floor in a measure cause wholesome ventilation, and correct what otherwise would be objectionable in a low roof going off at an acute angle from the flooring.' It is true that this part of England is notorious for the filth of its parish houses, the utter absence of decency in the way the poor are sheltered, the utter absence of justice in the terms on which they are employed. Most of the gentlemen of this county with whom I have spoken lament these things, and are now doing much to remedy them. All attempts to deny them have utterly failed. Surely, then, the policy and the good taste are equally question- able which would take the occasion of a meeting for the encou- ragement of good labourers to turn into ridicule the attempts of scientific men to improve the agriculture of the county, or the attempts of a legal commission to compel common decency to be observed towards the poor, and to give them power themselves to be decent, or of philanthropic men to encourage emigration. 1849 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 37 It is not that danger is feared on the passage for the emigrants ; it is not that crowding on the voyage is deprecated ; it is not that fears are felt lest the poor creatures should be worse off there than they are here — it is none of these things which has lately made the subject of emigration unpopular amongst the class Mr. Bankes addressed ; no, but it is feared that the price of labour may be raised in this part of the country ; it is feared lest gs. a week shepherds, with optional (?) grists, should be tempted to seek the 30^. a week and good food and lodging of Australia ; it is feared lest the strong boys (?) of eighteen and nineteen, paid at ic*/. a day, should be tempted to seek a free passage to get 14s. a week, and really eat meat. After Hilton filth and fever to talk of danger and crowding and neglect is even too absurd for any of the supporters of that good old state of things — innocent of ' sentry-boxes.' One thing, Sir, appears to me most clear — that unless the laughter which greeted this performance, and the applause which followed it, were the result of a species of postprandial hysteria, the audience must be as far wanting in that common gift of appreciation of what is either witty or just, as the actor was in knowledge of what was fitting in a man of his calibre, address- ing a company assembled for the purpose they were. There was a deal of talk and banter about ' the good time which is coming ' : in my poor judgment, one of the first symptoms of that good time will be when large landed proprietors and county members use these public occasions of meeting their tenantry and constituents, not to make them laugh at poor jokes and sneers at things beyond their compre- hension — not to win their cheers by shots fired at commissions or individuals who are trying to promote common decency, and the common use of well proved means of preserving health — not to flatter them in their old prejudices and ignorance, but to tell them plain and profitable truths, however unpalatable ; to encourage them to take advantage of modern improvements ; to warn them against adhering to those semi-barbarous customs which have made the general condition of the class they meet to reward a byword of reproach. I know no man who could do this better than my worthy friend Mr. Bankes. He, with 33 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Dec. 26 myself, is doubtless well acquainted with certain scarce- traditionary proceedings in Corfe churchyard ; he therefore, I am sure, could have borne a powerful testimony on the ' sentry- box ' question ; he knows, even better than myself, that there needs no encouragement to be given to an anti-emigration spirit ; he knows, as well as any of us, that there is a class who take his banter for real argument, and are glad to make his jokes sponsors for their own folly. I still — I admit I am very sanguine in disposition — shall hope to see the good time come when in him, my old public opponent, I shall see an equally warm, a far more clever, and a far more efficient agitator than myself in that cause which seeks only that men of that class by whose labour our property has been created shall be treated fairly, decently, and kindly. Mr. Osborne, in the following letter, lifts the veil hanging over the private life of the agricultural labourer. In a recent work M. Zola has drawn a picture of the French peasant, but his brush is used with a heavier hand. Though charged with agrarian treason, S. G. O. always wrote as a gentleman to gentlemen, and he never lost the hearty sympathy that led him to devote his whole life to the work of exposing the ills and oppressions suffered by the agricultural labourer. December 26, 1849. The statement lately made at Sturminster with regard to the amount of crime in the county of Dorset, gives but a partial view of the real amount of crime which exists. The gaol re- turns prove what crime has been detected ; the detections in this county, I am satisfied, do not represent more than one-fourth ot the crime actually perpetrated. I am prepared to assert, also, that of crimes committed, the authors of which are discovered, a very large proportion are allowed to go unnoticed, i.e. unpro- secuted. The chief sufferers by the criminal disposition of the peasantry are farmers ; the most common crimes being fuel stealing, barn robbing, sheep and poultry stealing. A man whom I think very likely to be an excellent judge on the matter has assured me that nearly as much fuel in some districts is stolen as bought. About two years since, on passing through some large new enclosures, I saw the young ' quickset ' protected by a i8 4 9 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 39 wattle fencing, which was coloured with red or yellow ochre. I asked the tenant what that was for ; his reply was, ' that it might stain the women's dresses who came to steal it.' As to sheep and lamb stealing, I speak within bounds when I say that for years past not less than sixty or seventy sheep have been annually stolen ; and this in so daring a manner as to prove to me the thieves must be well known in their several localities. The convictions for this crime have not been I per cent, for the numbers known to have occurred. Officers have, within this year, been had down specially from London, have lived for weeks in disguise amongst the parties more than suspected, but have failed to get any evidence on which they could arrest ; they tell me ' that these crimes are so lightly regarded amongst the peasantry, that no money will tempt them to give any infor- mation.' In one case, where some eight or nine sheep were taken from one fold in one night, one person was known to possess information which could have led to a conviction of the parties. She was of the poorest poor ; of known bad character. A free passage to Australia was offered her, with advantages which would have set her above want for life. She need not have appeared at all in the matter in public. My informant told me she refused all offers with this only reply, ' I am not going to stop my neighbours getting food.' So many have been the robberies of fowls and ducks, that many persons who once made a good profit by them have altogether given up keeping them. There are occasional committals and convictions for these crimes, but they are, however, few indeed compared only with the number of handbills offering rewards for their discovery. A farmer may readily detect a loss from his fold or poultry yard ; it is not so easy to discover all of which he is robbed from his barns and granary : this work is done in general by small quantities at a time ; but, if I can believe two working millers in different parts of the county, a very large amount of grain is annually stolen ; grists brought to the mills bear with them plain evidence that they consist of grain taken from different growths, of different quality, and often of very different kinds. There are some convictions for grain stealing, but in general these are where a large amount — a bushel or two— has been 40 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 26 taken at a time ; the robbery of the barn and manger in detail is rarely, if discovered, prosecuted to conviction. Poaching, wherever there is a field for it, is very common, and on the whole very often detected, and when detected a conviction generally follows. It is not often that it is accompanied with any dispo- sition to violence ; but there have been two cases within my own knowledge of savage attacks on keepers. In one case a sergeant of the London police, with an agent, was brought down, and the parties were all taken and convicted ; in another case, where a keeper was brutally attacked and beaten, if I am not misinformed, 100/. reward was offered. I have no doubt in my own mind there were many who could have obtained that re- ward who were living a life of wretched want ; not one, however, would come forward to give evidence. Assaults and robberies of the person, burglaries, and such like serious crimes are rare, as detected in the case of our own peasantry. My own belief is, that the crimes of this nature which are committed are for the most part the work of rogues on the tramp — a class with which our towns and villages are sadly infested ; nor do I think our peasantry much given to that spirit of contention which breeds assaults upon each other, though, of course, there are yearly some convictions for such crimes. Let me now speak of the general moral character of our people. My greatest opponent will not, I think, contradict me when I say, that for the most part the ceremony of marriage is not thought of until grounds exist for the preparation of baby linen. I always think Portland is unfairly dealt with in this matter ; what is said to be an ancient custom there is at least a very general habit in the rest of the country. There is a great deal of bastardy ; I do not know whether it is on the increase, nor do I think it important to inquire, as it is well known to many that there now exists a class of ' female practitioners,' whose practice and whose charges are so well understood, that, as an emigrant observed to me, ' It was now the girl's own fault if she got into trouble by having a child.' These ' cunning women ' are a great and growing curse to the country. As yet, all efforts to get evidence which could bring a legal charge home 1 849 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 41 against them, in the provinces, has failed, although I know no little effort has been made to do so. I need hardly add, that the promiscuous way in which all ages, and sexes, and relationships pig together in the sleeping rooms of crowded villages leads but too often to suspicion, if not proof, of crimes better left to be inferred than described. The cases of incendiarism which have occurred of late years have been few, though there have been some symptoms lately of a disposition to display discontent by this means. It has been given in evidence by one of our local authorities in these matters, that a bushel of wheat and a shilling is the customary wages of the county. When corn is low I admit that this is very near the scale adopted ; though even then I have found that whilst the market returns are made the standard of value of corn quoad wages, the tailings sold to the men as part of wages, are sold at a higher average ; when corn is high no such scale is adhered to. I have before me evidence as far back as 1795 that the Dorset wages were then from 6s. to js. a week. In the year 1822 a Committee of the House of Commons sat upon the subject of labourers' wages ; in their report tables are given of the wages in various counties ; I find Dorset alone paying no higher than ys., going as low as 6s. I shall be told that, let this be the case, crime was not then as common as it now is. I assert the contrary to be the fact ; I assert that from the year 1790 to the year 1829 there was more real crime than now exists, though of a different character ; it was crime against the Crown, and against a party whose rights were then as little esteemed — the owner of the rights of Cranbourn Chase. At times more than 18,000 deer ran wild on the Chase, to the great annoyance of all the border proprietors, but to the great enjoy- ment and pecuniary profit of the peasantry. Aged persons in very many villages have confessed to me that they then could always have meat ; ' the masters ' cared little how many deer they stole ; nay, some made no objection to a haunch found under the kitchen table. The disfranchisement of the Chase, in 1830, took not less than the value of is. a week from the receipts of the labouring class in very many villages. Smuggling was, again, a very large 42 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 26 source of emolument to the peasantry. One of the oldest and best informed smugglers of his day is lately gone to his rest. From what he again and again told me, I am satisfied that for very many years up to perhaps thirty years ago, smuggling gave a very large amount of employment to the peasantry of this county, and, directly and indirectly, put a great deal of money in their way. The measures taken to protect the coast cut away this source of gain. Again, until the passing of the Poor Law, the low wages were only an admitted part of a man's lawful earnings ; bread allowances, &c, from the poor, the church, and way rates made them up to the point which gave — existence. Until within these few years very many thousands of pounds were expended annually, in the thread button trade, from Bland- ford alone ; large sums in some other of the county towns ; the women and children made large earnings at this work. This source of income is almost altogether gone, the earnings at it scarce pay the poor return of is. 6d. for the best workers' entire week's work. In addition, Sir, to the loss to the peasant of aids, legal and illegal, to his wages, the temptation to commit crime has of late years doubled at his door. Schools for moral contamination exist unchecked in numbers, and wholly uncontrolled, in the beershops, which abound in every locality. The rise of the tenant class has drawn so broad a line between them and their labourers, that they have little, if any, control over their move- ments when not actually at work. So crowded and so wretched had the old dwellings become, that the heads of a family, if not glad themselves to get anywhere of an evening where there was warmth and comfort, were too glad to rid the one close living room of the cottage of its young adult members. The beershop has its good fire, its comfortable settle ; it has just the company a peasant in these district likes — i.e. those only whose sufferings and feelings are as his own. It is usually kept by a man whose position in life makes his presence anything but a restraint on his customers. Whether these houses are or are not licensed to sell beer on the premises, it is notorious they nearly all do so ; and, under one name or another, there are very few which do not sell spirits ; they keep what hours they like, without respect 1849 THE DORSETSHIRE POOR 43 of days ; the amount of customers which frequent them is very- great. These are the council chambers in which rural crime is concocted, as they are the marts in which the result of crime finds its ready market. I will not soil my paper again by de- scribing in detail what I know to be the immoral practices carried on in these houses ; I did it once for all in your columns not very long since. The man who deals unlazvfully in an article so often abused as beer will not be particular as to the way he attracts customers. Some are ' safe houses ' — i.e., anything may be talked, planned, and brought to them ; others are ' women jerrys,' offering another species of attraction. This is all just as well known to the Excise and the magistrates as it is to the clergy, who have to contend against its consequences. The justices say they can do nothing unless the Excise will inform ; the Excise say they cannot get information — the real fact being they get no encouragement from head-quarters to do so ; parish constables will do nothing. Wages, Sir, having, then, continued almost stationary, except when high prices having risen them a little still left the labourer no better off; auxiliary assistance to them, by fair or foul means, of old-established character, having failed ; pleasant hedge taverns, congenial company, and sin made easy therein, being established far and wide, in as great a number as the mar- ket of the idle and profligate causes a demand for ; are we to wonder that crime has taken that gaol providing form which is now complained of? that pauperism is on the increase? and that paupers do become more and more unruly ? The foul misery of the peasant's home in many a village drives him to the ill-conducted beershop. He there hears each man's trials discussed ; he tells his own ; the character of the different masters, the stacks they possess, the pleasures they follow, the wages they pay, and in what they pay them, — these are the common topics of a beershop evening. Then follow stones of the 'justice meeting ' and the gaol ; the cleverness of the crimi- nals' pet attorney is eulogised, and the fare and treatment of the prison compared with home fare and union-house discipline. By degrees the warm fire and the warmed ale begin to tell, and the more adventurous spirits then relate their tales of successful 44 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 26, 1849 pillage ; show how they get the money with which they pay for their drink. According as there may be any not quite 'safe' customer present, will their conversation stop here. If all is 'safe,' where fowls or ducks might be taken, and who would buy them — or where a sheep would not be missed, and how it could be disposed of— will then be told. Plans are laid over beer paid for from dishonest earnings to obtain more money for more beer at the same moral cost. We are told that the rewards given to the labourers at the annual political gatherings are given as acknowledgments of their worth, not as any remuneration for it. Why is it that re- wards are never given to skilful bricklayers, carpenters, harness makers, &c. ? Why is it that we have no society to reward other servants than farm servants? Is not this system of the nature of an admission that long service in farm service is a proof of more than ordinary endurance ? Is not the stimulating of the peasant's skill in this special manner indicative of a belief on our part that neither the wages we pay, nor attachment to our service, nor hope of bettering his condition, will, unaided, call forth the full exercise of that skill ? Far be it from me to wish to check the distribution of coats, cloaks, money, or framed testimonials amongst our labourers ; if those rewarded really deserve what is said of them, the acknowledgment of their worth certainly is not excessive ; but I could wish to see the general conduct of the year a little more consistent with the puffing and rewarding which annually greets allusions to our ' worthy peasantry.' Oh, how I wish the labourer's fair treatment was in some way, only for a year or two, bound up with the success of fox-hunting. Nearly twenty years later the condition of Dorsetshire had but slightly improved. Lord Shaftesbury wrote to the 'Times' painting the condition of the agricultural poor of the county in colours considered by S. G. O. as too rosy. That two such men as Lord Shaftesbury and S. G. O. should be brought into collision on matters of fact, is an example of the truth of the statements made by the latter many years before as to the difficulty of ascertaining the truth on any subject. 45 CHAPTER II. FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. It is necessary to insert the following letter from Mr. Paul Foskett, an ardent Protectionist, in order to explain the letter from S. G. O. in reply. The Corn Laws, abolished in 1S46, still found many avowed friends. To the Editor of the ' Morning Herald' Durham House, Brighton : September 19, 1851. I have read with much pain some remarks in your leading article of this day on the speech recently delivered in Bucking- hamshire by Mr. Disraeli. It is right that your readers should know that there are men who do not ' look upon the restoration of Protection as a distant remedy ' for evils of daily increasing and insupportable magnitude. It shall not be supposed that, because men who are accus- tomed to mere Parliamentary ' hide and seek ' appear unwilling to lead to victory the advocates of a cause of justice, that, therefore, such a course must indefinitely be postponed. No, Sir, the British people will yet have leaders to vindicate the cause of truth, and to procure for it a triumphant issue. We are determined to regain for every British interest full and effectual protection from foreign competition. This is no idle assertion. We have means at our command legally and constitutionally to accomplish this resolve — means with which you will shortly be made acquainted. A suffering and oppressed people have, in the eleventh hour, learnt a lesson by which they can profit ; and it is not in the power of either eloquent yet time-serving ambiguity, Parlia- mentary chicanery, or political cowardice, to betray them a third time. 46 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 23 I make no apology for requesting the immediate publication of a letter which is, perhaps, not precisely in accordance with your views. You are not implicated in any way. I desire the responsibility to rest solely with myself. I remain, Sir, Your obedient Servant, Paul Foskett. The Threat of Paul Foskett. Stubble Minster : September 23, 1851. I am not habitually a nervous man, but the letter of ' Paul Foskett,' of Durham House, has painfully affected me. It is the letter of a man marked out for a ' leader.' It savours of all the courage of the British lion ; there is no disguise about it. I wish I knew Paul ; I have, in common with Mrs. Baskett, a love of great men. Every line of this letter, already I have no doubt cut out for framing by the Foskett family, breathes a spirit of eloquent defiance ; future Fosketts will point to it as it hangs beneath a picture of Richmond, and say, ' The Goodwood Duke could say strong things, but what did he ever say equal in the sublimity of protective heroism to this ? ' Oh for the key of Foskett's desk, or one glimpse into the overboiling crater of his great mind ! Legally and constitutionally is the great resolve to which this great man is privy to be accomplished. Shortly shall we all know the means. Twice have a suffering and oppressed people been betrayed, but there is now an end to treason. Protective truth is to rise phcenix-like from the ashes of Protec- tionist deceit. Then, observe the modesty of this truly great man. He makes no apology for asking the immediate publication of his cheering news. Let me tell him, cruel as he appears in keeping us one moment in suspense, he would have been false to his country had he not at once in some degree prepared us for the astounding event he knows to be so very near. It was wise, per- haps, to wait to see the egg was not an addled one, but there would have been no excuse if in the eleventh hour of assured incubation he had still held his peace. It can be no marc's nest ; no, his is 1851 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 47 a glorious cackle or hiss ; there is nothing of the neigh in it. I wish, however, he had told us where the suffering and oppressed people are. The good folks of Australia are doubtless gaping for the golden food which has so suddenly sprung up at their feet. Paul Foskett, of Durham House, has the manna all ready, but we are left in the dark as to where it is to fall ; where and for whom it is to be dispersed is a matter still hidden within the Foskett breast. Alas ! I fear it will not fall in any of the purely rural districts. He is the herald to a suffering and oppressed people. Where are they in England at this moment ? Where are the masses so suffering from want of work, food, clothing, that they are driven to the madness of asking for their bread to be less cheap ? The scarcity of labour in the district from which I write is an undisputed fact ; not a man is to be got for money — at least, a man whose work is worth the smallest coin. Bread at A,\d. a loaf, of most excellent quality ; articles of clothing very cheap ; the wages cannot fall lower, for the demand for labour tends directly the other way ; they have not fallen on an average is. 6d. per week, and I have seen bread range in the last ten years from is. to jd. the loaf. The rates are falling fast ; I pay 6d. where I used to pay gd. to is. ; the boards of guardians have scarcely anything to do. Hundreds of acres are being yearly broken up for cultivation as arable. Locomotive steam engines are for ever seen at work in the yards of tenant-farmers ; the tall chimneys of fixed engines are getting very common. So far from farms being hard to let, I know Sir John Shortstubble, a great friend of my own and a very large proprietor, is pestered daily by would-be tenants ; and when he ventured to give a few weed-growing occupiers, of the very old school, notice to quit, he was at once accused as a hard-hearted man who did not care about ruining his neighbour. I speak within my own knowledge of one of his tenants, whose land was in a condition which would have puzzled Foskett to say how, even with wheat at 1 8/. a load, he could have paid his rent, who now is very sore, because he is to be saved, against his will, from the ruinous effect of free trade ; gladly would he still grow couch and thistles at the old rent. 4 S THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 5 Do tell us, dear Foskett, where the seat of this disease is, for which this mysterious all-healing medicine is still under cork. The thing to be cured is, as yet, as great a mystery as the means of cure. Is the Durham House Revalenta some happy discovery of the simple Foskett brain, and as yet from some dire necessity skull-bound ? No, he says — zve ; he speaks as of Foskett and Co. Derby, Richmond, Disraeli are clearly not of the firm. Where are the other partners ? Let him at least take into his confidence Arabica Du Barry, Ointment Holloway, and Pillulus Cockle ; the hour in which the shell is broken must come : then, even a Foskett will have enough to do to wield the mighty instrument which is to do all he promises ; he will want such colleagues to trumpet with practised pens its successes ; they will tell us who suffered, who took the dose, who were cured, who gratefully wrote to Durham House for more of the true, all-protective, anti-importation, price-giving drops. Your obedient Servant, Barnabas Baskett. April 5, 1852. Really, Sir, it is time that Lord Derby should tell the country in plain terms what is to be the policy of his Government. He was raised to the political position which gave him the offer of the State reins, when Lord John's hand dropped them, by the Protectionist party. With no small amount of special pleading did he at once evade any clear declaration, whether his was, or was not, to be a Protectionist Government. He said he could not reverse the present policy without the general concurrence of the community ; certainly he could not make the attempt with any small majority in the House of Commons. He plainly declared that as soon as certain necessary measures were got through he would dissolve Parliament. I am afraid this gallant, able, and bold man is, after all, about to show himself tainted with but too common official duplicity. His late fencing with the Duke of Newcastle has already done him much injury. As to ' Protection,' no one for one moment doubts but that he has thrown that altogether overboard, and yet he has not hitherto found courage to say so. 1852 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 49 The real truth is, the Ministry is to fight simply as the ' Con- servative Government.' It is to be a Government open to conviction on every measure calculated to secure the good of every class, &c, with no intention of offending any large class by any unpopular measure, &c. Allow me, Sir, here to quote from a document now before me, signed by that old stager, Mr. Bankes, and his two Pro- tectionist (?) colleagues : — ' A Government is now formed, having a nobleman of acknowledged talent and integrity at its head, whose avowed desire to place all classes in the country on a footing equally prosperous is accompanied by the announcement that he will attain this object by such means as shall occasion neither strife nor contention, and, above all, which shall secure to the humbler classes every comfort that is now within their reach.' This is the declaration of the Right Hon. the Judge- Advocate, endorsed by, I am sure, his humbled followers — to whom ? Why, to the freeholders of the county of Dorset, who have been quite nauseated of late years by the unblushing way in which the strength of what is called ' Protectionist principle ' has been nurtured by these very men. The tenant farmers have been sedulously taught to hate the Manchester and loom school ; they have been flattered, toadied, humbugged to their very hearts' content, with the fine prospect of a js. duty ' when we once get Stanley in.' If they are not now utterly disgusted they are more easily gulled than even I ever believed. All Manchester could not have produced a more glaring pattern of political evasion, for a present purpose, of all past profession. Were Lord G. Bentinck alive it would have turned his honest heart with disgust. I know, Sir, that unhappy class, the tenant farmers, well ; often do I hear from their lips, ' You are right ; we are hum- bugged.' But still do I see them return to drink at the same stream. Three or four lead a market. There are many ways of managing those three or four. The whip and the sop are alternately used ; and I must say hitherto with great effect. I have now, however, some hope the farce is nearly played out ; it has of late been too coarsely acted even for a market audience. vol. 1. E 50 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. April 20 Agricultural dinners have been at a discount ; the sense of the auditory outgrew that of the orators. It may be said now, on such occasions, of the speakers, in the words of Benjamin Disraeli, in his ' Life of Bentinck ' (page 289), when speaking of the efforts of the same gemis in the House of Commons, ' The House would not listen to, and the reporters would not re- cord, these prim philippics, elaborately prepared and precisely delivered, with all the solemn conceit of a Quarter Sessions pedant' April 20, 1852. Will you allow me to call your attention to some facts and figures, which seem to me in danger of being overlooked in the Free Trade controversy ? The facts I will adduce shall be patent to any and every ordinary observer of things around him. My figures are no mere dry numerals, no collection of statistical enigmas, such as the Quarter Sessions pedants of Disraeli gather from the Bond Street primer, to astonish and edify the bored and gaping audience of a rural meeting. My figures are ani- mate, they are moving, bieathing units ; you can feel their pulse ; handle them as they handle beasts, they will bear it, and yet prove my story. Peers, baronets, squires, rectors, curates, tenant-farmers, labourers, stand forth ; let us look at you ; we are told free trade has ruined you — is it so ? I pen these lines in Dorsetshire, the very land of ' Coverleys ; ' we possess, I believe, almost the sole remaining pattern ' Squire ; ' we have owners of property of every rank ; we call our county agricultural to the very backbone ; hitherto many have dreamt that for a real, living freetrader to hold any position of respectability among us — to walk undespised — would be as likely as the enlistment of a Quaker in the Guards. Of the peers, baronets, squires, in Dorset, who can show me one ruined by free trade ? Will they deny that their rents are paid punctually, their land generally well farmed ? Will they hesitate to challenge all England to show a tenantry in the more general possession of every comfort of their class ? I have means of knowing well the condition of very many Dorset estates. I cannot find that even the most popular squires have 1852 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 51 been compelled to sacrifice rent on the altar of free trade ; they have mostly found it sufficient to return some 10 per cent, not to reduce their rental to that amount. This and civil speeches, expressed hopes of better times, and a regular hunting of the county, has hitherto answered the purpose of the owning interest. It is true some few have fairly reduced their rents and readjusted the agreements with their tenants ; but, as I find in these cases that no popularity has been won over those who don't readjust, but who court esteem by donations and civil talk, I can't think the pressure has ever reached a ruin point. Let any man get on his horse and ride over the different estates of our great holders,— will he see evidence that free trade has ruined agriculture ? On the contrary, in every direction he will see large sums of money being expended on farm buildings on a scale and of a construction at once proving that the owners of property, however they may talk despair, do not act it. Within an area of twenty miles round where I now write, I will venture to say more money has been expended within these six years in building new farm premises and improving existing buildings than was spent in forty years previous to the repeal of the corn laws. Ten years ago I was told there was not a steam-engine in Dorsetshire. I believe this was not quite the fact. Within the area I have spoken of above I now know myself of five in con- nection with farm homesteads. As to land going out of cultiva- tion, why, Sir, there will very soon scarcely be left a yard of our famed downs. Year by year I have known hundreds of acres broken up ; I never saw more activity displayed in this direction than at this very moment ; I can find scarce one instance of land which has been so broken up being allowed to return again to mere pasture. Is the price of land in the market any criterion of the prosperity of agriculture ? I only know of one estate which has been sold in these parts of late, and I defy all denial of the fact that it brought a very J ligJi fancy price. But, I may be told, that with all this, the owners of land are much pinched, and have reduced their establishments and personal expenses. I do not believe it ; I cannot detect a symptom of it ; on the contrary, nearly all of them add the 52 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. April 20 luxury of high, fancy, amateur farming to their other costly sources of enjoyment. The assessed tax returns will prove no diminution in the enjoyments of our landowners ; they arc as hospitable and happy as they ever were. I shall be told the Church has suffered ; that rectors, holders of commuted tithe, are suffering: it is quite true they are receiving less income than formerly, and, if any men have a right to get up a growl, they have ; but I cannot, as a body, hear them complain ; I know many of them feel a gain in the present state of things. The pressing calls on their charity from the sufferings of their people are as nothing to what they used to be. In very many respects housekeeping expenses are lowered ; and they see daily the blessing of no longer having to wrangle for their property with their parishioners. Were the clergy (owners of tithe) polled by ballot throughout the land, I believe there would be ten to one of white balls in favour of free trade, even though they may be in some degree sufferers. I need hardly say how much further the ioo/. of the curate now goes than it used to do. I have it on the authority of one who has every opportunity of knowing the fact, that the claims on the clergy, in the shape of religious societies, and church and school building, never were at any time more numerous ; they never were more cheerfully and liberally met. My next figure is that sturdy, well-dressed, healthy, respect- able-looking man, of that species which fills our weekly markets —the tenant-farmer. It is so stoutly asserted of this very stout class that they are altogether ruined, that it requires great moral courage to deny the fact. I do, however, altogether deny it. An extensive owner of land trades with it ; he lets it as he best may ; he is as much a trader in occupations as a liveryman is in horse-hire. When the liveryman can't get customers he must give up his trade ; so long as he can get them he gets the best hire he can out of them, and makes more or less profit, as there is more or less disposition in the public to ride and drive. When he finds a steady pressure on the stable for horses, he calls it a good season. He would then laugh at you if you told him the hirers of horses were all ruined. I defy denial of the fact that farms will let at this moment in this county at as good 1852 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 53 a rent, and to as good tenants, as they ever did ; with the exception of cases in which much game is preserved, I believe few agents or landlords ever knew a greater demand for farms, or a better class of candidates. On what reasoning can we for one moment entertain the supposition that there is one particular class of tradesmen, they who deal in the seed of wheat, oats, and barley, in sheep and bullocks, who are ever anxious to enter a business they declare to be ruinous ? I can understand an inn on the great northern road remaining vacant, now the posting and coaching are transferred to the rail. I could easily imagine the man to be mad who took the great inn at Hartford Bridge to carry on a posting and coaching business. But I cannot understand why no farm remains vacant, if farming under free trade is ruinous. Now, I do happen to know that farms in this county have been lately let at an increased rental to existing tenants, and I fully believe the credit of the said tenants to be as good as ever at their banker's, and their friends treat them as sane. That there are men unfortunate as farmers is only to be expected, for what trade or profession is there in which all can command success ? but that fewer farmers fail than any other class of tradesmen I hold to be a fact as honourable to them as a class as it is declaratory of the wholesome nature of farming business. There is one curious fact relative to this figure — the farmer : that the chief complainers of the ' ruin ' are just those who, for years, have cried ' wolf as they have chased the fox. It is consolatory to hear a good-humoured lot of well-mounted men talking year by year of their ruin, and yet to find that they are the first and most constant in the field. Long may they be so, for so long shall I believe their ruin is a mere market phantom — the crafty creation of those who, for political purposes, like to keep up the cry. Now, John Styles, stand forth, honest ploughman, with horned hand and good-humoured red face : — has cheap bread been thy ruin ? You may well laugh ; you and Susan and the children never were so well off ; and you knozv the reason why. The wages have in some instances fallen since 1846, but in most cases the demand for labour, from the improved system of 54 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 20 farming and the amount of additional land brought under the plough, has kept them up. Where even only 6s. a week is received, the labourer is still better off now than I ever knew him. There is not a thing he eats or wears he cannot get at a less price. At the boards of guardians the work is infinitely less than it used to be ; the rates have much decreased. Take the children at school, or the congregations at their places of worship, and who is there who will deny that, in our generation, we never knew the poor so well, so respectably clad ? The rent of their cottages, the contributions to their clubs, are now scarcely ever in arrear. For my own part, I can say, after more than twenty years' active interest in their condition, I never saw them so comfortable as I have known them to be the last five years. That which is the result of my own observation is corroborated to me by their own evidence, cheerfully given me. They have no need now to purchase dirty foul ' tailings ' at 6s. the bushel. They do not take it as a favour to buy the meat of animals which die in the field at 4^. the pound. They can get good cheap bread, enough of it, and now and then can buy a bit of real butcher's meat. I know you will be told this is all untrue ; that they prefer dear bread and higher wages, &c. I should like this test applied :■ — Let a day be appointed on which every man who is for cheap bread shall give himself a holiday, i.e. lose the day's wages. I doubt whether a hundred men would go to work in Dorset on that day. A mechanic puts it to me thus : — ' You should not talk only of your labourers. Look at me and my class. If I have a sick wife, or crippled child, it is in vain for me to go to the board for relief, or even for the doctor ; — look, then, at what cheap food and clothing are to us folk, who have to find all out of our earnings. We gain tenfold more than the labourer.' He is right ; and since the cheap loaf the building societies of this class have thriven, and hundreds of the members, year by year, are becoming freeholders. Once more — a fact, not a figure. Will any auctioneer deny that farming implements and farm stock are, and have been for some time, fetching a price astonishing under any circumstances, but almost miraculous in the days of ruin ? 1852 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 55 For the present, Sir, I have done. I will only express my firm conviction, on the above hastily sketched data and an abundance more of which I am possessed, that the country will not give up one hair of free trade in food, that the Protectionists themselves know it, and have not the least intention of further exposing themselves by making the attempt. Lord Derby is for the time being their ' idol,' Cobdcn their ' evil one.' They affect an affection for the former to disguise their hate of the latter. The chief worshippers are those who are intoxicated with the idea of a Quarter Sessions Ministry ; it is a tribute to their order. They just at present can command the voices and some of the votes of their market Janissaries. The said Janissaries are, however, well aware they have been •used, not honoured, in the service. Six months hence, when Protection will be corrupt in the tomb, there will be a just cry for an adjustment of rent — I mean just as regards those land- lords who have taught their tenantry the ruin cry. I think I know what will be the upshot of that demand. Why take the farm, why hold it, if you are losing ? I asked lately the best judge in this county whether we were likely to have many appeals against the income-tax from tenants who could swear their profits had not realised their rents ; he smiled at my ignorance. April 26, 1852. There are those who think that Lord Derby is postponing the dissolution of Parliament — his appeal to the intelligence of the country — in order that the party disposed to support him may gain strength. I am one of those who believe his policy to be simply this, — he wishes to see the cause of Protection die its natural death before his supporters, the so-called Protectionists, appear on the hustings. Protection is very sick indeed ; like the end of a rushlight, there will be some wavering, some sputtering — a hiss or two, then quiet, a nasty smell, and all will be over. But, Sir, there is some danger in this policy. Already in some counties cool-headed men begin to regard the days of the coming strife with apprehension. It cannot be denied but that the working classes of this country are determined the bread tax 56 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. April 26 shall never be again imposed. We have had many great agitating questions, but they were such as appealed to the classes who live on bread, meat, wine, and beer. They were questions affecting men's political feelings, coming home to the powers of mind which deal with objects of mental ambition, which touched on hereditary or class prejudices. The boundary of the agita- tion was as to its depth— to the men who could just spell a political tract, or who had a taste for democratic oratory. Men who had only leisure for three operations — working, feeding, sleeping — took no real interest in such questions ; they might lend a hand in a disturbance, but it was from the love of mis- chief or for hire. The cheap bread question comes home to every labouring man, to every wife, to every child who can remember the slices cut when the loaf cost \od., and can compare them with its present slice. Not only is there a voice, at least three times a day, speaking to the working man in every syllable of his every meal, telling him how free trade has blessed him, but he sees it in his furniture, in the new clock, the extra chair, the extra saucepan or fryingpan. Nay, he folds the truth to him at night ; he wraps his children in it — it speaks from the lately purchased blankets. He and they carry it to God's worship with them, in new and good clothing. Is it wise, Sir, to keep these millions talking and thinking of the most remote chance of their being robbed of this ever speaking blessing? Are there any men more capable of judging accurately of the prosperity of the landowner and the farmer, the capability of land, than the agricultural labourers ? Con- versant with the business which forms their life's toil, they are close observers of their employers. They are quick to mark any symptom of ruin as they are to note every proof of extrava- gance. None know better than they do that there is no one thing under heaven so generally beyond their reach as the hire of an acre of ground ; that nothing is so grudged them — for nothing is more coveted by those above them — than land, land to hire, by the very men who say to till land with a view to profit is now madness. These men are now witnesses of pre- paration for a struggle between two parties — one, a party which 1S52 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 57 fought its utmost to keep a tax on food, which when beaten in that fight has ever held the language of a furious determination at some future day to retrieve its defeat and again have food taxed ; the other party that which, whatever its former opinions, has now come to the conviction that free trade has been a general blessing, and, therefore, that it shall be maintained. The party which would tax the poor man's loaf has now a man as Minister whom it regards as their great champion — a man who, unruly and unruled, has failed to hold an abiding place in any one pure political party. He lent himself to their purpose ; brought eloquence, a great name, and exaggerated zeal to their selfish cause ; they paid his price, gave him all an English party can give of hero-worship, lifted him to the position which placed the Government in his hands. Lord Derby is reputed to be a man of great courage, but even he shrinks from a contest with the defenders of cheap bread. For once the people uplift a banner on which the boldest Minister who ever breathed dares not to lay a finger. It has been their special lot to earn bread, not to inherit it — to give the sweat of their brow as its purchase money ; they have not yet spoken out, for they don't believe the power exists which dares again to tax their food. But, let the contest come ; I know them well, and well I know they will speak with a voice, and act with an energy, which for quiet's sake the country might well be spared. I, Sir, am one of those openly accused of assisting to make this a class question. Where is the power which can make it anything else ? I will do all so poor an instrument can to pro- test against a tax which bears the hardest on the class whose lot, under every aspect, is ever one most hard. Tax luxury, tax extravagance, nay, tax the comforts of life, but let the very staff of existence at least go free. Is the contentment which has of late so blessed the poor man's home, founded on any sur- plusage of either ease or food ? Is there any margin to the labourer's page of life from which you may take a portion to aid any other class ? I can conceive no more debasing an occupa- tion than that of going from house to house, from village to village, to ask for votes for Protection to the owner and occupier of land at the cost of the man by whose muscles it is tilled. 5 S THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. April 26 With lips dewed with the squire's wine or the tenant's good strong ale, gently but bountifully dropped on good repasts of earth's best things, home grown and imported, on they go — the hired lawyer, the sturdy farmer, the Protectionist members — nay, shame ! sometimes the ministers of peace — passing cottage after cottage in which wine is never tasted but at the cost of medicine, i.e. sickness, in which meat is seldom known and bread hardly earned ; on they go, a merry, triumphing party, seeking aid in scenes of poverty to have the poor made still poorer, asking votes for Lord Derby's Government, power for the party who, to keep up rents, would keep down the condition of the class on whose patient toil all rent depends. God be thanked, very many of the great landowners, the ennobled and the untitled, are now on the poor man's side, and the poor know it. I say that to send the question for decision to the hustings is to provoke something little short of a revolution. The poor are loyal ; they will never believe it is the Queen's wish their food should again be taxed. But when masses are moved without justice, it is not a contest in which reason will rule ; when the movement enlists all of every age and sex of that class which is the least educated, who shall say where the contest shall end ? S. G. O. preceded Mr. Bright in his agitation for a free breakfast table. At the date of this letter tea was taxed at the rate of 2s. 2\d. per pound, and was gradually reduced, first to is., and finally, in June 1865, to 6d. per pound. The letter was alluded to in the House of Com- mons by Mr. Walpole, and was generally attributed to Mr. Haliburton. Pity the Teapot of the Poor. April 26, 1 86 1. We want to say a word for ourselves. We are only common labouring men. Our work takes us out in all weathers, and is done all day at no little cost in shoe-leather. Shoes are very dear. We eat hearty ; our children, like rooks after plough, are always looking for grub when the cupboard door is open ; loaves are very dear, and among us we consume many ; the potatoes were digged few, small, and the most of them rotten. The single ones of us may get a drop of beer a day ; many of us iS6i FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 59 scarce ever tastes it, and somehow we never knows beer to get cheaper, let barley be up or down ; brewer's clerk tell us it is the malt-tax. Butter and milk ain't within our reach at all. The masters all are down o' the mouth, and true enough they have had bad times lately ; we see no hope of better wages. As to a morsel of meat, it's seldom now we can see a bit of it, were it but to make a bit of broth for a wife down or ailing child. We don't ask the Parliament gentlemen for cheap sugar— we've learned to do without it ; our children don't ask for sweets. We live on bread ; we wipe it over with a bit of lard, when we can get it ; we wash it dozen with tea ; at all our meals this is our drink ; we tell no lie about it,— tea is a more to us than all the wines and beers is to the gentlefolk. We pays very dear for it ; shop folk tell us it is the tax upon it as makes it come so high. We has to buy it, little enough at a time ; it don't stand us in less than 4s. 6d. the pound. It ain't, neither, what it used to be ; it makes the water very dark, but such as we gets now, the women tells us, is half hedge-robbings. However, as poor folk, we don't expect the best of anything. We men work on it, wives wash on it, children gets bigger on it. When the bread was cheaper we miss'd the potatoes less. Bread is now so up that six days' sweat don't fill the three shelves ; two or three year agone it filled five of them, and there was a bit of bacon besides, and there were a good heap of potatoes in the back place. Folk do say that Parliament is going to give us paper cheaper, and, though we have licked the Chinaman into selling us plenty of tea, the tax upon it ain't to be meddled with. Do, Sir, say a word for us down on your big paper (my boy carries it up to parson from post every day). We poor folk use little paper any way ; it ain't either meat, drink, or lodging to us. What we finds to use up at all is a poked into our doors by the quack doctors, cheap Johns, and such folk ; it don't come much in our way a wrapping up parcels. As for the books, well, we has some ; we now and then buy one at the door, and the children gets 'em through parson's daughters ; they are just astonishing cheap, pictures and all. The value of three quartern loaves will 2ive us two or three of the best of books, and as for tracts and 60 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 26, 1861 such like, they are nearly gived away. Many of our single folk of the farm get the ' Ramfold Express,' our newspaper, for a penny a-week ; they club to take it in. 'Twas there we saw the gentle- folk were a-going to leave us to bad tea and dear, and give us cheaper paper. We don't say as knowledge ain't a good thing. Our parsons and chapel preachers gets it out of books as are made of paper ; were there no paper they could not teach us much ; because paper is so cheap they takes in the learning easy, and then give it us poor folk. This be all right. If times get very good again, and taxes were less upon our tea drink, we should not grudge paper being ever so cheap, that we poor could use it after our way just as gentlefolks. But we don't put the wrapper of our ounce into teapot ; we can't turn it to no profit. We've been and turned the matter over, as we sat in barn eating our bread and drinking the cold tea. We wanted parson to write to Chancellor of the Chequers about it, but he ain't a interfering man. One of us minds a man down here who wrote to ' Times,' and spoke up for us, so we got up this, and sends it, hoping you will let us have our say, down on your paper. We respectfully asks the gentlemen to give us cheaper tea anyhow ; if they can do this and make the paper cheaper too, we are most agreeable, but tea is the inside of the nut ; it won't help us that the wrapper be made cheaper if the stuff in it is left dear. We are very quiet, hard-working folk ; there be few to speak up for us about taxes, because we don't often care to speak up for ourselves, even if we know'd how. We ain't town folk ; they can talk out and get helped. Do, Sir, say a word for us about the teapot ; it is always a-brewing, and there isn't nothing which makes a greater cry in our houses than when the teas are not to be had by all, young and old. Put this in, we will bless you. Seven Dorset Labourers at Midday Tea. Rushbottom Barn. 6i CHAPTER III. FAMINE IN INDIA. Twenty-five million persons were affected by the Bengal famine of 1873-4. An expenditure of 6,500,000/. was made before the close of the famine. The Earl of Northbrook, an old friend of S. G. 0., was Governor-General, and, with Sir Richard Temple, fought the famine with singular skill, determination, and success. Abundance of rain fell in September 1874, and the crisis was surmounted with a comparatively small loss of life, contrasting in this respect with the appalling loss of life in the famine of 1877, when Lord Northbrook had relinquished the Viceroyalty. S. G. O.'s experience in Ireland in 1847, and in Lancashire in 1862, had charged his mind with the principles to be followed in dealing with a famine-stricken people, and his love for medical science increased the weight of his authority. March 11, 1S74. Will you kindly permit your old correspondent to say a few words on the above subject, being led to do so by your own leading article in yesterday's issue, and the letter of Lord Law- rence ? The Bishop of Manchester seems to me to view this awful Indian crisis as one the burden of which, so far as England is to help to meet it, should be laid on the entire public ; that the expenditure should be, pure and simple, that of the Govern- ment, to be recouped by drawing from national funds ; and thus, I presume, he would argue, every taxpayer would have his share, let it be what it may, of proportional contribution to meet this call on our common humanity. At first sight, I am free to confess, I was inclined to favour this view of Dr. Fraser's. I am now, however, fully persuaded that such a course is one of, if I may use the expression, too cold-blooded a nature to be consistent with our national cha- racter. It may be very right to throw on the Government the utmost responsibility in such a crisis. We have a right to 62 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. March II demand that no one life should be lost which the action of the Government, as such, can save. It is, however, indisputable that departmental vigilance, zeal, and expenditure must inevit- ably be subject to so much official regulation that, grapple as it may with such a crisis, it can only deal with its effects within certain more or less defined limits. Outside such limits there will be full margin for the utmost exercise of private benevo- lence. Along the broad road of food destitution it will be for the ruling powers to meet — to save — those who stagger famine- stricken on it ; I have every confidence this will be done, but I feel well assured there will yet be gleanings for mercy, as well on that road as on hundreds of by-ways where charity, purely official, would scarcely recognise a field for its exercise. Those who have had any experience in the work of official action and private benevolence among a people famine- stricken, know full well the value of the latter, not to supersede, but to supplement, the former. The Government may have a large staff of inspectors and other officials ; districts may be mapped out and brought under the most minute official inspection ; reams of paper may be daily used for ' reports,' ' depots ' may be established ; well supplied works may be set on foot to be well overlooked, yet, with all the will and the utmost power to save, thousands, alas ! may yet perish. There is a listless apathy begotten of famine that seems to paralyse brain and limb. There is a stage when the heart cares not to seek the food to save the life, panic-stricken to a degree which almost courts death. It is a disease, this unfed hunger, which comes gradually on a whole household ; they waste in common, and as they waste the fate which is on all seems to lose any terror for any one. Official work leaves little margin for sentiment ; it is not, perhaps, a hard and fast line of benevolent action, but it must in its very nature be so far hard, so far limited, in that it has to guard, as a trustee of national funds, against anything and everything which may either foster imposition or lead to extra- vagant expenditure. Christian benevolence stops not to inquire whether famine or pestilence came on the sufferer through his own negligence 1 874 FAMINE IN INDIA 63 or imprudence ; it asks not how he came to be travelling the road which led to either ; it finds him in want of bread or heal- ing, it cannot let him die if it has bread or medicine to give him. He who for Christ's sake becomes an alms-bearer is not content to know there are ' depots ' where food may be pur- chased cheap or given ; works where food may be lightly earned ; he is glad these exist, but his work is to seek out those who can reach no depot, who may have not yet reached the depth of destitution to obtain such help — those who could not do the work to earn the food to save life, who are as yet not so utterly ruined as to have claim for its gift. I believe that what any man as Viceroy can do Lord Northbrook will do to meet the awful strife with this famine on which he has entered. A man of long official experience, cool in action, warm of heart, of great personal activity, one who would leave no stone unturned to get the best information, possessed of it, has all the ability to turn it to the best account — we may rest assured none will sorrow more than he will over any lives lost he has been powerless to save. I trust, then, English sympathy may now rouse itself to the high and holy task of seeking to aid his efforts by supplementing the means he officially has to take to save life. Let us bear in mind how nobly India poured her voluntary subscriptions into our Lanca- shire relief fund in the days ot the cotton famine. Let there be no hesitation as to how the money subscribed may be best applied. Famine waits not on deliberation of details of help ; we must trust those who in India know best how to deal with our alms. It is well to pray that they may be wisely directed ; our first and pressing work is to send the supply, that what they see best to do be quickly done. August 23, 1874. In common, I hope, with a very large proportion of your readers, I have read your able article on the famine in India, appealing, as it does, to our common Christian humanity to aid the Indian Famine Fund. There can be no shadow of doubt that this famine has assumed features already awful to contemplate ; alas ! in all cases of famine-stricken lands the worst is not when first the C-4 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. August 23 pressure for food is felt. It is not simply the case of a large population at the moment dying for want of food ; this in itself is sufficiently appalling to those whose duty it is to seek all possible means of food supply at any and every cost ; it has, however, to be done under the day by day conviction that while tens of thousands are actually starved to death from want of food, double — nay, treble — the number have arrived at a con- dition in which no supply of food, no care, no medical aid can save them. The women, the children, the constitutionally weak at once succumb under the pressure of the first wave of want. The stronger sex, the more healthy, the adults, are, on bad food, and this in insufficient supply, breaking up to die after a manner easily recognised, and, when so, seen to be hopeless of remedy. It is, in fact — all experience has proved it — in the rear of the actual starvation field that the famine foe is most to be dreaded ; here help comes too late, food fails, for the assimilating power necessary for its sustaining aid is absolutely gone. Those whose sad duty or whose inclination has led them to action in a famine district know also that panic arising from the sense that what they now suffer from some want is but the foretaste of what they must come to from want of all, works to produce an apathy of mind, which, casting aside all hope, de- pressing all mental energy, becomes in itself a disease, as an auxiliary of death most powerful. I would say, then, let not the English public judge of the real call for sympathy by the deaths recorded, but let it bear in mind that to arrest mortality means must be found to meet it at the very threshold of the field it seeks to occupy ; those who have not yet begun to starve may be saved ; I wish I could believe that any amount of food and money could do more than try to save some of these. Of those actually stricken few, alas ! can be saved. To myself, now stricken in years, having had some little personal means of observation in scenes where war and famine have dealt thousands to death, the daily pictures of my daily papers appear in somewhat different lights from those in which many regard them. War at best, let it come, as from time to time it must come, from causes held to be necessary, is, and 1874 FAMINE IN INDIA 6} ever must be, simply the use of all that science can produce to kill, maim, lacerate the beings whom in days of peace ordinary civilisation assumes the power to defend and preserve from death and injury. We are fascinated by the perusal of the courage shown by the belligerents ; their respective movements are watched as some champion match of chess may be ; we read the one or other may have lost 10,000 men killed, and left thousands wounded on the field ; we wait to read— what next ; and so on to the bitter end — it always is most bitter ; day by day we read the bloody chronicle, until our humanity seems shunted by our curiosity, this again the more intense as we may have strong feeling for one or other of the parties to the strife. The present war adds fresh features to the ghastliness of all wars. God alone knows how much is true of what we have now to read. ' Atrocity ' before the war had become an almost household word ; what is it now? If there is in all told but a tithe of truth, the present war land must be a sort of hell on earth ; no army can, as I believe, carry with it anything like proper provision for its own wounded ; their treatment at bett must, and will ever, let extern charity do its utmost, be far short of what is needed to secure them the help their cases demand. I do not believe that in the present war, from the nature of the country and the nature of the people invaded, anything the least like proper hospital and ambulance appliances can be found ; I feel equally well assured that the invaders, from causes most obvious, can do no more than make but poor provision in the same direction ; outside the killed list we have then an immense margin of suffering, much of it worse than death, most of it lead- ing to it. We have all the horrors of ordinary war, devastation of homes, the crushing out from countless numbers of both sexes and all ages of home life. We have the worst features of insur- rection aiding war invasion. Revenge rules, and brutal lust works in vengeance, after a fashion so disgusting, so degrading to all humanity, that, with reverence be it said, it courts fire from heaven. I shall not wonder, Sir, if for a time this awful scene does so fascinate us, so absorb our interest, so call upon our com- passion even as it excites our disgust, that the calmer wave of VOL. 1. F 66 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. u famine destruction may not carry the appeal to our hearts it ought to do. All that gilds over war — its reports of brave deeds and bold strategy — is here wanting ; a people dies in silence save for the children's cry, who see not why they hunger. The victims fall here and there. Scarce sheltered by the home in ruin, they, like it, decay and fall ; mere framework of the fed life, they faint to death ; unwounded by the weapons of other war, want has poisoned the fountain of their life ; yet these, thus fated in their tens of thousands — albeit not of our colour or our creed — have the claim of countrymen on us, for they are fellow-subjects ; yes, and in all the dominions over which the British Queen rules, no subjects are to be found who more patiently have fought the battle of life under her rule. Let us then look to it, and that at once, that the compassion which can beget the charity which takes English alms to the victims of war, forget not that there is urgent need for its in- stant exercise, to the fullest, to aid that fund now raising, by which we may hope, with God's blessing, yet to snatch thou- sands of our kind from a fate, begotten not of national ambition or political intrigue, but simply from a visitation of Providence, to which we ourselves any year may be liable. September II, 1877. We are all well read in war slaughter, and have had for many years, from time to time, such an abundance of testimony from war fields of all the horror and suffering war begets, that Christian civilisation has long since organised, and held ready for use, means for help on battle-fields. We have been content to arrive at the conclusion, when two or more nations deliber- ately set armies in motion to destroy life, to maim and lacerate, to spread far and wide around the scenes of bloodshed, misery, and ruin, the disruption of all that made social life that of peace and comfort — that then, as fire-engines rush to burning houses, the Red Cross banner should be hoisted, and our alms freely given to subsidise the miserable deficiency of the pro- vision for wounded found to exist in almost every war. The real fact is — we all well know it — no country on the face of the earth can furnish anything like the provisions necessary to meet 1877 FAMINE IN INDIA 67 the real call for ambulance and hospital efficiency in any pro- longed war. The conveyance of the munitions of war, its live fighting plant, the commissariat, the vast amount of supple- mentary impedimenta, forbid anything but a very meagre pro- vision for field hospitals, staff of skilled surgeons, or even stretcher-bearers to glean the bloody fields. On paper, at the first move of an army, there may appear a large amount of such provision ; but once on the field, and for ever changing that field, pursuing or pursued, advancing or retreating, paper pro- vision has rapidly to be discounted, and is found to be utterly unequal to the demand made upon it. I, Sir, ever welcome as an honour to our land that at least English men and women have come forth with money, gone forth in person, to try and alleviate the sufferings of the wounded, with no one question, whether they are thus found on one side or the other ; but, Sir, I know well the different aspect of work among wounded to that done among the famine-stricken. With the former, they have bravely done the work for which they have been carefully trained ; what they suffer is in the nature of a contingency they have been also trained to expect. They have met their fate with the existing consolation, it came on them in the path of duty. As with the rank and file, so with their officers ; all alike share the same danger, alike meet the same fate ; they have the pension and medal in view ; as they lie, all broken as they may be, they are yet ever cheered more or less by the sense that what has come on them has been for their nation. This community of sentiment lends no little power of support in their suffering. I do rejoice that England is not found wanting in her endeavours to help those war victims ; I would not be the advocate of any course which should seem to turn aside this outlet for our common humanity. I am satisfied there is wealth enough, Christian compassion sufficient, for the Red Cross cause, and yet ample margin for appeal in favour of famine succour. What I do feel is the difficulty of bringing home to the hearts and minds of my fellow-countrymen the real features of a famine-stricken people. No pen, I know, is really equal to the task. There is a deadly sameness in the tale to be told that 68 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Sept. n shuts out that fresh and fresh sensational appeal which war scenes afford. Here we have had no previous education teach- ing what a fate it is to starve. There has been no foreboding of a time when, houseless and wanderers, tens of thousands must stagger forth from homes fallen, whole families too weakened to walk at all, to walk, for very life's sake, anywhere where one atom of food can be found. In this battle of life for life itself there is altogether wanting one single element of all that goes to support the combatant in war. It is one ghastly crowd joining other such increasing crowds. They need tell no tale as they mingle ; want is stamped on all alike ; and, as one after another falls, none can feel hope their own fall can be long deferred. There is little wailing in that death march ; the home that sheltered is no more ; but one home, not on earth, but below it, is the sole prospect of family reunion. Men with some strength yet aim at reaching where they have heard of ' relief food.' See the wretched, sinking mothers still struggling to nestle at the breast, which has no support to give, the infant, fieshless, too far crone to cry. The crew of some sinking vessel have been fed to the moment in which, in despair, they rushed to the boats, which seem to give some chance of life. In them starvation has in- duced mania ; it has come suddenly on them — found them in health, left them ' the locked out ' from food. The madness of their hunger has driven them, we know, to food abhorrent to contemplate. Such cases, thank God ! have been rare ; but how have they stricken every reader of them with horror ! The sufferers might have been counted on our fingers. Not so is it with the famished on whom starvation has crept, not rushed ; here day by day they have still, as men will do, yet hoped for life, even as they felt and saw around them its staff rotting in their grasp. That slow, creeping apathy, so well known an element in this visitation, has gradually starved down brain power ; there is no mania, no fierce struggle for food abhorrent ; they will grope the soil for root food, pluck anything that may seem to feed, and, as they thus weaken and waste, become hope- less of their own lives, scarce roused to feel the death of those 1 877 FAMINE IN INDIA 69 they love. And all this not the fate of a few, but of tens of thousands. I, Sir, have no shadow of doubt but that the Indian Govern ment, the Indian people, will do their utmost to breast this death stream and save where possible. It would be a shame tc doubt the determination of the Home Government to do its duty. But, Sir, I hold this visitation of Providence to be a knocking at the door of Compassion's chamber in every English heart, as it is also at the door of the Nation's Government to j read the present lesson as a warning not to neglect all possible means of future safeguard against future recurrence of such a crisis. ;o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 24 CHAPTER IV. EDUCATION. Until quite recently there was no public provision for education in England. It is difficult for those who have lived in the era of School Boards to conceive the darkness and ignorance that formerly prevailed throughout England and Ireland, and the widespread antipathy towards any measures for enlightening the minds of the labouring population. In 1834 the Government began the system of annual grants (the first was 20,000/.) which continued until the Committee of the Privy Council on Education was constituted for the distribution of the money. In 1846, and later, the subject of education began to occupy a large share of public and parliamentary attention. Disappointment at the results of what had hitherto been done pervaded the country. The very name of ' educa- tion ' had passed into a by-word. The clergy were discontented with the then state of things ; for the poor remained aloof from the Church. The moral and religious condition of the English peasantry was such as to display the negligence with which their rulers had dealt with the education of the masses. S. G. O., with the use of home truths forcibly expressed, compares the formal education with the real educa- tion of the country — the name with the thing. His capacity for dealing with the realities of life was never more clearly exhibited than when dealing with the educational question. November 24, 1846. What is education ? There is a great talk about it, and it is said that we are about to have it made accessible to the nation 1 at large ; the word itself is linked in our imagination to certain unpicturesque brick buildings with whitewashed interiors, fitted up with deal benches, slates, maps, books, and a master for boys ; with a mistress, and the additional accompaniment of certain masses of calico and linen, scissors, tapes, and needles, for girls ; the benefit of such instruction being offered to the rising generation at weekly sums varying from 2d. to \d. ; the chief superintending power either the parochial clergyman or some appointed committee, assisted by a minister of some of 1846 EDUCATION 71 the denominations ; the expenses, over and above the sums re- ceived from the pupils, being defrayed by local subscription, aided in many cases by grants from the National, British and Foreign, or other educational society. I presume, Sir, the intended national scheme of education will cither increase the number of those existing establishments, under certain conditions requiring the application of the modern improvements in the art of educa- tion, or it will establish additional schools on some new and so- called comprehensive plan, by which the authors of it hope to make education come-at-able and palatable to persons of all those particular creeds or no creeds whose religious scruples at present shut them out from the benefits of existing schools. Far be it from me at the present moment to say one word for or against the idea of a national all and no creed-including system of education. It may be a possibility ; this is an age of wonders ; and not the least wonderful feature of the age is its malleability of opinion. Some bold theorist may strike out some method of imparting all useful knowledge without endangering the existence of the one absolutely needful know- ledge. Whilst we wait patiently for the development of the new plan for schools, I think we may, with some profit, proceed to consider how much schools, as yet, have had to do with the education of the people. Hitherto we seem to have acted as though to instruct a population merely meant to submit it, when young, to a certain course of instruction within the above- mentioned buildings for some four or five years, more or less, with the accompaniment of a regular attendance on the Sabbath at some place of public worship. We have tried, or rather we arc now trying, to bring this course of instruction to the highest perfection. Modern ingenuity and modern zeal have, by care- fully training masters and mistresses, enabled them to train boys and girls into really wonderful feats of memory, to bring them under a most marvellous subjection to the word of command ; if we are to trust in the truth of modern reports of school inspection, there is every hope that the next generation will be a most learned one. It doubtless will ; but I fear, if things continue as at present, it will be a very wicked and troublesome one. Let these intellect factories be brought to the highest pos- 72 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 24 siblc state of perfection — let them become so scattered through the land, and so accessible to all people, that none need live to the age of twelve or thirteen without having been forced into the highest state of intellectual and moral perfection which their individual capacities will admit of; — I assert, that there will be, if other matters remain as they now exist, a school yet to be passed through, not merely calculated to counteract all that is valuable which may have been learned, but directly constituted for the destruction of all the moral training which may have been acquired, the perversion of the intellectual to the very worst of purposes. A nation highly civilised will surely seek, as the result of her people's education at her expense, that they shall be reared in honest, decent, and orderly habits of life ; this is the very lowest return which she will expect for her capital when invested for such a purpose. The man who wishes to grow one particular crop in any one particular field, is not con- tent with merely taking the necessary steps, however costly they may be, to fit the soil for the seed, so that that seed shall find in it all that it needs from the soil to secure its healthy growth ; he does something more— he takes especial pains that no noxious weeds shall grow up with the crop, or grow so near to it as to in any way injure it. So should a nation act, in seek- ing to rear a population in honest, decent, and orderly habits ; but not so does our nation act ; on the contrary, whilst for years past we have talked of, and sought for, every possible thing which could make the school a field for honest, decent, and orderly training, we have allowed the scholar to grow up exposed to all that can tempt to dishonesty, obliterate decency, and nurture a spirit of lawless discontent. Our national refuges for the indigent have become schools of contamination, horri- fying even the chaplains of our gaols ; the records of those gaols form thick folio volumes, proving the existence of an immense amount of petty crime, clearly traceable to poverty, undeserved, exposed to temptation that cannot be justified. As to loyalty, which in the masses means attachment to, and respect for, the authorities amongst them who represent and execute the laws, of which the Sovereign is the real head, who can 1846 EDUCATION 73 doubt but that we have, as it were, by Act of Parliament, done our best to weaken that attachment, to turn respect for the law into a scarcely concealed hate of it and all connected with its administration ? In the school we teach honesty, — 'Thou shalt not steal' is our text. We press on our young the value of industry ; that, earning honestly all that they need, they may not be tempted to transgress this law of God and man. Loss of character, the gaol, the tread-wheel, and a future judgment, each and all are held up to fright and control the evil disposition ; the scholar, with these lessons of wisdom still fresh in his mind, goes to his home to learn how his parents and brothers and sisters are to be kept in food and fuel on ys. a week, with the hope of earning enough to pay for rent and clothing out of the extra wages of the extra toil of harvest. The father sees his family wanting food ; he sees game on his master's farm, which he hears that master curse as a nuisance ; he becomes a poacher, first to get food for those at home, but soon to purchase that warmth and mirth at the beershop which his home knows not. The mother will not see her very little ones cry from cold, when her bigger ones can slip out at dusk, just to get a stick or two out of a hedge or a slip or two from some neighbouring railing. Father, mother, and children were all taught not to steal — told its consequence here and hereafter — taught to pray at least twice a day ' that they might not be led into temptation.' The poacher is caught and sent to gaol, the little wood thief is caught and sent there too ; both now learn that the school lesson, with its warning, was all right enough. Those who know their history are apt to argue that those who find schools for the poor should have some regard to the amount of trial in after- life to which the school-learned lesson is to be exposed. Pharaoh's exaction of the tale of bricks without straw was hardly greater tyranny than that which gives a little teaching in the school to fight against overwhelming temptation in the home. As to rearing our population in the common decent ways of civilised life, I do not know how the new system is to set about the task ; but I do know what all systems have hitherto had to contend against. Let their worst enemies say their worst of the 74 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 24 worst of our existing schools ; I yet believe they have taken all common care to rear their scholars in those early habits of personal decency which are as the alphabet of that modesty and decorum so valuable in after-life. No man commonly observant of human nature can doubt but that there is no one clement of civilisation more valuable than that moral restraint established between the sexes, which, acting with more than the force of law, exacts a decency which no law could enforce. In the absence of this restraint, we lose the one great cha- racteristic which distinguishes mankind from the brute kind. Within the walls of a school the age of those we teach limits our efforts in this matter to a certain point ; we cannot make the seventh commandment our text, but we endeavour to secure a chastity of conversation, and a habit of decency in minor matters, to which we look as the foundation of that modesty of character in after-life which we hope will come without especial teaching on the subject. Now, follow the child home ; in how many of our villages and towns will you find it placed under a force of circumstances that, unless it be blind and deaf, must force on it a knowledge, by ear and by eye, of evil, destructive of every decency of habit or purity of thought. Not only in the cottage and the lodging is this the case, but go to the national refuges for the indigent, the union-houses, and you will find in them a system pursued, that the highest pressure of the world's worst contamination could hardly exceed anywhere in the world's worst abodes of vice. So herded together are the abandoned in these establishments, that all degrees of vice are soon lost ; the woman the victim of a seducer, the mother of one child, is made to keep company with the oldest and worst sinners of the streets ; girls, as soon as they are too old for the schoolroom, are placed amongst just that species of adult com- pany which at their age must most surely contaminate them. Respectable women, who have been forced for a time to mingle with this herd, have told me of horrors in word and deed which defy all description. The head of a very large union-house lately told me such things of the female wards in it as would disgrace the worst den in St. Giles's. Are these things un- known ? No, they are for ever quoted to prove the shameless- 1846 EDUCATION 75 ness of the lower orders. Let us go to the villages from which these houses are filled, and let us see how things are there. Is it not notorious that, very generally, the cottages in which the poor dwell are so constructed that anything like a separa- tion of the sexes at night is next to impossible ? Is it not the fact that in ten thousand cases, father, mother, brothers, and sisters are forced to undress and lie down to rest in one and the same room ? So common is this state of things, that I am satisfied it has affected the whole tone of feeling of the upper towards the lower classes ; we have got into a way of thinking depravity, like rags and broken windows, to be the regular, if not the natural accompaniment of poverty. Within these few years I was shown a sort of hovel, the back of which was in the churchyard of a village of considerable size ; it had no window, only a remnant of a door. The parties who showed it me entreated me not to enter it, so great was the filth and depravity of the inmates, and the actual danger from the insecurity of the roof; I, however, did go in, and saw a brood of human beings whose very look at once seemed to prove the probability of the disgusting tales I was told of them ; here and thus they lived until the house fell down over them ; it was a parish house ; they are now lodged in a neighbouring town, by a private rate. A short distance from the same spot a woman, the mother of a family, but a lunatic, had lately existed for more than eighteen months — I heard it proved before a magistrate — in a certain building in the garden, with no door to it, her clothing simply a bit of blanket, or an old shift ; at times, I am credibly informed, if not wholly naked, she might have been seen by any one who took the trouble in a state of indecency and filth as great as if the straw she lay on had been her only covering. In another village of large population, with which I am well acquainted, in which every cottage almost is crammed, to the suffocation of all decency, the consequence of this comparatively private con- tamination publishes itself under circumstances hardly to be believed in this age and country. For years past it is known, it is undisputed, that at certain gay village festivities it has been the custom, and still is, to get some poor wretch of a woman, and, having made her intoxicated to insensibility, or nearly so, 76 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Nov. 24- to place her in the midst of a crowded room on a table, in a public-house or beer-shop, in such a condition of dress that one could almost lament any dress was left on her at all, as then the wretched object of the jests and cruelty of the assembly might have escaped the suspicion of being a human being ; this being only the prelude on two occasions to acts of foul cruelty that the orgies of the worst heathen nation never surpassed. Do not think, Sir, that this is done unknown to the authorities of the village. I enclose you proof that it is well known, and yet it may continue the custom for years to come ; and so for years to come will the school, and the church, and the parochial officers continue their existence and nominal office : what a mockery ! A very short time ago I myself heard a man, who is said to be half an idiot, state that he had lived, where he then and I believe now lives, in a stable, for more than twenty years ; that he went there first because he had nowhere else to go to. The parish support him, and a woman has 6d. for cleaning him once a week ; I did not see much insanity in him ; I am, however, told, that nothing could persuade him, though he has been trodden on by the horses, to live like other people or sleep in a bed. He might in the same number of years have been taught to do without clothes. What can any national system of education, which confines itself to teaching what man and woman should be and should know in the school, do in the face of a state of things that holds so light the common respect due to decency in both in after-life ? I could multiply proof on proof of this awful state of things. I have information in my possession, from those whose profession causes them to live amongst the poor, that would bear me out in alleging far worse, far more awfully criminal effects, as directly proceeding from the indecent crowding of the poor in their homes. But I have said enough on this disgusting subject. I may be told, if the possessors of the land can get tillers of it who are content to live as beasts, and to receive pay that will not find them any but the scantiest amount of the coarsest food, that there is no reason why they should pay them more, feed or house them better ; just as I have lately been told that if a man's labourers will give him 2d. a pound for the carcass of a bullock found dead 1846 EDUCATION 77 from disease in a ditch, there is no reason why he should not sell it them. Let a man give one farthing more to a labourer than that labourer's wants and horror of a workhouse would drive him to accept ; let a man forgo even the small advantage he can get from the sale of carrion to men, to whom such food by necessity has become a treat, and he may say ' It is corban.' If, Sir, this is so, if a certain dogma of political economy is to be thus forced into practical exercise, it is time that those who would defend the rights of the poor should indeed look about them ; and they need not look far for authority to prove that the producing have claims on the possessing classes, which, if urged to the letter, might somewhat inconveniently interfere with their assumed position of possessors in fee of the soil, claiming all the privileges, but repudiating the duties of that possession. At a meeting for the repeal of the malt-tax, reported in one of your last week's papers, I see one of the leading speakers, a farmer, said, ' The farmers are trustees for the labourers, who would be otherwise unrepresented.' Great applause followed this announcement. If it is true, I can only say the labourers have enjoyed a very long minority ; the trustees have, indeed, husbanded the resources of their trust — are they at last going to pass their accounts and surrender to their wards ? Has poverty at last come of age ? If so, may we presume that the immense capital these trustees have amassed in the long day of poverty's minority is now to be disgorged and dispersed in works of love and mercy to the poor ? If the accounts were rendered at that chancery where none can deceive, and all that is the poor man's due was now to be returned to him by those whose lands he has tilled, I cannot but think that thousands of those who now claim to limit his hire according to the meed of his necessity, would have to take the place he now fills, and taste themselves of a poverty and misery they would richly deserve. Let the nation educate its every child, if it is so disposed, but let it beware of sinking deep into the mind of another generation any real knowledge of the value of justice, the beauty of charity, the importance of honesty, decency, and loyalty, until it has given without the walls of the school some 78 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. 1853 proof that its justice is more accessible, its charity less repul- sive that honesty shall be less wantonly tempted, decency more valued, and loyalty more cherished than is now the case. The fatuity of providing mental training for children when the home influences continue to poison the moral sense, was a point on which S. G. O. felt very deeply. To the end of his life he maintained that the proper housing of labourers and artizans, where the decencies of life could be secured, was essential to any effective dealing with the social problem. 1853. The great demand for space for mansions, large shops, ware- houses, and broad thoroughfares, drives the working man into localities so crammed with buildings as to defy purity of atmo- sphere—so crammed with life as to contract its lease into that short compass which is engrossed in the absence of every decency, the abundant presence of every destructive nuisance. I admit there is a class, living in their thousands as beasts, who do not care to live otherwise ; but it cannot be denied that there are tens of thousands of mechanics and others possessed of a sense of decency who cannot by any possibility secure it to themselves and families. There are men working for some of the largest houses, skilled in hand, and prized for their intelli- gence and cultivated taste in their own line of work — men deal- ing with delicate materials, employed about the abodes of the wealthiest — who each night go to what they call home — to lodgings which defy cleanliness, and are imperatively exempted from all attention to decency— the staircase common to many, and ever dirty ; the rooms small, inconvenient, and overcrowded ; water scarce and foul ; ventilation confined to a fouled atmo- sphere, admitted by narrow apertures ; men, women, and chil- dren having in common a most restricted — if any — share of conveniences which are as public, as from their nature they should be private, in construction as opposed to every physical and moral sense. To such dwellings, to such degradation, is the mechanic to return as to a home from his work, from any place of education open to him, as the chief scene in which he is to enjoy and cany out the result of the increasing cultivation of his mind. 1 853 EDUCATION 79 The boy or girl skilfully and faithfully taught at any of the many valuable schools open to the children of this class comes back each day to such a home (?) there to con over the next day's lessons in purity and holiness — lessons in all that can train the mind to see beauty in the God-given wonders of the world, the God-promised treasures of the world to come. Here, to these reeking scenes of disorganised decency and morality, such boy or girl is hoped to go — the best of missionaries— to spread knowledge of good by telling to those at home the lessons learnt at school. What a mockery is it to expect that a plant so comparatively pure as a well-disposed and well-taught child could hold its purity in such an atmosphere ! Go into one of these schools : you will hear branches of learning ably taught, to which, until of late years, none but the wealthy and the specially-favoured had access. You will hear with astonishment children answer- ing questions correctly and promptly which a few years back would have puzzled many a professor. You will find, on in- quiry, that the deepest interest is felt in the training of the scholars by many of the greatest men of our day. Foreigners are taken to see the children examined by a Government in- spector, or, perhaps, a bishop. Some of the most scientific professors of the age write works adapted to make, through these schools, science, its beauties, its glorious truths, accessible to the million. On all this devotion to the education of the children are further built schemes for advancing the taste and intellectual acquirements of the adult mechanics. Schools of design, exhi- bitions, literary and scientific institutions, all aid the work ; and yet we are left to wonder at the statistics of intemperance, and the daily proof afforded us that, as a class, this class, with all its intelligence, becomes too often the easy prey of designing demagogues and trading advocates of its so-called rights ; that they prefer those emanations from the cheap press which deal only in the topics that excite them to discontent and evil to the many works equally cheap, equally accessible to them, in which they can study wholesome truths, useful to them in their calling, affording instructive amusement, and tending to foster all those So THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. 1853 higher feelings which do so lighten any life, but, above all, the life of those who toil. Do not our police reports prove to us that man now is for ever found to be the savage brute who dares himself to assault with the greatest brutality the mother of his own children— the woman whom above all he is bound to defend ? Go with the police to the ' homes ' in which these crimes are enacted — go and study the mode of life born there of its scene — study there the nature of the retreat in which the father of a family has to meet them — and then cease to wonder that he returns to it him- self only when he has destroyed feeling each day in drink, to find those belonging to him seeking in drink that character which would seem to most befit the stage of their daily life. The magistrate properly tells the brute he is one, and gives him the full share of the law's sentence. He will leave the orderly cleanliness of the gaol, the decent deportment there enforced around him, to return to the old scene of filth and disquiet. Can we wonder he drinks, and is again the brute to strike or kick his wife ; and that some begin to argue, for such bestial- ised beings, we must revive the beast's chief terror — the lash ? There are those who need to be taught the degradation in which they live. This is the class which, reared beyond the pale of decency, and having no connection in word or deed with the decent, live contented in the scene of their foul existence. We have to make them see the evil of their lot — to teach them what they are, and something, at least, of what they should desire to be. Their children know little of any school, except, perchance, they may have attended a ' ragged ' one. With these life is pri- vation of all that is good and decent, but not felt as such, because goodness and decency never had any appreciable worth. But there is another very large class, who know well all they lose in the life they are compelled to live at home, but yet see no means of mending the matter. They have to earn their bread where they can well do it ; but they have to seek the decency and comfort of a home in localities where it is not permitted them. They are not an untaught class ; the nature of their employ- ment required that they should have had a certain amount of education ; they are, many of them, most persevering readers ; 18,3 EDUCATION gi any one who at the present day comes much in contact with mechanics will readily admit that they are on very many sub- jects well informed. It is, I fear, but too true that, as a body, they are much tainted with scepticism. I believe them to be loyal to the Sovereign ; they are close observers of the manners of the ' great ' ; however free in their observations to each other, and however free the tone of their ' press,' it cannot be denied that they are respectful in communication with the upper classes. It is my firm belief that the inevitable moral defilement of their ' homes ' has worked great social mischief to this class. Their work takes them much into communication with those who value and luxuriate in domestic comfort and decency. Alas ! they are thus only acquiring at zvork a taste for all that is denied them when at rest. Can we wonder that they spend so much time at their club rooms, imbibing there so much which injures the whole tone of their life ? In this letter he again returns to the subject of the schools' real difficulty. January I, 1S57. The dregs of most matters which afford them are of a nasty, disagreeable nature ; the dregs of human society ever have been, and will prove to be so. It is at this time the popular idea that our refuse population is our criminal population ; that if we could reduce its amount, in the same proportion should we purge ourselves of crime. It is argued that education will act upon the lowest scouring of social life as peat charcoal and lime do upon the contents of our cesspools and drains. I am one of those who put little faith in the operation of education per se as a purifier of our worst classes of fellow- creatures, even of education in which the very best secular and religious instruction should be combined. I should as soon expect to find the lenses of the best microscope doing their work properly in a damp cellar, or in a building set aside for the sifting of cinders. Englishmen boast of their love of fair play, and yet they send tens of thousands of children daily home from school to fight a foe at home, or rather a host of foes, with no better weapons VOL. I. G 82 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. i than a little book and pen knowledge, with no better armour than that amount of religious and moral principle which can be given each day to young children in crowded schools. Speeches on education are, as I well know, very easily made ; it is a 'stock subject ; ' even a clumsy handling of it will ever elicit the cheers of crowded audiences. Most men give something or do some- thing to aid one or more schools, and they receive as grateful tribute to their own charity in so doing every allusion to the value of education. Every man at a meeting to promote education takes to himself, within himself, a sort of pleasurable sensation arising from the conviction that he is one of ' the blessed.' The speakers panegyrise when they declaim on the glorious fields opened to the educated classes, and the true blessings they hourly derive in those fields. Call a meeting in a county town to consider the ' glorious fields' to which the children of agricultural labourers too often daily return from school ; call a meeting in a manufacturing district to consider the nature of the dwellings in which, at high rents, the mechanics are condemned to rear their children ; and then mark the attendance and the reception you will receive. It is wonderful to many — not to me — how comparatively easy it is to get up heavy subscription lists for the building of schools, the erection and decoration of churches and chapels, while it is next to impossible to push the ' dwelling question ' beyond that point which consists in a simple acknowledgment of the difficul- ties which beset it, and pious ejaculations with regard to the horrors it embodies. We are ready to wage any amount of paper war upon the question whether a gentleman holding heretical views as to the moon's motion is a fitting person to be an inspector of schools ; we forget that three-fourths of the children in any school which his peculiar form of lunacy can corrupt will go home to sleep, eat, &c, in common with many of both sexes, in a space in which the rotatory motion popularly known as the ' swinging of a cat ' could not, for want of space, be accomplished. Even a Chadwick would shrink from such a cup of Tantalus as a cesspool that filled at the rate of hogsheads of filth to his drams of ' disinfecting fluid,' and yet England sets the schoolmaster, and, above all, the schoolmistress, to do a 1857 EDUCATION 8 3 harder, more hopeless task. They have to teach truth, purity, honesty, industry, religion to children who return each day to homes in which life itself — human life — is almost a lie, purity barred out by necessity, honesty too often an exotic which can- not in health survive the climate ; industry interpreted to mean simply the principle of 'getting,' no matter how ; as to religion — the wheat is dibbled, but the tares are sown broadcast, and that in a climate so physically impure that the leaves of the charity- given Bibles turn damp beneath the touch, and their familiar binding has its white spots of fungoid growth. It is true, Sir, for I and many others have done it ; men of ' the upper ten thousand ' will go and look at how the labourer is lodged in many villages, how he is lodged in almost every town, as a matter of curious investigation, and then return and talk and write about what they saw, as if they had gone into the habitations of the offscourings of some foreign barbarian land. I shall be told that out of those dwellings have come some of our very best mechanics ; that there are thousands of honest, high-principled labourers who have been bred in the one room ; that many a soul goes to its Maker strong in faith in its Redeemer from these filthy, crowded abodes. I don't deny it. I know how light does pierce into darkness in many an extra- ordinary way. An ardent naturalist will scarcely find one thing on earth, however foul in itself, that will not generate some- thing, vegetable or animal, in which the glorious wonders of Providence are most manifest ; but we do not seek to hoard fever-breeding matters in tons because in a drop of such the microscopist can find the germs of strange, beautiful organ- isms. I would not be thought to undervalue the great efforts ever making by pious individuals and religious societies to penetrate these dark and foul abodes of ' the dregs ' of our population ; they are about a great work, and deserve all honour ; but I am satisfied that the evil is an increasing evil. We improve our great thoroughfares at the cost of a still further foul crowding of our alleys and back streets. Model lodging-houses are texts from which to preach ; hitherto little has been done to expound practically the truths they teach. I do not say that all the deeds S4 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O July 2 of violence against which there is now so just an outcry are the works of men made what they are by the existence of the dwellings in which they have been bred ; but I do say that it is folly to expect the criminal's reform when these are to be the scenes in which alone he could hope to work it out. So long as the mind of this great nation can think of no other panacea for vice than education, no preventive of crime but the dread of punishment, no reformation of the criminal but by a course which, prompting to hypocrisy, makes the acting out of a lie the shortest road to a remission of punishment, we shall go from bad to worse. There will still be blue-books full of astonishing examinations of very wonderful schoolboys, and lengthy statistics to prove the triumphs of penitential penal discipline ; meetings will still be ably addressed by men of high degree on the value of educa- tion ; but, with all this, savage criminal attempts upon life and property will increase until the yoke of daring, unbridled guilt will be beyond bearing. At last it may strike the nation that when the great multitude of its lower classes are forced to dwell where decency and comfort cannot exist, and honesty only under fearful trial, they must be as ' dregs,' the precipitate of a process of moral chemistry which, eliminating all that is poorest, all that is of the worst of our kind, keeps it closely confined to ferment and breed and harbour and become still . more obnoxious. The School and the Cupboard. July 2, 1857. In a late leading article on the Education Conference you brought Mrs. Hubbard and her son Bill forward in aid of your most true arguments on the subject. There is no one historical character whose name you could have more properly used for your purpose. The period at which village boys will be removed from the village school is simply a matter of cupboard ; Mother Hubbard in her family economy will only allow Bill to draw rations from her cupboard free up to that period of life at which he can begin to earn, or to learn how to earn, bread to put into it. She has each week to count the mouths which consume against the hands which can produce ; she will seize the earliest 1857 EDUCAT10X 85 moment to convert a consumer into a producer. The very poorest of dogs plead to her for a bone in vain ; but little meat ever finds its way into her cupboard, and of that the ' Bills ' have the bones. Mrs. H. will tell the parson or his wife, with much truth ' that boys get soft like when kept too long at laming ; the pen and the book be all right for the poor things, but they hands of Bill's must get a bit hard afore he can hold plough or handle fork. She don't hold to keeping children too long in-doors who have to get their bread in the fields.' I confess, Sir, I agree with Mrs. Hubbard. I feel that the necessity laid upon a labourer's child to earn his own bread at the earliest moment is one which I cannot contest. I know that in order to stand exposure to all kinds of weather — the lot of out-door labour — it is well for a boy to be early inured to it. I am quite convinced he will be no happier in the particular field of labour which is his destiny for that amount of schooling I see so many desirous to give him. In any good school a child can be taught to read with ease, to write a fair, legible hand, and to do all the arithmetic neces- sary for the common purposes of life by the time he is ten years of age ; in addition to this he can by that time have been well grounded in the truths of revealed religion, and should have acquired habits of obedience and propriety which will go far to form his future character. The use of machinery in agriculture has supplanted in a great degree the call for adult human muscle and sinew ; it has at the same time created a demand for the labour of the very young. Where large families used to be considered as objection- able parochial burdens, I now see them regarded as valuable auxiliaries to the employers of the parish. Emigration has given the call for more mechanical appliance, each successive mechan- ical invention calls more of early life to early labour. I cannot regret this, for I see the people living better, better clothed, more constantly employed, and somewhat better housed than they were ten years ago. I never knew them more patient and contented with their lot, and it is often a hard one. I know there is a great call among them for cheap but good books, and 86 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 2 that they read them. I know the dull monotony of the field of labour to which they are destined. I have grave doubts as to whether much intellectual training would not discon- tent them with that field. I am sure it would not conduce to their contentment, and therefore must be opposed to their happiness. As to the ' crime ' question, it is not a year or two's more schooling which will affect that in any appreciable degree. The poor are more often detected in crime than the rich, because they are more constantly watched, and the crimes to which they are tempted are just those easiest to detect. But this I say in justice to them as a class, compare those who can read, write, and sum but a little with those who have had the greatest educational privileges, and I believe you would find that in this our day, before God, the former are the purest in life, the most honest, the most tempted, the most loyal — yes, and the most Christian. The number of acquaintances and friends I have had through life probably may have been in amount about the same as the population of the village in which I have now lived nearly sixteen years. I think through life I have been most fortunate as to the society I have enjoyed ; and yet, I say it without one shadow of doubt I cannot on the whole claim a higher moral status for the friends of past and present life than I can for my villagers, few of whom remained at school after they could earn the smallest amount of bread. I must further be understood as including under the head of ' friends and acquaintances' men of every rank and profession, some few Cabinet Ministers, and a fair proportion of bishops. There is an evil of too prolonged schooling to which I have as yet seen no allusion — viz., its tendency to relieve the parents too much of their proper share in the rearing of their children. Who has not heard the excuse from the parent for a child's sin — ' I can't tell how it is, I can't ; I sent her to school as soon as she could walk, and kept her there till she went to service.' What say the aged women ? ' Ah, Sir, to see how the young married folk carry on ; the infant school takes them when amost babies ; t'other school takes all the rest ; 'tis but the getting 1 857 EDUCATION 87 them up, putting them to bed, and the putting out the vittles ; they ha'n't the trouble with a family as we had in our day.' In my poor opinion we run some risk of making our schools mere nurseries for young mothers, who never at home saw any- thing of a mother's real duty. I am quite sure we are making marriage very easy, the road to single, useful ' service ' very difficult. People complain they cannot get female servants. Do they think years passed in an educational machine, the cramming the head, and fitting the hand to nothing but pen, pencil, and needlework, a promising process for the production of ' maids ' of any work ? Where, where has common sense fled to ? Of the discontent bred by a certain class of education he writes : — July 16, 1857. The expediency of an industrial training of the children of the working classes as a great national object is at last receiving that share of attention it so well deserves. We are arriving at the conviction that the education of any class of our fellow- creatures should, to be really valuable, be of a nature to qualify them to perform the practical duties of the station in life to which, under God, they have been called. I have long foreseen that the endeavour to create a race of village ' prodigies ' could only end as it has done. Out of a certain number of young brains submitted to the process a very small number attain that measure of intellectual excellence which qualifies them to rise — if opportunity offers — above the station in life to which they were born. The rest remain on hand, with heads crammed with an amount and variety of teach- ing, which they have neither the disposition nor the time to turn to any profitable account, the direct tendency of which, how- ever, has had this effect — it has rendered head and hand little fitted for the monotonous, unintellectual work by which alone, in their peculiar station of life, they can earn life's support. On a somewhat similar mistaken principle I have seen money misspent by landlords in building dwellings for the labourers. There is a great expenditure in making the ' new cottages ' picturesque, and so constructing them that they 83 THE LETTERS OE S. G. 0. July 1 6 abound in ingenious contrivances for a most overstrained pro- vision for all that can conduce to morality and decency ; the in- mates feel, from the constant intrusion of ' company from the house ' that they are ' on show,' and therefore live in an enforced tidiness, scarcely made palatable by the ' tips ' and praises of the inquisitive visitors who form the landlord's audience, as he points out with his stick, above, and below, and about the dwelling, all the happy contrivances he has employed to compass the ' moral ' and the ' sanitary ' of cottage life. Of course, small families of wonderful habits are chosen for these dwellings, for they must live a Sunday life every day, while the lord or the squire ' be down home.' In the meantime, such has been the cost of these hotbeds of tidy economy that the same estate will very likely, for twenty such, have further off from the mansion forty or fifty dwellings in which human life is simply pig life glazed and staircased. Just so with schools, you are shown their walls furnished with diagrams explanatory of the rudiments of the severest science ; the class-room has its large wooden model of the steam-engine, an orrery, a large collection of ' objects ' in aid of lessons combining amusement with instruction in the several ologics. The master and mistress are most superior people, quite equal to the tutorial and schoolroom requirements in any private family of rank. The first class is called into the class- room ; the master in an easy off-hand way knocks at the brains of the ten or twelve boys in turn ; these brains open at the knock, and out comes without hesitation a stream of knowledge monotoned, which the same master might knock in vain for at the brain-doors of half the House of Peers — two-thirds of the House of Commons. You are probably too glad to plead a pressing engagement to escape the offer kindly made to your- self to examine the class. Now, Sir, I admit it to be very wonderful that what we hear on these occasions should flow as it does through teeth that mas- ticate bacon as the rule, butcher's meat as the rare exception. But I question the real value of these pearls to those who ex- pectorate them. Bill Hubbard cannot serve two masters — a brain craving to revel in the paths of science, a stomach desirous 1 85 7 EDUCATION 89 of food only to be obtained behind the plough. He will either have taken in knowledge that he will soon forget, as a mere school lesson belonging only to school days ; or, if he has really acquired a taste for all the mental refinement to which he has been introduced, he will be very unhappy and discontented when the call of a hard working life shuts him out from its indul- gence. But I am told ' these boys will rise above their station ; they must, their intelligence will command a market.' Is it not a fact that at this very moment there is a supply of educated youths in the land far above the demand for them ; that even professional men who have voted for bankers, merchants, and even ' Ministers,' cannot get an opening found at the smallest salary for ' a well-educated youth, the son of most respectable parents ' ? I do not dispute that many great men have worked their way to eminence from a very low origin, and so may it ever be, as it surely will be. The mistake I see made is the attempt to put the seeds of greatness perforce into the brains of a whole class. I don't want to have forty boys spoilt for plain, honest, perspiratory labour that some five may become possibly eminent in literature, or comparatively wealthy at the desk of a Government office. Success is the great sweetener of toil ; for a village boy to succeed in his destined path of labour, heart and hand must work together ; practice alone will give skill ; it is skill in work that makes it really grateful to hand and heart. Ploughing, hedging, draining, turnip hoeing, even turnip topping, may be ill or well done ; in each perfection is the result of practice ; it has its reward, not simply in money value, but in that feeling of our nature which sees and feels a triumph in success. For the sake of the true happiness of the children of the agricultural labourers, I pray to see a day when industrial train- ing may be considered of more value than it is at present ; but I am not blind to the great difficulty of obtaining it. There is, I fear, no way by which outdoor labour can be taught with any real great result by any modification of mere schooling. I know it has been tried, and with some little success, but in practice the farm field, the stable, and the barn must be the real school. go THE LETTERS OE S. C. O. July 16, 1857 To make a good servant you want a disposition to serve as well as the power to do so. Boys or girls working at industrial pursuits in classes, under teachers, get ' handy ; ' but more than this is wanted. A master watchmaker could make twenty boys expert in a good deal of the manipulation of his trade in a school, but there is a something which can only be got in the shop required to make any one of these a valuable apprentice. Temper has to be formed for service, and can only be formed in service. Girls may be taught in masses to wash, iron, work, and cook, and yet make bad servants if kept too long from actual service. The ' ways ' of a kitchen, a laundry, housemaids' ' ways,' can only be acquired at the real scene of action. I am satisfied that the greatest charity the rich can bestow on the working classes of their several neighbourhoods is to make their own households, stables, and gardens, schools of in- dustry. Let them take a young girl into the kitchen, the laundry, under the housemaid ; encouraging cook, Martha, and Mary to aid in the wcrk of training them in their several depart- ments ; let it be understood that this is schooling for service — not service — their food the sole wages for the first year ; give the ruling powers of the kitchen, laundry, and bedrooms a small bonus for every child so trained for a year ; let these, if possible, still attend the Sunday school ; thus, at an expense which would scarcely be felt, there would be real and abiding benefit done. If gardener and groom had also their scholastic apprentice, here, too, good would be achieved. In some cases it might be advis- able to have two girls in each department, taking week by week in turn ; the week at home to be given, half each day to the school, the other half to home duty. As to that overstrained prudery which says it would expose the morals of these young girls to unfair trial by sending them into large establishments, my answer is, look at all to which they are exposed at home ; and, further, I am satisfied that wherever a master or mistress of a household is of a dis- position thus to help the poor around them, their servants will themselves be too well chosen not to be trusted to ab- stain from injuring by word or deed those their employers would benefit. April 28, 1862 EDUCATION 91 On female education S. G. O. held the view that the mental equip- ment provided in schools for girls was too obviously devoted to the capture of husbands. In single life he found great gain. He looked on women who do not marry as the direct instruments of God, fit for work from which those who marry and bear children are, as a rule, excluded. April 28, 1862. Women, in that class where education begins to be given wholly at the cost of the parents, have not, as yet, had the same chance in life as the men of the same class. Parents have little choice of schools ; where the expense is high, but too often, accomplishments — so called — are the staple of the education ; at the cheaper schools growing girls eat out two-thirds of what is paid for them ; for the other third they get all overworked, ill-paid, and badly qualified teachers can give in the way of teaching— writing, reading, geography, arithmetic, with a slight seasoning of weak French, stronger piano ; they are taught to walk with what is called a ' genteel carriage,' perhaps to dance, with catechism and Scripture included. They grow up fine young women, amiable, and all that ; do ' puss in boots,' in scarlet on crinoline and Balmorals, as well as those who are far above them in life ; the day comes when the realities of a life, with bread to be earned, are thrown on them, and for what are they then found qualified ? There are excellent endowed grammar schools for boys, where yeomen, tradesmen, poor professional men, get them well taught for all future purposes at a small expense. At present there are very few such chances for the girls of the family. Very many parents, for economy and from higher motives, prefer having a governess to teach their girls at home. There is a great demand for such teachers ; there is a great supply, but it is found that a very large proportion have little to offer beyond good character, amiable temper, and a desire to teach. The con- sequence is they rear up young women as they themselves were reared, but leave them at last as unfit to really be governesses as they are themselves ; and yet but too many of their pupils must come at last to a choice between ' service ' in some form or seeking the situation of nursery governess. The remedy must rest with the parents ; they must learn the 92 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 28 wise lesson that no man or woman is lowered before God and the good who has been fitted by education, from the first, {or the chance of that reverse in life which may throw her or him on their own resources. The mistakes of the day are the notion that education is to raise every one in life, instead of being the great aid of life in every position of it ; and that women are sure to marry, and, therefore, they need not be fitted for the special struggles of the single life. From the Belgravian mother to the matron of the village shop the rage is to raise daughters for the matrimonial market ; how to attract attention is the one seeming object. I only wish the little dames knew the sores of ' the great dames ;' how hard to obtain and how rare is success ; how bitter dis- appointment ; how often, after all, in the race in life, a sensibly educated woman, with no outward advertisement, carries off the possession of a home of comfort, where the mere artificial man- bait has to either live out a life of sullen, disappointed spinstership, or to share a home, in which she soon finds that, having nothing in her to make it happy, she has to suffer neglect and misery. Let us all echo the desire of Miss Faithfull, that parents may turn their minds to the giving their daughters a thorough educa- cation, making them useful and wise as well as accomplished, fitted to meet, single-handed, an evil day as to enjoy a day of married prosperity. So far from thinking woman's noblest sphere that of the matron and mother, I hold that the greater proportion of really noble, self-denying work must be done by single women. These must be, to a very great degree, the teachers, the mind-formers, of the yet to be mother race. What mothers would do without nurses, governesses, maids, I cannot see. They have for many a year the almost perpetual infant, that continued claimant on night and day care ; to this is added household economy, and the real task of all, the home to be made pleasant to the husband ; if married to professional men, men in business, they have to share no small portion of the husband's cares, if not his actual work. The wife who can rule her household in all honour, and quiet, and love, is a noble creature, for she is fulfilling by force of a pure affection that which requires of her, day by day, the most 1 862 EDUCATION 93 active exercise of the highest virtue. But I confess I must claim, as only just, that the spinster, who in her station does her duty on the same principle, is as noble a creature. Molly who, as maid-of-all-work, cheerfully drudges on poor, year to year, loving the butcher's youth she is too poor to marry — content to think he loves and is true, like her is working and waiting — is to my eye as noble a creature as her mistress, who took to master and a life of miserable and struggling penury on the strength of the proverb that ' if we do find mouths, God will find the food.' I hate to think of women as destined only to share the honour after their kind which the white mice and rabbits of one's children share after their kind. So long as ' increase and multiply ' implies matrimony, I can see many a noble field for those who prefer the ' individual ' life, or from prudence are forbidden to change it. It is my firm belief that a very large proportion of the great merciful works of English philanthropy is done by single women, as the funds for them are also in a very great measure found by that sisterhood. I look on them as God's direct instruments, appointed by His Providence to certain works in His world — works from which those whose lot it is to marry and bear children must, as the rule, be excluded. I am not sorry to hear of a colonist marrying a governess ; I always hope he and she may have chosen each other wisely ; but I hope never to live to see the day when any inducement may be given to ladies to go out to the colonies professedly as teachers, but in reality to seek husbands. I never think of a woman as nearer to real degradation than when I see her passively offered for marriage to the first comer of sufficient value in a mother's eye, or herself openly giving reason to believe that she is so scheming on her own account. Mr. Lowe's Revised Code had come into operation in 1862. It decreed regular examinations of the pupils, payment by results, evening schools for adults, and other changes which raised a storm of opposition from the clergy and schoolmasters. S. G. O. was one of those who expressed his dislike. October 10, 1864. The subject of the education of the poorer classes has of late 94 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 10 received a good deal of attention. There is evidently a feeling of disappointment abroad that the results are not what might be expected from the ' improved systems ' which have prevailed now for some years in so many schools. I think I see a disposi- tion to ask for what is called a still more energetic diffusion of knowledge, by means of the existing schools. For my own part, as a mere looker-on, I think the managers of schools on what is called the improved system are already but too energetic in their endeavours to push the education of the poor to its highest attainable point ; it appears to me they already have rather overdone their work ; that the failure to make the rising generation so wise as was expected has arisen from overcharging it with wisdom. You can only deal with the labourer's male child, as the rule, from the age of four to, at the furthest, the age of twelve. I accept as the definition of education that it is the general culti- vation of the understanding, that instruction is the special direc- tion of it, with reference to a future particular course of life. The sound education, then, of a labourer's son demands that, between the ages of five years and twelve, he should become well advanced in general knowledge, combining with this as much teaching as it is possible to give him in matters specially connected with his future bread-earning condition. Young Jobus is the son of a carter in a country village. When he is twelve years of age he must go to work, farm work, for his bread ; at five years of age he enters the schoolroom ; it will require at least two years to give him a ready command over ordinary words in print, and over the formation of very simple words on slate or paper. He will have proved himself of more than average ability if by his seventh birthday he has attained power to read with accuracy, straight ahead, any plain, easy book, and can also, with pen or pencil, write legibly from such book. I assume that he has acquired the amount of know- ledge in arithmetic which enables him to do easy sums accu- rately in its early rules. In the remaining years of his school life he will have been employed in an advance in all these accomplishments, and while thus improving in the mere mechanics of knowledge, will have 1 864 EDUCATION 95 stored his brain with a great many read and told facts, having been strongly exercised in the study of such facts, and in reason- ing upon them. Of what nature these facts may be, to what extent, in reference to them, his reasoning powers may have been exercised, will depend upon the books of the school, his own special industry and ability, and the ability and industry of his teachers. Such a boy may be expected to leave school able to read and write with ease, to do fairly a good deal of arithmetic ; he will, from maps and books, have acquired a certain amount of geographical knowledge, a good deal of that miscellaneous ' useful ' information which is to be found in modern school books ; he will have been made to read and commit to memory a great amount of Bible knowledge — i.e. its chief historical features, and the deductions drawn from it as a whole, as the grounds of that religious belief in which he is being educated. A boy who has profited thus much from a school, at the age of eleven or twelve, will have done well ; he will be a very favourable specimen of an educated labourer's son. He is book- coloured to a point as high as we could expect ; whether the colours are fast, will stand the wear and tear of life, remains to be proved. He is turned out to order from the intellect mill, a schoolboy knowledged up to the highest mark the material and the system of mental-facture would admit. He now passes to the purely labour mill, his transition state, as a future bread- earning man. I for ever hear the complaint that school learning is very soon almost altogether lost, in the active business of early labour life ; that green fields and fallow fields, barns, pigsties, and cow- sheds, act to develop muscle and make the cheeks ruddy, but seem, at the same time, to rust out the largest proportion of all the teaching so laboriously acquired at school. You go with a friend or two into a first-rate village school ; you listen with astonishment, not only to the reading, as reading, of the upper classes, but to the answers made to questions on lessons in history, political economy, geography, and natural history. You hear the master read from some essay on one of these subjects, the work of a well-known author. Passing behind 96 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 10 the class, you behold with wonder the accuracy with which, as he reads, the boys write down each sentence ; a skeleton map on a slate is filled in without hesitation as he calls out the different counties and towns. Then there is a lesson given in mental arithmetic — you are too thankful that neither yourself nor friends — one of them, perhaps, a Cabinet Minister and great educational authority — are called on to prove whether Joe Jobus with the sore ears has really done all his figures right — right out of his head. Now follows a Scripture lesson ; could any bishop or examining chaplain, could any living Cruden so quickly and accurately reply to the pelting storm of questions which extracts Scriptural matter, historical, prophetical, etymo- logical, and doctrinal ? Jobus takes it all easy ; so do some dozen Jobuses. You are too happy when it is over, and you and your friends, left unexposed as to your ignorance, are per- mitted to escape, having written your names to a declaration how gratified you have been with this wonderful proof of the industry of the master and ability of his scholars ; and the more so, as you may be told he can get no help from Government, as he declines to be himself examined to prove whether he is qualified to teach a village school. If we follow these boys into farm-labour life, take them in hand two years hence, I believe we should find that a very great deal of this power of intellectual exhibition has gone from them. Reading will have been preserved, although some of its facility will have been lost ; writing will not have been lost, but much of its accuracy will be wanting ; the ability to work out com- plicated exercises in arithmetic will have vanished, probably degenerated into a mere power to apply enough of arithmetic for very ordinary purposes ; I doubt whether history, secular or religious, will have left a trace of its former accurate character ; and so with all that remaining high intellectual matter with which the brain had been inoculated — it may still have its shadow upon Jobus's mind ; it was schoolwork — like the smell of the school stove, it formed a part of school-life : it gave him no real pleasure then ; the loss of it now produces in him no mortification. Is it then all loss ? Certainly not ; it has been years of brain 1 864 EDUCATION 07 exercise, years of learning how to learn. The boy has been so fardisanimalled that his reasoning powers have been roused into full vitality ; he has been introduced into a new world, one very different from that which might have left him to believe that life was a mere matter of labour as its business ; beer, skittles, and coarse indulgence as its recreation ; he has found out at school that he has a mind capable of getting at strange fields of infor- mation, a soul offered very high privileges. The intelligence which remains to him may appear to but poorly represent the process by which he obtained it, still from that process he has derived it. The thing remains, in its degree powerful for good or evil, although a great deal of the tool work that created it is obliterated in the wear and tear of active life. It appears to me that we are too apt to regard the village schoolboy at school as so much raw material, capable of being worked up to one uniform pattern. It is very curious to observe how cleverly boys of very different natural ability are made to play out the same school tunes, under the hand of a skilful master, and with very little apparent variation. Is it that the dull head is driven up to the mark the brighter intellect attains without driving ? or, is it that the clever boy is held back in his work to pace with the natural dunce ? or, again, is it not the fact that the system pursued is so mechanical, the material sub- mitted to it is so young, that dull and lively brains early forced into the same groove must, as they run in it, give forth nearly identical lesson sounds ? Are we dealing with brain material as the acrobat deals with the muscles and ligaments of the children he is training for future astonishing contortion, making the whole frame, when immature, obedient by the very force of continued exercise, to perform feats which no skill could, at maturity, get out of a human being who had not been thus made subject to this early power of muscular distortion ? I admit that where there is an early opening for the profit- able use of what a boy has thus learnt at school, he, being now an adult, docs very often turn it to account ; he goes for a few years to farm work. Having overcome by open air and labour the depressing effect of the years of schooling on his frame, he is in full strength of constitution. Such an adult will be eligible VOL. I. h 9 8 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Oct. 10 for many a position in life higher than that of ordinary farm labour ; he goes into the railway or police service, or into some other avocation in which his scholarship, what remains of it, acting in aid of his physical power, will give him good earnings and fair prospect of rising in life. Here the system may be said to reap its fruit, but the majority of these successful cases are those of boys who may have done no more in school than all the rest, but, having better ability, they had done it with more ease ; the process of being taught having been less painful to them they retained, better than duller boys, what was put into them. Wlw should we wonder that many a boy, no worse in the utterance of lessons than another at school, should, as an adult, very soon become dull, stupid, devoid of any the least taste for anything intellectual ? By nature dull, with brain power heredi- tarily of low average, he had for seven years, for some six hours a day, been subject to a hard brain drill ; in the school ranks he passed muster ; he is now out of them ; it is a positive constitu- tional advantage to shake off the mental stiffening to which he had been subject ; he is not the utterly uncultivated being he would have been without schooling ; but he is in a healthier, more mentally wholesome condition in the forgetfulness of a very great part of what had been forcibly crammed into him. We should always bear in mind that the child of educated parents returns from school to a home in harmony with the work of his school teacher ; all around him speaks to the value of knowledge, the misfortune of ignorance. Not so is it with Jobus. His home is the place of his meals and his sleep, rarely of his play, more rarely still of anything likely to bring out his school lore ; tired himself, he rejoins parents toil-worn, needing what rest and quiet they can snatch in early evening and at night to refit them for the next clay's early toil. Let us be con- tent that we yet have a very large and increasing number of the labouring poor, who are able to read, with some power of writing, who have not forgotten all their summing, and have retained enough of school theology to find and hold their way in a simple, unambitious Christian life ; they may not do all credit as pupils of a master of high qualification, but for their calling in life they 1 864 EDUCATION 99 have all they need for their happiness. I question whether a less ambitious style of education, less forcing of dull brains, would not have left a great many of them really wiser men — men more likely in after life to seek more wisdom from books. I think many a boyhood has been so book and Bible and slate poisoned from over school work that the mind, nauseated from over- feeding, has passed into a reaction, making all knowledge, sacred or profane, repulsive. As to special instruction, I do not see how much is to be done at school. Sums in sacks and hurdles, lessons on soils, the treatment of farm beasts, and the nature of farm implements, may have their value, but I am not aware that in practice there has been any real result from them ; still I feel that many an object lesson might be made more agreeable and could not be less useful if it did direct attention to the commoner objects with which the boy's future will be so connected. I will not trust myself to say what I think of the effect of making the Bible an every-day hard lesson-book — a practice far too common ; that it is utterly destructive of reverence for God's word I cannot doubt, nor do I for one moment doubt but that it is as injurious to the teachers as to the taught. The connection between education and strikes is not obvious. A prevalent idea among employers of labour a quarter of a century ago was that education led to combination and strikes. Subscriptions in aid of education were largely withheld by the large employers, many of whom held this view. S. G. O. discussed the bearing of education on disputes between capital and labour. October 24, 1864. There is a very wide difference between the action of education of a high standard upon the operative of a manufactory and its action in the case of an agricultural labourer. In the latter the work upon which he enters when he leaves school is of the simplest character, requiring little from him beyond ordinary in- telligence, health, and proper attention to the orders given to him by his master. Not so is it with the mechanics in any large branch of manufacture ; these men have to deal with a great variety of tools, to perfect their share of a great variety of work executed on material at one time of the finest and most delicate ioo THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Oct. 24 texture, at another of coarse and intractable quality, only to be dealt with by great force of hand, as well as skill of hand and brain. The machinery in co-operation with which they have to work is of the most complicated character, requiring consider- able intelligence to direct its power to properly deal with the material submitted to it. In every factory, in every mining operation, it is of the first importance that the majority of the employed should have at least that share of intelligence which will secure habits of caution in regard to the risks the property of the employer and the lives of the employed must be exposed to, where so much depends on the accidental disarrangement of the machinery and those many elements of danger which are inevitable where the work sought to be done can only be safely attempted with great watchfulness, lest any disturbance of the vast power used, any avertible mis- chief from the nature of the material or the scene of work, should, for want of this caution, have been left unguarded against. It requires a well-exercised brain in boyhood to prepare the man for the incessant demand on his judgment and nicety of calculation that the great proportion of skilled labour now re- quires. Those who have to be trusted as ' the hands ' to perfect by their labour the wonderful productions of the manufactories of the present day, need not simply the intelligence and skilled manipulation which to-day's inventions may demand, but power to follow in the steps of each day's fresh inventions. If, on the one hand, we are told that the brain of the engineer can know no rest, but must ever be on the watch to push further the won- derful achievements of machinery, will they who tell us so dis- pute that there is with each novel application of machinery a new demand for increased skill and intelligence in the work- man ? It is just with this class that the education I think overdone in the case of the children of the farm labourer can scarcely with their children be so. Born of parents of a higher intellectual type, bred in homes where from their earliest days they are brought into contact with so much that concerns mechanical power, the skill of mechanics, they are brain-fitted and home- 1 864 EDUCATION 101 fostered in a more intellectual atmosphere, and are thus, when very young, led to value the school's teaching, as leading up to much on which the home's comfort so greatly depends. At the very commencement of the battle of life, when first they enlist in the array of our skilled operative force, they find all they have to do easier done by the use of knowledge gained at school ; growing up among men of intelligence, their faculties, so far from being depressed by the nature of their labour, are quickened by it ; they continue to improve in knowledge by the use of the power to improve they first obtained at school ; their worldly interest, the field of their labour, is no village-bounded field ; they work, and they know it, as it were, for the world at large, and soon take more or less interest in all those world changes which directly affect their own particular branch of trade. War and peace, national prosperity or adversity, the in- terruption from any cause of the progress of trade, are things which come home to them with peculiar force. No wonder they do read newspapers, have their reading rooms, clubs, &c, have ears to hearken to and eyes to study matters which affect the condition of their own class — the operative hands by whom the great commercial community work out their wealth ; those to whom large ' demand ' is the harbinger of good, for it is from their labour the ' supply ' must proceed, to whom a dull market is prophetical of short time and diminished earnings. It is true some portion of what they learnt at school is for- gotten, but it is not the case with them as with farm labourers, that what they have preserved is found to decrease. No, the reading, writing, arithmetic, that training in how to learn they had received, all very soon proves its own value to them, it is for ever more or less available in their work ; as they advance in skill and are promoted to a higher class of work, they still find more profit in mental cultivation. As their business in life calls for the exercise of all their knowledge and encourages them to seek more, so, with this value for it in life's toil, they find also it has its value in life's recreation. They are inevitably led into tastes for extraneous matters; the appetite for news seeks its food in newspapers ; those they will naturally like the best re- lating the news of the day, and commenting on it in the interest io2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 24 of their own class. Cheap literature gives them a great variety of reading — some purely instructive, some combining a little instruction with much amusement, with about the same amount of good and evil miscellaneous compositions as fall to the lot of other classes of readers. Should we ever have had the co-operative movement and all those various institutions which prove the growing providence of the operative class had they been less educated ? Are not these good evidence of intellectual progress developing in a sound and wholesome direction ? Should we have had that noble scene of patient submission to ruin and suffering shown in the time of the distress in the cotton districts — that noble exhibition of patient loyalty — had not the operatives of our day become far wiser than their forefathers ? We owe our commerce to our national industry, the skilled use of capital, and the labour of those to whom it gives employ- ment. Neither would avail to increase our home wealth and foster our foreign trade, were we not a people at peace among ourselves. It is not because we have coal and iron at our feet that we have outrun so many in the race, in which the power of these has made us so strong and swift, but because, having them, using them with such industry, property, the result of that in- dustry, is respected and protected to a degree unknown to other nations. There is ever the great inducement to seek its posses- sion in the fact that it can be peacefully and in all safety en- joyed. I can well remember the days when any great distress among the operatives ever led to the cropping up of political and social sedition, and this to such an amount as to threaten the safety of our whole social fabric, begetting a degree of ill-will between the employers and the employed, most disastrous to the interest of both ; for ever bringing large masses of ignorant, misguided men into direct conflict with the strong arm of the civil power. The coolest heads among the statesmen of those days viewed with the deepest apprehension a condition of things which, if left undealt with, would lead to the wildest anarchy, only at last to be put down by bringing the English soldier, on English ground, into direct collision with his fellow-countrymen. Is it so now? If it is not, is it that the operatives are men 1 864 ED UCA TION \ 03 of another race, or that education has made them wiser men, men who know the value of good government, who know it as a protector to themselves, who may yet be sometimes led to seek their ends unwisely, but who are yet too wise to seek them by direct open violence ? It is in vain to protest against trade unions ; these are days of ' interest.' Do we not see it in the House of Commons ? Who can dispute but that ' interests ' do there combine, and bring pressure upon every Government to legislate in the direc- tion they believe to be the best for their own particular selves ? We may regret that the interests of the master and the servant, the employer and the employed, are not made so identical in practice as we make them to be in theory. It is, however, folly to expect that each will not in this world seek his own first. The labour of the operative is as much his own to deal with as is the capital of his employer ; both are put out to usury ; no legal pressure, no force of human reasoning will convince either party that they may not choose their own market. Or, if they so please, let capital and labour, the one or the other, be for a time at rest, if they think it likely to promote their interest. A ' strike,' in nine cases out of ten, is a most disastrous, un- wise stroke of policy on the part of the operatives. It is a deliberate casting on the savings of past days and the present earnings of others the support of masses who were just now pro- ducers as well as consumers, but who thus become, in their own case, consumers of a store for which they have now ceased to produce anything, and also a burden for their support upon those who are still producers of that which they should, after supporting themselves, store or put out to profit fcr their own benefit. Of all the curses which afflict humanity, civil war is one of the worst, and yet out of such a war good has been known to arise ; nations have thrown off the yoke of the tyranny which oppressed their consciences or ground down their liberty ; thus have they regained the freedom of thought and action which was denied them. A ' strike ' is of the nature of a civil war. To produce wealth, capital must combine with labour ; to secure its daily support and any improvement in its condition, labour must io4 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Oct. 24 league with capital ; in alliance they have wrought out the great commercial triumphs of the day ; acting as opponents they have again and again arrested the progress of the national welfare, brought the wealthy to ruin, and reduced to penury and despair thousands of the dwellers in humble homes, who had yet so dwelt in comparative comfort. Still, I hold it cannot be denied that just as civil war is, and must ever be, in itself a curse, but yet even as such may by some great force of circumstances be- come the only remedy for a state of things which has become morally and physically insupportable, and thus is a last, most grave, but still justifiable resort, so there may be exceptional circumstances under which— however deplorable in its action, however opposed to all ordinary rule of right — a strike may be justified. So that no law is broken, no illegal or unjust compul- sion is used on others to compel them to leave work, it cannot be denied that those who choose to do so infringe no law, as far as I know, human or Divine, in withholding their labour from the market. To arrest men in the path of folly, surely you would not rear them when young without wisdom, to make the operatives as a class see that the weapon they now so rashly use has become the bane of all good feeling between themselves and their em- ployers, is one the very last to which they should ever resort, to cause them to perceive its manifest cruelty and injustice when forced into the hands of those who only under threats and com- pulsion would take it. It will scarcely be argued that we should limit early in life the exercise of their intellectual powers, be content to have them artificers of a lower standard for our own purposes, lest they should ever turn a higher standard of intellect to bad purpose in their own interest. In my opinion, the true policy lies quite in another direction. We should seek to draw wiser fruit by the promotion of a wiser and more advanced method of instruction. Already we have reaped the fruit of a sound loyalty to the Sovereign and a general submission to all constituted authority. We know it to be the fact, all strange as it is, that no increase of crime came of that late period of dis- tress to which the operatives in the North were subject ; educa- tion had given them the power to reason on its causes ; they saw 1 864 EDUCATION 105 clearly they were such as no power of Government, no commer- cial foresight, no prudence on their own part, could have averted. I say this was a great educational triumph. Had those hun- dreds of thousands of starving, ruined men and women been such as I can recollect in their scene of labour, I fear it would have been a very different state of things. Why, then, should we despair that this class, still thoroughly well taught in youth, may yet in advanced life be led to see with truer judgment the interest they have in any possible rational adjustment of trade disputes as preferable to the ' strike ' ? It may be yet some well-judging sound man, with a heart to feel interest in the welfare of the operative class, may write the history of past ' strikes,' stating impartially their real origin, the exact nature of the matter in dispute, and the eventual result to employer and employed ; the fault has not always been on one side, and it would be a blessing to both to have the whole truth put calmly on record. In my opinion, the great majority of workmen in all trades are, even now, sufficiently well educated to be open to the teaching such a narrative would offer ; if it is not so, I accept the fact as a call for more, not less, education. Let the law, the strong arm of the civil power, boldly and firmly administered, put down all exercise of force, direct or in- direct, by combinations of workmen to compel others to join them in a ' strike.' The law can do this ; but no legal power can make men deeply reason upon those many causes which, for ever disturbing commerce, act alike on the welfare of the master and the servant. The experience gathered from the past has to be brought to bear on the exigency of the present hour. This is the work of cultivated intellect ; the capitalist must do it, or he will have no safe guide for his investments ; the opera- tive must do it, or he will have no safe rule by which, at any given moment, to value the worth of his labour. Is the former to have all the education his parents can obtain for him to fit him to bring matured reasoning power to his business, and yet are we to give the operative a scant allowance of education ? With all the bitter lessons which may be read in the records of mercantile ruin, do not capitalists for ever rush into transactions which prove that although they have had high moral and intel- io6 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Oct. 24 lcctual teaching, they yet act the part of folly, tainted with all the spirit of the worst of mere gamblers ; and yet who says it is because they have had too much education ? The demagogue who reaps his harvest wheresoever there is discontent, coupled with ignorance to see whether it has just grounds, would wish only for that much education among the operatives which would give them a taste for reading and for oratory without the discriminating power to discover the fallacies which may exist in print, or the cunning falsehoods which may be clothed in eloquence. Turn over the files of the provincial papers in the days of riots in the northern districts in bygone days ; examine the fly-sheets, placards, ballads of those days ; study the speeches of the orators who then led, or rather, I should say, stirred the men, — would such trash go down now ? No ! it would not take in the boy who oils the machinery of any workshop in the kingdom. There are ever on the outskirts of every community a large mass of individuals whose idle habits and profligate lives have kept them in its lowest condition ; but too often the pressure of their numerical strength may be too much for the calm reason of the more industrious and better class ; it is these who but too often prolong a strike beyond the time when those who began it would desire to see its end. They may have gained as much as they now see to be reasonable, or they may have seen they had no real grounds of complaint. Alas ! they find that the vis inertia they have set in motion, the mass of idleness they have made industrious for mischief, now holds them to a course they deplore ; this may be an argument to spread education over a larger surface,— it can hardly be one to lower its quality. We must, Sir, rest content to see year by year education produce more independence of opinion, yes, and of manner. The working classes will think more and more for themselves, they will hold themselves as higher men. So be it ; so it must be. Let us be prepared for the consequence, and try and feed growing intelligence with sound food, meet and greet increasing self-respect with the respect to which it is entitled. Let us not seek to dam back the intelligence of this great and important class by blocking it at its early source, but rather let us give the 1 864 EDUCATION 107 stream all due space, seeking only to keep it within the banks of just reason. Middle Class Schools. December 9, 1864. The attention of the public is now much excited on the question of middle-class education ; it is understood that a Com- mission will inquire into the subject. Without presuming to anticipate the result of this inquiry, will you kindly permit me to discuss one or two features of the case as they strike my own mind ? It has been found difficult by the speakers and writers on this subject to define strictly what is meant by the term ' middle class.' We are told sometimes that it is the class whose means do not allow them the advantages of the recognised public schools — Eton, Harrow, Rugby, &c. ; who yet are in a position in life which would forbid them -sending their children to the National and British schools- -those assisted by the State. Again, another definition of a middle-class school is, that it is one from which the pupils go direct into the trades or profes- sions in which the parents hope they will get their livelihood. I confess I think this latter is the best definition, although it would be easy to point out where it fails of the exact object sought. In real fact, we all understand what we mean when we talk of middle-class education, however difficult or impossible it may be exactly to define where the class in question merges into the upper or fines off into the lower. I shall, therefore, assume that these schools are known in their character as institutions for the education of the children of what we call the middle classes ; and that there is a very large number of such schools professedly educating the boys who will form in future life the staple of the most valuable of all the classes of our people which we can in any way, in any degree, separate from the rest, as a class. I think some injustice has been done to the masters of these schools. Admitting that the actual work of education is very often scamped ; that very often a ' prospectus ' is like the pictures outside a ' show,' a great exaggeration of what you pay for at the door ; and further admitting that the master and staff are not in many cases equal 10S THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Dec. 9 to teach what they profess to do, and in some cases, when they have the ability, do not put it forth ; not denying that the proofs of what the boys have learnt, as shown in certain copies, themes, and prize-book testimonials to industry and ability, are some- times so many artful dodges to deceive parents who are either too ignorant to detect them or too vain to question them, — I still believe the masters of these schools in our day have done a great work. No one who has watched the changed man the tradesman, the tenant-farmer, the professional man of small means now is, and compared what he is now with what he was no such very great number of years since, can doubt but that the school of his class has done for it as a class quite as much as higher schools have done for the highest class, if not more. I am inclined to think, if the word ' stationary ' is to be used in the matter, it cannot be applied in the case of the intelligence of the middle class ; that, in fact, this has visibly advanced, while in the case of the class above it matters are very much what they were. Looking at the education of a boy as an investment, so far as regards its cost, I believe Mr. Cornfield, of the Grange Farm, has got more for his money at Mr. Dickinson Desk's academy, in the town of Oxmarket, than his noble landlord has got for the money he paid to Dr. Bellowstone, of Cricketfield College. Knowing, as I do, that Mr. C. got his boy done intellectually and fed tolerably for 35/. a year, and no extras, with short holi days, I think Dick C. brought away at sixteen more for his money than young Lord did at a year older ; his father paying at least 70/. a year unavoidable, with some 20/. more incidental, and having the pleasure of his son's company at home with the gamekeepers and grooms for a far greater portion of the year. We should bear in mind that by far the greater proportion of the purely commercial class, as well as almost the whole of the tradesmen of England, have been educated at these schools, and to these we may add the great body of tenant-farmers. Now, I think it impossible to deny, not only the great intelli- gence of these classes, but that it is an intelligence which has of late rapidly increased, and year by year we see no one symptom 1 864 EDUCATION 109 of its decline, but the reverse. I am inclined to argue that this is proof that these middle schools have given fully money's worth for the money they have received for their work ; and the more so, as I am satisfied that the masters of these schools seldom retire from business, having amassed anything beyond a very modest competence from it. I am quite ready to admit that many of these schools may be kept by men of low acquirement, but then it is but fair to ask, what in their case are the terms on which they receive pupils ? I believe the answer would be, ' Very low terms indeed.' If the curriculum is to be more ambitious, the cost of the educa- tion of the master will have been greater, and so with his assistants ; he must raise his terms accordingly. Are the parents who are his customers, as the rule, either willing or able to accede to this ? I doubt it. There is no class in the land which has to make greater sacrifice to secure education for their children than the middle class. They very rarely have fixed incomes ; the returns of one year give no security for that of the next. It is easy to point to blots on the economy they profess to pursue by sneering at the hunter of the farmer or the dress of a trades- man's wife and daughters. I have long been satisfied that, at all events, we see and know all that can be thus proved against them, for there is no concealment about it ; but we neither see nor know how these harmless indulgences are obtained, by a self-denying thrift, a narrow daily economy in many other matters. Nothing is more easy than to pick out grounds for taunting others with extravagance, by dealing only with par- ticular features of their lives. What homilies we could preach on their economy if we saw those lives in their entirety ! If a well-to-do tradesman or tenant-farmer can find yearly in hard cash, say, only 100/. a year for the education of his children, he does not do this as the rule with an ease which would enable him to add some 20/. more for a higher class of teaching ; his money is on his shelves, or in his flocks and fields ; he may turn it often, but the result of each separate application is ever a matter very uncertain, rarely leaving a large margin for the children's education. Boys at school are hearty feeders, and should be well fed ; no THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 9 the masters of these schools know to their cost that, though the fathers may be pleased most with the half-yearly report of pro- gress, the mothers look to the well-filled waistcoat far more than to the well-stocked brain. The old lady of Strawberry Farm, who said of the schooling of her children, ' I like to see the girls home with good manners, my boys well muttoned,' was not far behind the opinions of the present generation of mothers of her class. To mutton growing boys is expensive. You won't get much into their heads without a good deal of fresh air and exercise. The more they have of these, the more mutton they consume. I hope the new Commission will have some regard to the question, ' Can these boys be fed and lodged as they are for the sum charged to their parents, and have further claim, for that sum, for education of a higher stamp ? ' It is not just to point to what is done in many National schools. Mr. Dickinson Desk has no capitation money, no certificated Government-paid teachers to aid him. His own education may have been obtained at a low cost, but, such as it is, the nation paid nothing towards it. Before boys are sent to public schools, such as Eton or Harrow, they have had careful home-teaching up to a certain point by means of governesses or tutors, or they were sent early to a preparatory school, where the foundation was laid, or supposed to be laid, for the future work of the public school. It is rare with middle-class parents to send their children to any but one school from first to last. I need hardly say the family at home are far too much engaged to have much time for the preparation of the boys for school. The master receives in the middle-class school material very raw indeed, and on this he has to go to work to do the best he can. It must be well boarded ; it has all eating and sleeping power — powers pretty sure to develop more and more. The power of acquiring knowledge has as yet arrived only at a very early stage ; it has to be now developed to its utmost extent, and then led on and on until the boy can be returned to his father, educated — i.e. possessed of all that amount of useful knowledge which the school undertook to give for the money, with a habit of gathering knowledge which, if it be still kept up, gives every promise to the parent that the youth may now enter some business, and, being once in 1 864 EDUCATION ur it, by means of the education he has received make his way to a good position. I have no doubt there may be many a school professing a great deal in the matters of morals and letters, the master of which may be a wretched sot, a taproom authority, with just that species of ability which wins taproom applause. That he is a knave as well as a sot is very probable. But this is not the master of a school to which any decent tradesman would send his boy. There is a certain class of small struggling farmer or tradesman, who, scarce ever out of debt, still fights life, adhering to the business which makes it a bitter life, because it is business, not labour, who would yet be happier in the meanest labour which would return an honest support. Such a man won't send a boy to the National school ; it would, as he thinks, proclaim his poverty, and at once lower him among those with whom he still aims to live on an equality. A cheap but pretentious school takes his boys off his hands ; he wants them taught certain things, made sharp ; he knows he must be blind to the faults of the master, so long as he gets out of him all the teaching he can expect for the money. I cannot admit that such schools are middle-class schools ; they assume to be superior to the National schools, as the parents of the pupils assume to be classed above the mechanic or labourer, but it is in both cases a sham. It is to me a moral certainty that the real middle-class schools will improve ; they must do so, for the intellectua appetite of all classes is a matter of incessant growth. It will yet be found that although for the money paid a wider field of knowledge can hardly be expected, yet that what is taught can be taught better, that more pains can be given and better methods pursued to thoroughly and accurately ground the pupils in those branches of knowledge it is professed to teach them. There can be no doubt but that a well-devised system of inspection by com- petent and impartial men would be a most valuable thing ; but to make the submission to this compulsory is out of the question. The Oxford and Cambridge examinations offer to those who seek it a means of proving their ability — give to the successful candidates a certificate valuable as an honourable distinction, but carrying with it its own value as proof of competence to II2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 9 undertake profitable occupation. Thus the offering to the middle-class schoolmaster the means of having his system and its success tested and certified will tender him a certain honour- able distinction, having also a clear money value to him, inas- much as it proves to parents which of these schools are certainly good. Other schools may be as good, but are not thus proved to be so. It seems to me the success of such a proffered system of examination would depend much on the tact and skill of the examiners, and their common-sense view of what they under- take ; they should deal simply with what it is professed to teach, not with what they may think it desirable to teach. The masters, for their own sake, will give to the parents as much as can be expected for their money, for there is plenty of competi- tion ; but you have no right to expect more than this, even if you assume some sort of right to see that in the branches of knowledge offered the best means are used to obtain the highest result. That there are many endowed schools which are not only ill conducted, but which also are so conducted as to give the scholars received under the endowment scant measure of what is their right, while those who pay higher, the private scholars, are better dealt with, I have no doubt. Here the law is quite justified in direct interference. It is the case of an abused public charity. By all means, then, deal with these schools so as to secure, as far as may be, the original intentions of those who gave the endowments, but giving those intentions a liberal translation, in accordance with the spirit of our own age. I am, Sir, quite aware these observations of mine take a somewhat different view of the existing state of middle-class schools from that which has as yet been taken in your columns, but I feel that the masters of these schools are not as the rule open to the severe strictures which have been made upon them. I believe in their case, as in the case of masters of schools of the highest position, if they criticised the treatment of pupils at home, the habits allowed there, the example there set, if they divulged all their difficulties with parents, it would be seen that if they are no better than men of other occupations, they have 1 864 EDUCATION 113 been made what they are, and kept as they are, by a force of circumstances against which they were well-nigh powerless. The publication of the following letter attracted much attention, and among others who wrote to him was Mr. Walter. S. G. O. says : — - ' Walter wrote to me at once, on reading this, a highly complimentary letter begging me to publish a second, which I did.' December 13, 1864. We are all but too much disposed to regard education as a mere matter of book work, the agencies by which this work is to be set in motion being parents, governesses, tutors, or school- masters. We rely on these, the educating operatives, to take the brains of our children in hand and bring the brain power under subjection to book power. There appears to me to be one element in education which has not received the considera- tion due to it, and that is the necessity to watch over, control, and direct the knowledge the brains of our children obtain from other sources than the books from which they learn lessons, other lips than those of parents and salaried teachers. It is my belief that a child's brain at a very early age becomes a receptacle of facts and ideas to which at the time it attaches no importance — in reality, is scarcely aware that it has received them into the storehouse of its intellect ; but, being there stored, I believe such facts and ideas are not lost to it, may remain apparently dormant, but still have that life which waits only its season for a rapid and sometimes very inconvenient develop- ment. I hold that an idea thus received, although at the time the age of the child would forbid anything like a reasonable acceptance of its meaning, does have a future influence upon it — at least thus far, that at a more advanced age it can then develop it for good or evil, as it may be, and does often do so. This opinion may be held to assume that the brain is, after a fashion, a material on which facts and ideas, coming through the eye or car, engrave themselves, and so remain as written matter, awaiting a time when the advanced condition of the child's understanding gives it power to read and apply them. To many this may appear a very weak assumption on my part, and yet vol. 1. I ii 4 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 13 long observation and some study have brought me to the con- viction it is in a degree true. I hold further, that what is true of the child is, after its degree, true through every stage of life up to far advanced man- hood ; things we see, things we hear, we often see and hear yet taking no heed that we do so ; some event in after time, having some connection with them, at once brings before us the fact that we had so seen or heard, and yet been thus heedless of the fact. There is, however, this great difference between the young brain and the older one, the latter could have comprehended the impression received, had that knowledge of the world about it which could interpret the impression ; the young brain — yes, and a very young brain, — according to my theory, receives im- pressions which would be as algebra to it, preserves them, and only falls back upon their proper interpretation when, advancing in years, it has gathered a much further advance in its powers of comprehension. Whether I am right or wrong in my theory, I am quite satisfied of this, that if one half the pains were taken to secure a moral atmosphere in the nursery which is taken in the case of the schoolroom, or in the choice of a school, children would be wiser and better, and grow into men and women with more of wisdom and of virtue. ' Little pitchers have long ears,' says Mrs. Careful, as pre- paratory to a half-hour's gossip with a neighbour she sends Master Johnny or Miss Lucy, age six, out of the room. Where does Johnny or Miss L. retire to ? To the nursery. Nursemaids and nurses have their gossip, not so refined as that of the drawing- room. Do they send children out of hearing ? Are the ears of a little pitcher, whatever they may be, so constructed that they are dull of hearing upstairs, although so terribly acute down- stairs ? Would that parents could be brought to see that no cost, no pains, are too great to bestow to obtain nurses and nursemaids not only thoroughly respectable in life and conversation, but thoroughly aware how they may morally injure or preserve the children intrusted to them by their own evil or good ways and words. There is far more mischief done in many families before i86 4 EDUCATION 115 the children reach the schoolroom than the best of governesses or tutors have power to eradicate ; they may hinder its exhibi- tion, may give the child a sort of shame regarding it ; but early immoral taint is a very fast-set colour ; the attrition of many years' better principles may at last erase it ; it but too often, however, is only put to sleep in the boy or girl to break out with sad force in the man or woman. An early nursery lesson, one far too common, is 'never to tell tales ; ' it is often enforced by dark, mysterious threats of a character likely most seriously to impress the child ; little Missy has a very perplexing question of allegiance to solve ; early taught duty to papa and mamma, still earlier has she learned what may be the penalty if she is not loyal to the sovereign powers of the nursery. No doubt, an infant spy may grow into a sly and treacherous boy or girl, but there is, on the other hand, no little danger that this training of children to allow evil to be done and spoken before them, making it honourable in them to conceal it from their parents, highly penal not to do so, will in the end make them deceitful and false to suit their own childish purposes. Children are very curious in the matter of everything made mysterious to them. If, in addition to being commanded not to tell what they hear or see, they also are made curious as to why they are to be silent, their minds will be set upon the watch that they may find out what it is that may be thus said or done before them but not told to any one ; they will ask questions inconvenient to answer. If thought too suspicious they will then be bribed by forbidden indulgences to be quiet. It is thus many a promising child of parents who are themselves upright and truthful has become a source of life-long grief to them ; made false, sly, prematurely knowing in the nursery, it has grown up according to this training, become one of those cha- racters so utterly despicable — the man or woman taught what is good, but wearing the good taught as a mere cloak to conceal a heart false to the outer life, and only wanting opportunity to betray itself in all its impurity and deceit. I have heard parents and medical men of high standing express astonishment at those most painful exhibitions of moral ,i6 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 13 distortion, which sometimes occur under attacks of the brain in young persons. The patient may have been most carefully brought up and lived in the strictest consistency with such an education, and yet the lips have poured forth language so vulgar, so depraved in its nature, as to baffle all conception whence either the ideas or their form of utterance could have been derived. In the cases I have myself known I have felt satisfied that there was a clear indication that it was the development of what had long lain dormant in the brain, a confused delivery of detached sentences and sentiments, just such as might have been carelessly from time to time used in the hearing of children, thought far too young to heed them, or, if they did, to attach any meaning to them. I could trace just such low, coarse talk as could easily be conceived to be that of servants of the lowest caste of mind. It was to me simply the effect of fever exciting the brain under some, to us, still mysterious fashion, and rousing up into expression matters once, and long since, received as in a dream, of which in a sane state there had been no recollection. I believe it is always found to be the rule that, on the abatement of this physical disturbance and the return of calm reason, no vestige of the moral distemper has remained, nor the slightest knowledge that it has even existed ; nor in the future life could the closest watchfulness discover that this latent evil had any action on the character ; in fact, it had risen as a shadow of something belonging to years long past, every recollection of which had been by time erased — it had returned to that oblivion from which the fever of the brain had reproduced it. When a child leaves the nursery for the schoolroom it is not only transplanted into a more refined companionship, but in the more refined atmosphere it has the whole power of the mind steadily and progressively led to the attainment, day by day, of fresh and wholesome objects of interest. I can then quite under- stand that the low, coarse ideas it may almost insensibly have received may thus be gradually driven into oblivion — become so overlaid by healthy moral matter as to be in effect harmless ; and thus I can easily believe these maniacal developments of evil to be external to the acquired character, and only forced into view by the disease of the moment, for the moment. Not 1 864 ED UCA TION 1 1 7 so with the cunning, vulgar, false habits such as I have above alluded to ; these education may eradicate, or may only restrain, I consider, then, that of the two evils the teaching children to deceive and be in any way false to their parents is even worse than the actual exposure of them to verbal vulgarity and indecency at an age when, though they may and must receive it by the ear, they cannot in any way understand it. The pursu- ance of a bad habit is making evil a principle of daily life ; the evil is understood, and wilfully done. There are, as it were, two lives given the child — the one the life the parent knows and sees, while much of the other is of that nursery order of life of which no tales are to be told, because it permits and does what no parent would allow. I can quite understand that good children are as a kind of police in the nursery so long as they retain full truthfulness with their parents ; to bad nurses and maids their little eyes and ears, and natural tendency to prattle about what they notice, must be most inconvenient ; they must corrupt them into silence, or they must terrify them into it — make their life a false life, or one that wilfully conceals truth out of pure fear. Let parents look to it ; let them rest assured it were far better to lower schoolroom accomplishments, and pay high for a superior class for the nursery staff, than to do the one cheaply and badly, that the other, at higher expense, may aim at higher results. These are days when good female servants command good wages ; they are ever worth them, nowhere more so than in the nursery. The days are, I hope, nearly passed when children are made obedient by terror, the being threatened with all those old nursery bugbears by which even parents have -sometimes tried to subdue a child ; still, it is well that every parent should do all that is possible to prevent any action on a child's brain by means of these threats of evil coming on it from agencies other than those it can see and apprehend. It must take the — to it — mystery of duty to the unseen God on the authority of its parents and teachers ; it is as false as dangerous to set before it a fear of other mysterious powers, awful to a child's mind, in which we do not believe ourselves ; it may be spared to discover the deceit, but very often a certain amount of painful nervous n8 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 13 disturbance will remain for life. When we regard the pressure that, first and last, the human brain is subjected to in these exciting days, we cannot be too careful how we treat it, in the early days of its growth, it being then most susceptible of mischief. How often are medical men called in to advise in the cases of young children who are restless in their sleep, fearful to seek sleep, uneasy when left alone at night, lying watchful for fear they should be so left, with symptoms clearly indicative of brains overworked, over excited. Nurses and mothers attribute the mischief to causes which are the effect, not the origin of it. Were the real truth known, it would be often found that the sufferers are victims to the folly that has day by day exacted from the brain too much, or to the wickedness which has worked upon it by threats of some mysterious punishment ; very, very often, from allowing the patients to become absorbed in a species of reading which, keeping the mind on the strain, has wrought it up to an excitement from which it cannot calm down by any power of its own. It is quite true that there are many most excellent books for the amusement of young children. I have seen some I hold to be most pernicious, which are yet considered quite harmless. You may get a far worse kind of excitement for the physical condition of a child from some of these than you do of evil moral excitement for adults from the most sensational of senti- mental novels, and this when the heroes and heroines of the tale may be only domestic animals. I once took up and read in the nursery of a friend a book which in you or me might only raise a smile, but which I am satisfied might give the children for whom it was written night after night of pure terror. It was written something after this fashion : — It was the history of two truant kittens, which in a fit of naughty disobedience had absconded from home. Their adventures were many ; they were cleverly told in child language ; they were such as must interest a child deeply in the fate of the brother and sister catlings ; there were beautifully executed pictures of such things as awful owls with eyes of fire hovering over them at night, murderous-looking dogs coming down on them by day, bulls 1 86 4 ED UCA TIOA 1 1 9 breathing from their nostrils as if they were chimneys on fire, bandit cats, giants awfully armed, seizing them to carry them to dark caves, &c. Of course, the moral was, kittens and children who are disobedient will be subject to such terrible tribulations. It struck me that such a book was enough to scare sleep from any young child allowed to pore over its pages ; many such tales would make it subject to the dreams and screams which, terrifying the parents, invoke the M.D. ; they then all say it is stomach, and proceed to inflict all kinds of intestinal torture to no purpose, for the child, confined to its bed, is given more and more of such intoxicating literature. Weakened by the senna and traditional gray powder, it gets worse and worse ; the M.D. is puzzled, the mother alarmed ; more advice is called in ; the child is sent to the sea, there gets well under the more novel and natural fascination of shells and seaweed. Fortunately the books are left behind ; it is forbidden to read at all, but not because zvhat it read zvas bad reading for it. When shall we learn that, just as prudence should dictate the food a child should eat, so should it regulate the food afforded to its brain ? There is no greater folly than this system of rubbing off the natural angles of childishness by a course of reading appealing to childish simplicity, but wrapping up amuse- ment in clever mimicry of the most exciting of all literature, the novel. Childish sentiment runs to dumb animals and their young ; tales may be written on these to afford the utmost amount of childlike, gleeful interest — may be made joyous as well as instructive. I never fear sleeplessness from over laugh- ing. Children are born to laugh a good deal ; it is time enough to excite their tears by sentiment when that season has come when sorrow must mix more or less with their joy. The object of this letter may, Sir, be unsuited for your columns. If it is not so, and you allow it to appear, let me assure any parents who may read it I have no moiive in writing it beyond a desire to warn them against evils I know to exist, and, existing, to work out much misery. The < headaches ' of early childhood are on the increase ; medical men are more than ever alive to the fact that children arc over-excited in the nursery, and, but too often, too early and 120 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 13 far too hard worked in the schoolroom ; they are ' forced,' as gardeners would say, for too early exhibition in the drawing- room. They pass too much of their early life cramped into a sort of orderly, by-drill-attained manners, utterly destructive of the sweetest, most healthy characteristics of true children. For ever, from the earliest moment they can be taught anything, they are bidden ' not to be rude, but to behave pretty/ as if, in real truth, the prettiest feature of child life was not a sort of rudeness — the exuberance of real child nature. Martyrs to the vanity of our day, they are limb-hampered by the folly which makes them mere dolls for the exhibition of their dresses and the ingenuity of their nurses in dressing their hair. Taught a deportment in character with their costume, they become, but too often, vain little puppet imitations of men and women, all the winning artlessness proper to their age being thus forcibly taken from them ; they strut about, pretty pictures, when they had far better be tumbling about with the abandon natural to their age, but which would at once destroy the claim to that sort of prettiness their careful ' get up ' had given them. This precocious training in the nursery has its fruit in that great amount of butterflyism of which we see so much in after-life, in those stately, artificial, variegated specimens of young-lady life of which every watering-place gives such a cloud. Much real goodness is there in some of them, but there is the same sad sense of ' out to be looked at ' stamped upon their gait and adorning, only of an older kind, as that with which at from four to seven years of age they entered the drawing-room to visitors or the dining-room to dessert. These do not grieve me ; they have weathered the perils of child life, live, are to all appearance happy, may yet make others so ; but how many a young child has sunk under the hotbed forcing which these have managed to pass through unhurt ? I wish the physicians and surgeons who have to prescribe for the headaches, sleeplessness, brain fevers, spine complaints, now so common in the nurseries and schoolrooms of the land would boldly tell the parents the wholesome truths they could tell with such authority. I know, however, this will not be the case ; they will continue to be called in when the mischief is 1 864 EDUCATION 121 done, and must rest content with the best endeavours to modify its consequences. They are fee'd as medicine-men, will not be hearkened to if they prescribe common-sense instead of hyd. c. cretd. We shall, I fear, preserve our race of little ladies and gentlemen to the sacrifice of many a child life, or the rendering it miserable. Education of Children. January 5, 1865. In a former letter on the above subject I touched chiefly upon things to be guarded against — on evils in the early manage- ment of young children which by prudent care could be avoided. The kind and flattering way in which the advice I gave has been received in quarters entitled to my highest re- spect induces me to follow up the subject, by endeavouring to point out certain principles of action which I think important, as leading to that result we all desire — an early training of children in the way they should go. In every child born in healthy condition there is a moral life capable of developing certain moral emotions, as there is also, in combination with it, a physical life formed for the future development of certain physical powers. Sight, touch, hearing, taste, the power of utterance, are in the early days of life in a condition in which each separate faculty only exists in certain machinery, itself as yet in a very partial condition of develop- ment ; the will and power to apply the mechanism of our senses have yet to be put forth, to be called into action, by the succeed- ing necessities of advancing life. As the exigencies and at- tractions of the world around the child make calls upon the use of these senses, as yet in a very passive state, they will answer to the call, and increase in power as they are submitted to increased exercise. These, the forces by which the mind is to act and be acted on, if not early abused, will quite keep pace with any demand the mind may make upon them. How pleased are the nurse and the mother when the infant evinces the first symptoms of what is called ' taking notice ' ! The hammering the bottom of the snuffer tray with the back of the snuffers was the process in the olden time by which this, the first exercise of pleased attention to sound, was usually 122 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 5 discovered. Cheering to the ear of an orator is the sound of the applause which welcomes the appeals of his eloquence ; scarcely- less so that felt silence of the audience which will at times offer a tribute to his power in an attention which seems almost to suspend the very breath. Here, after all, is only the develop- ment of that sense of attention in the speaker and the audience which, perhaps, in early life was first shown as pleasingly excited by the snuffers-and-tray music of the nursery. An infant will take to its food from the first ; this may be called instinct. It is some time before it acquires that dis- crimination of taste which makes one food more pleasant than another. A great authority has laid it down that early knavery and early sense of taste are often traceable to that very early period when certain infant troubles are cured by the administra- tion of brown sugar ; it is said the little animal feigns the hic- cough to obtain the sweet taste of the antidote. So, again, with the sense of touch, and that use of sight which, combining with it, gives power to guide the hand to feel some object it seeks to reach. For some considerable time it is doubtful whether any understood sensation follows the early efforts to reach and touch the things to which the infant puts out its hand ; by degrees eye and hand act together, and although the result may be simply the childish glee, that half-wondering expression of countenance, which accompanies the successful poking of a finger into the eye of a little sister, yet even this is proof that the great business of preparation for active human life has com- menced — the eye directs, the brain wills, the hand obeys. I hold it to be true, and to be a truth deserving all attention, that a child is born to love ; it has to learn to fear. I argue, therefore, that we should in the very early stages of their existence seek, by looks of love, by gentle tones, to lead our children to yield to our wishes, rather than by a harsh tone and frowning aspect try to terrify them into obedience. It is very questionable in what way they feel the fear we thus try to produce — whether we do not act prematurely on a sense scarcely as yet developed, and simply confuse and annoy with no good result — whereas we do know that at the earliest moment of any exercise of reasoning power a child does answer to the tone and 1865 EDUCATION 123 look of affection with the smile which indicates its return, and by sounds which show pleasure. We are apt to laugh at the nonsense of the nursery dialect, that utterance of perverted English with lisping accent which, by common usage, is sup- posed to be best suited to the comprehension of a small child ; it is only, after its fashion, a lesson from the book of nature. If we watch Juno with her puppy family, we shall see that when they tease her into utterance, or please her into it, with their fondling play, she has a very modified growl of reproof to repress whelpine excess, and a soft whine of affectionate en- couragement in return for proper exhibition of whelpine affec- tion, very different from the out-growled menace or the out- barked applause with which she greets or menaces the more advanced in life of her species. It is the tone and look com- bined which makes the nonsense uttered to children attractive to them. Sense and nonsense are to them otherwise much alike. We do not in using it make fools of ourselves ; on the contrary, we show wisdom by this attempt to become as chil- dren, that children may understand us after their own fashion. We give a rag doll of bright colours, hideous and unshapely ; the child likes it for its bright hues ; it may or may not see in it a caricature of its own species ; the waxen, curly-headed, well- clad Dolla, so prized by Miss in walking boots, would be a meaningless thing to Miss scarcely out of socks. The two cardinal virtues of nursery life are obedience and. love. These are the rudiments of life's moral grammar, and in them should all human life be very early well grounded. Obe- dience should be won from a child by evidence given to it which it can comprehend of the pleasure it thus affords to those it loves, of the pain its self-will gives them. It will then give more willing obedience, just in proportion to the love it has for those who ask it. There can be no doubt that to win the affectionate confidence of a young child we must stoop to enter into the joys and sorrows which directly affect its, at present, small sphere of life. The pater or mater familias who, as the unthinking say, play the fool to a child of three or four years of age, accommodating themselves to its small follies and caprices, becoming for the occasion as children to gain more readily the 124 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 5 child's love, in my opinion, act a rational part. Going for a season into childland, they are no more to be ridiculed than the traveller who tries to win the confidence of the natives of a land strange to him by doing his best to join in their pursuits and make their language his own. He may do it imperfectly, grotesquely, if you will ; but in the attempt they see and accept the endeavour to give them pleasure. I can remember seeing a statesman, who for a short time was Premier, whose ordinary life was given up to the study of all the mysteries of national finance, who was one of the most confirmed red-tapists I ever knew, to please his child, made, willingly enough, to go on all fours about the room, covered from the nape of the neck to the extreme spinal boundaiy with his wife's shawl. What animal he was meant to represent I know not ; but this I know, that his own laughter was as loud and thoroughly natural as that of his child ; in after years, and not many of them, that child was lost to him, loving him dearly to the last ; I have no doubt that among the recollections of that short life that man of serious, thoughtful character, of whom the public thought as drawing his every inspiration from Blue-books, cherished above all the memory of those seasons when Downing Street and its lore had been so heartily set aside, and he, the statesman, had become as a child to please one. I may be told it is confessedly easy to win a child's love by becoming after a sort its playfellow, but it is not so easy to bring the love thus won to bear upon its will by the occasional withholding of it, to gain some point of conduct to which the child is opposed. I admit the difficulty, but I think it quite capable of being overcome. By alternations of pleasure and pain a child has to teach itself a great deal, which no one else could teach ; the pain from falling is the check to too early indulgence in the wish to stand ; a burnt child does dread fire, but it does not forsake the warmth of the fireside, although it- will fear to touch a fender, which, having been touched, had given it pain. Children study countenances before they study, with equal observation, anything else ; take a very young child into a toy shop, the chances are it will still look up more to your face than it will look at the nursery wealth which sur- 1 865 EDUCATION 125 rounds it ; it has learnt to love face, kind mother, it has yet to learn the charm of toys ; this latter is an acquired taste ; natural instinct, all early association, has given to your countenance, its change from grave to gay, its speaking smiles, or its look of pain, a sense and meaning, which at present is as omnipotent as anything can be over that ever-changing thing a child's mind. I assert, then, that you can play into a child's confidence so as to ensure pleasure to it from your looks of pleasure, pain to it when your face tells of pain. In the early days of its life's journey thus leading it by the light and checking it by the cloud, seen where it loves best to look. A time must come — and all a mother's judgment is needed to determine when it has come — when advancing reason will ally itself to that growing spirit of independence which is a part of our nature, — well trained, the basis of life's success ; ill regu- lated, the bane. Little duties are heavy laws on little folk ; things are to be done which are distasteful, others left undone which are very pleasant to a child. Too young to understand the wherefore of a command, as yet untaught in any severe penalty following on disobedience, we must expect rebellion ; but let us not forget what is yet due to the ignorance of the little rebel. To be angry with a child of tender years because it cannot see as we see is folly. No less foolish is it to expect to convince it of evil before it has yet learnt to distinguish what makes right or wrong. I believe the sound principle is ever to claim obedience to the parent as a duty not to be questioned, and never to yield for one moment that position of command which should reign all powerful to the age when advanced reason can be taught, that parents govern children on principles derived from authority by which they themselves are governed. We must punish ; the discretion with which we do it will greatly govern the amount which will be necessary. It should ever be a work seen to be one of sorrow ; it should never be done hastily or angrily. The dispositions of children vary greatly. Their sensitiveness to shame or pain do not vary more than do their dispositions to break out into degrees of open rebellion, or to offer a more or less sullen ar.d more determined exhibition of self-will. As is the disease so should the remedy 126 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 5 be adapted to it ; there are children so constitutionally violent that they are easily made defiant of all the ordinary means of punishment ; there are some so sensitive, and yet so self-willed, that although they need strong control, what would be as a feather against others is to them as the rending of their little hearts ; others are there of that strange sullen temper which seems deaf to all reproof, as it is proof against the effect of any mere bodily pain. To treat all alike is as foolish as cruel, the character of each has to be studied, and the symptoms of the individual firmly dealt with according to that prudent judgment which may best apply itself to their particular features. There are those who say that a parent should never let a child gain the mastery for an hour ; I . say there are children, with whom to contend at the time, beyond a certain limit, is only to do them physical harm and to gain no real moral advantage ; it is better to let them see you retire with sorrow from the contest, to leave them for awhile to the disturbance of their better nature, and watch the moment when the storm has passed to win them to a sense of shame at their defiance of your authority, their affront to your love. Then, to let the punish- ment be one which they shall see painful to yourself as to them — such as the withdrawing from them for a time some of the evidence of your affectionate care for their pleasures ; thus many a little proud, violent heart maybe tamed to an obedience that no rod could have commanded. Nature dealing with the child makes bodily pain a part of the discipline by which it is made careful in the use of its bodily powers. A broken nose from a fall on the nursery floor seems a hard measure dealt to the weakness of the child who chose to try and walk before it had scarcely learned to stand, and yet that bruising of the face will have taught a caution which may save it a worse fall from a too adventurous use of its early powers of locomotion. I would follow nature thus far ; I would far rather make the flesh smart for a moment than seek to terrify the mind by a pro- longed punishment of some other character, directed solely to affect some inward sense. The smart of the rod speaks to the occasion and then is silent ; solitude in the corner, with en- forced silence, too long prolonged, breeds but too often a sullen 1 865 EDUCATIOA 127 temper ; the dark closet begets a state of mind often sorely afflicting the criminal long after the crime has been pardoned and forgotten. In my opinion, with children, at least up to three or four years of age, toys, those bones of nursery contention, should be the property of the nursery commonwealth. As such they may be made instrumental in the production of harmony, whereas if they are the property of individuals they are sure to beget dis- cord at this early age. I think we err greatly in expecting the exercise of those virtues which proceed from a sense that property has its duties as well as its rights. To give a sense of possession, to the exclusion of all others, even in a toy, is to me questionable, when it is from the age of the possessor likely only to beget selfishness ; the toy is coveted .and cried for, perhaps attempts are made to take it by a still younger child, who is then punished or scolded for his larcenious disposition ; the pro- prietor is thus often made selfish on a principle he cannot understand ; his brother made angry, still left covetous, by a process equally unintelligible to him. Once establish an amiable feeling among all the members of the nursedom by a judicious use of a few toys in common, and you have gained a great step towards the amiable use of this kind of property, when the time comes for each having his own to deal with as he will. And here let me say it is not wise to be very liberal in toys ; the gifts, often repeated, of these artificial contrivances for the pro- duction of childish pleasure are too apt to create an unhealthy appetite for artificial amusement ; they contract the powers of observation within an area in which little is real or useful ; the old-fashioned wooden bricks encourage thought, the building which tumbles down gives impulse to contrivance to make it stand ; the generality of toys for the very young are good of their kind if used with moderation ; they help out the child's long days, but they should aid his efforts to find his own amuse- ment, not supplant them. The habit of kind relations of for ever giving toys is not, however, so hurtful as that detestable habit of seeking to please children by for ever giving them things to gratify simply the sense of taste. The lump of sugar after the dose is excusable 128 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Jan. 5 enough ; it has a specific purpose to fulfil, in which it would fail did it not please by its taste ; but this is no justification of that foolish custom which makes a bun or an orange the reward of virtue, but too often the bribe to cease rebellion. I admit that there is too much reason to believe that by nature we have a very strong predisposition toward confectionery, as we have also a certain amount of pleasure in destruction ; we do not, however, encourage children to wantonly smash toys or cruelly put their fingers out to maim flies. It seems to me that in the matter of sugar and all things to which it is an accompaniment, or in which it is an element, we make it a sort of ' Child's Guide ' to pleasure. I believe we thus not only create a depraved taste, making children averse to really wholesome food, with ' the sweet ' in proper amount, but we pervert the sense of taste, and, by its abuse, make it morally injurious. I always think it a poor compliment to the children and their parents when those they visit at once storm them with cake. With these hints on the discipline of a nursery, I would at once end my task — one, I confess, I think any prudent mother of experience would have far better performed ; but I know I shall be accused of having evaded the most important topic — the religious teaching. It is with some reluctance I proceed to give a few opinions in this direction, for I fear my view will not be a popular one. Our great Divine Example and Teacher invited young children to come to Him, lifted them, blessed them. I do not read anywhere that He expected great religious knowledge from them ; but I do read that He commanded all to become, in matters of faith, as a little child. I cannot believe that He ever meant that very young children should have His religion ever before them as a hard lesson. My own view is this, — children's first feelings of reverence should be obtained as towards the earthly parents ; as early as may be it should be instilled into their minds that these parents, to them so wise and powerful— and, it is to be hoped, good— daily serve and pray to an unseen Power, infinitely wiser, more powerful, and better than themselves. Invitation may then cautiously be given to the child to kneel as its parents kneel, and to offer some very short, most simple, prayer to God - the Being the parents worship. 1 865 EDUCATION 129 The child's prayer should be strictly childish — a simple request for blessing on itself and those it loves. By degrees, and only so, should a pious mother give more and more light as to the duty of prayer and the reverence it demands, unfolding gradually the connection of man with his Maker, thus lifting the love and the principle of obedience in the child beyond the seen to the Unseen Parent — not diminishing it as regards the former, but showing that this carries out the law of the latter. With equal caution — not as a hard lesson, but as one reverently and wisely given, and in all possible simplicity of language — the child may have such points of the Redeemer's history impressed upon it as are the most likely to arrest its attention, avoiding that which, from its age, it cannot in anywise comprehend, displaying all — and how much is there ? — it may well love to learn. I would ever avoid at this early age all religious teaching, which, becoming wearisome as a mere lesson, is likely to set the heart against it as such. I would never seek to terrify by dwelling on those features of revelation, which, to a mere child, must be full of dread ; just tasting life, every physical and moral agency as yet scarce breaking through life's soil, I would not bring up the grave and judgment to awe and to perplex, where from the same book in which both are written there is child's food far more congenial and appropriate to a child's understanding. Obtain reverence for the Unseen, fortified by your example as well as by your teaching ; tell of the beauty and love and mercy of the Redeemer, as shown in the passages you select from His life ; teach these holy things with reverence as if your- self felt them. A very young child will soon own their influence ; you will have prepared the soil for seed requiring greater strength in it ; the deeper mysteries of our common faith, the fuller after- teaching direct from the Scripture lessons, will be the more efficient for good in that they have not been taught until the child's heart has been won to Him from whose blessing on them all our hope depends. VOL. I. l 3° THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. May 2 CHAPTER V. LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF. The first year of the American war closed with the destruction of the Federal vessels Cumberland and Congress, in Hampton Roads, by the Confederate iron-plated ship Merrimac. The pinch of want had already desolated thousands of Lancashire homes. Men and women suffered in silence, as Lancashire folk are wont to do. But the intensity of the distress was now rousing active sympathy where hitherto it had merely excited apprehension. The International Exhibition was about to be opened in London. Misery contrasted with splendour always gave pinions to the shafts of S. G. O.'s imagination and wit. May 2, 1862. I think the general public is little aware what manner of men those are whose present suffering, and worse prospective suffering, is exciting some sympathy and a good deal of appre- hension. The American civil war has already starved industry in the weaving districts to a degree begetting wide-spread and deep want— want of food, of clothing, of all the necessaries of daily life. A peculiar class of working man, with peculiar habits of life, finds himself deprived of the power to exercise his skill in his own craft, not from any fault of his own, any infirmity ; not from any reluctance on the part of employers to find a field for his industry, but because a civil war in America has closed up the source of supply of that particular material on which millowners and workers in mills are alike dependent — the one for the profitable investment of his capital, the other for the profitable exercise of his labour. Not only are the working males of the great hives of national industry thus starved out of work for want of that material in which work finds its food ; but the females, who do so very i£62 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 131 large a proportion of mill-work — ' cotton-work,' — are in the same predicament. This is no senseless strike, seeking to force up wages by- making masters stand still, that scant savings may be turned into weapons of social war, and capital be assaulted in its tens of thousands by a few months' expenditure, in wilful idleness, of the little means they who would bind ' capital ' to their own terms have at their disposal. Employer and employed, the machines of iron and of flesh — the noblest inventions of the greatest minds, and the brave- hearted men, women, children, who, with their patient skilled labour, turn those inventions to an account — are alike partially paralysed by a train of circumstances which could not have been foreseen, and therefore could not be provided against. Yet all is quiet in the manufacturing districts. Vast crowds of suffering, acutely suffering men and women, young and old ' workpeople,' give hours to hear, with all the evidence of mental enjoyment, written on wan and weary faces, the Chancellor of the Exchequer dilate with matchless eloquence on the mill- work of mind, the mind-facture of ideas, lifting human reason to that elevation which, according to its degree, gives to man and woman, still handworkers, the full enjoyment of the widest views of all those God-given wonders the educated are able to appreciate. We have here not only a picture of ' want ' borne with patience, but of a ruling passion reigning, in the passing hours of daily life, of a happier time. I admit the world-wide reputa- tion for eloquence of the orator would draw a crowd anywhere ; but how rare in history is it found that any eloquence could, hour after hour, charm away the sense of suffering, subdue its murmurs ? Mr. Gladstone did more than this, — he rioted in his own happiest vein on the value of education, self-culture, self- help ; spoke as admitting and sympathising with physical suffer- ing, but made the burden of his oration still the work of the mind ; and men whose homes' happiness wastes for want o cotton he told of their achievements in literature. Wherever, and for whatever, men could combine to act for each other to further their mutual welfare, to provide against K 2 132 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. May 2, 1862 life's casualties, and to increase life's rational enjoyments, labour's honest gains, it has been found that the good sense of this class has worked out a way with success. They could not calculate on a day when mills should work half-time, or stop altogether, because there was a lack of raw material. Still they act together, for each other ; but no fru- gality, no foresight, no system of ' co-operation,' can long hold out under this trial. They are wise to see it is no ' enemy that hath done this ; ' that their suffering has no one ingredient in it they can lay at the door of any living soul. It is begotten in a field where it is carrying worse suffering than theirs. They — thank God for it! — have not become wiser than their forefathers in vain. They, in their patient suffering, are a noble spectacle of the right use of the institute, the lecture-room, the school. They are in want, yet peaceful. They suffer, but reason well why it is so. Self-helpers, they will, I am satisfied, work out mutual aid to its last penny ; and yet, Sir, it is to me the saddest part of all, this draining to ruin of all the machinery for social aid to each other, which has cost them so much, has so much raised them as a class. Can nothing be done ? I like not to think of the two pictures in one British frame — London, in all its splendour ; men of all nations there meeting to see the trophies and triumphs of the arts in all lands ; Lancashire, the soil of the greatest mechanical triumphs, the birthplace of many of the greatest names, sacred in the history of art and commerce, a scene to call pity from the coldest of hearts ; men's hearts, women's, children's hearts failing them from fear of what may come, chilled already by what has come. At this period, before the National Fund was organised, S. G. O. was in favour of restricting to Lancashire the relief of Lancashire distress, with the common sense which many may confound with cruelty. He laboured to divest the Poor Law of the dislike with which it was re- garded by the sturdy workers in the cotton industry. In September 1862, 163,498 persons were receiving parish relief. May 15, 1862. The ' nobility and gentry ' of Lancashire are, I have reason to believe, acting in a most kind and wise spirit towards the May 15, 1862 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 133 suffering mill-hands. They are doing a good deal quietly, and with judgment, in the way of private voluntary effort ; they are, many of them, much in council with regard to what is best to be done should the pressure upon the people thrown out of work become, by its continuance, more disastrous. There is an anti-pauperic feeling — pardon the word — as well in the upper thousands of Lancashire as in the lower ten thousands — a good, honourable, wholesome disposition to meet, as far as possible, the cry from Lancashire suffering by the self- help and self-means of Lancashire men. The sums which were held by factory hands, in the savings banks, in clubs, in those marvellous organisations, the co-operative societies, at the commencement of the American war, if taken in the aggregate, would show a total which, I think, would astonish the whole nation. In addition to money so accumulated as money capital employed for certain ends, this class have supported a large system of educational machinery — schools, libraries, reading-rooms. The result has been that a sense of independence and a thirst for knowledge have produced not only peculiar men and women, but peculiar homes. It is thrown in my teeth that I call men suffering in whose houses are often to be seen harmoniums, sometimes pianos, and shelves full of good, well-bound books. I grant it all. I grant, further, to another correspondent, ' they are sometimes too independent to be com- monly respectful ; ' nay, I admit further, that their combination in clubs and co-operative societies, &c, is giving them a ' rather alarming political power.' I, however, remember the days when men spoke with awe of discontent — want of work in the manufacturing districts ; I have some recollection of sad days of violence in those districts ; I know what the factory hand was then ; he lived from hand to mouth, he was rarely but barely educated at all ; none cared what his dwelling was, what the cost of his food. His children were worked from almost infancy, at a pace and for periods which stunted them in growth, made them strangers to one taste of real youth, soon brought them to know all the pain and deformity of a premature decay of mind and body. Indepen- dence, so called, often meant noisy Radicalism, often led to open i 3 4 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. May 15 rebellion ; it was the resentful feeling of man uncared for, seeing his own labour, in degradation, creating wealth for those whose only value in him was in the work to be got out of his children and himself. Is it nothing to have seen all this so changed — to look on Lancashire reasoning, not rebelling, in a day of deep trial ? Is it nothing to behold men, working men, and girls, their children, struggling, not for alms, but to be independent of them — willing to pawn or to sell the books, the musical instruments, every stick of that small store of luxuries hard industry and self-denial had won, rather than be paupers ? Sir, I can understand leaving it to Lancashire wealth, and charity, and wisdom to tide over this time of Lancashire suffer- ing ; I admit, at present, I see nothing better to be done than to leave the executive of mercy to these men, justly proud of the attitude of their brethren who suffer ; and yet, when I know how many wish to help, I feel it hard to preach the cold, dry lesson of a wisdom I still can hardly challenge. What I want to see is this — some committee of Lancashire men of note, who will, as such, receive contributions, not to save the poor-rates, or to interfere with the jealous surveillance under which all public money should be spent, but to supplement the alms to which the destitute have a legal right, in peculiar cases to prevent the necessity for application. At present none know- to whom it is best to give what they are ready to give, wherever good can be done, zuith judgment. I would leave all at the discretion of such a machinery, ask for 'no account' or 'report' until better times may come. I have no words to express my sense of the importance of preserving the independence of the mill hands as far as it is possible to do so — the importance of saving, as far as practicable, their special social, self-helping machinery from utter ruin. One word, let me add, on ' pauperism.' I say to these men, who would starve rather than receive help from the Boards of Guardians, you are wrong ; this help is your right, when self- help has failed — a right only claimed in shame when sought by those who are content to eat bread their folly and sin have brought them to, grudgingly given because it is known to be ill- i862 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 135 deserved. It is no shame that you, who created wealth for others, content to try only to get moderate possessions by indus- try and sobriety for yourselves, should, at such a time as this, when all employment fails you, take back in pay for your support what the nation's law offers you ; if the aid-giver still tests your necessity, think no ill of this ; it is not a libel upon the one man who may be our servant that we lock our desk, but simply an admission that in this world the good must suffer re- striction and watching because the evil need it, and there ever must be in every class too many such. The international revel was now in full swing. The country had not yet awoke to the tragical sufferings of the bone and sinew of the opera- tive class. S. G. O. abandoned the attitude he had first assumed, and pleaded with the general public in aid of the Lancashire homes. July 17, 1862. I trust I need no apology for again asking a little space to plead for the victims to the American civil war in England. There can be no shade of doubt but that the distress of the mill hands has reached a point at which despair for the future makes present acute suffering most difficult to bear. So long as there was hope that things would mend, before all ' savings ' were expended, all property pawned or sold, these men and women were sure to fight the battle of life, if not cheerfully, at least with a bravery and perseverance calculated to win our admiration. They have done so. They have seen the little capital that thrift, foresight, and self-denial had amassed gradu- ally pass from them by pure misfortune. The societies they had formed for mutual aid are on the verge of bankruptcy. Willing to be industrious, they find no field for industry ; having saved against all the probable mischances of disability from sickness, age, or accident, they have for a long time been subject to a drain upon every resource which no wisdom on their part could have foreseen. I wish again to appeal to the philanthropy of Englishmen to help a mass of people who have hitherto borne extreme suffering in a manner unequalled for the patient endurance and orderly submission it has shown. I admit a great deal has been done 136 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 17 by voluntary aid, local and general ; I believe it to be capable of proof that amid this crowd of heart-breaking miserables there has work been done by voluntary, personal agency, which in the world yet to come shall reap the honour it is solemnly promised ; it has been that of those who, having little of silver and gold, have given days and nights to comfort the afflicted, nurse the sick, to do innumerable acts of devoted affectionate deeds of mercy, seeking, hoping for no return beyond the rich one — it is their Master's work. Hitherto these agents of the alms of others have toiled on in hope ; they are now — I know it — staggered at the prospect day by day opening to them ; increasing poor rates may draw more money to feed and clothe, but inevitably must add to the crowd of the hungry and naked. The trade of the small trades- men depended upon the earnings of the very class who can no longer deal with them ; the increasing poor-rate falls thus on men who are compelled to feed those who, in fact, fed themselves. The capital of the great mill-owners must be disastrously affected ; it is folly to reprove the ' society ' of the north with the extravagance of their lives in the day of their prosperity ; they were rich men, daily adding to their riches ; I ask, ad- mitting all that can be said of their expenditure in ' luxury,' in the days of this wealth, were they worse than other wealthy folk ? In an age when sumptuary extravagance has been the open and visible sign of the folly of all classes, what class has any right to throw stones on the commercial classes if they too went with the stream ? I have grave doubts myself whether the hearts of some of the most opulent by report do not fail them at the condition in which they now behold their own life's hopes. This is not a time for reviling, but for earnest thought. I cannot but think, if Lancashire were nearer London, London would take a different view of the present crisis. I say, not that there would be less of international revel, less of incessant sensation-seeking in the fields of mere pleasure. I am far from thinking that even the wail of hundreds of thousands of fellow- creatures would arrest the tide of levity and vanity, of mere 1 862 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 137 pleasure at any cost, which reigns now in the greater and lesser worlds of 'society;' still I think the most thoughtless would make a sort of duty of benevolence, would compound for their folly and indulgence, by some self-imposed tax upon their « means.' Could we have in the ' Great Exhibition ' a true dis- solving view, showing Lancashire and the mill districts as they are — as the workhouses, the stoneyards, the hospitals, the streets, the unhomed homes are ; could we parade as in a glass the true physical and mental condition of these many thousands ; could we paint to be read off the heart mourning of parents, the be- wildered suffering of children, the masses of honest, sober, and chaste driven to the edge of that gulf into which despair plunges, defying every good principle in the strife for bread and forget- fulness — on what a scene should we gaze ! Were it possible for the vast throngs of beings on whom every power of adornment seems lavished — whose every feature is lit up with the light of pleasure, who, careless of all else, seem to have made these days, days of all the joy wealth can pur- chase, science afford, wearing out life, not in struggle for bread and clothing, but sumptuously clad and sumptuously fed — I say, were it possible for these, then, to turn from the contemplation of misery such as that of the ' north,' to see at once ' them- selves,' their truly painted lives in public and private, I think if the lesson read failed to teach any other moral good, it would at least do this, — appeal to them to show some self-denial, where there is room for so much, in aid of fellow-creatures, who have nothing left in which to deny themselves, who have now long lived but too thankful for the barest means of life. I think the oldest among us can scarcely remember a time when the non-suffering world so thoroughly made holiday as it has this present season. I am not writing to rebuke, but to supplicate. God knows, it would be as easy to do one as the other ; I would earnestly beseech those who joy, to think once more of those who weep. I have had reason to feel great faith in any appeal to the purses even of the most worldly. I have known continued deeds of anonymous — i.e. secret mercy — done by even the ' Anonyma ' class. I have known men whose lives knew no god but fashion, who neither care to profess or to deny 138 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Nov. 4 Christianity, yet go forth and do works of the truest charity. I am strong in the faith that ' good doing ' has a charm in itself which will vindicate its truth, even in the heart of the most world-hardened. I appeal to all alike for these suffering operatives. I have often thought, what a few known gentlemen and ladies could do, were they permitted but for two days in the week to stand at the door of the Exhibition to receive the smallest contributions for the suffering ' mill hands.' I am sure the Exhibition would not suffer. Was it not opened with prayer ? Can charity be out of place at its gates ? Help now began to flow in. Two days after the date of the previous letter a meeting was held at Bridgewater House, under the presidency of Lord Derby. Upwards of 10,000/. was subscribed. Between August 1862 and June 1865, a million sterling was subscribed and expended in relief. S. G. O.'s appeals to the public conscience and to public charity acted as a trumpet call to the patriotism of the nation. November 4, 1862. Will you again kindly indulge me with some little space for a few observations on the above subject ? The sufferings of the mill hands can now scarcely be exaggerated ; their patience well merits all that can be said in admiration of it. English charity has gallantly grappled with a call upon it, which has demanded, as it has cheerfully obtained, the noblest efforts to stem that awful flood of misery. A steady and increasing stream of voluntary bounty has flowed, and still flows, northward. I have no fear of any ebb in this tide of love so long as the cry of Northern want appeals to Southern sympathy. All, and more, than I anticipated in my former letters to you has come to pass. Homes of the industrious, in which industry and frugality had accumulated all that could make those homes scenes of happy contentment, are now barren of even the com- monest necessaries of life. Furniture, bedding, clothes, cherished articles of artisan luxury, viewed with pride because earned by honest toil, all these are gone. Savings — the cherished capital looked to for the future days when age or infirmity was to draw, in independence, on money stored for the purpose — these have long since been expended. Clubs, associations, by which, acting 1862 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 139 in combination, these men sought to aid each other, as each might need aid, from a common source, the produce of common forethought, have failed and are still failing — must soon break up altogether. Wherever the fault may have been which made the mills subject for a supply of material to that one source which has now failed them, that fault cannot be brought home to the door of the mill hands. I know not how far it may or may not be true that the mill- owners and landowners of these districts have not yet done, in the way of charity, what they ought to have done ; but this I know, that philanthropy would waste for want of exercise did we all wait for that exercise until all who ought to do their duty set about the work. It is my own poor belief that a great deal of the assumed wealth of the mill-owning class had a very insecure basis at the time the crisis came. For years past it was notorious that the cotton-working business had become one of almost reckless speculation ; large fortunes were made — in too many instances a most extravagant style of life betrayed the fact — but few really know how much of that rivalry in trade was built up on borrowed capital. I have myself grave doubts whether the appearance of wealth is not now often kept up to hide the reality of a poverty to disclose which would be instant ruin. That there are in the North wealthy, niggardly men may be the fact ; but, Sir, is the combination of great power to do good with a miserly reluctance to do it — out of pocket, a mere Northern social disease ? The question is now freely asked — Is the calamity pressing on a few counties to be borne on the shoulders of the rest of England ? Has the local demand exhausted the local means of supply ? My answer to this is, that there is a limit to which the pressure upon local charity, local Poor Law relief, should be confined, on grounds of justice and sound policy. You have no right to demand the utter ruin of the small ratepayers, their conversion into paupers ; you have no right to so tax all the local capital as to make it, under present sudden pressure, powerless to meet the day when on its healthy application will depend the resuscitation of the local manufacture. 140 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 4 We are not at war as a nation with America, but the Amer- ican war, in its indirect effect, is as an army which has attacked and now beleaguers the chief seat of our national industry. Charity from without may have broken the blockade to pour in loaves, clothing, medicine, help of various kinds, to those whose supplies have been cut off; the enemy, however, gains more force daily — the garrison becomes daily more weak. Fever follows on a very small degree of real want, where the destitute are confined to a small space, and crowded in it ; real famine (I know its looks well, for I saw it in Ireland in the dying and the dead there) treads close upon the heels of that degree of want which begets the low fever. I say that it is folly to expect the people on the spot to meet the whole brunt of the battle which the American civil war has sent as the inroad of a powerful besieging force against them. Southern England feels this, and is rendering noble help ; Southern England will help to the last at any sacrifice ; it can- not, however, bear this weight of misery except at the cost of an exhaustion the effect of which it is wise to seriously consider. Those who have studied the subject of English charity will, I think, at once admit with me that all-glorious as it manifests itself in the deeds it does — by hand and by the vast machinery it keeps up in the form of societies, institutions, hospitals, re- ligious missions, &c. — at least two-thirds of the amounts sub- scribed to associated charity and personally distributed comes from individuals whose clear incomes are under 1,000/. a year. Every such call on the benevolent as this Lancashire crisis is nobly met by a proportion of alms from the comparatively poor which ought to shame that given by those of known great wealth. In my experience, I have ever found, in every great crisis, the great mass of help was made up of contributions from people of small incomes. What is the 1,000/. of the millionaire in a crisis like the present, compared with the 2s. or 3^. weekly put by for the purpose by the class who with difficulty, perhaps, keep one maid-servant, and yet are ever found in their own locality ready to give a half-crown to aid any case of local misery? 1 862 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 141 We have a winter before us which may be a very severe one. Charitable feeling may know no limit ; its exercise must be limited by its available means. We may pity the want and misery of the North ; we have the same pity for the cry which may arise at our own doors, which we must meet. Let us bear in mind the cruel, but yet true fact, that our means have a limit to which our works of mercy must be confined. A really severe winter is sure to beget a powerful appeal to the benevolent in the South to aid their own immediate suffering neighbours. I foresee clearly, if Northern want is left to the present sources of supply, it will assume features too frightful to con- template. English people have yet to learn what a real famine is. As the cry gets loud, so will the answer be ready, and, though powerless to arrest, English charity will put forth every energy to delay the worst, but at what cost ? I admit there may be a great margin of means for extra work of benevolence after we have provided against all that we can foresee of evil which may arise at our own doors ; but that margin has its limit. Is it good policy, on the part of the Government, to suffer so great a strain on optional benevolence as that which now threatens ? I think it is not ; I dread that drain on the means of those to whom so many thousands must look in a hard winter in the South which the continued call from the North will entail. I think a time is fast approaching when the aid of the charitable should become auxiliary to national aid, not stand in its place. The calamity becomes certainly a national one when all legiti- mate local means are exhausted. Few can know better than myself the evils that follow in the train of aid by public ' grant ' to meet widespread destitution. We are, however, wiser in these matters than we were ; we have bought dearly a good deal of valuable experience. We have in the action of the Poor Law, and other organised systems of relief now in operation, a good basis for a sound system of relief. There will be abundant room for the exercise of charity, let aid by ' grant ' be what it may. There are classes, who would not be legitimate objects for aid from the public funds, whose acute distress will appeal, and not in vain, to the sym- pathies of the charitable throughout the whole kingdom. iA 2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 4, 1862 If there is to be no grant, let us know the fact at once. I have no misgiving as to the result of appeal after appeal to voluntary aid, though I have no belief that more would thus be done than a very slight alleviation of the awful misery which we have yet to behold. It would then become the duty of every household to at once determine how far it can help without some deliberate system of retrenchment for the purpose. The present income must be compared with the certain expenditure our duty at home and in the North to our suffering fellow- creatures is sure to entail. A sudden check to the aid to Lancashire in the dead of winter, caused by distress nearer home, would be cruel to contemplate ; and not less so would it be to have to deny clothes, food, fuel to our nearer neighbours, because we had tied ourselves to the work of supporting the poor Lancashire ' hands.' Your columns, Sir, have each winter borne honourable wit- ness to the readiness of the charitable to meet appeals for help. God knows, your kindness in permitting the appeals to be made has proved year by year what a winter's cold can do to beget widespread misery and want. What man living would wish to check the flow of help in money and in clothing now going from us northward ? I am not that man ; but, in the exercise of what I believe to be true charity, I entreat the benevolent of every class to calmly contemplate the possible exigencies of the coming winter. A prudent, foreseeing economy in every house- hold from which God in goodness has kept all knowledge of real want, at once adopted, will find us prepared to do our duty to North and South. Never shall we regret any sacrifice which leaves to us the power of helping to the last of the crisis the poor mill hands, and this with power still left to fulfil every charitable duty nearer home. November 5, 1862. I have just carefully read the account given in your yester- day's paper of the meeting of the Central Relief Committee at Manchester. The general tone of the whole proceedings is to me most satisfactory. It is evident the utmost care is taken not only to show that the expenditure of the Relief Fund is wisely Nov. 5, 1862 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 143 conducted, but also to show plainly the urgent nature of the misery and want to meet which it is so prudently devoted. Many persons, however, will, I have no doubt, assert that the statements of Mr. Cobden as to the present amount of destitu- tion, and that amount which is yet to be expected, are over- drawn. I am not of that opinion. I feel satisfied myself that no one can yet calculate the full amount of utter ruin which must follow on the present state of things. So much destructive element is yet in sure course of development, arising from the disturbance of all the ordinary action of commercial industry ; there are so many interests directly and indirectly involved in this stoppage of the mills that the actual destitution of the mill hands, all appalling in itself, forms but a part of what has yet to be played out in this great domestic tragedy. The dealers with the retail shops, by their insolvency, render insolvent the retailing shop class ; on this class depends, again, the life of the wholesale dealer. It may be true that men fed are fed on food bought, and this represents money paid to local trade. In a famine expenditure is restricted to the claims of hard necessity, and to make the most of alms, voluntary or in- voluntary, the purchasers of food and clothing are forced to drive the hardest bargains they can ; thus, necessaries are pur- chased at the lowest profit to the seller, and this at the time there is an almost entire stoppage to the sale of anything else. Trade is also necessarily driven out of its usual track ; there is not only a disturbance of all trade, the result of the supply of food and clothing being no longer purchased at the will of the customer with his own money, paid over the counter by himself, but by committees and boards, who are dealers, more or less, with the wholesale tradesmen ; but there is this sad addition to the evil, the pressure of the poor rate is fast driving into pauperism that large class whose liability to be rated at all had arisen from the profits they derived as the purveying class from whom the ' hands ' purchased their food and clothing. It is quite true that the chief figures in the picture of Lan- cashire destitution are the mill hands, but, as they sink in their destitution — none know it better than themselves — they draw down with them to the verge of the same destitution an immense 144 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 5 social mass of the industrious, who were altogether as much dependent upon them as they were upon the ' mills.' Whatever in general consumption, forming an element of trade, is suddenly forced out of consumption, begets at once so much positive loss to the dealers in it. In the course of the last six months the mechanic families in Lancashire have, in their way, had to undergo that kind of penal retrenchment, which economy enforces in a struggle for independence, caused by in- terruption to industry. To sell, or to pawn with no hope of redemption, articles of so-called luxury — for many domestic reasons articles, perhaps, of peculiar esteem — was the first item of sacrifice ; to this followed the sale or pawn of the more use- ful, but perhaps less sentimentally esteemed articles. But houses became very bare indeed before any one of the family, as the rule, entertained the question of any serious inroad upon the meat and drink of the daily meals ; the season, however, came when all saleable was sold, all that could be pledged was pawned, and all that had been saved was spent. The last shifts of in- dependence to hold its own, rely on it, were very painful. Children are bad economists ; they were fed as usual, for who could explain away their cry, or be deaf to it ? The drink, the little meat, the tea, the sugar, every article had now to be measured out, not by the rule of appetite, but by that of means, all in vain. They are not paupers now, but distressed human beings, utterly destitute. They have lost independence ; they subsist on charity ; and yet, O how wonderful ! to this, through this, have they come, and are peaceful, resigned, grateful — men viewing their own misfortunes with a reasoning power that has brought them to calm resignation ; and yet, Sir, in your memory and mine, with what awe did statesmen regard any symptom of distress in these very districts, so connected did they esteem it with the danger of acts of open violence ! It is quite consistent with all that we know of the distress to find, from the report of the Registrar-General, that the actual health of the people is above the average. The explanation of this was so clearly given that I need not dwell upon it. I must, however, speak a word or two of warning as to the future. When famine destroys life, it may do so under two different 1862 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 145 conditions. Stoppage of all food, such as that we have read of in the case of the shipwrecked, brings on in a short time a train of symptoms which quickly end in the most horrible of deaths. The other condition is that, when food sufficient, if not in abundance, gradually becomes diminished in quality, then in quantity, passing to still another stage, where it is not only alto- gether deficient in quantity, but also in the qualities necessary each day to rebuild nature's waste, and thus provide for next day's life. On this stinting of physical sustenance supervenes mental depression, causing loss of appetite ; thus there is indis- position to partake even of that measure of food which, itself insufficient, is still necessary to keep up some existence. Strange to say, at this stage of depression in mind and of gradual waste of body the sufferer complains but little, if at all ; there is tendency to sleep, rest, anyhow, anywhere, yet little evidence of pain. There is, however, to the skilled eye a cast of countenance unmistakable ; the children look aged beyond their years ; adults move and speak with a gait and utterance which seem to shun all effort. All experience tells us that here is the exact cultivation ot the human constitution fitted to invite and successfully develop the worst species of low fever ; mind and body, the condition of every organ, the condition of the blood, the depressed nervous power, — all invite the fever which ever waits about those districts where men congregate in masses, ready to deposit its poison wherever there is the proper predisposition to receive it. Failing fever, famine goes on to run its own well-marked course. I write from what I and many others saw, watched, and noted. With no real complaint developed, with little real pain, there is an increase of lassitude in the adult, a want of all childish energy in the young ; a species of patient, sullen, hope- less despondency masters the whole man. You have atrophy now showing itself in many ways ; the hair quits the head in patches, the ankles swell, the skin is bloodless, the eye sunken ; at this stage food fails, medicine fails, care cannot rescue. It is a mere matter of time ; few, if any, recover — few seem to wish it. Now, Sir, why have I written this ? As a warning, because VOL. I. L 146 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 5, 1862 I believe a warning is wanted. Those who manage the relief of these distressed people must remember that on a diet in amount and in quality sufficient to keep up their physical condition de- pends the lives of many thousands of them. It is mad economy to stint now, for at this season of the year the cold and the damp will add to that depression of mind which, lowering in itself, grows on itself, unless met at the onset with all proper physical sustenance. Let this population get below a certain physical condition, and, in my belief, the wealth of the world could not then arrest destruction from tens of thousands of them. They must have good and proper food, enough of it ; they ought to have every possible means of such employment and recreation as shall keep them, if not hopeful, at least free from over-depres- sion ; for thus only, should cold come on them, can they be kept from fever, or the atrophy from which there is no recovery. I could desire to see instant preparation for hospital accommo- dation, places taken and simply furnished, ready to receive fever patients, should fever break out ; nothing is so expensive in the end as an extemporised hospital. You may be prepared before- hand at a cost which, even if your preparations are never needed, will be but little ; for the unused furniture, &c, if taken care of, is always available for some profitable purpose ; but, if you wait the crisis of some epidemic, and then on the instant have to meet it, you do it with less efficiency, and at a higher cost. In the North, I presume, it is now easy to find large warehouses, or buildings with large space, which could easily be adapted so as to make excellent fever hospitals. I would urge, in every large town, the wisdom of at once preparing some of these as fever hospitals — at least, so far as to have them thoroughly available at a short notice. Trusting that these observations may be re- ceived in the spirit in which I offer them, I have only to thank you for allowing me to lay them before those most interested in them. As the famine began to ebb, the tide of subscriptions ceased to flow. Claims on the funds, proceeding in some cases from impostors, exceeded the capacities of the treasury. It was soon clear that some of the operatives must seek elsewhere the livelihood closed to them in the cotton industry, and which could be but temporarily supplied from Feb. 4, 1863 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 147 charitable sources. Among the letters on Emigration will be found one of April 9, 1863, in which S. G. O. urges the advantages of the colonies as the destination of some of the operatives, all of whom cannot expect re-employment in their old trade. February 4, 1863. The state of things in the North has now arrived at a con- dition calling for very serious consideration. To meet the result of a suspension of employment, entailing deep distress upon a large mass of operatives, is one thing ; British benevolence came to the rescue, found them food, clothing, and all that was necessary for a support fully equal to that hardly earned by very many thousands of equally industrious labourers in other spheres of labour. It is another thing to expect that this same benevolence shall continue still to feed and clothe, in idleness, these same masses for a time that seems every day more indefinite. For very many reasons, it is neither kind to them nor politic in a national point of view, to continue the present system, as if the cause of which it was begotten had undergone no change. It was quite impossible to secure that just separation, which was most desirable, between those recipients of relief who were made paupers by the force of the stoppage of the mills, and those who were content to become paupers to share the relief given. The public, under the action of deep sympathy for the former class, would not have borne with any labour test of sufficient severity to have separated the two classes ; the consequence has been, that very large numbers have received relief, from the guardians and from relief committees, whom under ordinary circumstances a labour test would have driven to the industry they have thus shirked. Again, it cannot be disputed that every week's continuance of that abnormal state of things which supports in idleness large numbers of people, who were, when overtaken by this misfortune, an industrious, and for their class a prosperous race, must be morally most prejudicial ; it physically and mentally enervates them. There is a muscular industry as there is a muscular Christianity, a frame of mind and body which works with one earnest will. Food and clothing fetched, not earned, may sup- \ 4 S THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 4 port the mere animal man, but it will not sustain the working energy of industrious man. I am well assured from many quarters that already this forced idleness is fast deteriorating the character of the operative. A taste for alms is a growing taste, increasing daily on the charity by which it is fed. Give alms as you will, as the scale of giving becomes increased the difficulty of regulating the gift grows upon you. It is ever hard to avoid imposture, but more hard than ever when the source of supply seems only restricted by the demand. The national liberality has even gone ahead of the cry for help ; the knowledge of the sums in hand, and yet to come to hand, must of necessity act to slacken effort on the part of the operatives to seek work for themselves. Every effort to turn some portion of this large operative class into a new sphere of labour has as yet been met with all possible discouragement. We are told that every hand may yet be wanted on the spot. I do not believe it. I do believe that be- fore the crisis came there was an amount of mill work going on that could not have gone on much longer ; in fact, that we have been, in all proper kindness, supporting a mass of operatives a large proportion of whom ought, on any sound principle of trade, never to have been millworkers at all. Does any sane man for one moment believe that the raw material of the mills will, for years to come, reach the millowners at a price, in a quantity, and of a quality to find work for three-fifths of the operatives now on ' relief,' giving them and their families 2s. a week per head wages ? Does any one really know the amount of cotton in America that peace to-morrow could bring to Liverpool in the next six months ? Who can tell us in whose hands the existing cotton in the South now is, — how often it has changed and is changing its owners ? I know not on what grounds any man may calculate that this cotton will ever reach us at all, except in small consignments. We have yet to learn the effect — the direct mischief — of the great premium to insurrection held out in Lin- coln's Emancipation Proclamation. For my own part, I can only construe that document as a direct invitation to the Southern slaves to rebel, and of course help and revenge them- selves. iS62 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 149 When I hear of Northern men giving the whole black race the freedom that shall place them on political and civil equality with their fellow-creatures ; when I am told on good authority, that the slaves of every Northern State are not only let out of bond, but welcomed to every social equality the free Yankee claims, — then, and only then, shall I believe that this proclama- tion means anything but a wicked, cowardly effort to make a war-tool out of a so-called pious principle. Let this be as it may, 1 am quite sure that this ' proclama- tion ' is in itself a heavy blow and discouragement inflicted on our future prospect of a cotton supply from America. But it is said, ' Look at India ; look to other sources of supply fast open- ing to us.' I have no wish, I have not the ability, to write any- thing worth reading on this phase of the question ; but I am advised that as yet nothing in lieu of American cotton has been, or is likely to be, produced, calculated to revive the cotton manufacturing trade. Owners will not make expensive altera- tions in their machinery to work up a material they hold to be very inferior for their purpose, so long as there is the least hope of their obtaining the material for which they constructed it. The Surat cotton, to be worked at a profit to the millowner, and to give in the working anything like the old wages to the opera- tive, must, I am told, wait until the present stock of manufac- tured goods is exhausted, and a demand at high prices for this new manufacture has thus been created. Is it wise, I ask — is it kind, to hoard up industrial power, under depreciating influences, in its present full amount, until all this is solved ? On what grounds of political economy — nay, of real charity, are we justified in blinding ourselves to the fact that a prolonged continuance of this unwholesome state of things is unjustifiable, if it can by any means be shortened or alleviated ? I could easily dwell upon other evil features in the present state of things. The clergy and ministers of all denominations have now for many months become, after a sort, relieving officers, but with none of the restraint and none of the real re- sponsibility of such officials. It is admitted that there is but too much of the sectarian element involved in the working of 150 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. March 24 many of the plans for relief. The very success of impassioned appeals to distant friends for help, in such a crisis, begets, almost imperceptibly, a disposition to exaggerate the necessity of the plea. I am not surprised to hear that some of the most humane and able of those who have taken a leading part in the deeds of mercy the crisis called forth are now seriously appre- hensive that imposture is much on the increase. The remedy seems to rest with those whom the country at large has enabled to tide over the winter months without that ruinous destruction of their property which must otherwise have followed. A firm determination to wisely economise the pre- sent funds in hand, to guard against and punish all attempts at imposition, to watch closely the labour market and the relief market, to see that the latter does not supplant the former — this will do much ; but I feel satisfied it is well that the truth should be not only spoken, but, when spoken, practically applied — viz., the operative class should have every inducement put before them, every reasonable aid afforded them, to diminish their own numbers on the spot, by either seeking other fields of labour at home, or taking their energy and industry to some of the colonies, where a new hope of prosperous life would await them. The benevolence of England and her colonies towards these poor victims of a ruin no care on their part could have avoided is only equalled by the noble, submissive spirit they have shown under it. I wish them from my heart a happier fate than the being forced into lovers of idle dependence, by an unwise hold- ing them to a spot where for years to come I see no hope that a very large number of them can ever again eat the bread of free industry. March 24, 1863. In the last letter I addressed to you on the subject of Lanca- shire distress I intimated my belief that the continuance of the present system of relief must inevitably work serious mischief, as well to the operatives themselves as to those more immediately connected with the distribution of that relief. Permit me now to put my fears for the future, and their grounds, in plainer language. I ask this indulgence, because I 1 863 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 151 am quite satisfied that day by day very dangerous elements of evil are at work in the distressed districts. While there was any hope of a revival of the cotton manufac- ture the operatives were regarded as sufferers, through no fault of their own, by the temporary suspension of the trade of which they were 'the hands.' They were objects of true, deserved pity, and were treated as such, locally and throughout the whole kingdom. A charitable enthusiasm, most honourable to the whole country, paid the highest possible tribute to the character of the suffering operative ; he heard of it, read of it, was justly proud of it, and in return endured ruin with a calm patience above all praise. The relief committees caught the enthusiasm of the hour, and gave valuable time and the severest tasking of personal effort to aid the great national work of charity. Month after month the distress grew in its proportions, and assumed in its nature a still more piteous aspect. Subscriptions anticipated any demand that arose ; the tide of benevolence out-ebbed that of the rising distress ; there was no lack of money, nor was there lack of voluntary service to secure its fair distribution. But, Sir, even the charity of the most charitable will at last grow cold when the work to be done not only grows in its pro- portions, but appears to offer no probable limit to its duration, and yet day by day begins to assume features more and more trying to those who are employed in it. Of all the ungrateful work to the performance of which we are ever called by duty in this world, there is none which so speedily becomes most ungrateful as that of distributing alms from a very large subscribed fund over a large, craving field of distress. That which is at first received cheerfully, and yet tear- fully, as a gift, becomes so very soon a help claimed sullenly as a right. Those who at first are blessed as kind almoners — who, in pure charity, are giving time and effort to seek out and meet the distressed, to help them — very soon come to be regarded as men having some selfish interest in their work, inducing them only to give grudgingly and of necessity. This will be specially the case where it is no secret that there arc very large funds in reserve. Can we wonder, then, if 152 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. March 24 almoners at last flag in their work, sicken of it — sometimes meet the ill-temper and ingratitude of the relieved by words and small deeds indicative of weariness and disgust ? Let us bear in mind, too, that they first offered themselves as temporary agents to meet a passing crisis. They now find themselves enlisted in an ungrateful service, with no prospect of relief from it ; the sup- posed passing crisis has become a permanent situation of helpless distress. I am not surprised that for many weeks past close observers have seen the tone and temper of the operatives fast changing for the worse. Sewing classes, adult schools, all the expedients for temporary dealing with the stoppage of the mills, may have been good for that purpose ; they could not be good for any tiling but a temporary purpose. No one class of existing workmen could pass through what the ' hands ' of the mills have now undergone, and not be seriously, morally, and physically degraded. There never was yet in history a prolonged period, in which any one class of industry found its ' hands ' sustained by alms in idleness, which did not beget in those hands serious depreciation in mind and body. We are bound to look the present aspect of this question boldly in the face. There are now bickerings, jealousies, and worse, growing up out of the work of almsgiving, in the hearts of those who are the direct givers ; there is something far worse taking root in the dispositions of those who live on these alms ; and yet, as yet, there is no stoppage for want of supplies. But we all know where the paying out is in 40,000's, the comings in in, say, 2,000's, the end cannot be very distant, as regards the voluntary fund — just that distance which, in my opinion, under the present system, will have allowed the partial evil spirit now existing to have grown to an alarming amount. I own I dread the day when the voluntary fund is declared spent, and the whole question of relief must fall upon the boards of guardians. Preaching agitators, I am told, tell the ' hands ' that when the mills do open, wages will not be what they were. The older, wiser, and more calm of the ' hands ' have long foreseen this. They are reading, thinking men ; they know well enough that were all the cotton of the Southern States in Liverpool to- 1 863 LANCASHIRE Df STRESS AND RELIEF 153 morrow the amount of mill work could not find employment, at the outside, for more than three-fourths of those who were em- ployed before the crisis. They know that those who would start their mills again have themselves much leeway to make up — that they must push economy to its utmost stretch. These men are well aware that when fifty men seek one place the value of labour must fall ; they see, just as plainly as you and I, that agitation for high wages in a trade just emerging from ruin must retard its rise, and inevitably check employment. These men see what you have written, what I have written, to be the real merciful, wise course — i.e. to diminish on the spot the numbers craving for work, which that spot has no reasonable prospect of affording ; they make no secret that a very large emigration of ' hands ' is absolutely necessary. It is said that our subscriptions were never meant to aid the emigration of the ' hands.' I assert they were given to be used wholly at the discretion of Lord Derby's Committee and the Mansion House Committee. I utterly deny that these vast funds were raised to aid the cotton manufacture, by detaining the hands on the spot until the masters wanted them again. I say, Sir, it is insulting the charity of the kingdom to keep one 'hand ' in distress, under all the horrid aggravation of a ruin which has no hope, on the spot, if we can help him to work else- where, at home or abroad. I say more than this, — it is in direct opposition to every sound principle of political economy to sub- sidise idleness for months, in the hope, the very faint hope, of thus keeping labour material at hand for the use of one particular branch of industry. Before many weeks are over, I am satisfied public opinion will be with me on this point. We shall not rest content to hear of increasing suffering, entailing increasing degradation, at the same time being told one great outlet of relief for thousands is closed, for fear lest, they being only ' the men,' this mode of relief may some day act to injure the masters. S. G. O., towards the latter part of his life, was more acute in the discovery, and skilled in the display, of evils, than instrumental in remedying them. Of this habit of mind the following letter is an instance : — 154 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. March 28 March 28, 1863. Now, Sir, here is a host of our fellow-creatures, once indus- trious, prosperous, content to earn their bread by the patient exercise of skill, acquired gradually, of a nature scarcely appli- cable to any but one particular branch of manufacture. For many months the field of their industry has been closed to them ; they have tasted the fullest bitter of home ruin. Willing to work and to save, their savings are gone ; they are hopelessly in debt ; they have had to live — they are now living — wholly on a charit- able dole, or on parish pay, or on this eked out by charity. They, men and women, many of them advanced in years, have had to accept all kinds of nominal employment, either in the shape of work, strange, distasteful to themselves, and profitable to no one, or in the form of schooling, sewing class work, &c, which they must have been blind not to have seen as simply a condition of restraint and so-called discipline, not really given as a desirable means of good to themselves or profit to any one. I hope I may be misinformed, but I had it before me that at one time the learning the Lord's Prayer by grown-up men was paid for by the hour ! I know what some of the best hands, the most valued leaders of the co-operative movement, felt a few weeks ago as to the action upon their whole class of the present state of things. ' It is forcing us into a race of beggars.' ' Tis clemming all heart out of one.' ' Many on us has to be false before we can be fed.' They say that for the last few months past ' no mortal man can tell the lying shifts the workfolk are driven to to get a bit of silver.' Here, let me say, I see plain enough that, as the rule, there is great cruelty in paying all in kind, though I see great prudence in paying the greatest proportion of relief so. It is my firm conviction that the moral standard the loan is to pre- serve has already been most cruelly lowered. There is yet, however, a wonderful amount of real, stout, manly, northern in- dependence which has resisted evil so far that it has not tasted one drop or eaten one crumb obtained on false pretence ; it is combined with a sober, yet heart-trying view of the real state of things ; it is the last to deny the difficulty of the task of the 1863 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AND RELIEF 155 ' boards,' or ' committees ' ; it is deeply grateful to the nation for its benevolence ; it scorns the tempting of the seditious ; would, were there need, be active to put down riot. But, alas ! loaded beneath a weight of care, worn down by hope deferred, it sickens fast towards a condition — not that of the good man struggling against difficulties, but that of the good man so weak in heart and body that he must soon sink, for he has no power to strive. I admit, could you by loan, by any expenditure whatever, take up this mass of good skilled labour and put it to work which would return bread, clothes, decent shelter, and hope, for the exercise of a patient, stout determination to earn them, you might save, comparatively unhurt, the general moral standard of the hands. How is this to be done ? The operative's skill and health and strength are his pounds, shillings, and pence. He is a capitalist ; these are the capital on which he trades ; but, unfortunately, as certain looms — capital — can only work cotton, so the cotton hand has acquired skill only for the working in the cotton manufacture. Money can purchase the engineer, whose lathe, files, drills, castings, &c, can alter looms to improve them at once, or fit them even to work other material. The human machine is a very complex one, is slowly adapted to meet particular ends ; after a time it rarely can be fresh adapted to manipulate on new principles, in new fields of hand and brain skill. A ' hand ' of good health and ordinary strength might descend in the scale of labour, and learn to do work requiring more of muscle than of dexterity ; but he would require long training to attain a fresh adaptation of hand skill, to be guided by the brain in a new field ; if he was past middle age, I doubt whether he could do so at all. The ' hand ' that did descend to field labour and went to it with a will would, I am told, soon become physically disqualified for any work requiring delicacy of touch. It appears to me, then, Sir, that the labourers under the loan must be either kept as now, which all wise men deprecate, or employed on enforced hard manual labour— i.e. agricultural, road-making, draining, or such like work — or they must be put to some trade work which, not damaging, but rather holding in reserve their cotton skill, shall give them to feel conscious that 156 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. March 28 they are again industrious men, earning the fruits of skilled in- dustry. Is there at this moment any trade which will bear further pushing by throwing into it, say, only 200,000 subsidised ' hands ' ? How about the effect of this on the present workers at that trade, supposing it exists at all ? We are not to help these men to emigrate, we are not to tempt them to field labour ; it is admitted we are doing worse than either by keeping them as they now are kept. Who will tell us how, poor creatures, they are to be kept ? I think when the nation is asked to loan a few millions to keep up perforce the moral standard of near half a million of souls whose occupa- tion is gone, those who ask the loan should favour us with some statement how the thing is to be done, especially as it is declared that sweat and skill capital is to be thus kept in store for the future purposes primarily of those who make the demand. Of one thing I am quite certain, until some plan of moral and industrial salvation is developed for the benefit of the 4 hands,' it is most dangerous for the Mansion House Committee to in any way act to hinder the guardians and relief com- mittees in their work ; they are on the spot, they have had many months' experience, they know every dangerous element at work — and, let me say, not the least dangerous element exists in the weak folly of some very kind-hearted, well-educated people ; they have had to battle against imposition so long that we may assume them to be skilled judges in the matter. Their real difficulties are now beginning, for the knowledge of the ' sum in hand,' the moral certainty that voluntarily it has poor prospect of increase, naturally, as it makes them economical and vigilant, sharpens also the faculties of all of every degree who hope yet to get their share of profit out of it. Discontent is the demagogue's dunghill ; it turns him up as a foul fungus to show what evil spirits an evil time will breed. Popularity is his capital ; to get more and more of it he will trade on anything, everything, which will serve the purpose ; he will lie in the pulpit, lie at the ' halls,' lie at street corners, where - ever his own person is safe. What matters it to him who starve, who rob, who are ridden over by soldiery or knocked over by police ? It will all make matter for sensation speaking, — that 1 863 LANCASHIRE DISTRESS AXD RELIEF 157 is his trade, paying little but in noisy tribute to his vanity ; but this vanity, this silly rule of men for an hour, is to him dear as anything but his own dear person's safety. We must expect these creatures — expect their work ; but well does it become us to do all we can to render them harmless. We are as bad as they are if we yield to the result of their work any one principle it is thought right to adopt. I have no fear now, Sir, but that the Government and the nation generally are fully alive to the danger of the present state of things ; that some course will be taken, not only to support those who are doing the thankless duty of almoners, but to seek out means to transfer some portion of the wasted labour to new fields of industry, aiding, at the same time, any reasonable means of local employment, to preserve the remnant ready for a happier day. i 5 8 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. June CHAPTER VI. EMIGRA TION. Encouragement to emigration began in 1819, but it was not until 1831 that regulations were framed by the State. In 1840 the Colonial I .and and Emigration Board was established. It is to this Board reference is made in the following letters. June 2, 1848. I cannot say with how much satisfaction I regard the efforts you are making to promote emigration to the colonies. We want in these districts bold and able men, well acquainted with the colonies, and the state of the poor here, to come down and lecture far and wide amongst us ; men who can show to our labourers the evils of their present lot, and prove to them how, by the mere patient bearing of a voyage across the seas and a little present inconvenience, they can find a country in which they may claim and obtain fair wages for fair work. They want to be instructed in the nature of what they will gain by the change, and to be assured of protection in their efforts to gain it from the Government of this country. They have been so long kept in a state of ignorance and of low animal apathy to all social comfort or industrial independence, that it requires strong and patient efforts to rouse them to travel from home to seek fair treatment, rather than stay where they are bound by the law of settlement, to live in crowded commu- nities in which vice is fostered by circumstances they cannot avoid, and their labour value depressed by causes against which they have no power to contend. There was a time when I should have started from the idea of seeking to send the poor away from among us — from this i 848 EMIGRA TION 1 5 9 land of churches, chapels, schools, and charities — this land whose whole soil has become one great workshop for the pro- duction of food, the producing of which would appear to require the active energies of every single labourer — this land in which every poor man is supposed to have a right to relief in destitu- tion, at, or near to, his own door. But, Sir, sad and lengthened experience has convinced me that the producer of bread by the sweat of his brow, for his body's sake and his soul's sake can be placed in no worse position than he is at home — in merry England (?), Christian England (?), England the nurse of in- dustry, the very hot-bed of philanthropy (?). Late, very late, personal experience — knowledge acquired far and near from those in whom I can put trust — facts of which I am cognizant from sources which defy contradiction — all prove to me that in hundreds of our villages the social condition of man is below that of any country of which I have ever read ; that vice is increasing with a speed, and of a character, which would justly call down any, the most awful, judgment on us ; that the labourer is defrauded of his hire, oppressed and ill-treated in a way that is a shame on our national character. I hear much of the political grievances of the people ; these are the stock in trade of every public declaimer. It requires no courage to attack a Government, or to vilify a party op- ponent. Political philanthropy is a cheap article and wears well — hence so many array themselves in it. Sympathy for a convicted felon, or that spurious sort of chivalric charity which would do anything for a Pole, but nothing for a Dorset, Somer- set, or Wilts labourer ; that missionary spirit which exposes the abomination of foreign heathen lands, but shrinks from unveil- ing the licentious infamy of our own land ; — these are profitable and pleasant occupations, and many there are who work thereat. I challenge one and all to prove to me that there is one single mere political evil, any one class of God's creatures, in any land on earth, the correction of which, or the social amendment of whom, require such urgent instant attention as does the evil condition, physical and mental abasement of the labourers in agriculture in the south-western and many other counties. Believe me, Sir, I am almost tired of repeating this now oft ,6c THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. June 10 told tale ; had I not seen something like a chance of escape for some of these poor creatures by means of emigration, I should not now have again troubled you. If the Government can be persuaded to make bold and liberal efforts to assist families disposed to go to Australia, I can point its attention to more than one spot where the so doing will be the greatest boon to the respectable and would-be industrious labourer ; it would not only give him hope in this world, but it would enable him to remove his family from scenes which, / am ready to prove, ex- ceed in vice any of which we have record in history, sacred or profane. Every word of the above letter might have been written in the last decade of the century. Now, as then, sympathy for the oppressed Pole and Russ, and for the inhabitants of Central Africa, is more attractive to many than the sorrows and wants of fellow-countrymen languishing within the radius of a cab fare. Had the Government then acted with energy, part of the soil of the colonies, acquired directly or indirectly by the expenditure of British blood and treasure, could have been set aside for the purposes recommended in this letter. While the needs of an over- crowded population are now no less than in 1848, the Imperial Govern- ment is unable to place its hand upon a single square mile of territory, outside Great Britain, suitable for the settlement of British colonists. Criticism was aroused in various quarters by the ' Times ' letter of Tune 2. An instance of the common sense and knowledge of the con- ditions surrounding the three parties interested in the soil— landlords, tenants, and labourers— is offered by the following reply to strictures of the 'Wiltshire Independent.' To the Editor of the ' Wiltshire Independent! June 10, 1848. Good farming I know can only be carried on by men who have ample capital for the purpose ; I know also that farmers, ol all men living, are the least inclined, from the very nature of their business, to invest capital without a reasonable security that they shall have fair opportunity to reap the benefit of the investment. The land is not a bank into which you can pay one day, and from which you can draw out the next, if you choose ; money ploughed in must be left till it can be reaped out- and when it reappears from the soil, in the shape of ricks, 1848 EMIGRATION 161 its value is liable to vary from week to week ; they only can hope to be successful farmers who can afford to wait those turns of the market which make all the difference between the sovereigns the ricks cost, and the 12s. or 30s - . which, when sold, those ricks may return for each sovereign so laid out. I think it, I own, quite enough to leave a farmer exposed to the ca- prices of the weather, and the markets ; I would spare him a liability to ruin at the mere caprice of a landlord. But, Sir, from what I have seen of tenant farmers, I think them quite capable of fighting their own battle ; whenever I have said a word for them on these matters, I have felt the presumption of what I have done. The labourer has few to speak for him ; few who care to face the odium of exposing the conduct of those individuals, or classes, or laws, who or which oppress him. I am glad to say his friends are on the increase ; I am thankful to add that I have received no common encouragement from many indi- viduals in the county of Wilts whose position makes their sympathy most valuable. In spite however of your friendly admonition, I feel still bound to advocate emigration as a hope for the labourer ; though I hope the time may come, and we may both yet live to see it, when the proprietors of landed property may be led to feel that in reality we have no men or capital for which, under a healthier policy, we could not find a profitable return at home, and yet raise considerably the con- dition of all our labouring poor. Having taken on himself, in conjunction with some of his neigh- bours, the responsibility of inducing a large party of poor labourers to emigrate, he describes in the following letter the impressions made on him after inspecting the vessel in which his proteges were to embark. Some outcry had been raised against emigration by the farmers, who feared paucity of labour. Advantage was taken of casualties to one or two emigrant ships to emphasise the objections which always have been raised to the relief of a stagnant labour market by means of emigration. March 22, 1849. The loss of the Floridianand other sad casualties to emigrant ships which have occurred of late years have tended to throw no little discredit in the public mind on the cause of emigration. VOL. 1. M 162 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. March 22 It is with some hope that I may be able to allay the apprehen- sions of many connected with emigrants now on their outward voyage, and also that I may, in some measure, aid the public generally in obtaining a correct view on the subject of emigra- tion, as carried on under the auspices of the Government com- missioners, that I now beg a little space in your columns to describe a visit to Plymouth, very lately made, for the sole purpose of satisfying myself as to the nature of the arrangements made to secure the comfort and safety of emigrants going to Australia in ships chartered by the Government. Having taken some little pains, in conjunction with many of my neighbours, in preparing a large number of the labouring classes around me who had volunteered as emigrants — or, I should more properly say, who had besought our aid to enable them to emigrate — -I promised to meet them at Plymouth, see them on board, and, if possible, go some little way to sea with them. On Monday, the 5th of this month, 136 souls, of ages varying from two years to forty-one, left my immediate neigh- bourhood under the auspices of the Blandford branch of the Colonisation Society. Every pains had been taken to see that they were properly outfitted for the voyage, and two respectable individuals volunteered to go in charge of them, superintending their provisioning, &c, on the road from Blandford to Taunton. At the latter place, by the kindness of the railway companies, third class carriages were found for them, and they were sent on with little delay to Plymouth. At the Laira station I met them, they having been joined on the road by a fresh batch from another part of the county, an earlier train having also brought in large numbers from Somerset, Wilts, and Gloucester- shire. By taking all the flys on the stand and one omnibus, we soon stowed away the women and children ; the men were glad to walk the two miles in to the depot at Plymouth. To the great credit of our two superintendents, and owing also to the precautionary rules we had drawn out for the journey, not a single box was lost, and all our live and dead stock for the good ship Emigrant arrived safe at the depot. Nor was any complaint made to me of ill-conduct on the part of one of the travellers, iS49 EMIGRATION 163 through a wearying journey, in which none, for thirty-six hours, could have had much, if any, rest. The medical superintendents with whom I became acquainted on board these ships seemed thoroughly respectable, and were kind and active amongst the people on board. The dietaries were most liberal ; the food seemed good of its kind ; the pro- vision for the sick was most generous. The arrangement for lighting, and warming, and ventilating the ' between decks ' seemed all one could wish. I examined many of the passengers who had come down the Channel in the Florentia, and none had anything to complain of except the sea-sickness, but this called forth an expression of gratitude for their captain and surgeon's kind endeavours in the worst weather to cheer them up under it. I have spoken of temporal matters ; — the emigrants are not neglected in spiritual matters ; each ship I found again and again visited by one of the Plymouth clergy, a lady who seems to devote herself to this good work, and a gentleman whom I believe to be an agent of the Pastoral Aid Society. These good Samaritans seemed thoroughly united in their work. They were assiduous amongst the emigrants, giving them Bibles, Prayer- books, &c. ; providing work for the women for the voyage ; advising them on their conduct ; seeking to form classes amongst them for mutual instruction, &c. Nothing struck me more forcibly than the respect paid by the captains, crews, and all concerned to the persons who thus act amongst the emigrants. I can remember when a boatload of preachers, teachers, and- Bibles would not have met the respect and ready assistance I have here witnessed again and again. I was asked to baptise two infants born on the voyage down in the Florentia, just about to sail out again. The captain was himself present, and took every means in his power to show not only his sense of the solemnity of the service, but his sympathy for the rather trying position of the mothers. Now, Sir, do not let me be misunderstood. I do not mean to say that the 'between decks' of the Emigrant, with her 326 emigrating souls, or, in office language, her 256^ statute adults, being Dorset, Wilts, Somerset, and Gloucestershire labourers and their families, was an Elysium, a scene of perfect comfort and m 2 1 64 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. March 22 convenience ; — no ; it is folly to tell emigrants that a ship can afford to labouring men with large families all that they could wish, or we could wish for them. But I am perfectly satisfied that, whilst the diet is infinitely superior to anything they have ever been used to, their accommodation by day and by night is as good in every way as any reasonable being could expect to be at the command of so great numbers, conveyed free of all expense, so great a distance, in a ship. The single men's and the single women's compartments and the infirmaries are, except in the matter of ornament, nearly as good in their accommodation as that of many a yacht in which noblemen live for months — superior to thousands of berths paid for by parties emigrating at their own expense. The crying evil is the noise and pranks of the very small children, which, until one got a little used to it, made the married people's compart- ment literally a Babel. But, as the parents did not seem to mind it, I suppose it was not so insupportable as it appeared to a looker-on ; however, from my present experience, I do not feel inclined to urge persons with many small children to emi- grate ; and I think the commissioners exercise a wise discretion in being chary of free passages in such cases. As to the safety of the ships, I found them all taking pas- sengers of a superior class of life in the cabin part of the ship ; they are carefully surveyed by competent persons, they must be in a high class at Lloyd's, and the captains and mates must have the best testimonials as to their seamanship, &c. By the kindness of a gentleman at Plymouth, who put his yacht at my service, I was enabled to go some little way out of the Sound with my people ; to the last I saw them cheerful, contented, and happy ; they had begun to get an insight into the way of the place, and though small children would cry for a run ' in the lane,' or be unreasonable enough to ask to go and see a neigh- bour's kittens now many a mile distant, on the whole I saw no one reason to regret the pains I and my neighbours have taken to launch these our poor fellow-creatures on a sea of adventure which I trust will bear them to lands where their industry and honesty may win for them comforts for life denied them here. Our leave-taking, trying as it was I believe on both sides, was 1 849 EMIGRATION 165 mercifully cut short by the commencement of such a gale of wind as gave us no time to think of anything but whether we could pass at once to the yacht, or be content to be carried off, no/ens vo/ens, to Madeira or the Cape as it might be. Having made myself a party to aiding a quantity of poor creatures to leave their homes for ever, I was determined to give myself the satisfaction of seeing faith was kept with them by the Government commissioners ; on this head I have no hesita- tion in saying I was satisfied. I will only add that out of the large number which went from this immediate neighbourhood all were literally volunteers, and were well outfitted by voluntary subscription. S. G. O. was already teaching the principles on which the Canterbury Settlement in New Zealand was afterwards founded. He was satisfied of the danger of colonising only from one class, and he urged the necessity of men belonging to the various professions accompanying the rougher material. The pathos, the difficulties, and the inducements so well set forth in the following letter are as true to-day as they were in the forties. ' A visit to an emigrant ship is not one of the most cheerful things in the world. There must have been much to endure in England before that floating household would have left it.' — Leading article of the Times, March 22, 1849. April 6, 1849. You are most right in your estimate of the effect of a visit to an emigrant ship. It is, indeed, not one of the most cheerful things in the world ; and it is the sense of what that floating household before one has suffered, and has yet to suffer, which makes the feeling of the visitor one of a painfully mixed cha- racter. Every step the intending emigrant has to take is one more or less of trial. I speak only of those who I conceive are fit for emigration — men of character — men who voluntarily seek in another clime a position they feel no hope of obtaining here. Misery may make domestic ties burdensome, but they are still ties. Penury may make the English peasant's home a scene of daily bitter struggle ; but it is still home. Cruel oppres- sion may, in some localities, have made him despise and hate the employers and authorities of the locality to which the law of 1 66 THE LETTERS OF S. C. O. April 6 settlement has bound him ; still it is the locality in which many of his kindred have lived and died, in which he has many kindred now living ; the shadows of the picture of his home and its surrounding circumstances may be very dark, still thee.1 are rays of light in it which he will hesitate to blot out for ever. It is the young and middle-aged who go, it is the old and the infirm who are left ; the moment is a bitter one which tells the aged father or mother that in a few short weeks their children, their grandchildren, purpose quitting them — and that, in all probability, for ever ; these wholesale buryings of the living are, to the mourners bereaved of them, hardly less bitter than if the waggons which were to take them on their way to the emigrant ship were biers, bearing them to a home-dug grave. It is fortunate for all parties that when once the resolution to go is taken, and the free passage obtained, the time previous to embarkation is short, and full of occupation. There is the outfit to be procured, home debts to be paid, the furniture to be sold, the cottage to be given up ; there is packing to be done. The outfit was on the late occasion of one large number of emigrants given most liberally from voluntary subscriptions. The home debts are to be paid out of the furniture to be sold ; the shoe bill, the shop bill, the bill for flour at the mill, arrear of rent — all must be sold, in the majority of cases, to enable the emigrant to pay these, and to leave home honestly. Gladly would Will Pilgrim keep the clock. He says he ' could take it out of its case, and then it would scarce occupy any room.' Gladly would Mary Pilgrim, his wife, keep the great cooking boiler, with its well-sooted hook and chain. ' It won't weigh much,' she says, and they are allowed to take half-a-ton each. There is the great staring tea-tray, with its picture of the waggon with large white horses, and waggoner with his large white calves ; this, the chief ornament of the cottage wall, the very tray they bought for their wedding tea-party — both would like to save this. Still, shopkeeper, shoemaker, miller's man, &c, by their frequent calls keep alive the fact that money must be found — that all their goods, when turned into money, will hardly pay to all their due. 1 849 EMIGRATION 167 The worst of it is, that when so many are going from one locality the furniture market is glutted ; the purchasers, poor themselves, have sufficient appreciation of the laws of supply and demand to know, that when many clocks, and beds, and tea-trays, and tables, are to be sold at once, they must go cheap ; they then wait to the very last moment, and in the end it often happens that the fortunate village Crispin gets the clock, well worth 3/., in exchange for his receipt to a bill for two strong pair of highlows. The tea-tray, and other festive furniture, in like manner, fall an easy bargain to the village shopkeeper. These are pangs, but there are worse ; children cannot be made to understand why or where they are going. What are the gold diggings of California, or the mutton-boilings of Sydney, to the urchins whose chief happiness is in swinging on Farmer Bailey's gate, or making dirt pies in the road with their hands ? The ' When will mother come back ? ' of his child, spoken to a widower, whose heart's wound is still unstanched, scarce touches a more sensitive chord than little Billy Pilgrim's question from his grandfather's knee, ' Why is dad selling everything and we all agoing to have new clothes ? ' Then, when all is sold, and the family live on loan of house and all about them, comes the hour of doubt. ' Is all true we have heard from the gentlemen ? Are we, having parted with all we possess, going to leave all we love to find ourselves deceived ? ' Then rises up to memory all they have heard of evil, from the sly and wicked men who for their own purposes, not the poor's good, tax their brains to invent the lies they dare not attempt to prove. The poor emigrants are told again and again, ' You are going among savages — you will, if you ever get to the colony, have to serve the Government seven years as slaves before you may do a stroke of work for yourselves. They put you into rotten ships, and when it comes on to blow, why the captain and the sailors take to their boats and leave you to sink. The gentlemen want to transport you,' &c. I have no words with which I can speak my contempt of the malice of those who use such foolish but cruel means as the above to effect their purpose — i.e. to detain the industrious, valuable emigrant, that he may yet toil on for his starving pittance doled to him at their hands ; nor can I adequately express my sense of the 1 68 THE LETTERS OF S. C. 0. April 6 courage and confidence shown by these unlettered men in our honest intentions towards them. And now, Sir, when all is sold, all debts paid, every box packed, all doubts as to going removed, the very day and hour of starting fixed, and that a very near day — do any think the mental contest is all over ? There is the last Sabbath — the last night ; a night which scarce gives the children sleep, for they are in strange beds at the houses of different neighbours ; the grown-up people seek no sleep. How little do they know of the poor who think that any amount of hard work or hard usage can obliterate amongst them love for each other — nay, a sort of love for everything connected with the scene of their daily life, even for things which have embittered it ! I would that such could have been present at partings I have lately known. Scenes they were, and sayings in those scenes, which preceded for a few hours the starting of those waggons and vanloads of emi- grants, which would have done honour to any, however gifted, of any class, however exalted. ' You did not see our people, did you, Sir, after we had gone ? ' was a question put to me again and again when I met the travellers at Plymouth, having started some twelve hours after them ; the suffering they had caused to those they had left seemed then their only suffering. Go where you will, or when you will, amongst a body of emigrants, and, if it be possible at all, you will find them writing letters home, or getting them written for them. I have seen many of these letters, and it is curious to observe how similar is the vein of feeling which runs through them all. They write with one purpose — to comfort those they have left ; although I know some of them have had to endure accidental hardships, of a nature to — at the time — cause no little discontent, I cannot find that one has alluded to it in a letter home ; and I am sure we have brought letters enough ashore to have spread any news very wide indeed ; nor have I ever found them speaking harshly of those whose harshness in dealing with them has often been one great inducement to them to emigrate. Rely on it, Sir, there is right good material in even the lowest caste of English peasantry. It may bs asked, what really is the ruling motive which has 1 849 EMIGRATION 169 made so many, at such mental cost, leave their homes to encounter a long sea passage to a far distant country ? Some go from the one simple motive, a desire to rise in life, coupled with the hope that the distant land will afford them the means of rising, coupled again with the knowledge that at home there is no hope of rising. ' The best man, Sir, in our village don't take more all ways than iof. a week all the year round ; I'd wish to do something for myself better than that ; if I can't do it at home, why I must travel to do it,'— so spoke one emigrant to me ; he spoke the feelings of hundreds. Others go rather than bear any longer a condition which makes each week a battle of life, a fight for existence, for themselves and children. ' I tell you what it is, Sir ; we are starving each other ; we be too thick in our place ; the best of us can't earn what will find us bread for our children and ourselves, let alone the clothing and the rent ; when we be gone 'twill be better for they we leave ; if one half had gone away it would have been better for all. When the maister has to seek for labourers, he must pay them what they can live on ; as long as we has to go and beg a job, it is little enough they will give us for doing of it' Some few there •were, I fear, amongst the many who lately left us, young and thoughtless, who go for the pure love of change ; they have not sufficiently bad characters to disqualify them for a free passage, nor sufficiently good to make any feel their loss at home ; these may, and will, I trust, gain the advantage of separation from idle, bad company, of the breaking up of much vicious associa- tion ; thrown on their own resources, finding the value of in- dustry, with a new field open for them, I know many such have made good colonists. I cannot, will not deny the fact, that I found some emigrants at Ply mouth— not, I rejoice to say, from this county, who had been partly bribed, partly threatened into going ; they spoke with very natural anger of some most shameful deception which had been practised on them in the matter of outfit ; but on the whole were well satisfied to be where they were ; at least, they were now free from tyranny ; they were cared for, and, the voyage over, they hoped to earn bread, and- to them— that great mystery — mutton and beef fairly slain. 170 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 6 And now, Sir, if I am asked — Do you think those ships you saw took out those who will become good colonists, i.e. indus- trious, loyal, and peaceable subjects of our Queen ? I unhesi- tatingly answer — Yes. Our villages do not breed democrats ; Will Pilgrim may have his own ideas of the justice of the rent forced from him for the hovel in which he was forced to dwell ; or of the price he paid for the bad corn for which he had to pay best price ; but Will and his class are neither infidels nor traitors ; it will take years of evil teaching and unjust govern- ment to make that class forget their duty to their God and to their Sovereign ; as long as there is a post which can take and receive their letters, home ties will yet keep up love of the mother country. The peasantry of England are no free-thinkers ; if some of them neither attend church nor chapel, they are not generally the less believers in the existence of the God they may choose to slight. My own belief is, that a very large majority of the labourers in the South of England have much religious feeling ; that their principles do too easily give way to tempta- tion, I admit ; but, as I was never tried as I see them tried, I will not on that account malign their faith. No, I shall be much disappointed if the future history of our colonies does not prove that from an English peasantry, however poor and however in circumstances degraded at home, may rise a race equal to any of their position in any country ; a race obtaining a position in the colonies superior to that of many wlio despised and trampled on their forefathers at home. At the same time I am quite satisfied of the danger of colonising only from one class. I am sure it would be sound policy to encourage the emigration of men of every class and honourable profession. The ease with which men who were mere daily labourers here soon rise to comparative affluence in Australia, proved to me, as it has been, on evidence not to be disputed, is an clement in the social economy of that colony not altogether without its danger ; an increasing population will require an increase of the local powers of Government ; I may rejoice to hear, ten years hence, that \V i 1 1 Pilgrim is a man of large property in New Holland, but I should hardly like to hear he is a magistrate or a member of the colonial Legislature. 1 8 4 9 EMIGRATION 171 It is not merely capital which is wanted to accompany the rough material we are now sending out ; but we want men belonging to the various professions to go out. Once let there be a population, sufficient to develop all the wealth of our colonies, and you will need, what every civilised country needs, that staple stock of intelligence and sound learning from which can be drawn proper officers for God's service — expounders of His laws, teachers of His word ; proper officers for our Sovereign's service — able translators of her laws, able dispensers of those laws ; proper teachers of sound learning, divine and secular — schoolmasters who can train the children of the colonists to adorn and improve the position their unlettered parents by their industry have obtained. We are, I trust, at last beginning to learn what colonisation is— the treating the poor emigrant well ; the taking some pains to make emigration a boon to the man who would rise, rather than a refuge to the man who would flee— these are steps in the right direction ; I hail them with joy ; I look to see many yet go in hope — to hear of many, who are gone, whose hopes have been realised. The following letter deals mainly with the question of emigration as affecting women. S. G. O. was keenly sensible of the dangers to which women were liable on emigrant ships. His inexperience of the practical working and discipline on a vessel at sea leads him however to a some- what impracticable suggestion as to superseding the authority of the captain of the vessel by investing superior power in some competent official. The scandals and trouble attending the transport of emigrants forty years ago have now vanished. Credit for the order and discipline now ruling on emigrant ships may be partly attributed to the careful studies of S. G. O. in this tangled and difficult subject, and to the publicity given by him to the result of his investigations. January 4, 1850. No one more sincerely rejoices than myself at the efforts about to be made to remove by emigration a large number of poor women whose condition in this country seems to be almost as hopeless as pitiable. Knowing, as I well do, what a boon emigration has proved in my own county to the agricultural labourer, where it has opened a door of escape to him from a ]?2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 4 life of helpless strife with circumstances which kept him at the lowest and most degraded point of existence, I can but sympa- thise with the generous feeling which has so boldly stepped in to aid an equally ill-paid, a more generally oppressed class — the needlewomen of London. It is true I am told — and I have some reason to believe it — that the places of those who will emigrate will be rapidly filled up by fresh hands from the country, themselves likely to become, in a very short space of time, under the same pressure, the same ill-paid, overworked, and too often guilty, creatures. True, also, I am told that there are other classes of our fellow-creatures whose condition is as pitiable as that of needlewomen ; and the question is put, why give one class the preference ? Because it is likely more people may rush upon unsound ice, is it any reason why we should not try and save those who are already on it ? — because the appearance of the excellent M. Soyer's head out of a hole in the ice should concentrate the energies of a particular iceman more than the greasy head of a coster- monger who might be in the same predicament at the same moment, are we to blame the said iceman that he did not pause to consider which it had been better to save first ? The case of the sempstresses turned up — so to speak — in such a light as to arrest the attention of certain philanthropic men and women of high station ; it was a strong case — strong enough to enlist their every sympathy ; they gave it that sym- pathy. Mr. Sidney Herbert takes the lead in the movement : while hearts glow with the heat of indignation, with the full excitement, of every kindling, of every warmthful impulse of charity, he strikes, and seeks to weld the material to a certain shape for a definite purpose. He offers all his powerful aid, all he can command, to secure to this one class better prospects in another country, so far as regards return for their industry ; he seeks to offer them a new sphere, in which they may hope, by virtue and industry, to obtain the position which want has driven them from here. Women are wanted in the colonies, or to send them there would be folly, if not crime. Mr. Herbert proposes, as a work of charity, to give the offer of emigrating to a class in whose 1850 EMIGRATION 173 behalf a large amount of sympathy very properly exists. Who shall blame him? It is not into the pockets of John Bull, as personified in the person of Sir C. Wood, he purposes to dip his hands ; he knocks at another door, he asks those who have worn the articles these poor stitchers stitched as they starved — he asks the tens of thousands, wearers of coats, and shirts, and paletots, and robes, &c, who have boasted of the "cheapness of the attire they have purchased, little knowing how that cheapness was obtained, to let him touch their purses. He does not say, ' I can buy justice for the poor — I can enforce fair wages for fair work.' This is a question beyond his present question, which, if I understand him, is simply this — these thousands of wretched beings for whom I plead can be lifted from their present misery, can be rescued from their present too pressing temptation ; there is a land in which they could find wages, on which they could live in comfort ; there is a land in which, from the very great disproportion of the sexes, it is more than probable very many of these women may soon become wives of persons well able to keep them in comfort ; will you help me to give them the chance of escaping a lot which has so long and so deeply embittered their existence ? I am truly glad to see the response given to this appeal. I might have wished to have seen some of the vast tide of help to the oppressed flow in channels in which I may take a more imme- diate interest ; but I question the right we any of us have to dictate on the matter of charity. If this were a question of Government policy, I would be among the first to contend against its justice, for I could, I am satisfied, make out claims for other classes equally good on every ground of governmental expediency with the claims of the sempstresses ; but I under- stand the movement is one wholly independent of the State ; its authors, then, had as much right to choose the objects for whom they would work as the iceman might have who, in the exercise of a discretion which left him no option but to save one at a time, should choose to pull the French cook or the costermonger out of a hole first, as the case might be. I am told that day by day difficulties will rise up in the way of the plan now proposed for the aid of these women — 174 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Jan. 4 difficulties connected with the difference between their but too common moral character and the character of those who, it is said, would alone be welcomed by the colonists— difficulties con- nected with the nature of the employment open to emigrants in the colonies, and the nature of the employment to which alone these poor creatures have been habituated. I am aware how easy it would be to raise up a cloud of perplexity by a display of all the rocks and shoals which threaten the success of this scheme of Mr. Herbert's. That there are physical and moral difficulties of no little magnitude, I am sure he will not deny ; he must feel, as I do, that money, though a very great ingredient in the work, would be useless, unless the untiring energies of many men of his station, and not less ability, are given at once to the mastering all the entanglements of the question, so that no money may be wasted, but every pound, as far as may be, brought directly to bear in aid of the great end for which it has been subscribed. Flies are not more sure attendants on a sugar-cask in sum- mer than are a crowd of would-be private gainers the constant attendants on every great philanthropic movement. If this movement has in it the spirit of success, it will attain its end at the cost of less paid agency than any movement approaching its magnitude which has existed of late years : it is one which should enlist, and will enlist, a large amount of gratuitous aid. It must be, and will be, I trust, worked through, in all its im- portant details, under the strict surveillance of its own committee. I speak from experience — I have worked on an emigration movement, from the smallest of its details to the seeing with my own eyes the first meal served on board the vessel at sea. I have had to correspond with honest friends and dishonest job- bers in the cause at home ; I have had to wade through that which was true and that which was false from the colonies ; I have had to detect, and expose, and prevent the schemes of those who, paid per head for emigrants, have not hesitated to connive at anything which could add to their own gains. I have studied the emigrant ship empty and full ; I have been on board ships with cargoes of mixed emigrants, and, in one case, a cargo of only young single women. Through your columns I 1850 EMIGRATION 175 conveyed my satisfaction with all the apparent effort made by the Colonial Commission for Emigration to secure the health and comfort of the emigrants on the voyage. The ship in which I had so deep an interest arrived in safety ; the accounts I have seen from those on board give me no grounds for reflec- tion on any of the authorities ; on the contrary, knowing what I do of the habits of the people that went, and of the neces- sary economy of a ship, I am wholly satisfied with what I have heard. Still, Sir, I have learnt matters connected with the transport of women in emigrant ships which force me to call on all con- cerned in this movement to weigh well their every step. They have entered on a work which, if blessed with all the success I wish it, will lay the foundation of a new era in emigration. They must learn, as I have learnt, that even the eye of practised inquirers may be deceived — the precautions admirable for some purposes may be full of mischief for others. They must arrive at the conclusion I have arrived at — that, at any cost, it is re- quired that authority over the management of the emigrants should be invested in some competent power, whose authority, in his own department, should even override the authorities of the vessel. No amount of testimonial to character should weigh against precautions to secure the fulfilment of orders given. It is not enough to have a picked crew, the most respectable master, and surgeon, and matron. There are circumstances attendant on the necessary arrangements of an emigrant ship which require some deeply responsible authority to pass and repass with emigrants, to enforce that moral discipline for want of power to enforce which more than one captain and surgeon of respectability have been compelled to witness, if not to connive at, the grossest continued vice. Where there is great temptation, there must be double vigilance ; I am satisfied nozu, that to take large batches of women long voyages, arrange your ship's accommodations how you will, if you would secure comfort to the really modest, and restraint on the immodest, you must uphold a strict discipline on board ; the machinery for which has not, as far as I can find, been yet afforded. I do not know that I had an)- right to 176 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Oct. 23 expect for emigrants who beg a free passage from Government a greater moral guardianship than that afforded in an ordinary union-house ; that much, such as it is, they have had ; but it has had to contend with difficulties, consequent on the difference between a ship and such a house, and therefore was still weaker to oppose evil ; still, the boon, all things considered, is great. But, Sir, I arh satisfied that much improvement is yet to be made in the arrangements for the voyage, before those who are aiding Mr. Herbert, and Mr. Herbert himself, will be satisfied that they have done all which can be done to so rule the cir- cumstances of their emigrants on board that they may reason- ably expect a voyage passed in comfort and decency. The Potato Famine in Ireland and the operation of the Incumbered Estates Bill had given great impulse to the process of emigration from the sister isle in 185 1. The deterrent influences of agitators were insufficient to neutralise the magnetic attraction of the United States. The following letter lays stress on the strength of the feelings that led to what was then called the ' Celtic Exodus,' and speaks of the insig- nificance of the obstacles against emigration raised by agitators. October 23, 1851. I am not a little amused at the different opinions now given as to the cause of the ' Celtic Exodus,' as it is now the fashion to call Irish emigration. English Protectionists would make out that it is the result of free trade ; Irish would-be repudiators say it is the present heavy taxation, in the shape of poor rate, aggravated by the prospect of repaying the debt to England. Now, Sir, I believe neither of these causes has anything to do with the matter. For some years past, even previous to the potato pestilence, a large number of Irish left Ireland each year for either Liverpool or America ; very many who settled for a time at Liverpool afterwards went thence to America. The Irish peasantry are, when separated, far more disposed to corre- spond with their relatives than are the English under the same circumstances. They have for a very long time been in the habit of sending from America and from England occasional presents of money to their families. The feeling that Ireland is not the best place for the Irish is one of some years' gradual 1 8 5 1 EMIGRA TION 1 77 growth. It only wanted that the potato — the link that bound thousands to the soil — should fail, to fix the minds of the people to the questions, Why should we now tarry here? Why not follow those who are doing so well in other countries ? Before the potato rot the process of extermination or eviction on a wholesale scale had commenced on very many estates. The people had got too numerous ; they competed against each other, and could not realise the exorbitant rents they had promised to pay. The landlords, in by far the majority of cases, were virtually bankrupt ; they had ceased to be the real owners of their property. Agents had to work far more for mortgagees than »for their nominal employers. By some sort of tacit agreement the word went generally forth — ' to clear.' To famine was now added a war on houses. The starving were made houseless. This was done at first with a barbarity almost beyond belief. At last certain forms of humanity were enforced on those who by the power of the law were about to ' clear ' their estates. Still the process went on, and that on a scale no Englishman can even now be brought to believe. Then fol- lowed the pressure on the workhouses, and all the horrors, which through the powerful efforts made to suppress them, have only yet very partially met the public eye. For instance, had the returns of the mortality in the Clare unions, laid on the table of the House of Commons last session, and still in the printer's hands, been published, instead of purposely kept back, you, Sir, would see that it has been free trade in death, not in food, which has forced the people to fly. Then was first felt and seen what the operation of the Encumbered Estates Bill was likely to prove. The peasantry and small tenantry saw clearly that confidence in the potato was gone ; they knew the new owners would pursue new systems of culture ; they felt assured that holdings beyond their capital, and requiring a knowledge they had not, would be the rule. Still to hold on, with this disheartening prospect in view, was now out of the question ; for to this very moment, in very many districts, the most exorbitant rents are exacted. All has been embittered to the small tenantry, they have met with no mercy, no sympathy ; they know not in fact who their real landlords VOL. I. N 178 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Oct. 23, 1851 are, or how soon they may be sold with the estate, and have to meet a change for which old habits and ignorance utterly unfit them. Many thousands had early flown from the scene of deso- lation and death. Parents had forsaken children, husbands their wives. Their country they had learnt to loathe, but not their kindred. Every sixpence they could save they devoted to the purpose of helping their relatives to join them. I know it to be a fact that money is now freely advanced in America by employers to Irish labourers that they may get over more hands. Mr. Lawrence knows as well as I do that America will take yet the whole clearance of Ireland, and find a profit in doing so. One of the active officers of a large bank in Ireland has sup- plied me with the details for a few months of the money passing through that bank alone. Those details satisfy me, that so far from there being any reason to suppose the ' Exodus ' will slacken, it has not reached its full height. It is a sad thing to say, but so it is, the people — the masses of Irish — have lost all confidence in every other class. They have, by a system of extortion and wanton oppression, had their hearts turned against the landowners ; they have been deceived by the promises of agitators ; they have ceased to care for any one thing but that — the great object of all — the desire to join their relatives across the sea. A higher than human power has ruled it — an oppressed and neglected people are being led to liberty and food. As to agitation, be it for ' tenant right,' for ' the defence of the Catholic faith,' for ' extension of suffrage,' for any cause good or bad, real or false, it will fail. Stood O'Connell again on the shore, and loved as he once was, let him command as he once could command, — the masses would cheer him, might weep as they left him ; but go they would. They were a people devoted to their priesthood ; their hearts went with any who spoke loudly of their wrongs. Were it possible to plant every deck of every emigrant ship with the excommunication of the Pope himself on those who trod it, they would yet go. If the voice of the people is the sword of the patriot, in Ireland, for years yet to come, patriotism will go unarmed. April 9, 1 863 EMIGRATION 179 S. G. O.'s last letter on the subject of emigration was addressed to the 'Times' on April 9, 1863. The back of the Lancashire distress was nearly broken. The report of the Central Executive Committee to the General Committee of Relief had just been placed in the hands of the public. After allusion to other points in the report, S. G. O. comments in the following letter on the references made by the Com- mittee to the subject of emigration. He mildly deprecates the caution with which the Committee approach the subject, and urges with his usual force the necessity of avoiding the pauperisation of the mill-hands at home, and of enabling them to better themselves across the sea if they wished to do so. April 9, 1863. And now, Sir, having touched on the above points in the official reports of the Central Executive Committee, I turn to that part of their report which enters upon the question of emigration. The committee, ' without doubt or hesitation,' has lent itself to the publication among the operatives of the con- ditions under which several colonies are ready to aid intending emigrants ; candidates have been put into communication with the emigration agents, and an officer of the Emigration Board has visited several of the towns from which applications for aid to emigrate have been received. The committee has reason to believe that by these means, and by the spontaneous efforts of the workmen themselves, a considerable emigration has com- menced. They avow their opinion that it is better, in the absence of any certainty as to the time when home employment may revive, as to the positive fitness of the operative class to meet the nature of the demand for labour in the colonies, and as to the operative's physical and moral qualifications for this new life, 'to leave the extent of the emigration to be determined by the wants of the colonies and the intelligence of the work- men in discerning their own interests.' They postpone more positive interference in the matter until they can see clearer proofs that in a moderate period of time the population of these districts cannot find profitable employment, as of old, or become absorbed, more or less, in other local work, or work elsewhere in the mother country ; or until it is certain that these results can- not be attained without a deterioration in the physical and moral condition of the population. i So THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. April 9 I am not, Sir, now about to questibn the prudence of this course of action thus marked out by the Central Executive Committee. I believe they are endeavouring to act wisely with regard to local manufacturing interest, regarding that interest to be one important to mill-hand as well as mill-owner. If I read a cautious forbearance in advising emigration, a clear indication that at present they consider they can apply our alms more wisely than in aiding it, I at the same time see fair play given to the operative in the way of setting the question before him, giving him every facility to learn from the best sources what emigration offers — what it demands. There is, to my mind, in the cautious language used with respect to the revival of trade, that which convinces me the Executive Committee are very far from sanguine. Their policy clearly is to husband all their resources. They have, by power- ful embanking, hitherto kept back the flood of distress so far that they have successfully checked its power to destroy life ; through certain sluice-gates they are endeavouring to drain off pressure, to distribute it on new work on the spot, new work not distant, new work wherever it can be found in the mother country at any distance ; by the ticket system, by the manual and mental labour test, they strive to turn back from their doors all whom they can thus induce to seek work for themselves ; they are not blind to the necessity for some colonial emigration, but they plainly see that here self-effort should do a great deal before they weaken their future power of distress-resistance by giving anything more than facility to self-effort to obtain know- ledge on the subject. They know that the crisis involves many whom neither parish pay nor alms can help ; they clearly see that these are in- directly saved from becoming paupers by the expenditure on the spot in alms and Poor Law relief to the existing wholly destitute. I do not gather from what they put forth that they will hinder emigration, though they may lament it ; neither do I assume that they negative the idea of the possibility of a time coming when they will see it right to directly aid it ; but I understand them to look with just dread at any weakening of their force to oppose starvation on the spot, threatening as yet for a time to 1 863 EMIGRATION 181 which no living man can put a date, by the process of expending very largely to remove a very limited number of mouths. Strong advocate as I am for a large emigration of ' the hands,' I mus; in truth own I accept this course of conduct as one with which I cannot find fault, when I look at what this committee has done, is doing, and is morally pledged yet to do. And now, Sir, permit me to say something on this question of the dispersion of mill-hands by home or foreign emigration. We were told in your columns by Mr. Potter, the colonists ' want the education and morals of the Lancashire operatives superadded to the other qualifications provided by the agricul- tural labourer. Educate him, and he would be the material they seek, and much less costly. It would be perfectly cruel to nine-tenths of the cotton workers to take them.' The very best emigrants I believe Australia ever had were from districts and parishes where the agricultural labourer would, in Lancashire eyes, have been considered scarcely educated at all ; I myself, aided by my neighbours, nearly filled one large ship for Sydney with Dorset labourers. I have reason to know that they have, with but one exception that I ever heard of, done so well that the great majority possess property and position in the colony far beyond what could possibly have been anticipated. It is difficult for the little-taught common labourer to work up his way to wealth, schooling himself on the road ; far easier does it appear to me for the educated and moral mill-hand to descend to the learning the simpler uses of limb and muscle rough labour in a colony may at first demand, and adding to this the aid of an educated mind, to rise in the field of colonial enterprise. I am told that the mill-hand is a bad subject for colonial acclimatisation ; I don't believe it ; I do believe there is far less risk to him on the voyage out, in the first two years' struggle in any one colony with hope before him, than there is in six months' work in draining, roadmaking, or stonebreaking in fine weather, with the confinement in school on wet days, for the wages he will be allowed to earn of a relief committee, or could for some time fairly earn for himself in the ordinary labour market. I am told of the great moral danger to young women sent out to the colonies. I was told some twenty-seven years ago, 1 82 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 9 when Buckinghamshire lasses were being tempted to Manchester looms, just the same thing. I ask, what is the danger to these young women if they are to be kept another year as they now are ? I am afraid I must add, outdoor agricultural work for young women is a sad school. The same correspondents who ask me if there will be haymaking work for Lancashire lasses are very severe about the temptations of an emigrant ship. I have seen both ; I should hesitate to say which is the more dangerous. I am afraid I am a little sceptical as to the real value of the moral philanthropy that of a sudden is so fearful of the immo- rality attendant on emigration. I have information before me that, at all events, the young men of the mill are either held very cheap on the spot, or considered as moral heroes under difficulty from want of a field for heroism. Why, Sir, it is no secret that there is a paid agitation, active, very active, purely philanthropic, to send out a great number of these to the United States to fight for that very Republic whose mad folly has been the direct cause of all this distress ; and this, out of pure love to the poor negro ! How about the Potomac climate ? How about the moral atmosphere of the Northern army ? Are no Lancashire capitalists conniving at this so-called emigration ? Is there no name mixed up with this movement of note among those who are against colonial emigration ? I can quite understand the efforts made to discourage emi- gration by cotton speculators. The existence on the spot of the raw human, working, wearing material is an important element in the value of raw cotton material as a speculative investment. I don't look for philanthropy as an element of commerce ; I can enter into the reasoning of a man who shall say, ' Ten thousand young men here are worth so much to me if I can bring cotton to them at per lb. ; they are worth so much more to me if their help to the Northerners in America would let cotton free by the subjection of the South. It is immaterial to the question, so that they do go to fight, whether it is for the money only or for this and the cry of " Freedom to the niggers ! " ' I say I can enter into a man's reasoning who takes this line, only I must say if there are many such I don't see why we need go to Mrs. Stowe for a picture of a ' Legree,' and I must add that it makes 1 863 EMIGRATION 183 me feel more than ever the necessity of viewing ' Emigration ' from the workman's side of the question. Here I have no difficulty at all ; it is indisputable that, day by day, the hands are getting to argue ' Some of us must go, that those who remain may have hope of restored independence ; a great number are anxious to go at once.' They are studying the subject, and they are already seeking to bring the valuable principle of ' co-operation ' to bear upon it. The public may rest assured the superior mill-hand thoroughly understands the present crisis. I have read letters from these, and from wealthy capitalists, and have been much struck with the thorough know- ledge the former have of the business of the latter. They have no hope for years to come of any such revival of the trade as shall give employment, at the former wages, to one half of their number. It is folly to try and arrest the disposition to emigrate ; in my opinion, it would be most wise to aid it, still, however, holding in reserve the fund of the General Executive to meet home exigency. It will be yet most serious. I admit a large number of ' hands ' may be absorbed in home employment, away from Lancashire ; but there is the old house difficulty, scarcity of lodging, where there is yet a demand for field labour ; there would be the difficulty of leaving their wives and children ; still no doubt there will thus be some absorption. In home trade work I expect there will be very little, for ' the trades ' keep out by their own rules all foreign labour, as far as they possibly can, and by their unions they are very powerful. The whole question is about to come before Parliament ; in my view there never was a more important one — let me add, a more difficult one. I am told ' the mill-hands ' are not, as yet, at all morally deteriorated. I don't believe it. They are not the men to live long dependent and yet unharmed. I claim for them fair play ; — I ask nothing more. Of charity, of Poor Law, it would be folly to grant to them more than necessary to sus- tain health ; but if it becomes clear to the nation's great council that to keep them alms-fed, Poor-Law-fed, when they are desir- ous to earn anywhere the just wages of honest industry, is to do them injury. I say, let their hopes, their comfort, their 'capital' in muscle, head, and heart weigh in its degree with that of any arguments founded on the capital of £. s. d. 1 84 THE LETTERS OF 5. G. O. Sept. CHAPTER VII. DISEASE. Cholera visited England in 1849, and destroyed 13,161 lives in London alone between June and October of that year, The mortality lessened and the distemper vanished with the approach of winter. Interested from early life in the origin of disease, S. G. O. never failed to direct public attention to the close alliance between dirt and pestilence. The Cholera. September 20, 1849. There is a certain class of persons, and that, I fear, a very large class, who view with great indignation the daily published accounts in your paper of the progress of the cholera. They argue that it is dangerous to be frightened about that disease, and therefore wicked to take any line which may produce fear. They are of those who are so engaged in this world's business, this world's pleasure, or this world's apathy, that they feel every- thing which may tend to remind them of the uncertainty of their stay in this world as a wanton aggression on their so-called peace. They are of those who are for ever speaking of this pestilence as almost confined to the wretched poor, and the wretched locality of their habitations, but who are of the last to lend aid in person or in purse, to minister to that wretchedness, either by improving their condition in respect to food or dwell- ing. I at once admit, that to put before a man whose all is here daily proof of how very near he may be to hereafter, is to try his patience on its most tender point. Just as the curers of pilchards at Mevagissey object to interference with their trade, though it may be to save their lives, so the worldling, in his selfish devo- tion to his cold or no creed, objects to interference with his satisfaction with things around him, though it may be done to save his soul. 1 849 DISEASE 185 It is very true that the cholera takes the multitude of its victims from a class whose habits and whose dwellings have sur- rounded them with circumstances especially predisposing them to receive its death embrace ; but it is very far from true that it limits its claims to the lives of these. No, Sir, you can scarcely now encounter any, if any rank, who know not with sorrow that their own sphere enjoys no real immunity from this disease. Typhus bred in the village hovel but too often travels from its birthplace, the abode of the poor, to take its place in the mansion of the wealthiest. The poison of cholera finds in its journey the best ground for its temporary encampment the locality where neglect and sin have formed for it such preparation as suits its head-quarters ; but it takes up those quarters under no restric- tion to confine its force to them. Heavy will lie the guilt at the door of any of every rank and position who have power to attack it in its best loved spots, and who use not that power ; but deep is the folly and still heavier the guilt of all who, callous to. the lesson it reads to all, are endeavouring to drown the voice of that lesson whenever it tries to be heard beyond the sphere from which it chiefly directs its voice. The authorities connected with the watering-places to which the wealthy at this season resort are straining every nerve to hide or qualify the report of every case which may occur, lest it should drive people away, keep people away, and thus injure the trade of the town ; nay, to such a pitch is this selfish folly carried, that in some towns, inland as well as on the coast, there is a question of whitewashing and cleansing places likely to be, or actually infected, lest it should raise suspicion. I can state, of my own knowledge, that either untrue returns must be made, or returns are altogether withheld, of this disease in many towns ; for it is notorious the cholera is rife in many places never mentioned in your columns. What puerile, wicked folly this is ! Is the present scourge really of so light a nature ? Does it betoken so little purpose in the hands of our God, that we may dare thus to pooh-pooh its existence, lest we injure our trade or inconvenience the migratory bands of autumnal pleasure- seekers ? Is the hand of God to be stayed by coaxing and bribing sextons to bury and be quiet — giving medical men the 1 86 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 20 option of concealing their cholera cases, or losing their best customers ? Is it justifiable to trap the timid wealthy, who fly about seeking uninfected places, by receiving them with the smile of confident safety, when it is known to the courteous mayor, the all-civil landlord of the hotel, the affable master of the library, that, day by day, some are buried who die of cholera, though perhaps the bell is forbidden to toll the tale ? In very many places I am satisfied the clergy would before this have used the appointed prayer against pestilence, and even had one or more Sundays, or other days, noticed for special intercession to the Almighty, had they not known, and unfortunately too much respected, the dissatisfaction such steps would cause to the very many who are set against public allusion to the possible advent of the disease amongst them. I am quite ready to admit that nervousness on the subject may predispose to the disease, but we have long since got beyond the time when, if it were admitted to be expedient to do so, it has been possible to conceal the progress of the cholera. Where ten persons may be pre- disposed by fear to take the poison, in consequence of publicity given to the existence of the disease in any given locality, twenty will be saved from its full power by being timely warned, and thus enabled to take the only steps which can check that power. There is still another class pre-eminent for their mischievous folly ; these argue that the filth and crowding which characterise the habitations of the poor in many towns, and in but too many villages, have always hitherto existed, and yet been productive of no such disease ; these people are for letting things alone. They don't live adjoining to churchyards, which have become so poisoned in the soil by the amount of corruption with which they have been saturated that even the sparrows will not roost near them, and a true earthworm is never dug up in them. They do not spend hours of sedentary toil by windows opening over stinking gullyholes, the foul air-shafts of the foulest tunnels human negligence can build and human filth can fill ; they know not what it is for scores to dwell under each roof of a crowded court, with no means of depositing at a distance that shall not taint the air they breathe the noxious matter, vegetable and animal, to breathe the taint of which would, by degrees, even 1 849 DISEASE 187 weaken the constitution of a sewer rat ; no, these self-satisfied arguers from what has been borne hitherto, and they not called on to cleanse and build, lest others die, live comfortably and cosily at a distance from any such abominations ; they have learned to regard filth, foul air, and foul crowding as the normal state of certain districts set apart for the poor, and because the filth, &c, is of old date and the cholera of recent date, they deny that the two have any direct reference to each other. Self- accusation is, of all assaults on our peace, one of the most disagreeable ; many a man can walk unshamed in the face of well-deserved public odium who trembles, when alone, at the indictment his own conscience prefers against his integrity. I can easily see the sore so many of these men now thus try to hide. If it is admitted that our wanton neglect of the things which constitute the common decencies of life to the poor man, of the things which are necessary to save him from a too great liability to low fever, and other analogous disease, has raised up around him a state of things which make him now especially open to the attacks of cholera ; — if men's hearts now generally fail them for fear of a disease that seizes first on localities such as those spoken of above, and then and there spreads and becomes aggravated in its symptoms till such localities become foci from which its pestiferous breath poisons the air far and near ; — if this is once admitted, why, here is at once a heavy indictment at the door of those who have connived at and profited by such neglect — an indictment of many counts : sin, disease, and now death, all the result of gross negligence, may now be laid with justice as against them. How often have we been warned of the sure moral result to our population of that state of things which is now being daily officially developed as of long existence ! How often have we seen typhus tracked in its destroying power to the abodes vouchsafed at high prices to the poor for rent ; but abodes on which to spend a farthing to cleanse, ^repair, or make decent, was considered unnecessary by the owners ! The filthy tale which the public now daily reads, as it is set forth in your columns, the scenery to the tragedy of each day's cholera work, is no new tale. That the poor so lived in tens of thousands was 1 88 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 20 well known ; that, in consequence, they were subject to disease, which yearly slew a heavy percentage on their numbers, was well known ; but scarce anything was done to wipe the shame from our name. Did the poor only rob the poor, were the rich never assaulted, robbed, murdered, I fear we should grumble at the cost of justice and the maintenance of police. So long as nothing much worse proceeded from the neglect of the social and physical condition of the poor man than an occasional inroad of typhus into the houses of the better-conditioned classes, we should still have lived on, regardless of that neglect. God is now teaching us that, as we must pay to repress the crime which we will not, by education, seek to prevent, so we must be content to receive cholera to our own bosoms, if we will not seek to prevent its advent by the destruction of the causes which court its presence. Instead of seeking to disown the lesson, let us humbly accept the wholesome teaching it conveys. It is useless to deny that we deserved it ; it would, indeed, be wise to take the utmost profit it can afford. There is much, very much, which can be done at once to abate the disease amongst the poor, even where it is established. There are few spots, indeed, in which there is not abundant room for measures of prevention. God hath suffered us to learn this much of this mysterious agent, that though its power cannot be defied, it may be to some degree turned aside — to some degree weakened. Cleanliness and watch- fulness are the permitted means ; let us diligently use them. Above all, whether we do so publicly or privately (we ought to do both), let us humble ourselves before Him ; we should have gone to Him as a nation sooner ; but, though we have waited to seek Divine aid till human aid has been baffled, He will not yet reject our cry for mercy. Let us put aside all foolish conceal- ment of the extent of our punishment. Universal trust in the great Disposer of all events is the best precaution against the panic which begets the disease it would fly. Using every proper means of human precaution, let us endeavour to live so that we may be, in confidence in His good dealing, as ready to assist others as, if needs be, to meet our own attack. Let us, learning the lesson from David that it is better to fall into God's hands 1 849 DISEASE • 189 than those of men, rejoice that He who directs the sword against us can now, as in the time of David, be led, by the penitence of the punished, to sheath the sword with which He punishes. England was once more ravaged by cholera in 1853, especially in the northern towns, and once again does S. G. O. take up his parable against those who opposed the late Sir Edwin Chadwick and himself in their propaganda of sanitary laws. September 27, 1853. The great scavenger of our race is among us, active and awful. The cholera is cleaning out our human cesspools, re- moving sewage — mortal and immortal. Stuff of our own kind which we have hoarded and herded in our out-of-the way places, where it could ferment, rot and perish, is now being no longer left to the causes of destruction to which we were content to leave it, but is being hurriedly swept away by a mysterious and all-powerful agent. Bodies reared in filth — souls reared in the midst of blas- phemy — steeped in ignorance of all good, polluted with all knowledge of all evil — men, women, and children, whose ap- pearance and whose habits made them the eyesores of the corners of those streets where the abodes of the neglected adjoin the dwellings of the privileged— men, women, and chil- dren who were born amidst filth of body and taint of every moral sense — who have been reared to the age at which they are now being removed, with a rearing in character with their birth. These, to whom the same message of eternal hope was sent, and by the same hand, as to ourselves ; these, who had minds which could have been trained to comprehend that message ; these, who had all that organisation in common with ourselves which could have been adapted to purposes honourable to their race, to the things of the school of honest industry and deserving ambition, cholera is taking them, struggling with us for their possession just as they are ; from amid the filth of physical and moral life cholera grasps them. And now, we who left these to typhus — to miasma of mind and body ; we who looked on them as we might have regarded the rats in our sewers, as the life 19 o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 27 that must live among stuff and in places which we have chosen to consider inseparable from our towns — that species of life to be deplored and left to the police — we are engaging in the struggle with cholera, because that agent chooses with too rude a hand to snatch away that for which it has a direct affinity — that which we have treated as if it were nothing of our own. Tents from the Ordnance, physicians from London, medical students from anywhere, every known disinfectant — all possible means of early prevention of those symptoms the seeds of which we have sown broadcast in the localities in which we have left people in habits the most predisposing for them — a very host is now putting on its armour to fight the common foe; the nation's energies are roused, and what will not the roused English attempt ? They who fought against sanitary laws ; they who cast every impediment in the way of sanitary improvement ; the men who pooh-poohed the efforts of those who said the soul- possessed poor should have the opportunity to live with access to soul health ; — all are now eager to arrest the progress of that foe which, landing to destroy on the spots on which he was most likely to land, shows a disposition to go beyond the filthy bounds of his own prepared territory, and claim the lives of classes who dreamt of safety in their own freedom from the causes to which they were content to leave others exposed. I know not, Sir, at what cost of human life we shall now pay for our past mad neglect. Who shall count the value of the immortal souls now flushed into the grave's vast pool from these the sewers of our race ? Who shall stand up and say, ' Lay no measure of the account at my door ' ? Cholera will not wait for an impromptu, hurried mission. The Church I know — other bodies of Christians I feel assured — will now lend every energy and face every danger to try and warn, and point to heaven and to hope. Alas ! an hour of panic is no time in which the hearts of those reared in ignorance can grasp the truths grafted in our own hearts now by faith, but learnt in our early days as the necessary lessons of our creed. Cholera will not wait for us to organise the means to minister to its victims. We may — by God's help we shall, I have no doubt — by the aid of science and the energy of that humanity 1853 DISEASE 191 and that more selfish principle of self-preservation which is now awakened, disarm it of many of its terrors, mitigate its destruc- tive power. But, while we do thus struggle, using human means, and pray, seeking heaven's aid, let us pause at times, and say on what ground can we — above all, can the Church and State — declare we are not guilty in that this mysterious power, expected, yet found us so unprepared. S. G. O.'s investigations of the Germ theory of disease, in 1854, entitle him to the credit of being one of the first to connect the outbreak of disease with the presence and propagation, in the air and the animal system, of minute organisms afterwards known as ' microbes.' It was not until 1870 that Professor Huxley publicly expressed his concurrence with the Germ theory. The germ of the Germ theory is found in the following letter : — - Will it ever be possible to map a Smell ? September 29, 1854. I lately stated in your columns that, in my own opinion, the pernicious products of the bad air of sewers and such places might be made visible. I can now, with a great approach to truth, assert that a bad smell may be mapped — i.e. the organic atoms in it laid down on paper, so as to show their very outline. I will give my experiment and its result ; I do so with the less hesitation, as it is one very easily made. An upright metal pipe, some four inches in diameter and ten feet high was some months since placed as an air shaft from a vault or cesspool, receiving daily additions of the worst animal matters. This shaft so far answered that it carried the effluvia above the heads of passers-by. By means of four uprights of wood, cut to a level about half an inch above the orifice at the top of the shaft, a rest or platform was made on which a piece of glass six inches square was laid, so as to cover over the said orifice, and yet leaving a narrow space for air to pass. This glass had been most carefully cleaned. Before it was laid on the platform it was lightly smeared on the under side with some pure glycerine, procured for the purpose and carefully tested. A small weight on the upper side kept the glass in its place. It was left thus for eight hours, then taken down, and at once washed with dis- tilled water which had been submitted to test. Some half-dozen 1 9 2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 29 preparations were at once made from this washing — i.e. a few drops were enclosed in very thin glass cells, and hermetically- sealed. I have now studied these preparations with the utmost care, using a microscopic power of more than 600 linear, with the aid of excellent illumination, by one of the very best inventions for the purpose. The result was to show me that even in the small portion of the infected or polluted fluid contained in each pre- paration there were countless masses of animated active bodies. The commonest form was that of a simple circular cell, with a distinct nucleus ; there were also beautifully distinct oval cells ; some few fungi I recognised as of the same genus as those found on decaying vegetable matter. There were numbers of vibrionia, small maggot-shaped bodies, not like those found in vegetable infusions, with central lines of division, but broader in shape, rather longer, evidently of greater diameter, and more active, the motion being more rolling than vibratory. There were thousands of bodies shaped like mushrooms, the stalks of which twisted about as the umbrella head revolved. One peculiar cell I found, but not in such great numbers ; it was always the largest in the group, being about 4-7,oooths of an inch long, nearly oval, well-defined outline, and the membranous sac easily made out by a little subduing of the light. I compared it with fungi in a preparation made from mould on meat ; it was of a very similar character, but larger, and its contents more obscured from sight. These cells alone were in a state of repose, with the exception of the few vegetable ones of which I have spoken ; the rest were all alive, or rather lively, and, though now in con- finement some forty-eight hours, they continue so. It is quite clear to the eye that the maggot-like forms are generated in the cells, for they may be seen within tJiem and escaping from them. Very many of these cells were so small that they could have passed three abreast between the spaces of a micrometer, ruled to give, with the power used, something under the 7,000th part of an inch. All these bodies are in sub- stance homogeneous ; I can detect nothing like organs within or without them ; they are so far transparent that they appear within these outlines as white and luminous. I am familiar with 1 854 DISEASE 193 monads, and I think with most of the infusoria, but I have never seen any corresponding with the form, action, and general character of these bodies. I have within these few weeks taken specimens of the vibrio from various sources ; I can trace in them the characters ascribed in various books to the several species ; I have caught them in large numbers in the air ; but these, the product of the effluvia from the commonest of all very- dirty matters, appear to me to be perhaps of the same genus, so far as to deserve to be ranked as scavengers ; but yet a new species. I had been led to believe, as I stated in my last, that glyce- rine might, when exposed to the rays of the sun or moon, itself so decompose as to produce the so-called vibrios. I have, by means that defied all such chance of deception, ascertained that, as the rule, wherever a glass arrests in the air any vegetable fungi, a very high microscopic power will discover with these great multitudes of these lively bodies. Fungi washed from the tomato, or from the mould on meat, with distilled water only, which has been boiled afresh in a glass tube, will give to view these same bodies. That these creatures are in the atmosphere for some wise purpose I have no doubt ; that they do, as it is written of them, act as nature's scavengers I have no doubt ; that their existence in the air is almost perpetual I believe, for when and where is there season or locality in which some decaying process is not going on ? We may, probably, inhale these ordinary aerozoa in any number with impunity, perhaps with benefit ; but I have my doubts as to man's power to inhale, without injury, repeated draughts of the animated matter, which, I now believe, forms an element of animal decomposition, and is given off in its effluvia. At all events, I think, if the public could be brought to see that which floats in what they smell from sewers and cesspools, they would be more careful in the removal of filth in such a way as to, as far as may be, limit the escape of its life-crowded atmosphere. I trust these my crude experiments may be followed up by those who possess even more powerful instruments and greater VOL. I. O 194 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 29, 1854 opportunities for observation than I have. I have only sought to give the results of my attempts to shadow out my theory. I am more than ever satisfied that a diligent study of the organised products to be obtained in different conditions of the atmosphere would lead to more light than we at present possess with regard to the cause of epidemics. I am strengthened in my opinion by that given to me by one of the very first physiologists of the day. But, Sir, let me add that, just in proportion as the experi- mental means I have used and pointed out are simple, so are they, unless used with the utmost care, liable to betray. In dealing with these minute matters, the utmost care must be taken to test every stage of the experiment ; to see that none of the materials used are the parents of the things found. It is in vain to work the product of glasses used to trap the air with any powers less than those of the quarter-inch of the best makers; to see thoroughly, a i-8th or i-6th with good eye- pieces and good illumination is necessary. I am still sanguine that these experiments are in the right path to discover pheno- mena in nature's works which may prove most valuable ; I see no reason why we may not make an approach to some ocular analysis, giving the difference between various decaying matters as to their specific effect on the atmosphere ; it would not sur- prise me if particles of scent — say, from the fox or civet — could be made apparent to the eye. I am well aware that a great part of the value of my experi- ment will depend upon the question — does glycerine, when exposed to the air, so rapidly decompose as in a few hours to give out this amount of life ? As I have found vibrios with vegetable fungi taken directly from the plant to the stage of the microscope, using only fresh boiled distilled water, and no glycerine at all, I believe the bodies I have described are literally taken floating in the atmosphere ; and when I see their dimensions, and find with them the form of well-known fungi, it does not surprise me. Investigator. April 17, 1865 DISEASE 195 The Typhus Nest. April 17, 1865. All who have studied the subject know full well that as surely as the early hedge-nest tells of the advent of the breeding-time of birds, so do the first few cases of typhus in any locality warn that here this foe of our race is about to build and breed to the utmost of his power — that is, as far as he can do it, and we will suffer it. Whether or no the fever which has broken out in Russia and elsewhere will invade our island none can say. To read the accounts we have of it, it would appear to be no more or less than typhoid fever of malignant character made more so from the low condition of those it attacks, and probably further aggravated by some peculiar atmospheric condition. It is quite certain crowded cities are seldom, if ever, quite free from this type of fever ; it is not disputed that there has now, for some time, been a great deal of it in London. Let us admit that it is, as it is now among us, simply what is called typhus fever of the usual character, traceable to certain condi- tions, which we know full well do for ever produce and propa- gate it, such as the low feeding, dissolute habits, the crowding together in masses of people of filthy habits, in localities ill drained, ill ventilated ; these being the primary causes of typhus. To such places the typhus-nester may go at all times, and feel certain to find what he seeks. London has many hundred acres of such typhus-ground. It is early spring, we have only just warmed out the chill of the last winter's atmosphere. It is not impossible that we shall have one of those summers the heat of which intensifies the odour of the crowded rooms of London dreg-life, depressing human vitality, calling into full vitality every poisonous material that foul water-butts, fouler drains, foul rags, are so ready to yield to summer heat. Where typhus now nestles, now breeds, it will be warmed up to more vigorous effort ; fed on the foul food it loves best, inspiring the foul air on which it thrives best, it is sure to spread and, spreading, aggravate its own fatal type. 196 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 17 Never were ' court,' ' alley,' and ' lane ' London more crowded than at this moment ; never was there more clear indication that pressed-down human life must yet submit to more pressure. It is possible, I am told, to calculate how many pilchards can be got into a barrel, how many figs into a drum, and yet preserve their healthy market condition. Is it so difficult to calculate how many human beings can possibly live in an unhealthy locality and yet preserve health ? It appears as if we had no power to number the amount of persons in such a locality who can be crammed into one bed, or how many such beds any one room can be made to hold. We have long since cried out loud enough that the condition of the lowest strata of our London poor is a shame to our humanity ; we have still been content to see that condition year by year made worse. At this very moment we are well aware that large numbers of poor people, already too closely packed for health or decency, are about to be evicted from their present dwellings, with no option but that of wedging themselves into the lanes and courts in other dis- tricts, which already are hotbeds of all the vice and disease re- sulting from humanity submitted to a pressure under which cattle might just live, but could not thrive. We read of the ' typhoid relapsing fever ' of St. Petersburg ; we send professional experts to see all about it and ' report.' It strikes me this is something like sending a professor of botany to bring home some rare exotic, to prepare for which we have already got our soil ready. Have we not read that it is the poor, overcrowded, and ill-fed of the Russian capital who are the victims of this pestilence ? To calm our fears is it not written that the disease is confined to this class and the doctors who attend them ; that, after all, it is no plague — oh no, only an epidemic, the result of too many dirty, poor, lower-class people congregated in one spot ; in fact, are we not informed that it is nothing more than a rather abundant hatching of typhus, where that disease has had every encouragement to settle and breed ? It is quite true that, as the rule, this kind of low fever takes its victims chiefly from the lowest and poorest class of society. Let it, however, assume the full proportions of a wide-spread epidemic among this class, instead of dealing with it as it now 1 865 DISEASE r 97 does, a few cases in a house, and this in a few dozen houses here and there in the neglected, miserable districts of London, we may rest assured that then it will not only assume a more malignant form, but will extend its contagion far beyond the boundaries which now divide those whose life in its scene and circumstance seems a mockery of human life from their more privileged brethren, who live in a comfort and an ease which would seem to set at naught disease hatched of want and un- cleanness. Typhus is so far from being a strange thing in the over- crowded portions of the town that it is received as a resident rather than an intruder ; to be ' down with the fever ' is a very common lot — so common that terror of it has little power to produce that condition of mind which makes men most suscept- ible of its contagion. Not so is it in the wealthier quarters of the town ; we all know full well the dread felt of this disease. We can easily imagine, then, the consequences which would follow should it break out from its accustomed breeding-ground and invade in all its power the streets and squares where, as yet, it is rarely known. The dread and anxiety it would cause would in itself produce the very depression which predisposes for its contagion. Be it remembered, the natural foci of typhus irf the metropolis are situate, not on the outskirts of those quarters of the town in which the well-to-do live, but in the midst of them, in the closest contact with them. The typhus-nester may in a few minutes walk from the door of luxury and affluence and find abundant typhus ground of the most promising nature. He has only to apply to the officials of that admirable institution the Fever Hospital, and they will afford him every information of the whereabouts, at the moment, of this pest. It has been my lot to see a good deal of fever ; in Ireland I had every opportunity of studying it. We had it there in every degree of virulence ; that it gained its first power there from close crowding, low food and too little of it I have no doubt ; that it assumed from time to time a more or less malignant form I believe resulted from several causes. There ever is in and about localities where fever breeds a certain condition of atmo- 1 98 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 17 sphere which aids its production, itself becomes poisoned by it the more it progresses, and this tends not only to sustain and spread it but to increase its virulence. I have reason to believe that a strong gale of wind blowing from one quarter for some days will often be followed by a partial cessation of the progress of fever in a locality exposed to such wind. I believe the acci- dental circumstance of a fire taking place close to a typhus nest has so purified the atmosphere that there has been a mitigation of the disease ; I have, then, no doubt atmosphere plays an im- portant part in the production, support, arrest, or aggravation of the disease. There is a peculiar condition of mind that seems strongly to predispose the constitution to take the disease, — fear of it, that anxious state of depression which very naturally affects heads of families living near to an infected locality ; which affects espe- cially their servants, a class very apt to magnify danger of all kind. This, very often, by destroying a desire for food, inter- fering with rest, and otherwise depressing the system, produces that physical weakness which invites the attack of this species of disease. It is impossible for a close observer to mistake the peculiar cast of countenance which at once becomes common in all ranks of life in the neighbourhood of any powerful pestilence. When the disease first breaks out it seizes on those who have been bred to it in some of the low typhus nests ; these poor creatures, already scantily fed, ill-fed, living in dirt around, and breathing the air it has polluted, are soon taken ; the next seized are those somewhat stronger, on whom the conditions of their common life had not borne quite so hardly ; none who have once smelt and tasted (it is a thing of nose and palate) can for- get the atmosphere of a fever room in a low locality— a room where there may be but one dying or lately dead. We may leave it for fresh air, and thus drown out for a time the foul effluvia in a pure air bath ; but lodgers and relatives have to eat, sleep, live in it ; they very soon sicken and die of it. Now, panic met by gin, not argument, supervene^, and fresh elements of danger are bred- elements of worse danger, for as more are .fitted to take the virus the disease becomes the more malignant- 1 believe the buboes, boils, &c, we read of in Russia are nothing 1 86 s DISEASE 199 more than might occur, probably will occur, if the fever which has existed in London for months past becomes, by more crowding and the action of the summer heat, of a more malig- nant type. It was not till England was seriously threatened that we went to work so lavishly to prepare against invasion. The iron- clads, the fortresses over which economists grumble, but which make the nation at large comfortable in the matter of war from without, would never have existed, had not certain clouds, not larger than one man's hand, awakened the nation to our defence- less state. When the voyagers in steamers from Putney to Greenwich became subject to nausea on smooth water ; when Westminster Palace was found to be built by the side of the outfall of London nastiness ; and the deliberate wisdom of English legislators threatened to become hasty to execute, bilious in conception, from the action of Thames stink, making every committee-room and the very body of the House feel as private houses do when the plumber is wanted at once, then, and not till then, were the money and the scheme found which has just been inaugurated on its completion by the heir to the throne. Who twenty years ago would have conceived it possible that a few handles of iron, not ivory, had only to be kept lifting, miles out of London, sub- sidiary to our domestic machinery, and that thus we could cleanse our river and transport our abominations? That royalty itself next the throne should inaugurate the first pull of the valve of this great water vault speaks volumes for the honour we give to domestic sanitary matters. W r ould it not, Sir, be as well to now at once coolly regard the means and cost necessary to attack the fever which does exist in its present strongholds, before, by anything which may aggravate it, it flows forth a mighty pestilence, to force us to the task ? A great many good reasons will, doubtless, be given why the Russian pestilence will not reach our shores ; but somehow it for ever happens epidemics behave most unreasonably ; they show no deference to public opinion or to the arguments of private individuals. I have no doubt that if we have an out- break of violent malignant typhus we shall go over the old 200 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 29 track ; boards of health will be very active, printed advice will be distributed gratis, fever hospitals will be extemporised, the Privy Council will direct the use of a particular prayer, the custom house officers will vigilantly watch foreign ships ; all who have country seats will go to them ; we shall have regular returns of the mortality and large subscriptions to aid the sick. For my own part, I think it would be wise to anticipate the possibility of the necessity of this old routine ; but at the same time to go to work at once to clear the ground, where typhus does exist, and is likely to exist ; destroying, as far as may be, the domestic foe, before we burnish up our armour to meet the foreign one. It can hardly be doubted that this is not the time to cram more typhus nests, already quite crammed enough to breed to any amount. The Cattle Disease and Cholera. August 29, 1865. We are at this time visited by an epidemic in our grazing fields'and cattle sheds ; we are threatened with one in our own dwelling places. The cattle epidemic is already doing its deadly work ; the cholera appears to be on its way to our shores. Veterinary science gives forth great difference of opinion as to the origin of the cattle disease, is altogether at fault as to any efficient specific in the way of cure. Medical science has as yet failed to discover the originating cause of cholera, has discovered no one plan of treatment entitled to entire confidence. There is great division of opinion upon the question of the cattle epidemic being an imported or a home-begotten disease. It is argued, because it appeared abroad before it broke out here, it must have been through imported cattle that it reached our herds. Because the cholera is raging in places from which our ships, or foreign ships, sail to our ports, it is also held that we are thus likely to import this disease. In my opinion it is quite possible that these two epidemics may have this feature in common. Existing in a country with which we trade, oxen may be so far affected by the virus that, although apparently quite well when they leave for England, they may sicken on the voyage and die soon after landing, or 1 865 DISEASE 201 may appear still for some time well, but from local causes, English causes, develop the disease and then die. At the same time, I firmly believe that an ox and a man may alike absorb into the system the poison of disease, and yet, if in good health, so long as they retain that health, escape its full development. I am quite satisfied no man can go into places where there are many severe typhoid or choleraic cases and not take into his system some specific source of mischief from the atmosphere in which they exist. You may place mushroom spawn on several different soils, but there is one particular soil in which it will the quickest fructify ; so with these epidemic diseases. The man of to-day may be in a state of health which renders his constitu- tion altogether unfit to develop the virus he may absorb ; the same man the very next day, from some physical or mental cause of depression, may present to that virus just the pabulum it requires for its worst development. It is my belief, then, that diseases of this nature once planted in a population, do in reality scatter their seeds over a far wider surface than is usually supposed ; that very many of us, who have been again and again exposed to typhoid malignant disease, and cholera, from having had to go among those suffering from them, have taken into our systems their poison, although, from circumstances simply constitutional, we have altogether escaped any exhibition in our own persons of such diseases. Further, that the seeds of these diseases are ever present among us, awaiting peculiar atmospheric action for their development. There are localities so inhabited, so ill-drained, so utterly denied all proper ventilation, the men, women, and children, the in- habitants, of such foul callings and habits, that the riddle science has failed to solve is, how typhus is ever absent, how there should be such apparent failure in its production. For years, in such a locality, the people have been, not healthy, perhaps, but still free from malignant fever and cholera. Either of these diseases may on a sudden break out among them ; and, per- haps, in a dozen such localities the same thing will occur at the same time — there is an epidemic. If at the time malignant typhoid fever raged at Boulogne, or cholera at Marseilles, we set to work to find out how we can connect the fact with our own 202 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Aug. 29 pestilence, then we have the old story of sailors just come ashore, who had taken lodgings for a night, or some rag mer- chant who had bought some rags from a ship on the river. Our safety consists in this, — until science can teach us some- thing certain as to the cause of these diseases, let us fall back on common sense. We find when cholera comes it pitches its tent on the foul grounds of human life, and there it at once develops its full destroying force. It jumps over the well-aired cleanly mansion to produce a sporadic case here and there in crowded mews, where the steam of dung bins without, mingling with that from boiling dirty linen within, depresses the constitu- tions of the hapless beings who crowd the rooms over the stables. It is not heard of again until, passing by whole streets and squares of the rich, it falls foul of some filthy alley, where all abomination to mind and body is perennial ; here it at once takes up a position, it revels among the life that lives ever pre- pared for its reception. The inhabitants of such places may have dwelt for years under the precise circumstances in which cholera now finds them and escaped it. The question to me is, whether all the time its elementary matter was not present, but the peculiar atmospheric condition wanting to complete the process necessary to its development. It vegetated unseen, simply because this, its vegetation, wanted a certain condition of atmosphere to force it into that destructive growth which it could alone obtain under such condition. I do not, for one moment, believe that any cordon, any human known means of isolating a cholera bed or typhus nest, can secure it from the disease, the seeds of which are contained in its polluted soil, awaiting incubation in due season. As to contagion in its literal sense, I doubt whether contact with the dead or living in these diseases will give them ; but I am quite satisfied that whether it be from the excreta, the secretion from the skin, or the air expired from the lungs, where there are many choleraic or typhoid cases in a small space whatever care may be taken, there is this much infection in the air — it renders those who breathe it liable to the disease, doubly so if in weak health ; the strongest men if depressed by fatigue become as susceptible to the virus as the weakest ; in fact, it 1 86 s DISEASE 203 appeared to me that those most liable to take it, among the attendants and medical men, were men and women originally strong who were worn out physically by the heavy work cast upon them, and to these I would add those whose peculiar nervous temperament kept them in a state of desponding appre- hension of its attack. Where cholera has got a strong hold on any one locality, and the deaths are very numerous, I have no doubt that the poison is developed in excess. In addition to the causes which led to its production in the first instance, still adding all its own peculiar morbid matters, it becomes more virulent on the spot, and thus taints a considerable area of atmosphere. For some distance around every locality in which there is human life dwelling under circumstances which depress, healthy life is in danger. What I have now said with regard to cholera I believe will apply to the case of the cattle epidemic. Let us suppose two steamers, under precisely the same conditions, vessels which for years have been in use in the importation of cattle, being in every respect as clean or dirty, well or ill ventilated ; the ac- commodation for the beasts, as to the average number brought, being the same. I strongly suspect, if you travelled my squire's healthy Devons the same distance, to embark them for Holland in one of these steamers, that a herd of healthy foreign cattle were travelled to be embarked for London, either on the voyage or so3n after landing, the probability would be as great that the one set of beasts as the other would show the disease. It is no use assuring me that the mode of transport for years has been the same by rail and by boat ; that the beasts stood the crowd- ing, bruising, half-starving and foul accommodation, and yet escaped the disease. I assert that they did so simply because, to develop this scourge, it requires a locality to be tainted up to a certain degree ; all that is then wanting is the action of a certain atmosphere to make it at once a hotbed of disease. Without this peculiar atmospheric condition, the seeds of the disease, existing, could not fructify. As with crowded alleys and lodging-houses, so with steamers, cattle trucks and cowsheds ; nothing but continued care and 204 THE LETTERS 0E S. G. 0. Aug. 29 cleanliness at all times can guard against pestilence at peculiar seasons. We nurse the viper until we think him harmless — a change of temper and he bites to kill us. Why should we have expected a thing so tame should ever become so deadly? — because he was a viper at best. So with dirt and bad air ; for a season they leave us unharmed, and we bear with them, but on a sudden they vindicate their nature and destroy. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Soap, whitewash, pure air, clean clothing, good drainage, take precedence of medicine. An assembly of ' vets ' over the deceased in a cowshed, a board of medical inspectors with cabs waiting at the mouth of a blind alley, cholera-smitten, are alike worthy of respect : they are the detectives come — after the robbery. Had they been called in a few short months since to inspect the premises and point out the weak places, death would not have stolen the cows or the men. I once knew a row of cottages in a healthy village, in which there were repeated cases of low fever ; the gardens were close up to the doors ; the only accessible cesspools were just the distance which the poor call, not convenient for such con- veniences. I ascertained the mothers and daughters who did the housework were accustomed to bring out slops of all de- scriptions to their doors, take two strides, and then jerk the stuff as far as they could into the garden. The result was, the soil for some nine feet or so (a woman, strong in the arm, can only jerk the contents of a large vessel three feet) was saturated with mixed noxious matters. I advised during the fever keeping the soil twelve feet from the houses, covered with quicklime ; the fever abated, certain sanitary alterations were made, I have never heard of a case in the same locality since. My strong impression is that, with regard to the cattle disease, every shed in the kingdom should be kept for some time to come not only in a state of the utmost cleanliness, but that no cost should be spared to remove to some distance from it any accumulation of dung ; that cattle owners cannot be too liberal in whitewash everywhere, that especial attention should be paid to the water given the beasts to drink, never taking it from any source in any, the most distant, connection with decayed vegetable or animal matter. Were it my good luck to 1 865 DISEASE 205 possess a valuable herd of beasts I would at any reasonable cost at once erect temporary wooden buildings for them, remove them for a season from the sheds to which they have been accustomed, and treat these as I would a stable in which by ill luck a horse might have had the glanders. As to steamers and railway trucks, all the scrubbing and disinfecting in the world can only mitigate the evil. I doubt whether fresh painting the whole of a truck would be more than partially effectual ; boards not only absorb noxious matters and retain them far below their surface ; but cattle on a journey rub in and scratch in their excreta to a degree of incorporation with the fibre of the wood which must thoroughly inoculate it. The paint would only be a covering soon lifted, the old sore would be exposed and re- moistened. You may deodorise and not disinfect, kill the smell and yet leave its source prepared to give out its peculiar poison ; the plan I would suggest is, to thoroughly clean each journey, and then quicklime every inch of exposed wooden surface. I know not whether the disease is imported or not, but be it how it may, I am satisfied common prudence points out the wisdom of not trusting to the mere close watching our herds that no foreign cattle come among them — it is well to regard it as an epidemic, and as one to be prepared for its outbreak anywhere. With regard to human beings, as yet only threatened with epidemic disease, our hands are but too much bound by circum- stances we cannot control. There is a fringe to civilised life of social existence, the character of which must always be most deplorable. House to house visitation, to warn and advise, is a wise step ; but how speedily do the visitors arrive at the con- viction that to preach purity of air, personal cleanliness, and wholesome life in such localities becomes as preaching to foul winds ? Human nature on the lees is a very helpless nature. The stir and bustle of our common life is ever precipitating a vast amount of living human matter, to fall where to live at all is scarcely human. Two jobbing tinkers, a rheumatic old man, an Irishwoman with three children, a single female lodger who binds shoes, a girl who helps her, with chance extra inmates coming to see any of the lot, all in a space of 16 feet by 1 1 feet ; low ceiling, 206 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 29 very small fireplace, any ' convenience ' inaccessible to the chil- dren, scarcely obtainable by the women ; water supply scant and bad ; as to drainage, bad originally, for ever made worse ; staircase a filthy shaft ; story after story just as crammed, even the cellar full of life ; — from what text can we preach cleanli- ness, purity, decency to such folk ? Society could not go on without these poor creatures, their poverty can afford them no higher social status. Wealth, commerce want space, pure air, good drainage — expensive matters in a town ; these can buy them, the poor cannot ; they are to them luxuries ; the poor must dwell according to poverty, hence so many dwell in a con- dition which invites cholera. How are we to deal with such people so living ? We are not justified in leaving them to their fate, how can we make that fate less one of destruction ? With cattle we can do a good deal, they are not bound to one pasture ; these our fellow-creatures are helpless to change their position or better it. Some work may be done, and it cannot be too quickly done, in preparation against an attack of pestilence. Investigation into the condition of the water supply may lead to measures for its improvement. If there is no means of obtaining drainage, I presume means could be found to remove daily all offensive matters. We cannot force cleanliness of person or secure to each human being the proper amount of pure air ; but I assume it to be possible to enforce periodical whitewashing of the rooms, thorough cleansing of the staircases and courtyards, &c. In this direction the law might act for great good. A regular sanitary supervision of every house would afford timely warning of the disease in its premonitory stage, the only stage in which there is much hope of arrest. Proper medicines to be adminis- tered on the spot should be found, and every endeavour made to give confidence in them, that they may at once be applied for. Here let me relate a fact within my own knowledge. When the cholera first broke out in this country several children died of it very near a school for the poor, many of the scholars living in the houses where the disease had appeared. A common- sense clergyman took measures to administer a certain small amount of chalk mixture with opium to each child in the school 1 86 S DISEASE 207 every day, giving them also a luncheon of plain boiled rice, with treacle. The result was a good many complaints of pain in the head, some breaking out about nose and lips of unpleasant sores, a rather general fractiousness ; but in no one case was a child attacked with cholera. I believe I must add there were a few cases in which it was necessary to reverse the principle for a day, and give some castor oil. The argument of the rev. divine was — if you can't cure cholera you may do something to keep the constitution on its defence against its first symptom. I saw this same mixture, or one at least of the same nature, served out from a tin pail with a ladle in Ireland, but it was at too late a period ; it was used as a quasi remedy, it should have been used in anticipation of the disease. Presuming that sanitary mea- sures have been taken in anticipation of the disease, in the worst districts of our crowded towns, should the disease break out, temporary hospitals should at once be established. It is wonder- ful in how short a time any large building can be turned into an hospital for one class of patients. Of course it requires money ; with this, the aid of a few gentlemen of ordinary sani- tary knowledge, and a few builders' men, will soon extemporise all that is necessary to secure pure air, proper temperature, &c. The best temporary hospitals I ever saw were some run up by the Poor Law authorities in Ireland for fever and cholera cases. They were mere deal sheds, but erected with all regard to the end sought. You may not save many of the lives of those you move into these places, but you get the best chance of doing so, and by taking them from crowded rooms, you give those who are yet untouched a better chance of escape. You secure cleanli- ness and decency, and kind nursing to the dying — at such a season blessings inestimable. If this letter appears in your columns I may be accused as a rash alarmist. I am willing to be so. I wish to alarm, even if I am rash in doing so. I have seen enough to convince me that cholera of all diseases is just the one the public pooh-pooh until it is at their doors ; then rush into a state of panic, most preju- dicial to themselves and the more rational of their neighbours. I know that a great deal is easy to do well before it comes, which it is next to impossible to get well done when it is come. 2o3 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 21 I believe it to be our plain duty to seek to protect the class most exposed to it, seeing that it is a class whose condition, however lamentable, is the result of the state of things which gives to so many of us blessings they can never know. Had half the zeal now expended to cleanse and purify cattle steamers, trucks, and sheds been given six months ago, when we had every reason to expect the existing disease, we should have saved many a milcher, have had yet to eat hundreds of tons of beef now buried. We have some expectation that cholera will come ; we have sent forth warnings ; shall we do no more ? The cattle plague appeared in Laycock's dairy, Barnsbury, London, in June 1865. It rapidly spread, and by October in the same year 27,000 beasts had been attacked. Cattle and Christians. September 21, 1865. The memorandum of Dr. Thudichum on the cattle disease will be read by those who take an interest in the subject with all the attention a document so exhaustive deserves. If it is much studied by agriculturists it will bewilder a great many ; give to very few much, if any, comfort. We are told that ' the contagion adheres with particular pertinacity to all secretions and discharges from sick animals.' Disinfection means ' the destruction of all matters actually being or containing products of disease capable of reproducing disease in other animals.' I had hitherto believed that we were altogether ignorant of what contagion is. If I could detect it in adhesion to anything liquid or solid, I should be inclined to believe that then quicklime, or the more costly so-called disinfectants, would then and there kill it. I know a forest fly will make my sober pony tempo- rarily insane ; if I kill the fly pertinaciously adhering to his stomach, I am satisfied that I have, as regards that one matter containing a stinging product, stamped it out. Inasmuch as we have some reason to assert that cows infected at a distance from cows sound may be the cause of giving the sound cows the disease, we can hardly doubt that the seeds of the disease, so to 1 865 DISEASE 209 speak, must travel by some agency other than that of contact on the part of the sound with the poison adhering to any sub- stance, man or thing, which has itself been either the product of the disease, or in contact with it. I myself believe that air poison will give a healthy being a form of disease which will show itself in the poisoning of the blood. At the same time I am quite satisfied that local and constitutional causes do for ever beget, in men and beasts, diseases ; the excreta and secreta produced under such diseases acting at once so to poison the air that thus the peculiar morbid ailment is carried to beasts and men in good health. In other words, there is at times a something in the atmosphere which will affect the healthiest with disease ; this something we hitherto have altogether failed to discover. There are also certain well-known local causes of air pollution, which give such air power to infect with deadly diseases those dwelling in such localities ; and the poison of such air is intensified by the excreta and secreta proceeding from those first affected. I, therefore, utterly despair of the discovery of any disinfectant which shall secure man or beast against these occasional atmo- spheric afflictions. I have, however, always advocated all pos- sible measures to keep the best atmosphere we can around us ; when the presence of the disease is admitted, to then remove, disinfect, treat all its products in any and every way calculated to prevent their further pollution of the atmosphere. Some years ago — there are those now living who will well remember it — a man and his son took a load of straw to Lon- don to sell, to return with a load of London stable dung. The distance was about twenty-two miles. The boy got tired, and lay down to sleep on the top of the dung. Within twenty-four hours of his return home he was seized with the symptoms of low fever ; it became malignant typhus, spread through the cottage, and into the next. I never saw such malignant cases before or since. I think three died at once ; one was saved, I dare say is now alive, who went through all the worst stages of the disease. We took active measures with soap, lime, &c, to cleanse all the houses near ; we had not another case on that spot, but within a week a (ew cases, here and there, in dista?it VOL. I. P 2io THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 21 parts of the same parish. I recollect an old carter saying to me, ' It wasn't altogether the sleeping a-top of the dung — we often does that, and never take harm — but 'twas a bright moon, and stuff is always twice as bad then.' I took the hint. Again and again when I have wished to trace bad drainage, I have chosen a bright moonlight night ; it has never failed me. Men of • science ' have acknowledged to me the fact that the moon's rays do act on corruptible matters in a manner inexplicable. I know not whether the dung that gave my poor people the typhus was stable, cowshed, or composite, but I never was more convinced of anything than I am of the fact that the ' visitation,' which at the time frightened my whole neighbourhood, did come from the boy sleeping on the dung. He was healthy, well fed, perhaps under some exhaustion, but not such as was likely to make him a peculiarly liable subject for infection. I defy all the powers of science to arrest the spread of epidemic disease. You may deal with its consequences, to pre- vent an atmosphere already in an abnormal state from becoming worse by your neglect of common precautions ; but it will act its play out ; all that we can do is to keep up all the purity of air we can at all times, and thus remove those causes which, when air is poisoned, directly attract its worst destructive powers. That cowsheds where there are animals diseased and dying are most offensive there can be no doubt ; so are the best bedrooms of the richest people, in their degree, when any analogous causes arise. The question is, not whether a smelling air is unwholesome, does sicken and depress, and therefore tend to produce disease of a low type, but whether the bad air from the product of a particular disease is likely to directly produce that disease. Does the destruction of the smell really destroy the contagious power of the disease ? Or may it not be that the good done is this — we take away a cause of depression in that we preserve the air from that savour of nastiness which nose and tongue alike feel, and, feeling, resent by the peculiar nausea in the stomach that will at times cause fainting, and thus we avoid predisposition to the disease? I am not convinced that we can by any means secure immunity, nor am I at all convinced that contagious disease has yet been traced to any 1865 DISEASE 211 one matter, solid or fluid, so that we could say that such matter, being removed where there was a perfectly clean bill of health, would there produce the identical disease of which it was a pro- duct in healthy animals. It may be the case with such diseases as scarlet fever and small-pox, but these are diseases of a different class from those we are considering. As I read the memorandum of Dr. Thudichum, it would appear that this cattle disease has features, I have never read of as belonging to any disease whatever. It is of a character not only deadly in itself, but giving deadly power to everything that comes from it, surrounds it, is within reach of its breath. Dr. Thudichum advises measures so many in number, embracing action on such a multitude of things dead and living, that I can quite understand the cowkeeper saying, — ' Better burn the lot and have done with it.' He seems to me to argue that the con- tagious matter is everywhere, on every thing and person, in and about a dairy where there are diseased beasts. I wish I thought this was the case, for I then should not for one moment doubt but that the prying eyes of science would find some new ele- ment, a common element, to so many matters. Chemistry has wonderful detective power. The microscopists have penetrated by the power of their lenses to regions of discovery physiolo- gists a century ago would have considered inaccessible. Intel- lectual rivalry was never more powerful. There is nothing scientific men won't do and endure to elicit a new truth, or throw more light on an old one. Comparative anatomy has its scholars, men of world-wide fame. I believe if specific con- tagious matter could be found in dung, on pails, on forks, on the human hand, deep in the boards, in water standing in the sheds, or flowing from them, &c, science would lay hand upon it ; there would be a something the lens could see, or the action of the analyst discover, common to the substances thus accused. I admire the courage with which Dr. Thudichum exhorts to this wholesale dealing with everything that could be supposed to be infected ; I am satisfied we cannot in fighting an epidemic over- wash, scrub, whitewash, secure all cleanliness in and about the patients and all who wait on them. We certainly thus in some measure secure ourselves against the consequences of the atmo- P 2 212 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 21 sphere being poisoned by the products of disease. We give the diseased a better chance, but I am as yet altogether unconvinced that we thus really deal with the immediate cause of the disease itself. I sincerely hope that the cleanliness and caution to which Dr. Thudichum invites may as far as possible he carried out. If done so in sheds unaffected, the beasts will stand a better chance should the disease come upon them. If I have my doubts as to his theory of contagion, I wholly agree with him in the valuable 4 recommendations ' at the end of his memorandum. ' The same great measures which are known to maintain and restore the health of human beings will also maintain and restore the health of cattle.' He proceeds to give them. Pray allow me the smallest possible liberty with this part of the instructions the Privy Council have put forth with high authority. Dr. Thudichum says, and means to say, cattle and Christians, at least his and our fellow men, require, to maintain or restore health, pure air, dry, spacious, well ventilated and well drained clean sheds, or cottages ; clean and dry meadows for cattle, a clean and dry locality for the Christians ; plenty of pure water ; frequent currying, and cow and man washing ; the prevention of the development, by the destruction of the germs, of internal and external parasites, particularly entozoa ; in the case of Christians the pulex domesticus and pediculus humanus, as parasites, the entozoa resulting from feeding on diseased meat, &c. ; proper food in suitable quantities and at proper times ; protection from inclement weather ; the utmost cleanliness in the removing of manure ; the privies of Christians to be sufficient in number, placed conveniently, and constructed to secure decency and cleanliness, &c, — all these measures and agents together will secure the utmost health of the stock, and the prosperity of the agriculturist and dairyman, also, the generality of labourers and poor Christians. These are the recommendations by which man and beast may preserve health ; he does not say that they can thus defy the contagion of any epidemic, but it would not find them in a state to invite it. For years past, I have said, cattle have been more cared 1 865 DISEASE 213 for, as to their housing and general cleanliness, than Christians. Let the public now say whether or no tens of thousands of Christians are not for ever living and dying among us ; we knowing well that they have not these common elements of health, which we are warned to give our cattle. When Dr. Jeaffreson, in your columns, told his typhus tale, did any dare to dispute it ? Has anything the least approaching to the measures now advised for dairies been carried out in the scenes where we know typhus is destroying, and has been for years past? In every possible detail, Dr. Thudichum, under the wing of the Privy Council, proclaims a campaign against the cattle typhus, which is to penetrate and cleanse to the smallest details of cow life. How is it with the boards of guardians, sanitary boards, and inspectors, who have charge over the health of the poor creatures who dwell in well known typhus nests ? How is it with landowners, especially that one in Norfolk, who fought the inspector on a question of common decency, and still is said to hold his people worse housed than the cows of many a bad dairy ? I thank Dr. Thudichum for having admitted that a man and a cow have alike a claim on decent cleanly shelter, pure air, and water. The Privy Council have indorsed his deliberate opinion. Typhus is among our poor, cholera threatens them. Shall all interest run to cow-ward, no active sympathy be shown for human beings kept in the condition which ensures disease ? When I read Dr. Thudichum's advice as to every living and dead thing coming in contact with a sick cow, and then thought, how typhoid poor are tended, the condition of their sheds, the state of their ventilation, to what their attendants are exposed, what the air they breathe, the water they drink, I could not but ask myself whether we have really arrived at the conclusion, that animal is more precious than human life. Sanitariums are established for cows, with veterinary surgeons armed with all power, found in all means, to try and save. Throughout the whole kingdom committees are formed, money subscribed, every available agency enlisted to protect the cow. Two sick heifers in a dairy five miles off make a sensational topic. What, I ask, is being done for the crowded, ill-fed, air-poisoned poor of our towns and villages ? Your columns have been open to the 214 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 29 statements of medical men, clergymen, all the host of wit- nesses who tell the public where mankind live, deprived of all, Dr. Thudichum says, they should have in common with a cow. Is there anything like the interest shown for the poor of • Thompson's Rents ' that is shown for the heifers on any farm ? The Government of the country is alive to human typhus, as existing among us, as it is to that disease which slays our cattle, but does it show the energy with regard to the former it clearly evinces about the latter? Are owners of property as keenly appreciative of the necessity for clean cottages in good repair, with all conveniences, as they are to the cleanliness and general furniture of the cowshed or stable ? We fight in the dark with the cow disaster, do our best, but scarce know what to do. We do know what is best to do as against typhus in man, to guard against cholera ; why don't we do it? The Cattle Disease. September 29, 1S65. I have known for some weeks that sheep had in some locali- ties been affected with a typhoid disease which was very de- structive. I also know that there is a good deal of a similar disease among pigs. A farmer has just told me that a man informed him he lately bought six pigs ; two of them sickened and died ; he sold the other four ; the man who bought them has since lost six by the same complaint. It is of no use attempting to conceal the fact ; some par- ticular atmospheric action, acting per sc or in combination with existing matters, whatever they may be, is at work pestilentially affecting animal life. If we had the same opportunities for observation, and an equal interest in using them, I have no doubt that we should find there is disease in the insect world, probably in all living creatures, or at least in very many classes of them. It does not at all follow that the same symptoms in disease, the same morbid evidence from post-mortem examination, shall always proceed from the action of the same identical virus. But it is reasonable to assume that any atmospheric condition which seriously affects one class of animal life shall, more or less, act on all such life. 1 865 DISEASE 215 There can be no doubt that the past summer and the present autumn are in many ways exceptional seasons. It is not a question of more or less heat on any one day, or in any one week, that we are often for nights together submitted to heavy cold dews, falling on overheated soil ; that then we are for a time with little if any dew at all ; that we have been deprived for weeks, under these circumstances, of all rainfall, rain in heavy torrents, I believe, being one of nature's most sanitary provisions. Beyond all this, it is reasonable to suppose that such weather acts directly on the atmosphere itself, tends to deprive it of a proportion of some elements, or to give it in excess the action of others, thus rendering it by its abnormal state a direct cause of disturbance to ordinary animal life. The 'books' give us many different theories as to the origin of epidemics and epizoics. Able writers have propounded theories founded on the direct action of insect life as, under certain circumstances, likely to produce disease. Again, we have men of high scientific degrees leaning to the theory that these diseases are of a fungoid nature. It is quite true that the ova of certain insects may exist for years unhatched ; that then, from some peculiar cause, they at once become living things, propagating with a rapidity almost beyond belief. I, for one, am not at all sure that in certain states of the human and other animal bodies entozoa are not spontaneously generated, and then proceed to multiply. This may be heresy against the dictum ' Omne ovum ab ovo,' but in these matters I am, I fear, that way inclined. With regard to fungi, I know from experiment that the spores are for ever in the air. We breathe them, eat them. I know, also, that they will lie dormant for years ; some peculiar atmosphere calls them to life, and in a few days they spread over countless miles of vegetation. It is admitted that human beings are subject to fungoid disease, although I have never heard on good authority whether it can be propagated by the sporules taken from one being applied to another. I have satisfied myself that vaccine matter can be applied to quick- growing plants, so as to show direct injurious action upon them of a very peculiar character. It has been stated that in 216 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 29 Germany the virus of other diseases has been tried with the same result upon plants. I long since arrived at the conclusion that, as the first bricks of the structure of all animals, all vegetation — the cells from which all alike commence — are, so far as science has ascertained, not only similar in apparent structure, but can be affected in the same way by the same preparation — that of cochineal used for microscopic investigation — we have much of our life in common with all life around us. I do not believe there could be an ox murrain, or pig or sheep disease, extensive, sudden destruction of any one crop growing on a large scale, mortality, or excessive vitality of any class of insect life, without some causes at work, liable to produce disease in man and beast, herb, every creeping and flying thing, directly connected with life on our common soil. The whole universe is as much, to me, a system of adjustment as is the system of daily life of every living animal and vegetable in it. All such systems have been ever subject to more or less disturbance. Whatever acts to disturb the ordinary course of those elements of the atmosphere we breathe, to which we have been adapted, must affect us, for good or evil. If the excreta, the secreta of diseased animals have power to infect healthy beasts with the disease — and I for one by no means admit the fact, still believing their action is to predispose for the disease, not to give it — the question is, for how long do they retain this power? If the grass of our fields is infected by the droppings of the cattle, again I ask, for how long ? You bury cattle under six feet of soil ; unless the said soil is dry and loose, it will do little in the way of deodorising ; trodden down over the beasts, you have so many flesh pies with a crust of dirt. The rapid decomposition will saturate the lower soil with fluid, permeate the upper with gases. I can conceive it quite possible that, some of this soil taken six weeks after burial of the beasts, and put into a new cattle-shed in a locality that has not known the disease, the cattle chosen from a healthy herd, would have no disastrous effect whatever a few months hence, when, I trust, other weather will have given us a suspension of the disease. But I am of opinion that six years hence, or any 1 865 DISEASE 217 one year with such an atmosphere as we have had this year, it is quite possible that this identical disease might appear in that very shed. Corrupt animal or vegetable matters beget — I choose that term — vibrionic life, insect life, fungoid life ; it is more than probable that this class of living products, or pro- ducts ready to become alive, partake of the nature of that from which they are bred ; it is, to me, quite possible they may re- quire the same atmospheric action to give them active life that caused the death of the beast from which they proceed. I could go to places where many hundreds of those who died of cholera were packed in pits, scarcely coffined, so loose and ill-fitted were the boxes in which they were placed, the soil over them not three feet from the surface of the land. I have never heard that cholera has broken out in those places since ; it will not surprise me if it does so now. Two sheds being erected, the one out of boards which have lain in a workhouse yard since they were used on fever duty ten years ago, the other of entirely new boards, place healthy people in both of these ; it would not surprise me when fever was an epidemic if it broke out in the shed where the old boards had been used ; were there no epi- demic, I would as soon sleep in one as the other. It strikes me as madness to destroy every beast affected with the epizoic. I do not believe you lessen the infection on the spot. I cannot but hope that a downpour of rain, a gale or two of strong wind, must come before long, and I firmly believe that this would do more good than anything we can ourselves do. Public markets will be the great agents for the spread of the disease. Closely packed for hours without food in a railway truck, exposed to the sun's rays, then driven into a steaming crowd of tired beasts, standing on excrement poured forth in excess from distress and heat, I can conceive no better way of inviting the disease to break out in any beast that may from any cause have absorbed its virus. It is humiliating to confess, but the fact is, science is fairly beaten on the subject of these diseases. Because the cause beats us are we to give up contention with its result — to resort to the polcaxe and knife, and neither let art nor nature contend with the disease ? We cannot afford to lose one pound of 2i8 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 8 animal food \vc can save. Malignant typhus is, as the rule, a very fatal disease ; still it is not always fatal. Too much atten- tion cannot be given to cleanliness, for reasons I stated in former letters. The air cannot be kept too pure, the animals and all around them too clean. I know nothing of veterinary science, but I believe the prin- ciples which apply to men, with a certain subordination to the peculiar difference in some portions of the economy of life of ani- mals, hold good. I am incredulous as to new diseases. When I am shown a man or beast of novel construction I shall expect to hear of new complications in their organism — diseases of de- rangement of functions, as new to us as the functions them- selves. In cholera, and in malignant typhus, we have morbid action and disorganisation in excess — a destructive excess ; in a less degree the animal economy shows the same morbid ten- dency under many other complaints. Cliolera and its Germs. September 8, 1866. There seems to be very satisfactory evidence that whenever we are subject to the choleraic epidemic it prevails most where the water drunk is the worst. Those who assert this to be the case do not, I assume, allege that cholera is produced by bad water, because they must be aware that the same water is drunk at other times for years together, and cholera does not exhibit itself in consequence. I presume we are asked to believe that, given the presence of cholera in any one district supplied with bad water, it will there spread more and be more fatal than in the districts supplied with purer water ; further, that a district thus likely to suffer most from the pestilence is one, from this same cause — i.e. bad water, in a condition to invite the disease. The public are advised to boil all water used with food, or drunk at any time. It is urged that the action of boiling on water purifies it from all matter capable of evil, or, at all events, makes that matter harmless. But we are now told by high authority that even boiling will not render this bad water harm- less — that there is evidence to prove that the germs of disease can withstand the action even of a sound boiling. 1 866 DISEASE 219 I make no claim to be a scientific writer. I can, however, claim some experience, gained from a good deal of experiment, in this and other kindred matters. It is known to yourself that certain letters published in the ' Times ' some years since on ' the fungoid theory of cholera,' and under other titles, all bearing on this subject, although signed ' Investigator,' were written by myself. That this was well known in what is called the scientific world I can have no doubt, as reference has of late been often made to the experiments I then described, and I, by name, have been credited with them. It has been no small satisfaction to me to see the views I then adopted obtain, as they have done, so much corroboration from the experiments and researches of men really scientific. Permit me now to say a few words on this question of the power of boiling to make water said to be poisonous free from poison. I know from experiment that there are ' germs,' containing a principle of life, that will stand very strange usage, and yet not have that principle destroyed. Many years since I applied a certain matter to a piece of glass about four inches square. This has another very thin piece of the same material cemented over it close on three sides, leaving a space just sufficient for a thin stratum of water between the two. It has been exposed for days to the action of the direct rays of the sun, it has been kept for months in the dark, sometimes has been for a year or two left without a particle of water touching its surface, in a very dry place. To amuse friends I have again and again allowed a little water, sometimes filtered, generally of the coldest spring nature, to fill up the space between the two glasses — water I have pre- viously tested for any living organisms. I have never failed, in a few hours, to produce a most beautiful exhibition of one of the most interesting species of infusoria, having beforehand sketched the exact creature I would produce. With the same water in another glass tank, of the same nature but not so pre- pared, I fail to produce anything at all until it has been left some days, and then the creatures seen are not my old friends. I have read, not seen, that these organisms retain their vitality even when the glass has been made red-hot. I don't say I believe it, but from what I have seen I think it quite possible. 220 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 8 I therefore can believe that, granting water has certain ' germs ' which can be detected in it before boiling, which germs, received into the human stomach, become a proximate cause of cramps, &c, some germs might exist with great vitality even after the boiling process. I say some germs \ I do not believe the former germs would be visible as such, but, as they are only the develop- ment of others far more minute, I can credit the fact that in this, the earliest state of vitality, be it animal or vegetable, the matter of such life may be indestructible even by boiling, unless some chemical agency had added to such boiling its own peculiar life- destroying element. But I think it right to urge another view of the subject. I will assume that water in which these germs are found has been distilled and filtered again and again. I will defy any one to say how instantaneously it may receive these same germs on its surface as soon as it is exposed to a polluted atmosphere. There is no surface which can be exposed which is not for ever swept by a crowd of organisms floating in the air — aerozoa, as I have named them ; many of these we may trace and name, and build theories about them, but there is a vast mass, I believe, which not even the greatest powers of the modern microscope can reach. Of those we can see there are very many of which we know nothing ; they may be very poisonous, or may have their part in the economy of health. As yet, I am altogether unsatisfied as to their real place in nature, be it for good or evil. Drs. Lankester and Hogg have of late referred to the investi- gations made by myself, and published in your columns. It is quite true that these experiments were made at a period of cholera, but I believe I detected nothing then that I could not detect in a healthy season ; it is quite possible, however, that ' germs ' which in ordinary seasons may be harmless, at peculiar seasons may assume a pernicious character. When, in your columns, I called attention to the possibility of mapping a smell, I had made the attempt. I have the diagrams I then made of the various air-floated matters I obtained from vegetable and animal substances, in a condition more truly expressed by a stronger word than smelling. There can be no doubt that there are floating matters, particles, germs, molecules, fungoid spores, 1 866 DISEASE 221 or whatever we may please to call them, which do vary, accord- ing to the source from which we obtain them, but I have ever found with these there were others, to be found at all times in the purest atmosphere. Agreeing, as I do, with those who attribute the spread of contagious diseases, such as cholera or rinderpest, to certain air-borne particles of poisonous matter, I am still of opinion that as yet no one has discovered any particle of which it can be said that it is the special agent of any special disease. My own belief is that the danger from all discharges from patients affected with contagious disease exists at its worst when, having become for a time dry, they are afterwards again moistened through damp, warm air, or by any other means. I am also of opinion that in a dry state they may give off to draughts of air minute particles, which, finding a nidus on any moist, mucoid surface, would thus infect. Cleanliness in a sick chamber cannot be too thorough ; a cartload of linen and other articles might be sent to the laundress every day, and yet a yard square of dirty linen or of dirty furniture of any kind left for a few days would defeat the most liberal and otherwise careful attempts to keep all things clean. As to the question of boiling water before use, there can be no doubt that it is most advisable, for you do thus give it the best simple purification in your power. I wish people could be persuaded of the fact that no liquid to be used in cooking in any way as food or medicine should ever be exposed to the action of the atmosphere in a bedroom, sick- room, or ward, but for the shortest possible time. If patients must have water, lemonade, &c, handy to them at night, let these be kept in stoppered bottles. Let any microscopist expose plain water, gruel, tea, milk, Or barley-water in shallow, thin-glass plates to a night's air in any bedchamber, sick-room, or hospital ward, and then carefully examine the surface with a good micro- scope ; he will satisfy himself of the fact that such surfaces are of all others those which receive, to detain, a great deal that, for all that we know, may be very deleterious. I don't know what water-butts may be in London ; I know that they are very valuable in the country as breeding places for some of the most interesting organisms we ever exhibit to friends 222 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 8, 1866 with the microscope. In London I should expect to find them most gratefully prolific. Water originally but partially pure, kept in rotten wood, which probably never was clean, surrounded by all kinds of dirty things and beings, in an atmosphere ever odoriferous, the bottoms and sides of the butts never cleaned, so that vegetation at the sides is nourished by the accumulated deposit at the base, must ever be water of great microscopic promise. I can quite conceive a glass of clean, pure water twice a day acting as a powerful tonic alterative in the case of people who have been thus for years vegetarians and insectivorous by compulsion. 223 CHAPTER VIII. IRELAND. The following is a spirited panegyric of English sacrifice for Irish distress at a time when Ireland coldly accepted all that England had to give. March 8, 1847. It is said that an Irish representative 1 has ventured to hint, if not to assert in public, that the English generally, and a large proportion of the members of the House of Commons in par- ticular, hold the cold-hearted and cruel doctrine that the present famine and pestilence in Ireland is of the nature of a providen- tial dispensation, sent for the purpose of reducing the population down to its legitimate and natural extent, and, as such, impos- sible to be prevented ; he asserted that some such idea as this was held in quarters unconnected with Government, but not altogether unlikely to influence it ; he added, ' that there was no distress in England at all approaching that which exists in the least distressed districts in Ireland.' Why, Sir, one would really suppose from this, that England was doing nothing, had done nothing, was pledged to do nothing for the Irish ; that we were a nation fat in the matter of alms, plethoric in the matter of compassion, having no poverty of our own people to sweat us of our coin, to bleed us of our sympathy ; and yet content to look at the dying Irish as so many mere animals who had bred in numbers out of proportion to the soil, and were therefore just undergoing the legitimate operation of a principle that would starve down the mouths to a due proportion to the existing amount of food ; that this was no matter for us to concern our- selves about. If this is not true of us, I have no hesitation in saying that 1 Mr. J. O'Connell. 224 THE LETTERS OF S G. O. March 8 a more deliberately wicked, and false, and cruel assertion was never yet made, than that which I have above alluded to. The beggar who presented a musket at the traveller's head whilst he asked ' for the love of God ' that an alms should be cast into his hat, was modest and pious in comparison with any Irishman who will dare to say that the English have not already shown, are not showing, and have not pledged themselves yet to show, an example of the most unbounded liberality, both in what they are doing through the Government and also through voluntary contribution for the Irish, and this under circumstances far more calculated to arrest than to provoke charity. If returning good for evil is an heaping up of coals on an adversary's head, Ireland at this moment should be scorched to the very shoulders, or there is no truth in facts of which none are ignorant ; and yet we are to be coolly told that we, the English, phlegmatically regard the work of pestilence and famine as a sort of necessary regulator of a certain physical and social inequality between the people to be fed and the food their soil affords them, which we may ven- ture to do a little to disturb, but which it is folly, for it is impos- sible for us, wholly to arrest. Let us look, Sir, for a moment at what we, the thus maligned Saxons, are doing — how we are justifying this our character of being ghouls bred up under the tutelage of the worst featured political economy. I presume the nation at large may claim some credit for the way in which it makes no objection whatever to the millions of pounds already taken, and yet to be taken, from the public treasury to — aid the Irish. The most sanguine, when they re- gard what Government is doing and has done, give up all idea, for years to come, of anything but increased taxation. If I am not misinformed, committees receiving only voluntary subscrip- tions will soon have collected a sum little short of 200,000/., the greater part of which has already gone to — aid the Irish. It sounds a large sum, but I believe I am below the mark when I say that not less than 20,000/. has been privately collected in this country and gone through private channels — to aid the Irish. In almost every pulpit through the land, on Sunday last, or on some previous Sabbath, the congregation were exhorted to give of their means — to aid the Irish. There is, 1 847 IRELAND 225 I believe, no one body of worshippers of any denomination that has not responded most liberally to the cry — help the Irish. In addition to these public collections, there are count- less individuals in every class of life who are straining every faculty of invention that they may make something, or do some- thing, or beg something that may benefit the cause of — the suffering Irish. The public do not hear of one-half of the real efforts making in this cause by the cold-hearted Saxons. Every avenue of society is beset with collectors, pledged to get a par- ticular sum for the Irish, in one particular coin, be it a sovereign or a fourpenny piece ; importunate and eloquent in the power of their cause, they will scarce take, or ever have to fear, a denial. So determined is the spirit of charity that it seems reckless of what shape it takes : beg it will ; none shall be so deaf as not to hear, or so blind as not to see that the Irish are dying, that England's blood is warm to save them. Her Majesty and her Court at the opera, the champions of the prize-ring at the Flyes Court, each in their chosen sphere collect all around them that they can for ' a benefit for the Irish.' Families in every class of life are curtailing every expenditure on anything but absolute necessaries, not to save for their own profit, but that the difference gained from their usual expenditure may go to — help the Irish. Noblemen, for the same object, have put their whole households on an allowance of bread. The great Soyer (all honour to him !), resisting the smell and taste of the more won- derful productions of his culinary science, has lived for weeks a life of feverish activity, devoting his every energy to the in- vention of cheap, good, palatable soup, himself supported per- force on the tastings of his charitable essays — to help the Irish. Liverpool has received and fed with scarce a murmur tens of thousands Irish immigrants ; her ratepayers are being ruined, three of her officers have lost their lives, she is threatened with a devastating pestilence, as well as an avalanche of misery, that threatens to swamp her means, and all this because she will not close her hand against the Irish. One parish in London is pay- ing elevenpence out of every shilling raised to the Irish. And now, Sir, let me ask are not these senseless revilers of our nation more exacting than the young of that bird which VOL. I. Q 226 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. March 8 strips and wounds its own breast that they may live. Surely we have plucked our breasts till they bleed at every pore ; would they have us take our every possession, and cast it at the feet of a nation one of whose representatives has taunted us in terms of the foulest suspicion ? Are Irish orators to say that Ireland's day of hunger and fever was taken as England's opportunity for contempt and neglect ? No, let them speak the truth, and own that the English, as one man, have risen to her succour, urged on by one common feeling of pity for her distress, and desire to alleviate it, at any and every reasonable cost. But, Sir, as I have said above, this orator has asserted ' that there is no distress in England at all approaching that which exists in the least dis- tressed districts in Ireland.' It is quite true, we do not let any starve for want of food ; we find medicine and a doctor for all who cannot, from destitution, provide medical aid themselves ; we find coffins for the greater part of the peasantry who die over all the poor districts of England. If the value of the food, the value of and amount of medical attendance, the number of and value of coffins, that have been found for the labouring class of the south-western counties alone during any one year under the Poor Law was set out on paper, it would afford a rather striking indication of what their condition would be, were the landowners and occupiers of the land left like the Irish free from, the re- sponsibility of providing such relief to the destitute. Stop the action of the Poor Law, arrest the machinery established by local voluntary charity, in the shape cf clothing and sick clubs, coal funds and allotments, and who shall deny that at least two- fifths of England would be much as Ireland is now ? Our law allows the landed proprietor little power of escape from his duty. The poor over a vast surface of our land may be, they are, and long have been, living on the verge of starvation ; but the law steps in to prevent any one on our soil from dying for want of food or medicine. None have to trust to chance for the decent interment of their dead ; there is a special machinery acting under an Act of the Legislature, with a large staff of officers, whose duty it is to administer to the relief of our destitute poor. Do any die under the barest suspicion of having been starved to death, we institute a jealous inquiry into the question — by what IRELAND 227 accident, or what neglect of any of the officials appointed under this Act, it has come to pass. On the occasion of the late attempt to get sixteen millions of money voted for railway adventure in Ireland, there was a hope expressed that such a measure would give to the peasantry of Ireland Wiltshire clothing, Coventry ribbons, and roast beef. Within these few days I have seen complaints in that we (the English) are offering only soup to the starving Irish ; a cargo of biscuits manufactured for the purpose has been sent out to act in aid to the soup. I see Sir R. Peel is, like all the rest of us, puzzled to know how an English labourer supports a family on 1 or. a week. I happen, Sir, to have the means of proving to you on what the js. and 8s. a w r eek labourers in the south- western part of England are now living. I have letters before me of a recent date from clergymen and others in Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, and Devonshire. I have the published inquiry of a gentleman employed to look into the condition of the poor by the editor of the ' Bridgew r ater Times.' From these and other sources I am prepared to state, that I will defy any Irish orator to produce a district in Ireland which is short of starving, and at the same time worse in distress than a very large proportion of these counties. Our labourers can never spare one hour's work which they can procure ; they could not, if they would, attend the meetings called by any demagogue, did he charm their ears ever so pleasantly ; they cannot pay even the rent of the hovels many of them live in ; they have no loose cash to pay for any agitation of their cause, however just. Their soup is made of crusts of grist bread boiled with water in a teakettle, made savoury by a spoonful of cheap rancid butter and a little salt. With wheat at 10s. the bushel, wages say even at 8s. — many I find as low as 6s. — I need not say how little besides bread, and how little of that, can enter into their consumption ; turnips and horse-beans are becoming in many places the staff of their existence — burnt bread and water make their tea. Any one who will take the trouble of turning to the file of the paper named above for a few weeks back will find details of misery and want which, short of the actual starving districts of Ireland, I defy to be exceeded ; and, as I have said, we have a law that q 2 228 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. March 8 steps in to save when the hour of positive death by want arrives. Such soup, Sir, as the Government are giving in Ireland with the biscuits which accompany it, would be a luxury to thousands in these counties, which they have never been able to earn, or even taste except from the hand of charity. But do our poor ever have the roast beef which railways were to afford the Irish? We have plenty of railways, have our poor the beef? I gave a prize for the best account kept by a Dorset labourer of his earn- ings and expenditure for the year ending 1843. The winner had a wife and four children— if you wish for it, I shall forward you the account — he had a good master, and was a good ser- vant ; in the whole year, he spent lod. for meat; the average expenditure of the family was ys. gd. per week — cost per head per week is. $\d. The average price of wheat in the district for that year was 6s. $\d. per bushel, at present it is from gs. to \os. ; he killed a pig weighing about nine score, but I see it cost him altogether 2/. 12s. Sd. ; he had no rent to pay, no medicine or doctor, an allotment of ground and some perquisites ; with harvest work, piecework, and all included, he had a balance of 1/. 1 $s. yd. Could this man have even eaten his pig if he had had only his earnings and had had rent to pay ? This is a specimen of one of our most favoured class — an 8s. a week man. I should suppose he scarce ever dreamt of beef. A clergyman lately in- formed me that in a parish he named in Dorsetshire, where he was some time since doing duty, a cow died of fever ; it lay near a path or road for some days ; he made it a request that it should be buried, as it would soon be a nuisance. The request was granted, but before it could be executed the poor creatures in the village heard of this contemplated waste of beef; like ravens they attacked and stripped the carcase, women standing within it to the work ; it was hacked up, a good deal of it carried off and eaten by them. Near the same spot an individual keeping dogs has had the carrion hung up in the trees for them, stolen, to be salted for food, by these poor creatures. I enclose you my authority for this fact. Now, Sir, this happened some little time ago ; it had no more to do with the loss of the potato than had much of the carrion eating proved on the inquiry at Ryme ; ft simply goes to prove that, in what I must call, I suppose, their 1 847 IRELAND 229 normal state, these poor creatures are so hopeless of good meat that they will eat greedily any meat whatever. I see, Sir, the Irish peasant gets 8d. a day on the public works ; thousands of English labourers, when their rent is deducted, get no such sum ; in some counties single men from twenty to thirty years of age scarce ever, except at harvest, earn $s. a week. Again, our Js. a week labourers have their families to keep, buying, not at Govern- ment stores, but at village shops, or of their masters — in both instances but rarely indeed having anything but a dear market. At this moment I am satisfied nothing but the poor rate, aided by no common amount of local exertion, is keeping masses of patient, loyal, industrious, unmurmuring English labourers from starvation. The guardians are affording medicine and food for the sick and aged, coffins for all that need, with a liberal hand. The resident gentry and clergy, and many yeomen and others, are doing a great deal to alleviate distress in their own several localities ; the weight and burden of these exertions will be almost doubled from the unavoidable rise in price of pro- visions in consequence of the amount of corn bought to be given away in Ireland. This weight must still increase from the same cause. Our poor must still suffer more and more ; the charit- able must soon be restrained in their work, for they have to give to, and to be taxed for, Ireland ; the niggardly employer will become more niggardly still, for he looks for higher prices still, for he says they are doing little this year to grow corn in Ireland. No man, Sir, who loves the English poor from a right prin- ciple can fail to love also the poor of Ireland. Let Lord John call for what expenditure he will to save those now in danger of death, none will oppose him, all will thank him for the energy that, at any cost, upholds our national character in its own spirit of open-handed charity ; but, Sir, for our own poor's sake, for the sake of every charitable institution in this country, which is threatened with ruin from the necessary turning of the channel of our charity in a new direction, in order that every good and philanthropic work now in hand here may not be arrested by all our surplus means being demanded elsewhere, we have a right to demand, not that the dying should be left to die, but that instant 230 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. June 19 steps should be taken to throw on Irish property the same obligation to relieve destitution as lies on the property of Eng- land. We have a right to demand of the Irish orators of the day a decent admission of the extent of our present aid to them, if not in terms of gratitude, at least in terms that do not insult us, as callous to the suffering of a nation we are robbing our own to feed. A protest against the brawling patriotism that condones murder. June 19, 1847. Is the commission of cold-blooded murder sanctioned by the laws which govern Ireland ? Is there anything in the nature of the religion of the Irish which palliates the destruction of life when the murderers can plead cause of private offence ? Do owners of land in Ireland only exercise the right of ownership subject to the penalty of death if they do not bow to the will of any confederacy of any the smallest number of villains bound by some secret oath to destroy all owners who will not submit to their dictation ? Are the Irish peasantry so callous to every feeling of pity for their fellow-creatures — are they so hardened to the sight of human blood flowing from the wound of the assassin's weapon, that they can look unmoved on the slaugh- tering of parents in their children's presence — are careless to point a finger or whisper one word to discover the person of the murderer? Is the working of the law's machinery so imper- fect, so inadequate to its end in that unhappy country, that the provincial papers are daily full of the bloody records of cowardly assassination, and yet we scarce ever hear of a murderer being brought to justice? Is the cry of 'Justice for Ireland' to be ever ringing in our ears as the watchword of that species of oatriotism which fosters the rebellious spirit it affects to reprove, and urges its dupes to the brink of a fate in which it would at oiice desert them ? — and is it to bear no other interpretation but that which may suit at the moment the bombastic ravings of the silly, wicked members of an assembly which apes the func- tions, but wants the commonest decency of a Parliament ? Surely, Sir, justice for Ireland requires that murderers should be hung, not concealed ; it is inconsistent with the exist- 1 847 IRELAND 231 ence of juries leagued — not to convict. It would call on every man possessed of one grain of real courage, having the smallest atom of real love for his country, to give every faculty he pos- sesses to the expression of an open detestation of the crime of murder ; it would call on every man to use every power his station will afford openly to aid the law in the person of even its lowest agent, to pursue, to take, and to convict the actors in every scene of blood which may occur. It was said that it was 'justice to Ireland' which required the English patient and enduring peasantry to halve their scanty loaf to save the Irish from starvation. We have placed the yoke of heavy increased taxation on our necks to be worn for years yet to come; -we have given millions we could not spare but with suffering to our own people ; we have lent millions we shall as inevitably lose as we most assuredly shall need them : we did this because we would be just to Ireland ; we would not allow the stain to rest upon our character, that the country whose leader's foul abuse of us had been but too widely echoed was allowed to want when we at any sacrifice could minister help. The English are liberal as they are brave ; they will feed the hungry, but to the very soul they loathe as a nation that species of crime which is, alas ! now stamping on Ireland a brand of public infamy. The Irish say our newspapers tell of many a deed of violence in our own land. Who denies it ? — who does not lament it ? But can they say we screen the murderer ? Can they point to one single instance in which the law has not received every possible assist- ance to detect and punish the guilty ? Do Englishmen go on with their work in the field at the moment they know two or three villains are lying concealed in a ditch in that very field, waiting the passing of their own employer that they may shoot him in his gig in broad daylight, as though they were merely about the destruction of some soulless, venomous reptile which they might have watched to its hole, and waited to destroy ? Are our people as their people, ever blind and deaf and for- getful when a murder is in the course of doing ? Our good fame is stained whenever one of our people, in sudden passion or in deliberate revenge, murders a fellow-creature ; but the stain is not allowed to take this foulest of colours that the deed 232 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. June 19 had the sanction of the bystanders — was kept by general con- nivance from liability to the sentence of the law. We are likely, it is said, to have a new system of agitation in that misgoverned country. The wretched failure of the poor old man who is now gone to his account l to elicit good for his country out of the stirrings up of all its worst passions has not taught those reason to whom the lesson should be of the most value. Surely, Sir, England has now a powerful claim on the Government, that some new and better system should be pur- sued towards Ireland than has hitherto prevailed. If we have fed her so that she did not starve — if we forgot in the day of her weakness everything but her urgent necessity, we have a right to expect, if not gratitude, at least decent behaviour towards us. If we are to look at her distress, as we were told we should, as the distress of an integral part of our own empire, let us claim that the law which holds good in this portion of the empire should at any expense, at every risk, be upheld in Ireland. Let sedition in England be still sedition in Ireland. Let the murder of one single individual in that country be viewed there, as it would be here, as the commission of a crime calling for the utmost exercise of the law's vigilance to detect — severity to punish. I say, that did tens of thousands die of famine because unhelped by us, it would not entail greater infamy on our national character than the allowing ten open murders to remain undiscovered, the blood of the slain appeal- ing in vain to all the powers of our law, those who are known to have seen the deeds done by their silence conniving at them. Justice for Ireland will still be the cry of the empty orators of that false school which has so long racked its peace. Yes, jus- tice is indeed wanted when society hears of deeds of cruel violence with apathy. When private revenge can with ease find hands who, for small hire, will slay those it hates and would destroy ; when neither person nor property is secure, there is indeed a call for justice. When a father can be thrown down before his wife and children, and be coolly shot to death, the mother then dragged out to be mutilated in her limbs at the threshold ol er home ; — when the doers of such like deeds 1 O'Connell. 1847 IRELAND 233 go their way unquestioned, and if by any mere chance they are arrested, can find plenty ready to forswear themselves to secure their acquittal when tried — who shall say Ireland needs not justice ? If there are not police enough to protect the lives of the Irish, double or treble the number ; surely if this country is to bleed at every pore to find bread for the famishing, it is not asking too much to demand that they should pay on the spot for the blood they choose to shed. We have allowed a false, brawling patriotism to have a long reign in that country. Providence has suffered us to buy a dear experience of the folly of our conduct : to uphold a party in England a system has been connived at which has weaned the affections of the Irish millions from us. They saw us fawning on the man who taught them to hate us ; they gave him the affection they should have bestowed on us ; to please him we allowed him to hold millions on the verge of rebellion. When the mischief was done — when loyalty had departed from them — when crimes of cruel violence had become as common as the revenge that prompted them —we made a weak attempt to check the evil we had nourished. Had not the hand of Provi- dence made the Irish suppliants for food at that very time when age and disease struck down the power of him who in his best days scarce held in their rebellion, who shall say what would have been the issue ? We are now in full possession of all the particulars of the social state of Ireland ; the machinery by which we have fed the hungry has developed the character of every class in that country to an extent unattainable by any other means. We can trace the origin of much of their want ; we know where they are criminal from oppression — we know how they are leagued together to minister to their revenge. The blue-books already published, the experience of parties of known talent and integrity who have taken a part in the service of love for which England's charity found the supplies — all goto prove that nothing can save that unhappy country from peri- odical famine but the firm carrying out of laws which shall entail on the possessors of property the due performance of its duties. But, Sir, the owner of property has a right to look to the law to do its duty in defence of his person and his rights. 2)4 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 19 Without this it is absurd to talk of improved systems of farm- ing, of the giving every encouragement to the employment of capital in developing the riches of the soil of Ireland : good farmers have a wholesome love of life ; capitalists not merely invest for the sake of profit, but in the hope of living to enjoy it. Let the Government use but half the energy, and go to but a small portion of the expense, to check murder which they lately devoted to arrest famine, and then we may hope to see the present visitation prove itself a future and lasting good. Let crime go on unheeded by those who see its perpetration — let its frequency prove the inefficiency of the law — let the real govern- ment of the country, the only power that can awe and punish, be found, as at present, in the hands of hired assassins — let the crimes that stain that land seem to call down the misery and famine that overspread it, and soon will the heart of the most charitable become callous to the misery that takes the form of punishment courted and deserved ; those who suffer will de- stroy, by our abhorrence of their crimes, the pity we should otherwise feel for their distress. July 19, 1847. The doctrine of repudiation has at last found an open advo- cate in the House of Commons. An Irish member has coolly told the country, that money advanced as a loan to Ireland, and accepted in Ireland as a loan, ought never to be expected to be repaid ; that you might as well call the alms you give in the street to a beggar a loan. A significant hint was added, that any endeavour to recover the money so lent must be made at the point of the bayonet. For the few hundred thousands of pounds, the produce of English private charity, the givings of all who had anything to give, some measure of gratitude is ex- pressed ; but for the millions sent by the Government to Ireland for the same charitable purpose, millions raised by a taxation which will press 'for years to come on tens of thousands who scarce have bread for their own children, the Government are offered nothing but insult and reproach. The opportunity taken for this expression of ungrateful spleen is worthy of it — the House going into committee for the purpose of generously 1 847 IRELAND 235 turning no small portion of the loan lent to Ireland into a posi- tive free gift. We have it as a matter proverbial, that the drummer who flogs a man never can please him, hit high or low he does not hit so as to give satisfaction, he always leaves some ground for murmuring. One can see very plainly why it is the fiogger does not and cannot well please the floggee ; but it is something new to us to find that even when gifts do not excite gratitude the remitting a great part of a debt should be met with insult. We are very plainly told to consider it as quite possible that we may have Ireland to support through another winter. Now, it appears that in our campaign of mercy of the last winter, we have, in the opinion of the Irish demagogues, been guilty of every conceivable blunder. The Government, it would appear, has done nothing right ; it has, it is said, ruined the country it sent its millions to save ; all that has been done has had some evil in its train, against which the real lovers of that country (?) are for ever inveighing. Be it so, let us just for this once, by a very strong effort of imagination, believe that professional agi- tators in that country speak the truth ; let us try whether we may not gain some good from the lectures of these grateful remonstrants. A nation forming part of our own empire is, by a sudden dispensation of Providence, aggravated by its own past lazy habits, thrown into a state of famine ; we are at once deluged with petitions for help ; Protestant and Catholic priest alike bend their every energy to the work of affording to Eng- land every possible inducement to be generous and charitable to Ireland. The most graphic narratives that pen can indite of scenes whose horrid misery gives to such writing all its most powerful effect — pictures of Death rioting in every cabin and in every corner of it— all that could awe into reflection, all that could excite to instant liberal sympathy, were given with a pain- ful faithfulness that roused England, as one man, to the task of staying the hand of the Destroyer ; whilst private charity set to work with an activity that soon raised its hundreds of thou- sands of pounds. All looked to the Government to be prompt in applying on the instant its every resource to avert the horrid work of pressing famine. The Ministry promptly answered to 23 6 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 19 the call ; millions were voted as though they were hundreds — a mighty commissariat was despatched to this scene of strife be- tween Irish want and English liberality; vessels of war were sent in all directions, bearers of the ammunition that was to give, not to destroy life ; all was hurry and bustle, for post after post brought accounts of fresh horrors ; one plan after another was tried, the co-operation of every local Irish agency was besought to aid the efforts of Government, to get the greatest amount of benefit from the outlay they were ungrudgingly making ; the plague was not stayed until many millions were lavished with a freedom that nothing but the known generosity of the givers, the reported misery of the aided, could have justi- fied. Meal and bread stuffs were given away or sold at low prices, to an amount which, were the relative nourishment of the two sorts of food valued, would I suspect have nearly covered all the real loss of the potato crop. More wages were paid in money than perhaps were ever paid before. Soup was laid on, by machinery and various appliances, for the supply of the starving, and distributed to an amount that baffles all calcula- tion : and now, when we are passing a bill to secure the repay- ment of half of a loan of 9,000,000/., making the Irish a free gift of the other half, we are to be taunted with the fact, that we need not look for its repayment ; nay further, that in all we have done we have blundered to such a degree that the very recipients of our charity think it right to lecture us. Pressing imminent danger tends, as we all know, in general, to disturb rather than to settle our minds ; we are apt to take the first step that strikes us as good in the emergency, without stopping to consider whether it really is the very best step. I was once in a house the upper rooms of which took fire ; there was of course a general cry for ' water ; ' an energetic stillroom maid was met rushing up the stairs with a cream-jug full of that quenching element ; had she stopped to reason in the still- room, she would perhaps have brought up a pailful, but her intention was for the best though the emergency had rather dis- turbed her good sense. A Humane Society's official got a considerable scolding one day in the Regent's Park for breaking the gold guard chain of a gentleman he was dragging out of a i8 4 7 IRELAND 237 hole in the ice ; he was indignantly asked, ' Why did you not look where you laid hold ? ' The man doubtless felt he might have looked, but at the moment his first thought was to save the gentleman ; it never crossed his mind he might contrive to do this without breaking a guard chain. Now, Sir, admitting that the Government, in the rush and bustle of trying to save a country from instant famine, has in some instances acted weakly, in others to the discomposure of some favourite feature of Irish adoration, surely, if England found the money, as long as Eng- land does not complain, it is hardly fair or honest that Ireland should. If we have only drained 100 acres where with more foresight we might have drained 1,000 ; if we have spoilt a few roads ; if the almost navigable rivers of soup, made from the receipt of the best cook in England, have once or twice tasted too much of the seasoning and too little of the meat, why are these trifling imperfections in the work of one nation on a sudden called on to feed and employ another, to be for ever made grounds of indictment against the Government ? When Lord George Bentinck and his followers impede and annoy the Government to the best of their power, we understand their motive ; the guerrilla force of oppositionists is allowed a certain field of operation ; they may do mischief, but then they only do that which is expected of them ; but not so is it when the repre- sentatives of those whom we have fed and preserved, whom com- mon decency should make silent if common gratitude fails to do so, taunt and insult the very Ministry that, with more zeal per- haps than discretion, rushed to their rescue at a moment when unaided their country would have presented a scene of anarchy and suffering which would hardly have left an acre worth their representing. But, Sir, if gratitude and decency will not get us civility from those on whom we have lavished sums for the want of which our own poor will suffer for years to come, will shame do nothing for us ? 238 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Nov. 9 On the duty of Government to establish law and order, he writes : — The Life Market and the Money Market. November 9, 1847. The Government, it is generally understood, have determined a limit beyond which the Bank of England is not to pass in its infringement of Peel's Act. It would be a mercy to thousands if the ruling powers would allow to ooze out, through some official source, however obscure, the limit beyond which the advocates of ' tenant-right ' will not be allowed to assassinate in Ireland. A certain number of landlords, it is known, are booked for eternity in furtherance of ' the great cause ' ; these have, it is hoped, set their houses in order for the event, but a not unnatural curiosity exists in the minds of their relatives to know whether it may please the ruling powers of the country to give them any hopes of a reprieve. Doubtless, some anxiety is also felt in the families of other landlords as to whether, when the present marked victims are slain, this discounting of life is to cease or to continue. The Hibernian life market is, from ignorance on these points, in a most unsettled state ; it would not surprise me if a deputation from the chief insurance offices was to wait on Lord John to complain of the gross injury inflicted upon their several corporations by the liberty given to murderers to deter- mine policies under circumstances against which no calculations can guard. It seems almost hopeless to expect that any of the old arguments against murder being allowed to go unpunished should prevail ; the moral view of the case has been apparently long consigned to oblivion ; but just as any amount of com- mercial swindling obtained impunity until what are called great houses were endangered, and then, and not till then, active steps were taken to check roguery, and if possible save the fall of the entire credit of the country, may we not hope that, now deputy- lieutenants are in the course of being murdered, and all Irish life policies are becoming depreciated, a mercantile view of the matter may prevail, and life may be made ordinarily safe, even though some eight per cent, may be added to our taxes for the pay of a sufficient staff of troops, police, and hangmen ? 1 847 IRELAND 239 I may be told it is impossible to detect the murderers in Ireland, that the Executive is doing already its utmost to pro- tect life and property. This I believe to be utterly untrue ; these murders are done with weapons which cannot easily be concealed, and they are done in so open a manner as to prove that detection is scarcely feared ; they are not considered to be murders, they are esteemed simply as accidents of a war, the purpose of which is not concealed. It is the will of the bellige- rents that bullet right shall be the code by which land shall be held in Ireland ; the right of occupation, say these fine peasantry, shall depend simply on the issue, which shall prove the most powerful argument, a writ of law to dispossess, or the dread of assassination forcing the owner to give up his rights. It is of no use concealing the fact, the southern parts of Ireland are in a state of open armed mutiny against the powers of the law. Now, Sir, the effect of this in the mere old-fashioned moral and social point of view may be, as it seems to have been long con- sidered, of no great importance ; but it becomes of infinite im- portance when the modern political view is taken of it. The death of a magistrate causes a blank in the county roll of justices which the Lord Lieutenant can fill up with a few strokes of his pen ; most landlords have heirs — when one, therefore, is murdered the inheritance passes to another. Ireland is, how- ever, and has been for some time, a money-borrowing country ; few landlords in the south possess unencumbered estates, very many have had to insure their lives and place the policies in the hands of creditors as collateral security ; Lord John may safely believe me when I say that the prosperity — nay, almost the very existence, of many insurance societies, the positive salvation from utter ruin of many, very many, mortgagees, depends on some instant steps to make life ordinarily secure in Ireland ; of course, I only mean life in that class of it in which individuals effect insurances or give mortgages. Your columns now before me bear witness of the sad deterioration of the value of an estate in Roscommon, merely because at the sale a gentleman let out that it adjoined the spot where the last landlord was murdered the night before. 1 In a 1 Major Marion. 2 4 o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 9 commercial country is this, Sir, to be borne? Is land thus to be wantonly depreciated in value ? Is the vested interest of mortgagees to be thus trifled with ? Are all the calculations of skilful actuaries and learned M.D.'s on the probabilities of life to be thus rendered nugatory ? Surely, Sir, if the authorities of the land, to whom we pay taxes to uphold any amount of military and civil force for the suppression of crime, choose to allow a crime to go on unrepressed which endangers the very existence of some of the most valuable commercial securities, they are bound to state openly why they do so, how long they will continue to do so, and their readiness to indemnify the sufferers whose commercial prospects are thus endangered. If the Government are prepared to state that landlord murder is merely a sort of transient eruption on the body politic, a neces- sary adjunct to the transition of a country from a state of law- lessness and idleness to one of order and industry, and is, there- fore, a thing to be borne with patience as a present necessary evil leading to eventual good, or if they will allow that they are powerless to prevent it, let them do so at once, and leave the Irish landlords to their own means of defence, absolving them from any expenses for military or police. I, for one, believe that would be a better state of things than that mockery of protection under which a man is murdered when walking with the police- man paid to protect him. The Israelites bidden to make bricks, but denied the straw necessary for the work ; the West Indian planter bidden to do without slaves, denied free labourers, and yet told to compete with the slave-holders of Cuba — these are instances of unmis- takeable tyranny on the part of the parties exacting the work under the conditions that forbid it. But what shall we say of the position of an Irish landlord, resident, loyal, intelligent, and really anxious to fulfil the duties of his station ? It is demanded of him that he should pay poor rates, to support the aged, and sick, and destitute ; he is expected punctually to repay his share of any loan granted last year for these purposes ; he is implored to find on his estate reproductive employment for all he possibly can ; he is advised to encourage a new and improved system of agriculture ; he is asked to send his tenantry to hear lectures on 1 847 IRELAND 241 the said system, and to set them the example by himself pro- curing all necessary implements, and following out all the sug- gested improvements ; he is told on all hands that the great object is to do away with the conacre system, to establish larger occupations, and the production of more corn crops ; he is pre- pared to devote himself to this work at any sacrifice but one — it is not an unreasonable exception — he only asks that his own life and the life of his agents may be protected ; this done, he is ready to plunge his estate still further into debt, to make any exercise of self-denial, so that he can but put these hopeful plans in force. He gets a note by post to tell him his agent is shot at his dinner, and that on the body is left a cool notice that himself and some seven other landlords are marked for slaughter. A few days after, a brother magistrate, one of the marked, is murdered ; the week following another is as punctually despatched. Having planked up, with four-inch oak slabs, all his lower windows, and sent his wife and children to England, he takes up the newspaper, and reads that a monster meeting has been held in favour of tenant-right,' under the sanction of the whole priesthood of the district, and that language was then and there held subversive of all the established laws of property. True, there was no direction as to the shooting landlords or agents, but there was plenty said in favour of the cause in which it was known they were being daily shot. He reads on, and finds that two opposition mock Parliaments are being held in Ireland, divided, it is true, in opinion, but simply on the question, which is the most advisable way of keeping up the disloyal, semi-treasonable agitation to which Ireland owes two-thirds of her sad condition. He looks for the London news, and he finds the Ministry breaking through the law that governs the Bank of England, to save the credit of a few respectable houses from the ruin caused by the reckless speculation of the trading community in general. He sees in this one glimpse of hope for his country. A few more, say a dozen, murders of proprietors, and such will become the in- security of life that even as parsons were not insurable when, some years back, it was the pleasure of the popular leaders to bring them into that unpopularity which may be called bullet-range— VOL. I. 1< 24 2 THE LETTERS 01- S. G. O. Nov. 29 even as property in tithes then ceased to be marketable, so now no policy on a landlord's life will be esteemed of any value, no mortgage on land worth a farthing, for foreclosure will only pay in the prospect of collecting rent — this can only be done at the risk of instant murder. There is hope for the landlord if the Government will once open their eyes to the fact that the money- market may again become most seriously embarrassed if the land of Ireland cease to bear any value simply because it is in the hands of people who have been taught that to hold it from its rightful owner is not robbery, to shoot him if he questions the holding is not murder. The following is a call on the Government to do its duty. Hanging priests for the use of inflammatory language is still in advance of public opinion. November 29, 1847. To name any one particular remedy for the moral and poli- tical diseases of Ireland is doubtless very difficult ; but it surely requires no great amount of wisdom to define the immediate causes which at present aggravate the customary wretched state of that unhappy country. If this be true, the question arises, are these causes of present evil capable of removal ? If we say they are not, we seem, to my poor judgment, to admit that Ire- land is anarchised — is virtually in a condition defying all means of sound government. It is folly to speak of religious grievances as being the cause of the present disorganisation of the Irish; even the silliest of the agitator class are silent on this subject ; nor do we hear much of any distinct political grievance, for I count that stale cuckooism which perpetually chants ' repeal ' as nothing, or next t) it. The man who under the name of Liberator enslaved millions under that hardest of task-masters, a pernicious agita- tion aiming at an end he never for one moment dreamed of attaining, gave to the repeal cry a certain amount of importance ; leading the priests, who rode the ' million,' he could have given just as much importance to any other, even more insane ' cry,' which he and they for their own purposes might choose to con- *~rratp with their approval. Still I shall be told there must be r847 IRELAND 243 some deeply felt grievance, or the Irish would not be in their present state of almost declared rebellion ; the peasantry in several counties are evidently in a league which sanctions, if it does not demand, the commission of the foulest crimes history has ever recorded. The late murders have been no common murders ; they are done with an amount of cold-blooded cruelty to which we can find no parallel ; they spare neither sex, age, nor rank ; they seek no disguise ; the assassins do their bloody work in parties in open day ; they are sheltered whilst they await their victim ; they receive all the connivance at escape they need as soon as their work of blood is finished ; they care not to take the child out of the father's arms before they fire into his breast ; they fired into the breast of a wife who threw her- self between the muzzles of their guns and her husband ; they might with a little force have removed her a yard or two from him, but they see no virtue in her courage that they should spare her ; she stands between them and their victim — true, that victim is her husband, still they fire, and she falls. If, at the day of judgment, one deed of violence is found recorded in darker colours than all, save one, that the hand of murder ever committed, it will be that accursed deed which slew a wife in an act of devoted courage which would have turned the weapon of any savage but an Irish one ; and yet, ere this, who shall say but some dispenser of the comforts of the confessional shall have heard this tale of blood whispered into his ear, and then, in his turn, have whispered into the ear of the kneeling villain the words — ' This thy sin is forgiven thee, thou art absolved of it' When the priestly office is so prostituted that to gain worldly ends the steps of the altar are made the theatre from which the holy actor thunders the denunciation that so immediately fore- runs the death of the denounced, shall any man be called to account for bigotry if he presumes to argue that where murder is provoked it is not unreasonable to suppose it would find easy terms of absolution ? It is said the people have been taught to feel that these acts of blood are not murder ; that though they kill, they do not ahvays kill in hate, but simply because they believe that the deaths of a certain number of agents and landlords arc necessary K 2 244 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 29 to carry the end at which they are encouraged to aim, viz. the right of occupying land as tenants, with every privilege of owner- ship. I have not before me the number of tithe proctors and Protestant clergy who were slain in the campaign against tithes ; the deaths of such people are soon forgotten in Ireland ; but they slew the number necessary to carry their end ; they then, and not till then, ceased their war on these classes of their fellow-creatures. ' Tenant-right,' as they call it, is now the end at which they aim ; it is a grievance that the owner of property in Ireland claims to let it to whom he likes, on his own terms. True, the law of the land gives him this right, and in every civilised country owners of land have it conceded to them as a matter of course. Not so in Ireland ; the priests have ruled it, the agi- tators have proclaimed it, and therefore the people in their way are enforcing the principle that ownership means that mere relation to property which permits the owner to occupy a certain portion himself, leaving him a mere rent-charge on the rest, to be determined in its amount by rules over which he is to have little, if any, control ; as to using any discretion in the regulation of the numbers who may choose to locate on his estate, their characters, or the mode in which they may choose to cultivate it — in this he is to have no voice, beyond a chance opportunity now and then of bidding, at a sort of auction, for the privilege of letting one of his own farms to a tenant of his own choosing. That this principle should ever obtain the sanction of the law would be thought impossible by any sane person in any other country but Ireland ; that any minister of religion, any educated man, should openly advocate it, would be considered incredible, and yet the thing is done ; priests and so-called gentlemen of education are for ever preaching up this robbery of the land- owner as the legitimate right of the tenant. Surely, Sir, this is striking at the root of all government, for can that country be called governed in which the just rights of property are thus with impunity assailed ? The State can claim a right to enforce the duty due from property to the power that upholds it, but it cannot claim allegiance where it affords no protection. Such an agitation differs but little from positive treason. Monster 1847 IRELAND 245 meetings are openly held, at which doctrines are as openly broached, which, if they are just as against the rights of a land- lord, would in principle be equally so if applied to much that is claimed as the right of the Crown. At what point is that system of lawless aggression to be arrested which gives to the rash theories of brawling mock patriotism the seal of the approba- tion of a priesthood whose approval of any object, however wild and base, has long obtained that weight with the peasantry of Ireland which hounds them on to its pursuit with a bloodthirsty eagerness, defying alike the laws of man and the judgments of God ? How long is it to be borne that, in a country professing Christianity, with some characteristics of civilisation, and all the outward and visible signs of civil government, life is to be held so cheap that a policy of insurance on a living Tipperary magis- trate is held to be as good as cash at Liverpool, simply because he has been denounced by a so-called Christian priest from the altar in the hearing of those whose hearts are ever ready to seize any hint to commit the foul crimes in which their hands are already practised ? How long are the O'Connells, the Lalors, and Dohenys to be allowed full freedom to advocate the peace- able agitation (?) of a cause so likely to inflame all the worst passions of the peasantry that it needs only the easily attained advocacy of such a priest as Laffan to make the infatuated peasantry think its pursuit justifiable by any, the. most violent of means ? Is it not enough that history should record that one man for some fifteen or twenty years was allowed to check the whole industry of Ireland by keeping up the agitation of questions that never turned one penny's profit to any but himself ? — that he to whose memory a starving people (?) are about to erect a splendid monument, should, by his senseless folly, have so paralysed all that could have added to his country's wealth, all that tended to its peace, that he has left it bankrupt in food, distracted in every branch of its social economy ? Are we, now the craft and skill which could stir the passions but check the blow is departed, to see this senseless multitude handed over to a noisy divided set of dangerous agitators, who, backed by a bad section of their priesthood, have but too much power to inflame the hearts of 246 THE LETTERS OF S. C. O. Nov. 29 evil men, but not one atom of power to restrain the hands of those they address from the commission of crimes that cry aloud to God and man for vengeance ? Detect the assassins, try them, hang them — what then ? They will die as martyrs. Can they who denounce from the altar hesitate to absolve the over-rash spirit that rushed to murder the landlord the priest only intended to curse ? Think you the peasantry will fear to die, or not be lauded in their death, for fi cause that has the sanction of ' the leaders of the people/ the good wishes and advocacy of 'their priesthood'? I would ten times sooner have the detected murderer flogged than hung ; it is a longer process of punishment, has none of the melodrama of an Irish execution, and would soon prove absolution-proof. Muzzle by heavy penalties the mouths of those that agitate questions which strike at order ; hang the priests who henceforth pollute their office by denunciations which they now know the rabble take to be doom to be done at their hands ; flog again and again, on the spot of their deeds of violence, every perpe- trator of assault on the life of any one subject of the realm, every writer of threats of such violence ; place every district stained by murder under martial law, watching by day and night every possible rendezvous of the disaffected, however hallowed the spot. Let the Government at once, in unmistakeable terms, announce their determination to uphold every well-known right of property at any and every cost, and we may yet have some faint hopes of seeing Ireland brought within the common bounds of civilisation. At the same time, let every encouragement within the power of the Crown be given to every Catholic or Protestant priest who does his utmost to stem the torrent of agrarian violence ; let it be proved that it is no question of the nature of their creed which is to obtain favour or disfavour, but that the rulers of a Christian country will uphold both Catholic and Protestant in all that the good of either creed can approve of, but will punish with the utmost extremity of the law eveiy attempt to use religious authority as an instrument of social dis- turbance. There are many priests of both persuasions — there are many resident gentlemen, Protestant and Catholic, who ving, perhaps, a known doomed life, still do their utmost to 1847 IRELAND =47 uphold the law ; let them have every countenance the Crown can give ; they stand in the breach against a determined, relent- less foe— they deserve all that bravery can win of honour from the Crown ; above all, let the Government be deaf to the old cry of the liberty of the subject when opposed to the use of mea- sures which the gross abuse of liberty has made indispensable. Districts that connive at murder should expect no more liberty than that accorded to murderers. The Queen's Visit. August 20, 1849. At this period of Ireland's crisis the late visit of the Queen is likely to be productive of far more than mere temporary good. It is well that she has personally tested the loyalty of her Irish subjects, and that, too, in some localities in which expression had been recently given to opinions hardly consistent with the faintest loyalty. It was well for her thus to afford to Ireland an opportunity, through the voice of her chief cities, to give the lie to that false babbling spirit of misrule, which, assuming an air of earnest truth, has so long spoken only to deceive. More, how- ever, than this was needed ; and I for one am sanguine enough to believe that far more of good will yet flow to Ireland from the Royal visit. Although her Majesty did not with her own eyes behold the evidence of Ireland's worst calamity in all its most painful features, she has not left Ireland in any ignorance of its real condition. The splendour of her reception did not blind her to the effort it cost to afford it to her. Her visit, I believe, was purposely confined in its limits, from a delicate sense of the serious inconvenience a longer stay might have occasioned to a people determined at any cost, however individually imprudent, to give her a Queen's welcome ; she felt that there were claims on the means of her subjects to which no attention capable of being offered to herself should be preferred. At least one organ of public opinion, with somewhat questionable taste, has com- mented upon the poor appearance as to equipage, &c, which was made by a large majority of those who attended the levee. It is quite true that the miscellaneous string of vehicles and their 248 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 20 general poverty of appearance would have been fair objects of ridicule had they passed on a similar errand down St. James's Street in our own metropolis. The Queen, however, was waiting the presence of an Irish, not an English assemblage. She was holding a levee in a country on the higher orders of which there has of late years been such a pressure that wealth has become almost a fable ; a decent respectability of circumstance is only sustained with difficulty by those whose nominal condition is one of apparent large means, but who, in reality, are most straitened. The Queen did not hold out her hand with the less earnest welcome to Irish noblemen, Irish proprietors, in that she knew that famine and disease had so affected the value of their several properties that they had long since given up the luxury of a private equipage, and now were forced to wait on their Sovereign, perhaps, from the outside of a ' street car.' The roaring of cannon, the cheers, the wildest hurrahs, that could pour forth again and again from the excited feelings of the masses who lined the course of her progress never for one moment banished from her mind the real condition of the country in which she then was. No appeal to external sense could close the ear of her heart to that not far distant wail of the famishing which spoke to her in tones she would be the last to resist. She is now more than ever alive, as well to the deep suffering of the Irish peasantry in the west and south, as to the ruin with which that suffering threatens the proprietary, from whose already embarrassed resources it must in a great measure be met. Let no Irish landowner for one moment suppose that she gave no attention when on the spot to those who were ready to give, and from whom she sought, information on the subject of Ireland's present difficulties. No ; the welcome given to her- self, her consort, and her children, would have enlisted her sympathy at once for Ireland, had she needed anything to excite her interest. As it was, it has doubtless given to her sympathy a still warmer tone ; but she needed no such further inducement to feel for the misfortunes of this portion of her empire. The full advantage of the Royal visit will betray itself directly in this —it will give confidence to those who are engaged 1 849 IRELAND 249 in the struggle against a force of disastrous circumstances almost unparalleled. In almost every one of the distressed unions there are some few, more or less, landed proprietors who have never left their post or flinched from the duties their residence has en- tailed upon them. Only those who have witnessed it can judge of the self-denial, mental anxiety, and positive personal risk these noblemen and gentlemen have shown and incurred in their gallant endeavour to stem the torrent of ruin and destruction around them. We in England hear ad nauseam of absentee and insolvent Irish proprietors ; we hear but little, and know still less, of that small sturdy band who, having yet life and property to lose, have not hesitated to stay and stand the shock active local duties have entailed upon them, amidst famine, fever, pestilence, and agrarian outrage. If the west of Ireland is yet to be saved, either from positive depopulation or such a state of destitution as shall cause common preservation of life to make common head against all law, it will be done, not perhaps by their means — for they are well nigh exhausted— but by the advice and active co-operation of these tried and experienced men. They needed some cordial source of present confidence ; they were getting worn out in mind, in body, and estate ; and yet the task which had claims on all three seemed to grow in measure even upon each day's successive work. Irish debates certainly did not tend to give them any substantial ground of hope. There has been a great talk of great capitalists, indi- vidual and corporate, coming to their speedy assistance— it is still talk, and getting less loud daily. Did they write to friends of ' either House ' in England, the answer was, ' Nothing can be done this session ; we here do nothing but hope from the pro- mise of your harvest that your present troubles will soon pass away. We are passing the Encumbered Estates Bill ; this will give you a fresh infusion of capital. Everybody is hopeful about the potatoes.' Poor comfort this for noblemen and magistrates, guardians, &c, who from week to week have to see their workhouses and hospitals and graveyards still filling ; who on the spot have to bear, as the result of their position, all the hard-earned popular hostility which is entailed on those who have to contend against the poverty of a famine and the suffer- 2 5 o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 20 ings of a pestilence, utterly absorbing all that could aid in either T I exigency Many weeks ago, to my own certain knowledge, the potato was known to be in some places diseased. I saw it so myself, in company with one of the Poor Law inspectors. It would give you a lively idea of the perplexed condition of the upper classes of Ireland, if I could in any way convey it to you, the peculiar tone conversation ever took if the possibility of the failure of this year's crop of potatoes was alluded to ; it was as if a hint given to the captain of a large ship far at sea had been overheard, ' That there was a smell of fire coming from the hold.' I have seen men who went through any distance of contagious wards with me in apparent good spirits become painfully thoughtful and silent if the probability of a failure in this crop this year was alluded to ; not that it was supposed that however good the crop the lives of all who were threatened with famine could be saved ; but it was a sort of anchor out, which the ship might hold on by till succour came from some other quarter. Alas! I now know some strands in the cable of that anchor have already given way ; they who are on board, and have to officer the ship, need every help which can be given from every quarter to keep up their courage. Apart from mere political bias, I believe Lord Clarendon is universally respected in Ireland, and all the credit he deserves is given to him for the part he has taken throughout this long season of difficulty ; none ever doubted his humanity or the deep interest he takes in the regeneration of Ireland, for he, with every other resident, must long have seen that no term of less meaning than ' regeneration ' could define that which is to turn the tide of present ruin and suffering. To the Lord-Lieutenant, and to every individual bound up with the machinery of Ireland's social government, the visit of the Queen will give renewed con- fidence. All required cheering in their tasks. The Queen's visit, its form, the thoroughly domestic as well as Royal guise in which she appeared, will act as a cordial to him and to them ; for once and for ever it is felt she has identified herself with her Irish subjects in a way to which, as subjects of the Imperial Crown, they had long been strangers. It is felt that the Vice- 1849 IRELAXD 251 toy's voice will find now a powerful echo in the English council chamber. It is hoped— glorious hope — that her grateful pre- sence has hushed for good the grumblings of that contentious spirit of useless agitation which, only presently curbed by the power of the law, might soon again burst forth, again to sow dissension and strife amongst a people needing all the efforts all possible union could afford. We all know the power of fashion to sway public opinion. Let it once be known that our Sovereign takes a deep personal interest in every wise attempt to benefit Ireland ; let it be understood that she will from time to time land on Ireland's shores, and meet her Irish people of every condition in the spirit of her last visit ; let it be felt that Irish improvements, Irish works of art, may from time to time share with English in the benefit of personal Royal encouragement — and at once a new element will be infused into the spirit of Irish renovation. I shall not be surprised soon to hear of property purchased in trust for the ' Earl of Dublin,' to be managed as a model of improved management ; nor would it amaze me to hear of the possibility of the Royal occupant of the ' Flemish farm ' at Wind- sor going from time to time to advise with the managers of his son's farms— perhaps in Gal way. We may as yet be a long way from the realisation of either supposition, but every — the least analogous movement of Royal sympathy and interest towards Ireland will beget a crowd of imitators ; and could we but hope for a truce with all political and polemical agitators for a season, I should be very sanguine of an interchange of social and com- mercial benefits between the two countries springing up, not only most encouraging to those who had so long sighed in vain for such a period, but productive of vast mutual good. Irish soil offers every inducement for the investment of English capital. There are many fields of profit open for the manufac- turer who would invest in factory employment. The lines of railroad already open will take you from Euston Square to Dublin, to Limerick — almost to Cork, and soon, quite to Gal- way — to say nothing of the ready communication with the north of Ireland. It is true, you must on the way have a few hours' voyage, nauseous or pleasant, as it may be, in the fastest and 252 THE LETTERS OF S. C. O. Aug. 20 best ordered boats to be found on any seas. To the man of commerce this is a mere matter of form ; to the tourist it is a part of his business— for who now goes anywhere for pleasure and does not include a voyage in the account ? After the example of our Sovereign and her children, the greatest sea- hater can hardly pretend to that pitch of effeminacy which shall count the Irish Channel a briar in the path of a tour taken to see the real beauties of the south and far west of Ireland. It may appear trifling with a serious matter ; but I am satisfied that the encouragement, the impulse, the Queen has given to travelling Hiberniaward will be of the utmost value. The Irish and Ireland cannot be too much and too often seen by the English of every degree ; both sides have great prejudices to get rid of, very mistaken notions to be corrected. I am satisfied the fraternisation will be as complete, as enduring, if the acquaint- ance is made in Ireland rather than in England ; for it is in his own country that the Irishman's character is best seen ; and it will be there seen, not as drawn in the books of vulgar novelists, who seem to dip their pens in a composition of whisky and duelling powder, and attuning their tale to the fluid in which they write, fill their pages with scenes of vulgar wit, practical unheard- of jokes, strange narratives of abduction and seduction, drunken quarrels ending in duels, in which all parties act as unlike men of gentlemanly honour as well can be conceived. No ; the English traveller will find in every class of Irish society a kind and earnest and hospitable tone, bespeaking at once that respect and interest which no English gentleman will ever refuse to it. The Irish have their peculiarities ; they are themselves fully alive to them ; they do not deny that very many of their country- men may speak in a tone and with a liveliness of manner which to the sobered ear of the English may at first astonish rather than please ; but they justly plead that the richest brogue of the most boisterous Milesian never spoke to English stranger or guest anything but a right hearty welcome to all of civility or information or aid he might need. I trust ere many months are over Ireland may be better known to England than she now is ; I hope yet in a few years to live to see a constant yearly flow of intercourse between all who love nature's richest pictures and 1 849 IRELAND 253 the inhabitants of that country who have so many of them to exhibit. Many who will visit Ireland's scenes of interest from the very force of fashion will return to England ready to give, each in his own circle, that evidence of her real condition which, thus forcing its way in private life, will at last find a way to the conviction of those on the wisdom and firmness of whose legis- lation so much of the future welfare of Ireland depends. Once more let us regard a feature of no little importance in the Queen's late visit. The want of capital invested in the im- provement of the soil, is, perhaps, the greatest of any from which the west and south of Ireland now suffers. No sane man will invest his capital in a country in which the laws which protect property are not firmly and effectually administered. Lord Clarendon, alive to this fact, has shown a firm determination to do his utmost to carry out the full force of the law against all who seek wantonly to disturb the peace of the country. I need not now relate all the difficulties which beset him in his task ; he did, however, at last so far prevail that he checked the course of treason and firmly carried out the law, with no respect of persons, and at no slight cost, against the ringleaders ; in doing this, I firmly believe he had the approval of the great mass of Irishmen possessed of any real love of their country. The Queen's visit and most marked attention to him was but a fitting proof of the Royal approval of his conduct ; it is calculated on this ground to reassure those whose hearts began to fail them on the subject of the policy which was to direct future Irish legislation ; they now see that the Sovereign takes her open stand by the side of the principles for the carrying out of which her servant has had to endure so much ; she was ready to show herself in the most open manner, as most sensible of the valuable services of her Viceroy, thus stamping as her own the policy it was his painful duty to follow. The straightforward moral courage she showed in presenting herself so openly amongst the Irish masses at Cork and Dublin at so early a period after the time her representative had refused all appeals for a mercy towards popular individuals which he felt would be no mercy to the country from which their crimes had banished them, will of itself prove of eminent service to the cause of order. Every 254 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Oct. 20 honest Repealer must feel she has acted from honest conviction in the approval she has shown of the Lord-Lieutenant's policy. He must also feel the force of that argument to his own reason, so strongly implied by the open manner in which she threw her- self in the way of public opinion for good or for evil. The following views on the rights of property might have been written at the end of Mr. Gladstone's last administration. ' Property' October 20, 1849. If we employ ourselves, for ever so short a time, in com- paring the state of England with that of Ireland at this moment, we are enabled to see at once in what consists our chief happi- ness — the sister kingdom's chief. misery. Men of every class in England look to the night season as a time of peaceful rest and quiet. We go about our daily business or pleasure under a sense of legal protection to person and property from the violence and wickedness of any of our fellow-creatures whose hearts and hands may be set against ourselves or anything which we possess. I do not say that we English know not what it is to be robbed, assaulted — nay, exposed to the hand of the assassin ; but we do know that the law is so upheld amongst us by the general disposition of the whole community that no countenance is given to evildoers, no pains spared to bring them to justice. We may have our grievances, political and polemical, but we do not suffer our opinions on them, or our efforts for their redress, to lead us to sanction the disturbance of those fixed principles of general protection which give to us a sense of personal safety by day and by night. The most violent Protectionist magistrate would dare any danger to protect Tamworth from a mob of spoliators, and Mr. Cobden would not hesitate for one moment to seize a Bill Sykes whom he might chance to discover breaking into the War Office. What clerical justice, however dignified with ecclesiastical office, is there who would not do his utmost to protect a Dissenter, of any persuasion, in any matter in which the law empowered him to do so ? Where have we ever heard of an opponent of the Church so bitter in his opponency that he would look on and see 1 849 IRELAND 255 the rector of the parish robbed or assaulted and yet not aid him, simply because he was a State-connected priest ? The fact is, Sir, we have long since arrived at a knowledge of the value of that first element of civilisation — protection to life, limb, and property — without a due sense of which daily life is daily pain ; the life of night is nightly fear. We contend against every oppression of law and custom, fancied or real, with a determination equal to that shown by any of the injured in creed, in privilege, or in pocket, in any country on earth ; we give and take every bearable license of tongue and pen ; but before we enter the ring or any contention, public or private, we shake hands on this matter of agreement- — until laws are altered, laws shall be upheld ; for we all know very well, if we allow license to break the laws we object to, we do so at the risk of the breakage of the laws on which all we have depends. We don't read tenant-right to be licensed landlord robbery ; we don't understand that landlord oppression justifies landlord assassination ; we don't say the hungry cannot be thieves if they only take food ; we don't argue that to owe what we cannot pay justifies our plunder of our debtor ; we don't justify or connive at the disturbance of all respect for law simply because there may exist some laws which are abhorrent to our creed or our political opinion ; our magistrates could put no sane or honour- able construction on any feeling which should tempt them to use, abuse, or pervert their position as dispensers of strict justice to all on any party grounds, even of recent date, much less of so ancient a date as to have become mere matter of history. It can, then, be no matter of surprise to us that we do live under a state of things in England st» altogether different from that which now disfigures, degrades, and destroys all that is good to look upon, honourable, and profitable in Ireland. We for ever hear it said, why don't the Lord-Lieutenant and Government of Ireland force the law into respect there — that part of the law, at least, which preserves to a subject the posses- sion of his property in something like peace and quiet ? Alas ! Sir, this question is easier put than answered. When a nation is unanimous on a political question, even should the voice that claims that nation's will speak treason, there is the dilemma — 256 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Oct. 20 how shall a nation be indicted ? Where shall be the court ? Who shall constitute the jury ? It is of no use concealing the fact : there is imminent danger in a large proportion of Ireland of unanimity in opposition to the first principles of those laws which are admitted to be for the general good in every nation ; what between those who are leagued against the rights of pro- perty, those who covertly connive at their league, those who are afraid to oppose it, and those who are careless of everything but the gratification of a spirit of partisanship, the upholders of the law are fast becoming a small minority. Government is not a mere matter of police and military organisation : no country can be well ruled by mere stipendiary force ; laws require the aid of all well-doers to support them ; they claim of every individual, in any and every position of life, that if he be not in heart and purpose dishonest, he be a supporter in heart and hand of the laws which restrain evildoers. The magistrate and the constable are the instruments to carry on and out the common will ; when that common will is opposed to law and order, it becomes a matter either of anarchy and confusion, or of that despotism which secures by paid force, overwhelming in its amount, that forced obedience to law which the health of every civilised society absolutely requires. Let me ask of those mad, or misguided, or malevolent men who are now fostering by their tongues and pens the present agrarian outrages in the West and South of Ireland, have they looked to what must be the end of this state of things ? Having called from the depths of misery and ignorance a spirit of wild, daring outrage, which respects no law, is sparing of no crime ; having seen that spirit rise at their call, and proceed to work out its crusade of evil, where do they think that it will stay its hand ? How shall they chain this monster of their creation, so that he shall only prey on landlords, only steal corn, murder policemen ? Do they think that they can still the waves of rapine at any given moment by pouring out on them a torrent of the old oil of political grievance, or religious grievance ? When all the corn is stolen, all the landlords ruined, every haggard empty, every farm a waste, all industry checked, all capital locked up, the good landlord and the bad landlord 1 849 IRELAND 257 involved in one common ruin, do they think these crowds, triumphant in their villany, but starving on their laurels, will at once become again the mere tools of political agitation, shouters of old political war cries, worshippers of itinerant declaimers of sedition ? No, Sir ; let this system run out its course, encouraged by the faint disapproval of a press which can indeed boast of talent as great as it is perverted ; let the war against rent rend asunder all local ties, destroy all local energy for good, and though you cast down the Church as a bone to be at once devoured, repeal of the union as only waiting to be accepted, Ulster tenant-right interpreted according to Holycross interpre- tation, as already prepared for national adoption — though you offered these a crown to give O'Brien, and power to recall him to accept it ; though you could canonise the late O'Connell, and put the present one into his shoes, all would fail— for I am satisfied the riddle is now being read — the secret of monster agitators is being developed. Monster meetings cheered the repeal orators, but for repeal the peasant reads land — land at his own value, on his own terms. It was well understood by those who trained the peasantry for these meetings that their duty was simply to bring them together ; how they did it was left to themselves. It is scarcely to be believed how little the Irish peasantry know about the things for which they have been trained to shout ; the commonest cant terms of the agitation schools are as algebra to tens of thousands of those whose presence gave life to agitation. They know little of their national history so far as regards its political features ; they care next to nothing for any of the men who built a reputation upon their supposed love. They know well the history of their own localities ; their traditionary knowledge of all matters connected with land, so far as it regards who have held it, who have left it, who have owned, or who have claimed it, is wonderful ; from generation to generation they have been bred in a love of the possession of land proportionate to their entire dependence on such possession. They saw that their numbers forced land up to a fictitious value ; still, it was life to them ; they clung to it as their only hope ; close observers of every cloud threatening their possession of it, the)- saw the gradual accumulation of debt VOL. I. S 258 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 20 on the proprietors' estates as a warning of a time when there must be sales, and their holdings might be sold. They felt the increasing pressure of the landlords' debts in the landlords' rapacity, in the shape of increasing rent ; still they paid it, it was their life — they knew no other hope of life. They heard the agitator denounce the landlords, they knew monster meetings were so many engines of intimidation as against the owners of property. Repeal was the text from which landlords were to be preached into submissive fear ; they were content to gain that end from any text. ' Sure, and if we can meet in our blessed thousands to intimidate the Saxon Governmint, won't it be just telling them that we could meet, too, to terrify the landlords of us ? ' The men who taught them to come in their power of numbers to suit their particular purpose are dead or transported ; their lesson survives ; they can now intimidate for their own ends. An Irish patriot at this moment would feel that the one great question is, not whether the government of Ireland should be vested in the united legislating and executive powers of the two countries of England and Ireland, but whether all govern- ment is to be at an end, and every Irish interest left at the mercy of ignorant men, driven by their own want to follow a path for their own purposes, once taught to them, to further the mere political ends of ambitious leaders. Real patriotism would, for the present at least, shelve every other topic of public interest but the one, all pressing one, Is mob law to rule ? — Is all legal right to succumb at the dictation of a desperate peasantry used as instruments by a dishonest tenantry ? Are the horrors of another year's famine to be made more horrible by a present wanton waste of food, by a depression of every energy which could act in its mitigation, by a course of violent outrage which shall steel the hearts of the charitable against a people who so rashly induce the very evils the consequences of which must fall upon themselves ? Let the tradesmen of every town look to it — the owners of every species of property ; all who would be saved from the supremacy of a mob tyranny, invading every right and destroy- ing the very base of every interest on which men rely for the 1 849 IRELAND 259 security of their possessions, the safety of their very lives. I admit at once that the law of 'land tenure' may need improve- ment, that it has been made an instrument of tyranny ; I admit that want is driving many to crime ; still this cannot for one moment justify any connivance at those deeds of violence which now prevail. All order is endangered, all law is defied. If the Government is to contend against this outbreak with no local aid given for the good of the commonweal ; if the power of the executive is to be hampered and hindered by the cowardice of those whose position demands that they should firmly assist it ; if the priesthood choose to look on with arms folded and mute tongues ; if magistrates choose this season of common danger to show their sense of offence against the Government by adding their share of indecorous discontent, and giving none or a mere cold service to the State ; if the press is still to keep irritating old sores, and giving out daily new causes of irritation, it is clear what the issue must be — force must meet force. There will be a cost of life dreadful to contemplate, and that, too, at a cost to every acre of Irish property which will lead to one common ruin. But the law will prevail ; the Irish will be saved even from themselves. The very men who now connive at or en- courage lawlessness will be the most suffering of its victims ; to their own ruin will be added the shame of having, under the false plea of patriotism, been the betrayers of that ignorant, hard- driven class whose bad habits they made worse, whose prejudices they fostered into hate, whom, starving from scarcity, they yet taught to make still more scarce all means of obtaining bread — whom they irritated into rebellion, and then left them to meet all its awful consequences. Let those who now sneer at the evil of evasion of debt to the landlord look to it ; repudiation is a very catching disorder ; there are few debtors who do not look on creditors as oppressive in their claims. Anarchy will heed figures on red ruled paper- quite as little as it heeds a bailiff's process. The Condition of the West of Ireland. June 27, 1850. I, Sir, hold Ireland to be a hardly separable part of the British empire, a part we could only lose with pain and with 260 THE LETTERS OF S. C. O. July 18 detriment : I believe it to be a part that, once separated from us, would itself at once lose every element of sound social existence. As an Englishman, I am opposed to the evil I find here, as I should be opposed to it in my own more immediate county ; I would contend against oppression here as I would there. So far as I am able, I would expose everything in the shape of wilful, illegal ill-treatment, which affects the poor as a class here, as I would expose, and have exposed, the same treatment at home. July 1 8, 1850. In passing through the different wards, &c, of the Ballina workhouse, I observed the initials ' S. G.' painted, or branded, as the case might be, on all the various articles of furniture, linen of the beds, &c. The explanation given to me was that some time last year a seizure was made for debt of the whole work- house furniture, and a peremptory sale resorted to ; even the beds under the sick were not spared. It happened that this came to the knowledge of Mr. Samuel Gurney, Sir E. Buxton, I believe, and some other benevolent individuals, who were then on a tour in Ireland. Mr. Gurney, with his friends, and with the aid of some money subscribed by a local proprietor, empowered a gentleman to bid for and buy what was absolutely necessary for the use of the poor creatures, whose condition otherwise would have been wretched in the extreme. This v/as done, and the goods marked as above to save them from a second seizure. They are now, in fact, the property of Mr. Gurney, lent to the guardians. I copied from the doors of the wards in the Castle- bar house a paper pasted on each cf them, with the following declaration printed upon it : — ' Contents. Charles Malley, Jan. 9, 1850.' The said Charles Malley, I understand, is a contractor, who has put in a seizure of the whole property of the work- house, as well to secure himself as, I should suppose, to keep others from doing the same. There are sheriffs' officers in possession in every house of this union. It is called a friendly transaction, and I dare say is so — to such shifts are these unions driven. And now, Sir, bear with me for a while, that I may call your attention to what is to me a most painful subject — the moral 1850 IRELAND 261 treatment of the dying, and the outrage to decency shewn in the absence of all respect for the dead. I think I must in this tour have walked some miles of ward ground between rows of sick and dying people. I have never in one instance seen any — the least — attempt to administer comfort to the dying beyond the usual attention to their physical wants. I am well aware that the priests are said to be most diligent in administering ' the extreme rites ' whenever called on to do so ; and I believe few adults die, if any, in a workhouse without these rites being administered, unless their deaths are so sudden as to make it impossible. I do not deny that the adult trained in the Catholic faith may, after these rites, be ready, without a desire for more of earthly assistance, ' to turn his face to the wall ' and wait his end in all the peace to his soul he desires. But, it is sad to see many hundreds of children lying dying ; two, three, four in a bed ; the dead from time to time weeded out that other living ones on their way to death may be planted in the vacant space. To see this, and to see from day to day, as one travels up and down these lanes, hedged with decaying infancy, no means taken to cheer these little pilgrims in their sad path, is, to me in a Christian country, a fearful reproach on humanity. Smileless and tearless as they lie, I still believe that all trace of childhood's spirit cannot be obliterated in them ; I think kind words and kind offices, such as all know the sick child to value, might be afforded to some at least of these vast numbers. That mild but holy chivalry which led a Sellon and her band to go forth last year at Plymouth to face cholera at its worst in its worst scenes, that she and hers might cheer, at least, those they could not otherwise aid, would find in the wards of Irish workhouses a field in which it might reap abundantly that holy laurel, which is its only— its deferred — but its sure reward. Far be it from me, however, to wish to see imported into Catholic scenes of distress— for there are very few Protestants in these places — a band of earnest people who would proselytise whilst they ministered to the sick. No ; I desire to see Catholic women — Catholic mothers, who know what children are — giving themselves to a work which no priesthood could do so well ; the very numbers now in these houses defy the power of the 262 THE LETTERS OE S. C. O. July iS priests appointed to them. I know not but that they do their best ; bui the work must beat them in its amount. It is, Sir, difficult to make the English believe that the thousands who die in these unions, in the houses, and on out- relief, are buried with no religious rites whatever : the dead-cart takes sometimes every morning for weeks its burden to the burying ground if it is at any distance ; certain paupers go with it to just put the coffins in the pits as they are dug, cover them, and leave them. Where there are burying grounds attached to the houses, they are carried out and put in the ground the day after they die with no form whatever. I have not yet seen one of these grounds that had any one mark or sign about it of the purpose to which it is dedicated ; though I am told they are consecrated. One large walled-in ground, in which, to my knowledge, there cannot have been less than 2,000 interred within the last three years, has a crop (I think of flax) now growing on that part of it to which the spades of the coffin planters have not yet reached ; this bit of agricultural practice may not be on consecrated soil ; all I know is, that it is within the walls of the so-called burying ground, and the dead-planted ground is fast approaching the border of the agriculturist. Some have no walls at all, no mark capable of pointing out to a stranger their boundary. I cannot wonder at the horror the peasantry have of these grounds ; how they will resort to any practicable scheme to get their dead away, that they may smuggle them into some of the old abbey or church grounds. I was with my friend one afternoon, looking at the ruins of the old abbey at Ballina ; hearing some noise, I looked in the direction from which it came, and saw two women crouched under an old tree, at their feet two coffins ; four boys in the workhouse dress, with the long spades of the country, scratching at a grave into which they were going to put the coffins. I returned in the evening and found they had just put them some six or eight inches beneath the soil, a few loose stones above them. On looking further about the abbey ground, which seems to be the public receptacle of all the filth of the Ballina public, I found a quantity of coffin wood, tops, sides, &c, which evidently could not ever have been long under ground ; it was 1 3 so IRELAND 263 deal, and not the least mouldered. A man who lives close by explained to us that so full is the ground, that often when a fresh corpse is buried they have to knock off the coffin head and sides from one that has been lately buried, that the new comer may be the more easily forced down upon the present occupant. The coffin wood we saw was the result. This abbey ground is one of the most public parts of Ballina. The two pauper coffins were being put in by the pauper boys at a time of day when everyone was about. It turned out that the buried were two children from a neighbouring auxiliary house — one six months, the other ten months old ; one certainly had not been dead twenty hours ; the women were the mothers. The thing was against orders, I found, not as to the method of interment, but as to the place. I cannot but think that if there was one more element want- ing in aid of the thoroughly demoralising effect of the present crowding of the workhouses in these unions, that element exists in this lowering of the feeling of the people towards their dead. For the sake of common decency, the burial grounds of the paupers — i.e. of nearly a third of the population — should be walled in, should have some outward and visible token of what they are ; should be kept with some respect to the fact that they are sown with the bodies of those who must rise from them to be on a level with all, wherever, however, buried. Decent walls and gates — a stone cross in the centre of the ground — the ground kept free from other use — this would not cost much, and would, I am satisfied, gratify thousands. I say it with regret, but 1 say that which is true, when I declare the tone of but too many of those above the peasant class to be of a nature, as towards them, most hard, unfeeling,, and in the worst possible taste. Many a time have I been struck with the fact that, as regards the suffering of the poor, the regret felt is, that it is discovered, not that it exists. There is no term which can be applied to lower the character of a human being that is not for ever used towards the peasantry ; they arc called idle, liars, cunning, and ignorant. Be it so-. Have not half, yes, more than half, of the proprietors of estates in the West owed their power of involving themselves to obtain 264 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 18 the position they coveted to the high rents paid to them directly or indirectly for conacre — that parent of idleness ? If lying and cunning are, which I deny, so generally characteristic of the peasantry, I must say that I think they have had no little temptation to become deceptive ; it was the unanimous testi- mony to me of all impartial persons, who have had much to do of late years in the employment of the peasantry — that the diffi- culty in getting them to work at task work arose from their incredulity that they would be paid the sum agreed on when the work was done, they were so accustomed to being overreached by those who had in other days been their employers. I think, too, the reports to Parliament of the exposures made on the relief works are enough to convince any one that cunning and falsehood, as means of obtaining benefit, are not qualities, in the distressed parts of Ireland, confined to the peasant class. With what a microscopic eye is every action of every Act scanned which pinches the higher orders ; the magnifying power, on the other hand, is applied in the case of their de- pendants to everything which tends to help them ; the eyes of their superiors are very blind to what hurts them. Tens of thousands of the peasant or tenant class have been driven from their homes, and forced to sell their property when the market was so gorged with the species of property they had to sell, that their potato pots, spinning wheels, stools, beds, &c, might have been had for not one fiftieth part of their value ; the potato rot had made them bankrupts ; the landlord or middleman creditor was inexorable ; what had he to do with the state of the market for the things they had to sell ? On the other hand, that excel- lent measure, ' the Encumbered Estates Bill,' gives creditors power over landlords ; and now hark to the cry, ' It is gross confiscation to sell our property when the market is so full of landed property for sale ; you are driving men of our order to madness, to suicide.' And have no peasants been driven to death and madness because their creditors were inexorable ? And who were those creditors ? Could one-tenth part of those horrors I have described (not a fifth of what I know) have occurred if the guardians had properly visited their houses and entered in the proper book the 1850 IRELAND 265 answers to the questions there printed ? For instance — Ques- tion 1. (Report Book of Visiting Committee.) ' Is the work- house, with its wards, offices, yards, and appurtenances, clean and well ventilated in every part ? If not, state the defect and omission.' Q. 2. ' Do the adult inmates of the workhouse of all classes appear clean in their persons . . . ? ' What says the board at Limerick, at Gort, at Clifden ? What say the guar- dians of Ballinasloe, where in one yard, as confessed by the master, the men, 140 in number, breaking stones, had been for nine days— when I called attention to the fact — without power to get one drop of water to zvash with or drink : what say these guardians to the above questions ? ' To the workhouse ! to the workhouse ! ' is the cry from the lips of the well-dressed in answer to prayers for help from the lips of the ragged. If vagrancy is a nuisance and illegal, work- house accommodation a legalised charity, is it not a burden at the door of the classes who bid the miserable go to the work- house that they themselves should go and see that justice is done within it ? For a political or polemical purpose the highest will stoop to speak kindly, coaxingly, to the lowest, worst clad instrument they may seek to enlist ; the workhouse, where the hungry are said to be fed and the naked ought to be clothed, to this the guardians will crowd, to meddle with its finance and influence the contracts ; but in nine cases out of ten they will shirk in any way they can the admission business, and when the poor are admitted leave all care of them to a low-paid narrow staff of overworked officers, often chosen chiefly for what is called their ' tightness ' — i.e. their want of sympathy. Now, Sir, I myself see only one remedy for this state of things : no Acts of Parliament, no official inspection, can im- prove the ' tone' of the higher towards the lowest order in this part of Ireland : but railroads will do it. Again and again was it wrung from my travelling companion's lips, ' I would not for anything a foreigner should see these things.' I agree with him ; but I do want the English of all classes to see and hear for themselves, what no power of description can bring home to them. Whatever the railway may do for the commerce of Ireland, it will have the effect of bringing public opinion to bear 266 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 1 8 heavily on the state of society in its western districts. Multiply the number of travellers, and you will multiply the number of those who will regard with equal pain and indignation the things they will see. It will soon then be felt that one of the first steps to induce the English or the Irish, from other happier districts, to invest their capital in commerce or in agriculture as owners of factories, or tenants, or purchasers of farms, in the West, will be to show a disposition towards the employed similar to what they have been used to. Englishmen would require some time to get over the fear of peasantry so treated. The placing overburdened estates in the hands of unbur- dened possessors will do much, for the new race will hardly fall at once into the follies of the old ; it will also clear the land of the present real despots, that race whose name is Legion, who, whether as agents or money-lenders, or both, have acquired all the influence of the properties they have bled, with none of the responsibility. I do not know that they should be blamed ; they have only acted in their known vocation. Still, order and humanity will gain when a different style of men administer the laws and manage the properties of these districts. Some few miles from Clifden our eyes were gladdened by coming suddenly amidst some beautiful scenery on a large space of ground under very high and clean cultivation ; it sloped to the road, and had as background a comfortable-looking, clean, English house with neat lawns, &c, in front. A great many women and men were hard at work, looking clean, well clad, and happy, and working with great activity. Really I could have believed myself anywhere but where I was. This was part of the estate purchased by Mr. Ellis, a member of the Society of Friends ; he has settled here with his family, is farming extensively, and doing all the good in every way he can. Nothing could exceed the kindness with which he received us, and gave me all the information I sought of him. He seems to have settled here with the one view — that of doing good; he does not expect much, if any, present gain from his farming operations, but he is full of hope. He says the men work well and cheerfully ; their labour is at first quite unskilled, but they quickly improve ; he now finds them very honest and trust- 1850 IRELAND 267 worthy. He believes that with kindness, firmness, and fair dealing they maybe made excellent labourers. Neither himself nor Mrs. Ellis repented their venture upon this wild spot ; they have established schools, &c, and she evidently works with him, heart and soul, in the good cause in which he has embarked ; from my heart I can say — May God bless them in it, for it is a gallant attempt at a noble end. It was like water to thirsty men to meet in such a spot one whose countenance was as characteristic of the benevolent nature of the man as was all about him in character with the neatness and precision of the sect to which he belongs. August 31, 1851. The late murder in the Queen's County, in Ireland, has very naturally horrified afresh that portion of the public of the United Kingdom which is not, as yet, quite callous to the oft-repeated tale of Irish social disorganisation. I have again and again given my opinion of these assassinations ; no man can view them in a graver light than I do ; but they are no matters of surprise to me ; they are in my eye a not unnatural result of the social condition of the Irish people. I am not now going to enter on the many features of that social condition which, familiar as I am with them, have led me to regard these agrarian murders as the direct effects of causes likely to lead to them. I will now, however, with your permission, unfold a picture, true, and yet surpassing all fiction in its horror, which, I think, will show a page in Ireland's present history as instructive as dis- graceful. My story is beyond all cavil true ; no salaried inspec- tor of any department, interested in the suppression of truth, could touch one hair of this monster tale of cruelty. On the estate of the Marquis of Lansdowne, in Kerry, there lived a few months ago a man and his wife, Michael and Judith Donoghue ; they lived in the house of one Casey ; an order has gone forth on this estate (a common order in Ireland ; you published one in your columns about a year ago), that no tenant is to admit any lodger into his house ; this was a general order : it appears, however, that sometimes special orders are given, having regard to particular individuals. The Donoghues had a nephew, one Denis Shea ; this boy had no father living ; he had 268 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 31 lived with a grandmother, who had been turned out of her hold- ing on account of harbouring him. Denis Shea was tivelve years of age, a child of decidedly dishonest habits. Orders were given by the driver of the estate that this child should not be har- boured upon it. This young Cain, thus branded and prosecuted, being a thief — he had stolen a shilling, a hen, and done many other such crimes as a neglected twelve-year old famishing child will do — wandered about ; one night he came to his aunt Donoghue's, who lodged with Casey ; he had the hen with him. Casey told his lodgers not 'to allow him in the house,' as the agent's driver had given orders about it. The woman, the child's aunt, took up a pike, or pitchfork, and struck him doivn with it ; the child was crying at the time. The man Donoghue, his uncle, with a cord, tied the child's hands behind his back. The poor child, after a while, crawls or staggers to the door of one Sullivan, and tried to get in there ; the maid of Sullivan called Donoghue to take him away ; this he did, but he afterwards returned, his hands still tied behind his back. Donoghue had already beaten him severely. The child seeks refuge in other cabins, but is pursued by his character — he tvas so bad a boy, the fear of the agent and driver — all ivere forbidden to shelter him. He is brought back by some neighbours in the night to Casey's, where his uncle and aunt lived ; the said neighbours try to force the sinking child in upon his relatives ; there is a struggle at the door ; the child was heard asking some one to put him upright. In the morning there is blood on the threshold — the child is stiff, dead ; a corpse with its arms tied ; around it every mark of a last fierce struggle for shelter — food — the com- monest rights of humanity. The Donoghues were tried at the late Kerry assizes : it was morally a clear case of murder ; but, as it was said, or believed, that these Donoghues acted not in malice to the child, but under a sort of sense of self-preservation — that they felt to admit him was to become wanderers themselves, they were indicted for manslaughter, and found guilty. And now, Sir, read the judge's address to them on passing sentence. I know not who that judge was, but his feeling docs him honour. His tears, his holy 1 85 1 IRELAND 269 indignation, ermine him more to my eye than if he sat on the seat of the highest earthly honour. Not quite a year ago I published in your columns the awful death of one Denis Kerin, the child who fell dead from hunger on that death march from Ennistymon workhouse to Miltown Malbay, which at the time attached all the infamy they deserved to the parties concerned in the cruel work. The Government had an inquiry, and held some one to bail in the matter ; but, for all I have ever heard, no one ever yet was punished for the deed. This was a cause in which officials were to blame : had the Donoghues been Poor Law officials, or guardians, it would not have surprised me if Denis Shea had been quietly buried and quickly forgotten. I know very well all that will be urged to wipe out this foul blot on the history of the day. A child twelve years old is cross, steals, and is starving ; he is a nuisance ; all lodgers are for- bidden — but this little creature is to be specially vermin-stamped ; to harbour him is forbidden on that penalty which only gives life or the chance of keeping it in an Irish workhouse in the west. His grandmother became houseless because she housed this infantine Barabbas ; thieves — adult rogues— are sometimes hard up for a meal ; this creature was watched as Irishmen in debt watch a bailiff; he could not now by thieving beat hunger ; he seizes a hen — his grandmother's — takes it to his aunt's ; he could hardly have eaten it raw : he probably hoped to barter it for a meal. She is only a lodger, one of the forbidden class ; her landlord bids her drive off this small, and weak, but, of all invaders, the most forbidden. She does so, does it savagely ; no driver could have asked her to do more ; she struck the starveling to the earth, and there he lay bleeding. The crisis of his famine is at hand ; he staggers to another door ; the uncle is sent for to outdo the savage fury of the aunt ; he flogs him, as was proved, most cruelly — binds with a cord the four scarce-skinclad bones which in a cry for mercy were held out as arms. Mercy in the breast of a man doing the behests of a ' driver ' ! He is flogged again and shut out, not even a morsel of food given him. It was a cold night, says one witness. Neighbours once more make an effort to get the dying bound 270 THE LETTERS OF S. C. O. Aug. 31 child beneath the uncle's roof ; he is savagely refused. A few hours after an eye that had never been off him saw him reel from the flagstone of his mother's sister's door ; she, her hus- band, and his landlord were ' retired to rest ' ! He tries to get his hands round from their cords, to press the forehead, to press the eye, as children do who die of famine ; no, his uncle had bound him ; death kindly came and released him. If drivers and agents, acting out what is considered sound policy, can thus make men and women into brutes, whose blood becomes so frozen that they can whip and knock down, bind and leave to death, a child of twelve — cne to whom by nature their hearts must have warmed — if permission to hold a poor lodging is price enough to purchase such Herod quality, are we to wonder that there is a price at which men can be hired to kill a landlord with the pistol in open day ; and that they who look on, knowing it is a landlord, will not lift a finger to arrest the assassin ? Can class hate be more successfully fostered than by the modern system of wholesale depopulation ? Let me be understood : I have ever held that the landlord has in law the right to evict : but I hold there is a power that should temper the use of law, which is above it. These landlords in general know very well that the evicted, if destitute, have a right to support in the workhouse, under proper regulations. Now, the eviction law is read literally, the Poor Law interpreted most arbitrarily. To lodge a stranger may be a thing to be forbidden, and no wrong be done ; but when the peasantry know what they must expect in the workhouse — when they know that once off the land is only one step from being put under it, they will cling to land as life ; they will see their own flesh and blood die, rather than risk the tenure of their own hovel. After what I have seen, and from what I know, of Irish workhouses, I can easily believe that to escape the workhouse there have been many of these Shea cases ; but I know enough of these Irish peasants to feel convinced that every such deed done in self-preservation adds fuel to the hardly smothered fire which will from time to time burn forth in agrarian murders. The last few years have put the finishing stroke to the degrada- tion of the peasantry ; they with one mind arc set on one object 1851 IRELAND 271 — to leave a country that seems to them one in which the struggle for life is too severe for that poor amount of life it can ever obtain. It is, alas ! but too true — to compass one proselyte to any one religious brotherhood there is no land in which more energy is developed. To oppose Orange to Green, to uphold this or that polemical flag, Irishmen will meet in thousands and throw themselves into sectarian or political strife with a seeming self- devotion almost heroic. To claim justice for the people — liberty of conscience for the people — freedom of thought and word for the people — these are cries which will assemble title- capped clouds of agitators. In the meantime, the people are passing away— across the sea or beneath the earth ; the people want, not bread — they don't dream of such a luxury — but a pennyworth a day of coarse raw Indian meal. They find it denied them. They were content to have lived on it in scal- peens ; they are unearthed from these homes — they have not even the fox's privilege. By the time Irish patriotism or English policy has gilded Ireland's hourglass the sand will be run out. The following speaks of the sure and certain hope after absolution. As shooting at the Queen has been stopped by flogging, why not try the same remedy for the outbreak of murderous assaults which marks the discussion of the agrarian question in Ireland ? Irish Executions. April 20, 1854. I did not need the late disgusting exhibition at the exe- cution of the Bateson murderers to satisfy me that hanging for agrarian murders in Ireland is a mere farce. The class from which the assassins are chosen is one that regards death as the risk they freely encounter in such business. They no more look on being hung for carrying out their law upon an agent or land- lord as an ignominious end than they regard the death of a soldier in action in that light. The popular idea is, that their confession to the priest after sentence, and his absolution, give them their scaffold courage. It may work to this end, but my own belief is that these men in reality care very little for religion in any shape whatever, but they take it as it comes to them in gaol, just as they take the rest of the rules and customs of the 272 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 19 place ; a priest or parson is a regular character in every flash gaol song. Hanging would lose a part of its accepted character in the eyes of these creatures, had not the criminal the attend- ance of one of these gentlemen to patter with him, &c. I have never seen but one way of dealing with these ' Riband- men : ' — don't hang the murderers, but spare no legitimate means to detect them ; try them by special juries in Dublin, of half Catholics, half Protestants ; if found guilty, sentence them to three several severe floggings with the cat on a triangle, erected at the spot of the murder, at intervals of six months between each ; within three months after the last flogging trans- port them for life to a penal settlement. No religious consolation will blunt the effect of the ' cat,' especially when the dose is to be repeated. It is one thing to steel the mind to one moment's pain — it is another to give it courage under some ten minutes' flagellation, with the certainty of its repetition. Absolution from the Romanist, or such hope as I have known crammed into the Protestant murderer by his pastor, may make a villain brave under the drop — I doubt its effect at the triangles. A man being flogged is a very different hero from a man being hung. Let the thing be tried, and my belief is Ireland would soon lose this stain on her character. An appeal for the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund. S. G. O.'s pro- phecy as to good administration was not altogether fulfilled. December 19, 1S79. I have read with great satisfaction the letter of the Duchess of Marlborough in your yesterday's paper. I have with plea- sure sent her a contribution towards the fund she proposes to promote. In the two years — now a long time since — in which famine and cholera had produced an amount of suffering and distress in Ireland which could hardly be surpassed, I — the readers of the 'Times' had, perhaps, painful experience of the fact — occupied for some months a considerable space in its columns, giving the result of personal inquiry into the condition of the peasantry over a large part— the most afflicted part— of that unhappy country. In that inquiry I not only_had the kind 1 879 IRELAND 273 support of the then Lord Lieutenant, but also letters to use as I might think fit from some of the highest and most respected of the Roman Catholic Church authorities. I met with a good deal of kind assistance from almost every local authority with whom I came in contact. In my many published letters I endeavoured to give a true and impartial narrative of what my own eyes had seen, my own ears had heard ; but no pen power could really work out, to fully exhibit, a true picture of the awful condition in which the friend who accompanied me the second time found many thousands of the peasantry from the effects of famine. In what I saw on the first occasion of the work of cholera it was simply the work of a visitation of a well- known disease, coming upon a low-fed, ill-housed population. It killed its thousands, as it will always kill under such circum- stances. I must say here, that considering the appalling nature of this death-dealing visitation, the officials in every department did all that they had the means of doing to save life ; but the means were necessarily limited, and the very nature of the work to be done made it difficult to obtain all the agency required ; it was, to me, not surprising that the loss of life was so great, for certainly at that time, if not at the present, under the best of conditions, we have not yet discovered any really effective treat- ment of a disease which in a few hours will prostrate the strongest, and with death-blast sweep off the face of the earth those who are weak. From my experience of the work of famine, I am satisfied the time to save is that which first threatens famishing. As I saw it, I am satisfied no amount of food, or clothing, or shelter, could have saved the large majority of those who died within and without the gigantic workhouses ; scanty food, of a low supporting nature at best, had become more scarce, the consti- tution was undermined ; so to speak, the animal had become deadened ; its life flickers in its flame from want of all that could give it support ; the swelled ankles, the patchy hair on the head, told the tale to any close observer that food had come too late. The patience with which this was endured was to me a fearful symptom, for it betrayed the fact that all mental energy had succumbed under physical depression. VOL. I. T 274 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 20 How far the causes which then led to this state of things may now exist I am not able to say. The Duchess of Marlborough may well from her position be held as a trustworthy authority in the matter, and that position appears to me all the guarantee the public needs to secure that what is given to her fund will be prudently expended. I therefore hope that her appeal may meet with all success, but I am satisfied that the good she can do will in the main depend on the speed with which she can commence it. Peace may arrest the horrors of war. Pestilence has its course to run, departs as it came at its own time ; having gathered its dead, it leaves the living unscathed. Famine has no limit so long as there are the famishing, and when at last restrained within some bounds, the dead may be counted, but the hunger-wounded are many of them, for life, but partly healed. The great end, then, at which the charitable should aim is to meet the enemy at the first threatening, not to wait until the awful horrors of starvation have become appeals for compassion on the largest scale, but at the same time defiant of all that compassion can really effect. The Government as such will, I have no fear, do its duty. Had there been a poor law including the road to Jericho, I don't think the good Samaritan would have jogged on his way to send out a relieving officer. On Mr. Herbert Gladstone's pilot balloon of Home Rule at Leeds. The Home Rule manifesto was issued November 21, 1885. December 20, 1885. In my poor opinion, and in that I am sure of every man possessed of common sense who takes a real interest in the welldoing of Ireland, the sending out the programme for Home Rule in that unhappy country with a complexion of an autho- rity at once to be equivocally disclaimed is one of the most deplorable of all political artifices which this nation has ever known. It clearly was of the nature of a party pilot balloon, set afloat on the political atmosphere to test the currents which some such measure would have to encounter ; whence, by whom this strange dangerous movement has originated may yet be made clear. i88s IRELAND 275 Its effect may well be to paralyse still further the arm of the law in its defence of the lives of those who are doomed to murder on agrarian grounds. Is there any one member of any existing party who can really doubt that the power which has given Mr. Parnell his Parlia- mentary force is simply derived from the fact that he is regarded as the pioneer of the party which is to give the land where it is now rented ? Conceive for one moment this so-called Home Rule in force on the lines which have been so prominently pro- claimed and but equivocally disclaimed ; the action of the magistrates and police to be governed by this new authority : what would be the result ? It must follow that boycotting and moonlight raids and murder must be met with decisive action, or, failing this, that the actors in this direction must be tempted to ordinary loyalty to the law of property by some ultra measures, which would go to confiscate that property to gain their temporary abstention from outrage. Is it likely — nay, is it possible — that an executive which has gained its power by the support of lawlessness would go to work to destroy the scaffolding by which it was raised ? Is it not most probable that, failing to do this, the powers which have gone to raise this party to the position of rulers, once convinced that they have made a rod for themselves, will now become more than ever lawless, and with some reason on their side, for who was it who taught them the lesson that by defiance of law, they could become owners where they are renters or at best rent on their own terms ? A warning to Mr. Gladstone, whom S. G. O. does not name. January 12, 1886. Admitting that the two great parties of the State are in the dilemma in which Mr. Parnell's tactics have placed them, one in which they are now forced to grapple with the question of Home Rule, and assuming that this will necessitate some action from the one party or the other, or from a temporary coalition on the part of both, to arrive at a practical solution of this important question, is it not as well to consider how far, if this solution can be arrived at after some fashion which will go far to meet Mr. T 2 276 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 12 Parnell's demands and yet preserve the integrity of the Empire, the material is to be found to carry out any real government of Ireland, let it be called by what name it may ? It necessarily follows that the executive must be one not only largely recruited from Mr. Parnell's adherents, but, being so, that it must have what is called the support of the great body of those Nationalists who have placed him in the position he now occupies. It has, however, been but too readily assumed that a desire for what is called Home Rule was the moving cause which has secured that powerful Parliamentary force of which Mr. Parnell is the com- mander. That he may choose to assume, or affect to assume, this for his own ulterior purposes it is easy to understand. I, however, have no doubt whatever that if he once gains his point, and finds himself, with the following he has secured for Parlia- mentary purposes, placed in a position to carry out Home Rule in any practical form, the very forces which have given him his position will just be those who will confront him in a way to defy all such rule as any civilised community requires to preserve its social and constitutional existence. I do not for one moment believe that one-tenth of those who have, under the mask of the cry for Home Rule, supported the Nationalist party regard such change of ruling power in any other light than simply as a means to an end, which with them outweighs all other considerations — one which promises that when those men are in power who have urged them to their law- less warfare against rent they will be able with impunity to push their demand for land rent free. Home Rule, with the vast mass of the peasantry, has little other meaning than the rule of those they have lifted into power by the leverage of outrage against all who, being landlords, will not submit to the tyranny which reduces them, as such, to the conditions in regard to ownership which make it profitless to return fair income, dangerous to life if any attempt is made to obtain it. The Irish peasantry are of the earth most earthy. They, in their hearts, set land possession above all other feeling ; it is with them an inherited, impulsive force ever in action, one which swallows up all other national or religious sentiment. It is of 1 886 IRELAND 277 their very nature to cling to the portions of the soil on which they have been born. No owner of any, the largest, estate to which he has succeeded by inheritance, and which he hopes to hand down to his heirs, has a stronger territorial sentiment than Paddy has for the wretched hovel and its few acres of soil, be it good or bad, which he may have rented as his forefathers did, or, it may be, at one time owned. We are too apt to forget that to the peasant land-renters of Ireland life has long been one of perennial struggle for the means to sustain it. When the gathering of the English harvest depended in no small degree on the immigration of the Irish peasantry, the assistance they rendered to us was most valuable, as it was a great boon to them. They worked with industry, receiving fair wages, and saved their earnings for their home expenditure. These, with the aid of the then existing conacre system, which afforded to these peasant farmers their cherished food, the potato, enabled them to live the life to which they were born and bred. They were content with the home little better than a hovel, so long as thus homed they could exist. At the time I wrote much in your columns denouncing the condition of the cottages in which English peasants had to live, it was for ever forced upon me that the worst dwelling in their case on which I ever looked was in the case of Hodge a palace compared with the ordinary home of Pat, and yet the latter was quite con- tent it should be so. The failure of the potato, the cessation in England of the harvest demand on the Irish, the years of famine and cholera utterly dislocated the economy of Irish peasant life. If land, in however small a quantity, the few acres and the pigs, was at any time so much cherished, it became now of the more value, for, small as could be the return from it to support life at all, it was the all. Now came the inability to pay rent followed at once by the reckless system of eviction, which cast into the gigantic workhouses those over whose heads the roof- tree had been broken. When I re-peruse the statements I published in your columns of what I saw in the many miles I travelled in Ireland more than thirty years ago ; when I had, from day to day, to inspect the 27 8 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 12 workhouses containing thousands under their roofs of this race thus pauperised, hopeless, if disease spared them, ever again to find a home, I felt satisfied that thus was sown the seed of a dis- affection one day to bear bitter fruit, and so I have lived to see it come to pass. Pat is by nature a strangely emotional being ; his passions are but too easily excited, when so but little under control. By the force of circumstances he has become dependent on land occupation to live at all. He is just the instrument ready made for the hand of those who, for ulterior purposes, would enlist him in that wide conspiracy which attracts him with the hope that, as pressure by outrage and murder led to the Act which laid down terms of present rent, more of the same pressure would still further reduce it, or even make land free to the present tenants. Thus inoculated with the virus of a disaffection to which he is but too much disposed, he is taught, under the thin cloak of the patriotism which would cast off Imperial rule, to believe that Home Rule would further the most extreme of those views which offer to him free occupation of land. Hence the well-organised system of outrage, that rule by terrorism which now shakes the whole social fabric, and makes the lives of those compelled to live in the disturbed districts an existence of continued fearful apprehension. Of all conceivable forms of wickedness no one is more flagrant than the building up a political party by pandering to the lawless passions of those from whom it is to derive its force : in every such case there will be a fearful Nemesis. To obtain the power to rule by fostering lawlessness is to prepare for the rulers a time when their own destruction shall be the fruit of the spirit they evoked to obtain authority. That the so-called National representatives are heavily subsidised from America is not denied. This being so, an ignorant peasantry will give this foreign aid a complexion leading them to believe that actual force as well as money will, if required to sustain the party their own action has placed in the position to threaten the Imperial Government, be as readily afforded. Let it be supposed that Mr. Parnell by some means so far carries out his programme of Home Rule that with his followers 1 836 IRELAND 279 he is placed in a position of authority under it, in what position will he stand in reference to the land question ? Can he suppose that by any possible exercise of authority or persuasion he will be able to meet the demands which will be made upon him by the National League short of confiscation ? He can hardly entertain the idea that a home Government would entertain a project so wild as this. If short of this he endeavours to procure the enactment of another Land Act, can he really believe that it would be accepted, that any possible revaluation of the land for the determination of its rental would appease the appetite for land, on their own terms, which is now the object of all that movement which has placed him in his present powerful posi- tion ? If the rental is to be readjusted, not swept away, to be recovered when due, who can doubt but that, as at present, it could only be done by legal measures, such measures enforced by police action ? Our common sense must surely teach us that police put in action by a home Government of Nationalist complexion is, if conceivable at all, likely to have but one end — i.e. open rebellion ; the betrayed would rise against the betrayers. It must be borne in mind that conspiracy against rent is no new thing. I can well speak to the fact that Lord Clarendon foresaw it, and it was a great cause of uneasiness to him. It is quite impossible for any one who has made Irish affairs a study for many years, as I have done — much opportunity afforded me to do so — to underrate the importance of the present crisis. It is easy on paper to theorise on the value of conciliation or coercion in this or that direction ; it is difficult to conciliate where all is for ever in action to aggravate, as it is to coerce where rebellion takes that passive form which, many headed and many handed, so works that in its nature and extended action it can only be met in detail, and that rarely to any good purpose. The present crisis is one which should put aside the weapons of mere party action and intrigue ; it calls for true patriotism outside all mere party feeling. The highest interests of the whole Empire are at stake. It is no season for personal or political ambition on the part of leaders, it is one in which all of 28o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 30 true statesmanship which can be obtained from the wisest of all parties is called for. It will be little short of treason to the Throne if it is to be met in any other spirit. A warning against Mr. Gladstone's Bill, especially with regard to the judges. April 30, 1886. ' Under the peculiar circumstances of Ireland, we cannot forget that some of these judges, by no fault of their own, have been placed in relations more or less uneasy with popular influences, and with what, under the new Constitution, will in all probability be the dominating influence in the country. We cannot overlook the peculiarities of Irish history in framing the provisions of this Bill, and we therefore propose, both with regard to the judges now holding office and with regard to other persons who, in what they deemed loyal service to the Empire, have been concerned in the conduct and administration of the criminal law in Ireland, that her Majesty may, not lightly or wholesale, but if she should see good cause on any particular occa- sion, by Order in Council, antedate the pensions of these particular persons.' — Extract from Mr. Gladstone 's Speech. Of all the strange propositions in connection with any legis- lative action to be found in history, I can hardly believe one can be discovered more extraordinary than the above, as taken from the speech of Mr. Gladstone in introducing a measure for the future government of Ireland. Is it really come to this ? Is it to be held that, in the event of any great popular movement in the direction of an open and persistent breach of criminal existing law, the judges who are appointed in their several circuits to try the offenders accused of such breach, are to act under a clear warning that in the exercise of this their office they must bear in mind that popular crime is to receive judicial indulgence ; that where the position of such judges is uneasy from the dominating influence of illegality, justice is to be tempered, not with mercy, but with the dread of the offence just dealing may give to the Queen in Council, hold- ing over their heads not wholesale pensionate eviction from office, but a particular decision in any one case where it may be held that due regard has not been paid to this dominant influ- ence ? And, Sir, we are also to further learn that a similar treatment is to be held over other persons holding office. Does 1 886 IRELAND 281 this mean the muzzling and blinding of the police and Crown lawyers, lest in the execution of their offices they do not duly bow to popular disorder ? I am at that advanced age which enables me to look back on a long series of popular movements, which at the time aroused the action of very large bodies of men, to procure the alteration in existing laws in a direction which they demanded as an act of justice to their class or interest — this as well in Ireland as in England ; I have seen many a legal change brought about by such popular movements. I cannot, however, call to mind a single instance in which, when outrage on person or property was committed in connection with such movements and the criminals put upon trial, it was urged on the judges and other officials, at the peril of uneasiness in their office, to be lenient in the carrying out of the law, in that the crimes committed could be more or less affiliated on a popular movement. Mr. Gladstone tells us, in all probability under the new Con- stitution there will be a dominating influence making the seats of judges and other officials uneasy, more or less. I wish he had explained in what shape this dominating power will appear. Is it to have a ^^z'-religious complexion, one creed seeking to dominate over another ; or, on another hand, is it to be that of tenancy against landownership ? It is possible Mr. Gladstone may foresee a league between the two — a land-seizing company, with powerful clerical directors. It has been stated that some of the judges have of late executed their office at the peril of their lives. It may be true ; I can easily conceive it to be so. Let me assume that some one of these judges who have been so threatened had been assassinated, the assassins seized, and put on their trial, it being proved that they were members of the Land League. I feel yet assured that even in such a case there is not one judge on the bench who would swerve a hair's breadth from a strict line of duty because he had to adjudicate in a case in which it might be attributed to him that he must be more or less prejudiced against the prisoners. lie would have had proof that the judicial seat was subject to uneasiness from powerful domi- nating influences, but he would scorn to make it easier by any 282 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 30, 1886 the least departure from his clear duty. If he sentenced the prisoners on conviction to death, is it believable it would be under the risk of an Order in Council to antedate his pension, because, overlooking the peculiarities of Irish history, the popular and dominating influences which for ever arise in that history, he had not made due allowance for them ? 283 CHAPTER IX. WARS. In these days of worship of United Germany, the contempt S. G. O. expressed towards Prussia for her conduct in the Danish war savours of the antique. The Danish Wounded. February 23, 1864. I trust the appeal of Lord Clanricarde in favour of the victims of the outrageous conduct of Prussia and Austria will be met as it deserves to be. England may be powerless to give the strong help of an armed alliance to the Dane in the day of his weakness ; but the silver and gold to find comforts for the sick and wounded of his army, these we have to give : let us freely give them. It is a work which appeals to the English nation at large. It sets aside the hair-splitting of cold, crafty, diplomatic action. It sets before us mangled brave men, bereaved and afflicted women and children, the mourning and the wailing in soldiers' homes ; this, the work of those who call that a just war which, on unjust false pretence, enlists the whole strength and hate of two so-called great nations against one very small one. It is said, and with a good deal of truth, that Lord Palmerston is the impersonation of English pluck ; that whenever it comes to a question of English feeling, stirred by the contemplation of tyranny in any quarter, however powerful, his is the voice that utters for England what Englishmen would have uttered. In his place in Parliament he has spoken the English sense of the disgraceful conduct of Germany in this war. He did this in language powerful as true ; the representatives of the nation cheered him. Doubtless, Sir, it is prudent, but it is yet very hard, for 284 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 23, 1864 Englishmen to be only indignant spectators when two powerful strange mastiffs have gone out of their way to bully and mangle one little dog of a small but very brave breed. It is the more so when we know that these great hairy bullies have only been driven to their cowardly work by the snarling, at their own heels, of a limited pack of very small dogs belonging to their own kennel ; that they have been barked and snarled out of their own yard to go and thus overweight and mangle the weak, for a purpose which, in its real end, they hate, and know, even if they loved it ever so much, they cannot carry out. If, at present, we can only treat these German Powers with the con- tempt those deserve who, under false pretence, seek glory in wanton, cowardly aggression, leaving them to the defence of those special pleaders who as yet have only shown how power- less the ablest advocacy is to gloss over or pervert plain principles of justice, we may yet safely look to a time, not far distant, when their iniquity abroad shall meet with retribution in the chastisement they will receive at the hands of their own 'peoples ' at home. As we cannot subsidise with arms, let us at once offer the free gift of our material sympathy — show to the Danes we do from our hearts pity, though we cannot, with a nation's strength, defend or avenge them. At any time I trust we would have done this ; with all the power a nation could put forth, to show a natural welcome to the Danish bride of our Prince, we welcomed her to her English home. Let our hearts now warm to the call for generous aid to the wounded and the sick of the army of her land, the orphans and the widows of the soldiers of her own first home land. Contempt for Prussia in 1864 did not prevent S. G. O. from wishing success to German arms in 1870. A Plea for the Wounded. August 17, 1870. I have read with no little interest the letters which have appeared in your journal referring to various plans of rendering aid ' to the wounded ' in the present war of France and Prussia. As you are well aware, I do not write as one who has not Aug. 17, 1870 WARS 285 had some experience of the state of things which arises from the hacking, hewing, and mutilation of human beings by the instru- ments of warfare, aggravated by a want of preparation in those departments which are entrusted with the task of trying to repair the work of such engines on the said human beings. Of all the crimes it is possible for the ruling power or powers of a nation to commit, there can scarcely be conceived a greater than that which wantonly hurries its army into war. If anything, however, can make that crime more odious in the sight of God and man, it is the doing this without previous sufficient preparation to secure the care necessary to be taken of ' the wounded.' View it as we may, war, after all, is a mere trial of the power of the parties engaged — the one to slay or wound as many as possible of the army of the other. To effect this — to slay or mutilate — recourse is had to every weapon or appliance science can invent. The sweet days of peace are now employed by nation after nation in the work of seeking out and manufacturing anything and everything which promises to give to the rulers of the earth the best means of destroying and maiming each other's armies whenever it may please them to fall foul of each other on any just or unjust pretext. We are now told that in this hour of wholesale carnage, when modern arms of precision, &c, are being exercised on living human flesh — an hour for which both these great nations have been for years preparing — a cry has arisen that, however fitted for the field, there is not fitting preparation for the ' hospitals.' I can hardly bring myself to believe that this can be true ; my own eyes proved to me that the French in the East had a hospital service which seemed to me thoroughly well appointed, at least in the earlier days of their Crimean work. During that long incubation which has at last hatched this war with Prussia, it to me appears inconceivable that so much thought was given to weapons, and so little to those who might fall wounded in their use. Nor can I conceive that Prussia, watchful and armed to watch, waiting the challenge, prepared to accept it, had not taken lint and linen and all the necessaries of hospital routine, worked at the rear of the field that made it, into considera- 286 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 17 tion. In our generation I did not conceive it possible that any army could be held fit for action in the field when the cost had not been counted of preparation for its wounded as far as is possible. I am as yet credulous as to the fact that these two great nations have gone to this bloody war in that cold-blooded inhumanity which would thus use up on the field their soldiers, with insufficient means to at least try and save what mutilated life may remain to them when left useless on the field of battle, wound-bound there. I am not, however, without the firmest belief that there is a demand for every possible exertion we, as a Christian nation, can make to render all the aid in our power to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded of both armies. The real fact is, it is next to impossible that in a war of this magni- tude either the necessary staff of surgeons and hospital servants could be found, or that all the most ordinary appliances they require could be at hand. No nation on earth could keep up a corps of skilled surgeons, practised nurses, and hospital orderlies equal to meet the real necessities of these modern wholesale mutilations. The wounds of modern warfare come in so many a ghastly form, require such an amount of skilled manipulation aided by hospital materiel of an amount, if procurable, yet so difficult of transport in all the exigencies of ' advance ' or ' retreat,' that it must ever follow that to lives lost on the field, purposely destroyed, must be added a very large proportion of those gleaned yet alive who might have been saved, however maimed for life, were it possible to use all the means modern science and appliance, modern nurse devotion, could afford. Many a time did I feel when walking those miles of mangled men in the hospitals at Scutari, what a blessed thing it would be if mankind's rulers, who get up wars so coolly for their own purposes, were forced to see with their own eyes, and feel with their every sense, what work was made behind the field of battle as well as what was the work of the field itself as seen in its dead. To me one of the most degrading features of our day is the cool way in which, in all nations, the soldier seems to be held as a mere article for war use and consumption. We read of ' actions ' in which tens of thousands are sent with bullet- 1870 WARS 287 haste to eternity ; in which, when the dead pits have been rilled, there yet remain thousands on thousands in all the torment of the wounded — many to die before means for moving them can be found, to be moved at all only with aggravation of their present fever and agony. But why seek to paint the scene ? There is triumph in the camp of the victors, every evil and revengeful passion in that of the beaten ; the groans of the wounded are as a chorus very faint, like powder-smell — part of the thing. But to matters more practical. I have great doubt whether either side in this war would accept volunteer aid from us with the army — i.e. accompanying its hospital staff. I can hardly, however, conceive that France or Prussia would reject aid in hospital materiel offered on purely Christian grounds. I believe the readiest aid we could afford, and, perhaps, that which we could obtain the quickest, would be the sending out rag, lint, linen in any shape, rollers or bandages. I would say, scrape lint if you like at your leisure, and keep on sending it ; but lose no time in sending all you can get at once ; make rollers, many- tailed, three-cornered bandages, and such things as you can, to send out when made ; but at once send out rag and linen, &c, as you can get it. Hearts will find hands to make the most of it ; delay for better things, when anything is of value, is folly. It is wonderful how many a thing we think necessary for the wounded can, however, be done without, or some rough substitute found on the spot ; but sponges and the ordinary appliances for stanching and dressing wounds, for these there is no sufficient substitute. By this post I shall send my small contribution to the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War. All my own sympathies are strongly with the Prussians, but I feel the wounded are cut off from the strife ; they should be to us simply objects of compassion, subjects for mercy. I earnestly hope this my view may be proved to be that of our nation at large. War and Humanity. September 1, 1S70. Yes, Sir, too much public attention cannot be drawn to the real nature of that bloody scene now enacting on the Continent. Men may differ as to the future destination of the souls, the tens 288 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Sept. i of thousands souls, driven into eternity by arms of precision. We who have to preach the teaching of Christ may well feel soul-shaken ourselves when we speak of heaven or hell, as our commission demands we should speak. Two Christian nations in the nineteenth century of Christianity dealing in such scientific butchery that, from day to day, we have to read of thousands of dead and dying, and the dying often in agony to which death is the to-be-desired respite : the killed sent to eternity in a moment of excited, death-daring determination to use the killing or maim- ing arm in their hands to slay those against whom, personally, they have no one feeling of hate but that begotten of war's demand on the soldier's duty to his nation — his courage to do it. There they lie, stiff or writhing as it may be ; husbands, fathers, who thought of home before they went to death, where physical agony permits, as they lie, only lacerated, only tortured, only fevered to the verge of madness, the heart, yet true as the compass to its home north, turning to the home point, to thus add to what the poor frame suffers the sense of what the heart then home-sickened can alone feel. Let those deny it who may choose to do so, I know that the great heart wound, after all, in these cases, is the sense in the despairing wounded of what their suffering and their death will cause to many a loved heart at home, to one heart often whose life they believe, and with truth, to be knit to their own. I don't wonder at the refusal of the French to allow any such aid to their foe, as permitting the French wounded and Prussian wounded in Prussian custody to be taken into Belgium, that they might have better chance of being saved alive or better dealt with, to die with less want of care. The more of your enemy that die the greater injury to his ' Fatherland ; ' are they not his children ? Living, they might live to his use ; no, in this modern atrocity of war feeling, the mowed crop, dried to death, is the gain to the mower ; it cripples the future hour of peace when it comes ; it weakens the national muscle ; we may fight now, shake hands when peace is proclaimed at last, but there is a grim satisfaction in the fact each did its best to let peace come on the other after every the worst fruit of war. So it goes forth, ' Huddle our wounded and your own as you 1870 WARS 289 may, into every conceivable substitute for a hospital ; let the atmosphere proclaim the fact, as passing breezes catch up the wound-tainted air ; take our own " braves " to help this process, the more you have of them the more they will cost you — us nothing ; are they not crippled ? Useless to us, for they are like burst guns, spiked cannon ; worse, they eat, drink ; they bleed, and you must do something with them, they help to diminish your " means ; " above all, they may help to work a pestilence ! ' All this, Sir, in the day when one Church knows, as she says, infallibly, the mind of God and Christ. All Churches believe in humanity as a principle of religion, and preach hell or heaven, as man dies prepared and in charity. What can England do ? As yet, I see nothing more than look on — indignant, but compassionate. As regards the war itself, we all have our own views of what we may individually consider the conduct of those who brought it about ; but in the name of our common humanity, not to say only in that of our common Christianity, let us put aside all feeling as to the cause of the awful carnage, and throw all our energies into the work of endeavouring to alleviate some of its horrors. The dead we cannot recall ; their existence is where living man cannot reach — in the unseen land of our common future ; we can but hope for the mercy there is only One can now show them. The yet alive, to be found in bruised and battered tenements of mortality, cry aloud to us. The cry is not one of tongues : come it in French or Prussian language, it is the human voice ; let us heed it. I know something now of the working of the National Society in Aid of the Sick and Wounded. Able, active men, thoroughly versed in the ways of the world— a great point — aided by the best professional advice, are straining every possible means, not only to raise funds, money, but to secure the utmost amount of things most pressingly wanted in war hospitals : they have skilled and authorised agents with both armies. I know it to be their wish that all that England can do to help them shall be received as aid, simply, to the sick and wounded, without any reference to nationality. They have already published, as I am advised they will yet again publish, the plainest directions to those who would help them how best to do so. As one now grown old, and little VOL. I. U ■■ 9 o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 27 capable of work of any kind, who yet has in a long life received at the hands of the public much support, much encouragement, in his endeavours to aid humanity, I once more plead to that public to meet the views of this society — nay, more, every society which can show it can execute what it undertakes, by giving money, by promoting systematically the provision of those special matters which are now so cruelly needed for the French and Prussian sick and wounded. The Red Cross. September 27, 1870. It seems to me advisable that public attention should be called once more to the real nature of the work Colonel Lindsay and his colleagues have undertaken, and are with such single- minded devotion now carrying out. They have voluntarily undertaken a trust and a responsibility for which there is no precedent, involving work the full amount and nature of which no one could have foreseen. The object they have in view is to accept whatever amount of money the charity of the land will place in their hands in aid of the sick and wounded of both sides in the present Continental war. A sum fast approaching 200,000/. has come into their hands, and the stream of contribu- tions shows little abatement. They undertook to receive and forward to the war hospitals any amount of the material such hospitals required. Hundreds of tons, in varying quantities, of many descriptions, sorted and unsorted, have been sent them from all parts of the kingdom, until all the warehouse room they could procure has been literally choked. There is also a very large amount of material, but a small quantity of which can be thus acquired, yet most necessary, which they have out of their funds to purchase as they best can. They have to seek out, salary, and despatch a staff of surgeons and personal material to the different scenes of suffering. They have to establish foreign agencies to secure the proper despatch to their destination of all their hospital stores. They have to keep up, often under the greatest difficulty, communication with the authorities abroad, through whose sanction and local aid 1 87© WARS 291 they can alone expect to do any real work, or know where it can best be done. When they have ascertained what is most needed, where, and how they can convey it through all the difficulties and dangers which the state of war produces to hinder traffic of any nature, there is yet the work to be done of sorting the mass of material in their possession, so as to meet the requisitions from different scenes of operation for particular species of it ; there is the work of securing the transit of the goods from this country across the Channel, so as to have them delivered as speedily as possible at the separate agencies to which they are directed. Consignees of specie to a large amount, they have to go into the market, to use all a trader's caution to make good investment where they have to purchase. Consignees of goods, they have to seek out the best and cheapest methods of despatch ; to regulate the streams of miscellaneous goods, so that the amount required from each of any particular kind should as quickly as possible flow to where the call is most urgent for it. Just in proportion to England's zeal and charitable warmth, affording specie and material, is the zeal, as genuine and honest, to advise the Committee by letter of various opinions the writers entertain as to the best mode of action in dealing with these gifts. Charity at this white heat becomes sadly inconvenient in the matter of correspondence. Where so many are at work there is a daily craving for knowledge as to how they can best work, a craving still to do more ; even to go to any spot, any- where to do it. The utmost untiring work of hands seems to thousands of excited hearts no valve of escape for that yearning spirit, which, reading the daily blood-stained page of the war, is impatient under the seeming necessity to work only at home. The mere work of acknowledging each day the daily consign- ments of money or goods is a task itself of no little magnitude ; add to this the task of answering the letters of the vast host who write ' to be informed,' ' to suggest,' ' to advise ; ' add to this again that host of communications which commercial instinct produces wherever a large sum is to be disbursed in ' purchase,' and where thousands of dealers seek to turn some of it into their own market — my surprise is that Colonel Lindsay and his u 2 292 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 27 colleagues, the Ladies' Committee, the whole staff in St. Martin's Place, have borne the heat and burden of a work such as no department with the most practised staff and greatest space for its operations have ever had to encounter. Now, Sir, what I urge is this — had not these gentlemen been well known as men of ability, of a position in life which proved they could have had none but the purest motives to lead them from the first to undertake what they did, the confidence hitherto so nobly reposed in them never would have been shown. Among them are men who have won honour in war ; some are well known as men of the highest repute in matters of finance, home and foreign ; it is known they have, as medical advisers, some of the highest rank and skill in the profession. None of us out- siders can form any real idea of the hourly call on their adminis- trative power — the perpetual cropping up of fresh calls for work, and of obstacles in the way of its performance day by day. If England's generosity throws on them fresh responsibility, there is the greater call for English forbearance from anything which can distract them in its exercise or add to that labour, which now must be far more than any of them could ever have contem- plated. Let us, then, one and all, not only continue to them that measure of confidence they have nobly earned, but rest content in the belief that they will still deserve its continuance, being ever slow to believe, where shortcoming is in any matter imputed to them, that it has any foundation in their want of will and action to have prevented it. It is ever to be borne in mind that, however gratefully help may be received by the French or German hospital administra- tion, the fact that it is at all wanted is more or less a reflection on their own failure to have provided what we offer ; that in the very nature of things there must arise some jealousy on their part if our interference, however really valuable, becomes of a character they may come to think intrusive. There has, I feel well assured, been much the subscribers to this noble fund and the committee may have earnestly desired to see done, which to have attempted might have endangered the power to do what has already been achieved. It must have required no little tact and skilful dealing with the prejudices and tempers, national and i87o- • WARS 293 personal, of the authorities, military and medical, to have gained that ground for this Christian work already obtained. Just as it is impossible at this moment to calculate the exact amount of liability in the way of money disbursements, for which the com- mittee have made themselves responsible, so is it altogether impossible to foresee to what extent that liability may yet be increased, or to form any sound judgment when it may altogether cease. At the present moment, however great the amount of material at their disposal,- however large the balance at their bankers, day by day proves there is no cessation of requisitions from their foreign staff for that help in specie they are as yet able to meet, in material much of which can only be bought here, for active medical and other staff scarcely to be obtained at any cost, and for materials in store to be despatched to the destination at a very heavy outlay. When by God's mercy this awful war has taken its blood- written record into the realms of past history, when its life of strife shall have become as a tale that has been told, when all that have been stricken for death are gone, and those of the wounded who remain, war-stamped but not war-slain, have found again their homes and what there may have been left to them ; when Colonel Lindsay and his corps may at last strike their well-known ensign, I, for one, have no fear but such an amount of self-denying, hard work will be proved to have been done in this cause, such evidence afforded of the thorough honesty and impartiality of every feature of its administration, that England will have good reason to be proud that her people of every class and creed nobly responded to this uplifting of the Red Cross appeal to their sympathy. 294 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. CHAPTER X. CORN LA WS. At the date of the following letter the country was in the thick of the agitation produced by Peel's proposed surrender of the Corn Laws, which were repealed in the Corn Importation Act that received the Royal Assent on June 26, 1846. Mr. Bankes and the Corn Laivs. February 3, 1S46. ' A great landowner might exist, and even receive large returns from his property, without any tenants at all. By employing bailiffs, who were much cheaper than tenants, he would obtain the same return that he received now.' — Speech of G. Bankes (' Dorset County Chronicle '). Of all the odd things, of all the unhappy and unwise things, which the leading exponents of the agricultural mind have given utterance to, surely none have exceeded in oddity and folly the above specimen of reasoning, said to have been spoken on a late occasion by the pet member for Dorsetshire, the self-appointed defender of the ' Coverley ' interest, G. Bankes. How has the learned gentleman arrived at his most sapient conclusion — ' that great landowners may receive large returns from their property, under the new policy, if they will employ bailiffs instead of tenants ' ? How has he arrived at the fact that ' bailiffs are cheaper articles than tenants ' ? To what market are the ' Coverleys ' to carry their samples of bailiff-grown wheat to receive the same for it as they do now ? Are we about to have a ' Bankes on Soils,' to supersede ' Morton,' proving to us some new capabilities, only needing development at the hands of active bailiffs, guided by the known intelligence of great land- owners ? — has he discovered that the landlords could, without any inconvenience, at once provide all the capital that the tenants now invest in the land, and that they might be sure, after paying the salaries of their bailiff staff, to yet make as great a return 1846 CORN LAWS 295 under the 4?. duty as they have done through their tenants under the late sliding scale ? Is he prepared to prove that the great landowners are ready to take upon themselves to pay the poor's-rates on their estates, to themselves employ all the poor ? If so, I trust he is prepared to defend them against the storm of public contempt to which they would at once be subject, if, when making these great re- turns, they dared to leave their peasantry to struggle for bread and shelter as they now do. Has he joined the League? Would Bright himself have ever proposed to turn Peel's ' proud aristo- cracy ' into a race of corn dealers, who, having exterminated the race of tenants, are to appear themselves on the market stage,. the vendors of the produce of their own industry ? Is it for this, that Richmond and his colleagues of the great Agricultural Society have been so assiduous in their study of fat and lean kine, in their attention to all the details of ploughing, dunging,, dibbling, &c. ? Can it be true that they have given their most serious consideration to the important question, how they can become useful members of society, and have resolved to quit the- Court and the course for the market and the barn ? Or is it, Sir, that, looking at the tenant farmers as on the brink of ruin, and having a certain pricking of conscience in the matter of that ruin, after hurling this argument at the Premier, and at the same time by its force on the fears of the tenantry having brought them to a proper state of humility, the ' Coverleys ' propose offering the bailiffdoms of their respective farms to their present tenant occupants, taking the live and dead stock at a valuation,, paying for the money yet sunk in the land, and then giving a fair salary to them to farm as agents ? If so, I have no hesita- tion in saying that three-fourths of the tenant farmers of Mr. Bankes's own county will jump at the offer : let them invest their capital on mortgages at 4 per cent, (there would soon be plenty to be had), and give them their present houses and a very moderate salary, and they would be too happy to change the uncertain and harassing business of a tenant for the light, easy, and interesting pursuit of a farming bailiff. But what is to become of the political importance of landed property ? — how arc voters to be provided when tenants have 296 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 3 been exterminated ? I fear some noisy orator of the League has corrupted this Bond Street Boanerges, and that he actually contemplates the fabrication of county votes. If so, let me re- mind him that he must deduct the expense of the 40s. rent- charges from the great return he expects under his new system, unless he purposes to qualify the bailiffs, under bonds of sale, if discharged from their office. What, too, is to become of market-table popularity ? Cheer- ing of a hundred-bailiff-power would be but a very faint echo of the grateful noise which in past years has ever greeted the popular protection member from his applauding constituents. Really, Sir, I cannot fathom the depth of these dicta of the hon. member. He must either be grossly ignorant of the real con- dition of the tenant farmer, and the value to an estate of a tenantry who, paying the full value of their occupations, are content to hold them subject to their landlords' will, relieving him of all the anxiety attached to land cultivation and labour employment ; he must be speaking in jest ; or he must be classed amongst those who in a moment of urgent trial come forward as champions in a cause which, by their utter folly, they injure more than serve. I, Sir, rejoice in the plan proposed by Sir R. Peel, and I believe the country generally are well satisfied with it : if the tenant farmers were let alone they would be much less irritated about it than they now arc ; but those who have led them into the mess seem disposed to make it as unpalatable as possible to them. Sooner or later the days of protection must have ended, and surely they ought to rejoice that this measure is propounded by one whose political sagacity they have been so long taught by their landlords to reverence. If ever men had a just claim for compensation, they have it from those to whom, or to whose candidates, they have so long given their votes, on the expressed understanding that the Minister of their landlords was their pro- tecting genius : that he may have deceived the said landlords is their look-out, not that of the tenant farmers. Because the leaders of a great party have blundered, and are blundering, are the voters who gave those leaders their strength to be greeted with such idle implied threats as that the genus farmer is to 1846 CORN LAWS 297 cease and yield its place to the genus bailiff ? Common justice demands that the loss of the contemplated change should not fall wholly on the tenant, but that the landowner should at once come forward and take his share. As for the senseless agitation against the measure which it is endeavoured to raise, it is utter folly : the nation will have the measure ; the section who are leagued to oppose it have no representatives capable of govern- ing the country ; the leaders of the two great parties in the State are for it ; what can exceed the folly which would rouse all the angry feelings of a bitter strife that can tend to no good ? Are the agricultural interest, as represented by the great landowners, in a condition in which it is wise to draw more than ordinary attention to their affairs ? I think not. The measure of the Minister seems to me calculated to better the condition of the labourer ; for I firmly believe the land will be better culti- vated, and every interest connected with it in the end better looked to. I say not but that there may be present loss ; but it is better to bear this than to provoke inquiries which may elicit evidence of the utter neglect, the wanton ill-usage, to which the actual tillers of the land have been exposed in the palmy days of protection. Let the landlords, if they choose to do so, abuse Peel to their hearts' content ; let them call that man foolish and rash whom they have so long upheld as absolute wisdom ; the public will make great allowance for men who certainly have much reason to complain ; but the public will not pardon an opposition founded on friendship for the tenant farmer, love for the labourer, in those who have grasped competition rents from the former, and have treated the latter as a nuisance. There are many able, and honourable, and kind landowners, may they now save us from the folly of some of their brethren ! The ' adder ' in the following letter was Mr. Disraeli. ' Punch ' had at the time a caricature of Peel as a file being gnawed by the late Lord Beaconsfield ; the idea being suggested in this letter. April 14, 1846. The debate on the second reading of the Corn Bill, though very dull in itself, may prove very useful to the country. It is 298 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 14 surely much to be desired, that we should have ample oppor- tunity of studying the characters and acquirements of the party which seems inclined to arrogate to itself the possession of the real confidence of the country. It matters little at the present day what were the colour and age of the particular geese by whose timely hissing a capitol was saved in ancient days ; but if it had been known in those days that these particular geese were to play so important, so patriotic a part, we cannot doubt but that they would have occupied no small share of public attention — their personal appearance and character would now be matters of history. I think, Sir, it was Miss Edgeworth who wrote the story of the ' Barring Out,' in which certain rebellious little boys are represented as shutting themselves in, and exclud- ing their master from the schoolroom, by means of certain laths, they being determined thus to keep their master in the distance until he had given up some point of discipline offensive to them. The commissariat of the rebels had provided buns for food, and- a few pounds of candles to light up their fortress ; they were for some hours very brave, but the hose of a fire engine being in- serted through the ceiling put out their lights, spoiled their buns, wet them through, and forced them, eventually, to capitulate, under a force of circumstances that made them look very foolish and act very humbly towards the triumphant pedagogue. Since the Peel school has become a ' free school/ some of his pupils have become very riotous, very disobedient, and very foolish ; they want to bar him out of Downing Street, that they may set up some new master, with less cleverness to expose their duncehood, and less determination to force them to make progress in their legislative lessons ; the laths, and the buns, and the dip-candles of Miss Edgeworth's boys were fully as equal to the exigencies of their warfare as are the obstructions the pro- tectionists can offer to Peel's power ; the support they can afford to themselves without him, the light in which they can work against him ; they talk very big to each other, they threaten very loudly, they first try one of their party's powers to lead them, and then, when he fails, they put forth another ; and, if we are to believe them, the talent they have hitherto displayed is as nothing to the stock they have on hand in concealment. 1846 CORN LAWS 299 But what, after all, must be the end of the struggle between the political pupils and their master ? The pedagogue in the story- book might have sent for two gardeners, a pickaxe, two ushers, a cane, and a rod, and have at once knocked in the door of the school, and forthwith have caned and birched the little rebels into submission ; but he preferred leaving them a little while, to quarrel amongst themselves, to learn their own weakness and folly, and then to raise the siege by means which would throw ridicule on the whole affair. And, Sir, who can doubt but that the present contest will come to an end in a way equally ridiculous ? The adder that gnawed the file, and believed its own blood to be that of its iron antagonist, was not more innocent in its spiteful attempt to injure, more mistaken in its estimation of its powers of injury, than are the leaders of the protectionist party ; spitefully spitting their venom at one so much above them, that it only falls back upon, to foul themselves. They are fast wearing out the patience of the public, who in this country, happily, never sym- pathise with a party whose motives are obviously more personal than political. Are these gentlemen so blind to the expression of public opinion, that they cannot see into how much contempt their present course must inevitably bring the very cause they affect to advocate ? Are the landed proprietors of England so blind to their own interest, as not to perceive that no injury from the Corn Bill itself can do them the harm that the nature of the opposition offered to it is doing them ? Is the whole commerce of this great nation to be impeded, all trade to be suspended, in order that a few chairmen of quarter sessions, a few young noblemen and country squires, may vent their spleen and indignation at what they call the betrayal of their party, by carrying on a useless contest against a majority, their superiors in every single quality on which a safe and wise system of legis- lation depends ? Eclipsed, as the old hack leaders of the Covcrleys have been, by the sudden and earnest co-operation of one hitherto as great at Tattersall's as unknown at St. Stephen's — do they really think that a certain readiness with figures and that bold species of declamation that hides weak reasoning under strong assertion and savage personal attack, can afford 3oo THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 14 their cause any real abiding aid ? If office could now be won, as a kingdom once was, by the neighing of a horse, Lord George would be perhaps the most likely man in the kingdom to manage such an affair successfully ; but it is drawing rather too largely upon the good sense of the nation to suppose that the reasoning and experience of a Peel are to be put aside to make way on a great political and commercial question for the dicta of one whose faculties have hitherto been devoted to the dealing with the chances of the turf rather than the exigencies of the state. We hear a great deal from these gentlemen on the subject of their betrayal : they argue ' Sir Robert accepted our support and thus gained his high position, knowing that we, as a party, would never yield the question of protection ; he, therefore, has now betrayed us, by himself becoming the Minister about to carry a measure of free trade.' Now, let us admit that he did owe his position to the party of which the protectionists are a section ; his defence stands on two grounds. The official re- ports received by the Government on the state of the potato crop in Ireland forced on him the conviction that restriction on the importation of corn must be relaxed. The force of public opinion on the question of free trade in corn convinced him of the difficulty of making the suspension of the import duty a temporary measure ; he therefore saw no alternative, but either to leave the expected famine in Ireland unprovided against, or to bring forward such a measure as that now in progress. It yet remains to be proved whether his fears about Ireland were or were not well founded, and, therefore, whether the present measure, as one of precaution, was not really called for. If he betrayed his party in thus acting, it has been by allowing any force of circumstances whatever to change his policy on a point on which he must have known any change would be most offen- sive to those who had so long and so strongly supported him. We must admit the force of the accusation, and be content to rest his defence on that evil principle, in which, however, he has at least on one memorable occasion been supported by many of his accusers, viz. that circumstances do occasionally occur making that which is in itself morally right politically inexpe- dient : on this rests his justification ; he yielded private friend- 1846 CORN LAWS 301 ship and old political ties to the more pressing force of public opinion, and fear for the public safety. But we are also bound to remember that he is not at this moment, in real fact, the Minister of any party, but rather the Minister of circumstances. He resigned office ; it was found impossible to find any other Minister who could undertake the government ; he returns at the request of his Sovereign, not at the instigation or by the support of any known political party. His betrayal of his old party in making the proposals he did to his Cabinet, if unjustified by the official information he possessed of the condition of Ireland, and the inevitable approach of a time when free trade principles must triumph, cannot, it is true, be excused on the grounds that he is not the Minister of his former party, but of a particular crisis, if he wilfully provoked that crisis himself. The events, then, of the next few months must test, if not his honesty to his party, at least his wisdom in sacrificing it for the general welfare of the country ; they will prove whether he sought to produce a crisis to justify the aban- donment of old principles, or whether the shadow of an inevit- able crisis forced on him considerations productive of that change in opinion which he avows, on which he is acting, and for which he is exposed to a harassing personal opposition from his old friends and supporters not more trying to him than dis- creditable to them. In common justice, let us wait the issue of the next few months before we exalt the wisdom of the country gentlemen so much above that of this great statesman as to brand him with the imputation of ignorance, as well as treachery, on such grounds as those as yet brought against him. And now, Sir, permit me to ask, how many of this very party would now have had seats in Parliament had they in their addresses, at the last election, announced that they were pre- pared to vote with the Minister in support of such measures as the Tariff, and the Canada Corn and Maynooth Bills ? They were not pledged to the ultra-protection or ultra-Protestant in- terests on such measures as these ; but did they not obtain their seats from constituencies who would not have returned them unless they had believed them to be trusted on them ? Dared they on the hustings have avowed themselves so pliant as they 302 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 14, 1846 proved on those measures, and on that ever memorable division on the Factory Bill, which stamped with their sanction the — to me — fearful principle, that that may be politically right which is acknowledged to be morally wrong ? If Sir R. Peel has betrayed the agricultural members by his present cpurse, their betrayal to him on former occasions of the constituencies they represented could, I think, as easily be proved. The tenant farmers relied on their members and the landowners who chose them, not on the Minister ; that the 50/. tenant voters have been deceived I know very well, but I look in other quarters than Downing Street for their deceivers. The public would have sympathised with any reasonable de- velopment of Miso-Peelism, any reasonable outbreak of Pedo- phobia ; they who so lately loved and so loudly praised him might have been pardoned that amount of angry opposition necessary to thoroughly develop their hatred of him, for his late seeming contempt of them ; but, Sir, Ireland is not to starve, the trade of England is not to come to a stand-still, all legisla- tion is not to be hindered, in order that those who have already exhausted every known source of vituperation should go on hashing up and serving up, again and again, sneers that from use have lost all point, and arguments offensive, because they were weak and have become stale. The Newmarket spring meetings are commencing ; Lord G. Bentinck will prefer his interest in the Jockey Club pasture estate to that of the squires in their less exciting defence of the produce of their arable estates ; quitting the study of blue-books, he will soon be deep in the mysteries of his betting-book ; with him they have, though weak, just escaped death by ridicule ; without him, further opposition will only make their overthrow not less certain, but infinitely more humiliating. 3°3 CHAPTER XI. S ANITA TION. The late Sir Edwin Chadvvick may be said to have invented sanita- tion about 1845. In him S. G. 0. had a lifelong friend, and of him he was the warmest ally. The Metropolitan Sanitary Commissions. December 27, 1847. A board is now sitting in London to conduct an inquiry as to the means requisite to improve the health of the metropolis ; it consists of five members who are known to be thoroughly in earnest in the matter, and to possess every capacity likely to ensure a useful result to their labours. They have made their first report ; it is one which will well repay perusal, for it tells a tale which must come home at least to every metropolitan breast. It seems clear that there is every probability that we shall before long be subject to a visit from the cholera, and it is as clear that whilst we have a considerable stock of food, i.e. dirt, for its maintenance and propagation, we are nearly without any rules for its proper, successful medical treatment, we are in a condition to show the utmost hospitality to the dreaded guest ; we can house and feed it after its own heart, and if it was a welcome guest right merry should we be to see it at our Christmas fes- tivities ; but it so happens that this visitor brings death and terror in its train — death which defies the doctor, and terror pre- disposing for that death. I know of but one way in which you can get rid of a visitor who seeks a lodging you are not disposed to offer him — find out what he requires for his comfort and take care that he has it not. If he loves to sleep on a feather bed take care that he has a hard, knotty, workhouse sort of a mat- tress ; if he likes warmth, put a brick or two up the chimney and make it to so smoke that his fire cannot be lighted ; hard 304 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 27 beer, raisin wine, and the baby in the next room to him, with a few other decided inhospitable hints, will probably cut short his visit. Failing these, you can but try and borrow money of him and you are sure of a speedy departure. Now, the Metropolitan Health Commission seem disposed to act on this common sense view of the case ; they have ascer- tained the exact nature of those things which are most inviting to the cholera, the particular localities in which it most loves to take up its abode, the particular class of persons it chiefly loves to embrace. As with typhus so with cholera, the first attraction is a vitiated atmosphere. Both these devourers of human exist- ence flourish best in a climate thoroughly impregnated with the odours of decayed vegetable and animal matter ; a pure air is their destruction ; they wing their flight over the localities which are blessed with the cleanliness which removes to a dis- tance from the abodes of man those decaying matters which are as offensive to every well regulated sense as they are deleterious ; they stop in their course to alight and settle where they find man in close contact with dirt of the worst quality, in quantity sufficient to depress those physical energies on which his health depends. What carrion is to the vulture and the raven, bad drainage and overcrowded dwellings are to typhus and cholera. If, then, we would greet these destroyers of our kind, if we would court their presence, we have only to take care that they find multitudes living in lanes and alleys in which there is no drainage, or in which the drainage is inefficient, where open cesspools and accumulated heaps of a filth unnameable abound ; pack these multitudes together in close unventilated rooms, let the habits of their lives be, as they almost ever will be, in keep- ing with the atmosphere around them, and you have spread the banquet and prepared the lodging which will ensure the advent of typhus at all times ; at this particular time — will in all pro- bability also ensure the visit of cholera. Having ascertained thus much of the habits of these plagues, the Commission has pointed out on clear evidence that, like my unwelcome guest, typhus or cholera, in possession, can only be ejected by depriving them of these essentials to their abiding. Loving dirt, we must offer cleanliness ; an air that stinks being 1847 SANITATION 305 the air they love to breathe, we must banish stink — (I wish I could find a more civilised word, but it is a libel on the word smell to apply to these matters) ; seeking a dwelling in rooms whose walls are painted with a thick coating of smoke and animal exhalation, laid on in combination, we must disturb their rest, by scraping off this inviting paint, and laying on that which is the object of the worst hate of typhus — a coat of quick- lime ; hating ventilation, we must boldly ventilate. Let me add to this stock of commission-found experience, that which I have again and again remarked — that typhus has peculiar notions as to the bed on which it loves to lie and mutter its wild delirium ; it hates clean sheets — it cannot have too many companions in bed with it — it likes to have its bed-fellows sleep unwashed — it loves to see the floor beneath its bed one mass of accumulated woollen and other rags — a head or two of old herrings and a few rabbit-skins add much to its sense of domestic comfort ; I have again and again seen it sulk, rebel, and quit when I have offered to those with whom it has taken up its abode, clean bed- linen ; when I have forced their own bed-linen and furniture into a washing-tub, the water of which has been impregnated with chloride of lime ; I have seen a fair fight between typhus and a clever M.D., in which the latter was getting the worst, put to an end, and typhus forced to yield to chlorine preparations or bark, simply by the removal of about half a barrow load of rags from under the bed. I have again and again seen it driven from a locality by a little pains taken to either lessen the number sleep- ing in one room, or, where that was not possible, the taking steps to ventilate the room. That the report of the Sanitary Commission will effect much good in the metropolis I have no doubt, and for once I think we may see the law forward in the prevention of evil, rather than waiting the time when it is forced to aim at its remedy. . I am not sanguine enough to suppose that all that is necessary to save the poorer classes from the liability to cholera under which they lie, can be done before the enemy reaches our shores ; but I feel convinced that the public mind is at last alive to those causes of pestilence which have so long been cherished in the very heart of the metropolis ; that these causes will now be attacked with VOL. I. 306 THE LETTERS OF S. C. 0. Dec. 27 an earnestness and under a direction that will enforce their mitigation to a great extent, and will at last remove them as far as they are capable of removal. The real condition of the very poor of the metropolis has now for some years occupied a great deal of public attention, but alas ! has not enlisted any great amount of public sympathy ; myriads have sunk, in misery, ignorance, and want, into graves as unfitted to receive them in death as their abodes were to shelter them in life. The sanitary epicureanism which has sought out with zest every possible condition under which human beings have been forced by poverty to live in close contact with the causes which generate disease — conditions which so familiarise man to the endurance of a life under a worse than piglike aspect, that, like the brute itself, he is heedless of the filth amongst which he dwells — has of late years become rather fashionable and very successful in the object of its search ; even my friend Chadwick must have almost had his appetite for the discovery of these matters destroyed by the very abundance of the feast he has found spread out for his study. Let us, how- ever, be thankful that he has survived these his most useful voyages of discovery. Alas ! Dr. Lynch and other most valu- able men have given their lives, and left their families to poverty, or what nowadays is the same thing — a nation's gratitude — in this task of public benefit. The man who is paid to stand in the ranks and fight his country's enemies, if he dies, is honoured in his death, and a pension is given to his widow ; if he lives, he bears a medal on his breast, and at last himself obtains a pension. A bold, unflinching, liberal professor of divinity, who falters not at the onset of a legion of academic authorities, robed in all the splendour of 'head of house' majesty, armed with all the weapons of antiquated orthodoxy, receives his re- ward from the Liberal Minister in the shape of a mitre. Con- test a county or buy a borough, so that you do it for party's sake, and when your party is in your reward is sure ; black your face, call yourself Ethiopian, be an adept at serving up grimace with the accompaniment of a voice tuned to harmony with other of your brethren who have taken the Ethiop's skin, and the grateful nation will pour thousands at your feet ; come with the 1 847 SANITATION 307 simple grace of a Jenny Lind, to bewitch with such song as hers, and there is no bound to the amount you may draw from the purse of a British public. The ministering to the nation's pride, the furthering the interests of political party, activity in polemi- cal strife — anything that will startle ; to amuse — be it by means which border on the limits of vulgarity, or which lift us at once to the perception of that which is most refined, so that it is new and startling, John Bull will pay for most liberally. Do as Dr. Lynch and two or three others have done — give up hours, of value to your family, to devote yourself to the task of searching out, that they may be remedied, the causes that slay tens of thousands annually ; do this at the risk of your life ; do it in the teeth of daily contact with everything that can make your every sense revolt ; do it till you have forced on the public the value of your work ; go on, cheered thus far with the prospect of some success, to die of fever taken in that work — and what follows ? A few friends may raise a few pounds for your ruined family, Ministers shall build noble works of sanitary improve- ment on the foundation you have laid, they shall gain the thanks of the existing generation, a grateful record in history — your name shall be forgotten, and your family shall struggle on, less noticed, less assisted, than if by some lucky chance you had been made a supernumerary surgeon to a police force or had been the inventor of some successful ointment for chilblains. And now, Sir, one word upon the state in which, should cholera visit these shores, many of our smaller county towns and villages will be found, for I cannot see why life is not as valuable in the provinces as in the metropolis. It is laid down on good authority, that, where the causes which are known to generate typhus exist, there there will be predisposition to cholera, however isolated these localities may be. Are no pre- cautions to be taken with regard to those thousands of villages in which it is but too well known that fevers of low type almost always exist ? in which the inhabitants are in a condition always so physically depressed that they may be said to be in the best possible state for the ravages of this expected plague ? I know it for a fact, that there are many hundred so-called parish houses still existing in the agricultural districts, so crowded, so 308 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 27 entirely without drainage, or any of the commonest accessories to decency, that the worst cellars of Liverpool could hardly be in a worse state. The back lanes and suburbs of many of our county towns are much in the same condition ; there are hundreds of villages, many, to their shame be it said, on the properties of men whose rank and known wealth should forbid such a disgrace, in which the dwellings of the poor are little better than hovels ; — yes, in these days of attention to animals, it would seem, so that pigs and Devons, breeding ewes and brood mares, are taken care of, it matters little how a labourer is housed, if he has a thing sufficiently of the nature of a house to justify rent being charged for it ; as to any regard for decency, any attention to drainage, this is thought of in very few locali- ties. It is true, certain published researches of Liebig have turned the attention of some proprietors to the policy of erect- ing buildings which favour decency, though for that reason alone they would probably never have been built. In towns I have no reason to doubt but that the moment cholera is announced to be in the country, the several corpora- tions will take sufficiently active steps as regards the drainage and other matters which may require attention ; in the villages, where the proprietors or parish officers may chance to dwell in close contact with the poor, there would then be a great white- washing and drain emptying, &c. I have often observed, with regard to typhus, that when no entreaties of the board of guardians could get these matters rectified in villages where the poor were dying one after another, the moment a parish officer's child sickened all one could wish was at once done. There are, Sir, many thousands of labourers dwelling apart from any con- tact with the classes above them ; these are the parties whose lot is the most pitiable at all times, who, in a season of prepara- tion against such an enemy as cholera, deserve the immediate attention of the legislature. Let the union surgeons be at once called on to inspect and report on all parts of their respective districts, in which, from their experience, low fever is often prevalent, or in which they perceive remediable defects in drainage, nr other matters which may be likely to produce it. Let such a report be made at the request and at the expense of 1 847 SANITATION 309 Government. It is folly to suppose, that men unpaid as they now are would give the time and attention required for the pur- pose, for such a pittance as the boards of guardians would allow for it. Let them be required to state what they consider neces- sary at once to be done as a matter of instant precaution, what in their judgment they consider the best means of permanently amending the sanitary condition of these at present unhealthy spots. I have no hesitation in saying, that the evils reported on would very generally be of a nature admitting of much instant mitigation with very little machinery. A very short ' Act,' with a few very plain clauses, calling on all union, medical, and re- lieving officers, at all times to report the existence of certain clearly specified nuisances to the boards of guardians, or, what would be better, some district sanitary board, making it com- pulsory on the said boards to give the parish officers and parties concerned notice to remove or remedy such nuisances on pain of certain penalties, to be adjudged by two magistrates on good proof of their failure to do so ; charging every union surgeon with the responsibility of sanitary inspection as part of his office, to be paid for in addition to his present salary according to the population of his district ; — this I believe could be easily done, would cost but little, would save many a life, would tend to better the condition of the poor man by securing to him that which he cannot secure for himself — that though he may have to live in poverty it does not follow that he must live subject to causes sure to generate disease. Twenty-seven years of sanitation, improved dwellings, and better food had left their mark for good on the labouring classes. Much remained to be done, especially in the enforcement of the provisions of existing Acts. But S. G. O. is glad to note the changes he and his friend Chadwick had done so much to bring about. Sanitary Legislation. January I, 1874. It is indeed a thing much to be desired that legislation on sanitary matters should receive all possible support, for if :lean- liness is next to godliness, to be godly at all is very difficult, where all around is unclean. Those, however, who seem to me 310 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Jan. i to be the ablest speakers and writers on sanitary legislation are apt to forget that the real difficulty lies in the direction of the machinery to carry out what the law enacts. There can be no shadow of doubt that polluted water does produce typhoid and other disease ; that a very large proportion, especially of the poor, have no other water to drink but that which comes from a polluted source. It is equally true that crowded bedrooms — rooms in which from six to ten people who have small change of body clothing, still smaller of bed clothing, being of all ages and both sexes, working in all weathers for the most part out of doors, therefore for ever damped, and sweating for their bread in the clothes to be thrown on their beds at night, if taken off, must beget the exact atmosphere to produce low physique and to generate rheumatism and other chronic disease. It is not less true that to rear children in houses with damp floors, on which, very short-coated, they are for ever crawling, is an efficient process for the production of cripples in after life. It cannot be denied that if there is no latrine accommoda- tion for a cottage, the surface soil around it must be top dressed with fcecal matters, which will be washed into the nearest stream or filtered into the nearest well whenever it rains heavily. If there is such accommodation, but so limited that one latrine is common to some fifteen or sixteen people, and therefore soon becomes, as it were, a well-devised store of poisonous matters filtering through its walls into the ground, from which it again filters into the well or the stream water supply, this is as good a way as human ingenuity could devise for the permanent propa- gation of disease. The slops, &c, of the house are in general thrown just as far away from the path to the door as a woman's arm can ' chuck ' them. As a rule, this is a very short distance indeed. Now, Sir, I am thankful to admit that in the last twenty years there has been a great deal of real improvement in the dwellings let to the labouring classes. But I do most unhesi- tatingly assert that, taken on the whole, these dwellings in a very large proportion of our villages, in the great majority of our towns, are in a sanitary point of view utterly disgraceful. 1 874 SA NIT A TION 3 1 1 As yet, I believe, all which has been done under the present sanitary authorities, if rigidly inquired into, would resolve itseif into a very small compass. I should, indeed, rejoice to see a real independent commission at work investigating how much real work has been done compared with the machinery set to do it and the local noise made by local boards and their staff. We are inclined to assume that legislation is the enactment into law of whatever the nation at large holds to require the aid of the law to obtain ; but it is one thing to cry out for remedy against abuse, it is another to apply the remedy. We have local boards of health, with sanitary officers and inspectors of nuisances ; these are easily floated, but when they come into action then, and then only, do we find the difference between machinery with power and the power or the will to work. Elected by local influence, that same influence governs their work. There is not only ' wheel within wheel,' but a vis a tergo guiding every wheel from the outside. The elected are no more jobbery proof than those who elect them ; some show of work must be done, and to be done local dealers in labour and material must be preferred ; those who have the most friends on ' the board ' of course get the preference. The ratepayers generally, being the electors, of course, advocate the doing of as little work as can be done. If money is to be spent, the object is to give the local tradesmen the work ; their estimates, their bills, come before ' the board ' — their own child. Again, where is there town or village which has not its in- fluential ' magnate ' or ' magnates ' ? The custom of these is the life-blood of this or that, of many shops. Who of the boaid is to ' bell the cat ' which laps so much milk to the good of the local trade ? Who is to look the agent of the Marquis of Barabbas in the face when the inspector of nuisances says a tithe of his cottages are, according to the law, unfit for human habitation ? W T hat member of the board could walk the street in peace after directing notices to be served on the many owners he must meet of dwellings in Stink Alley and Noxmary Court, &c. ? Is not the medical sanitary officer the medical attendant of many of them? Is he not a member of the board? His inspector reports to him that in that court — that alley — the 312 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. I water supply is polluted because the latrine supply is non- existent ; as he feelingly looks into the nursery at the measled patients of the owner of Stink Alley, is he to gently hint to Paterfamilias, ' We (the board) have just condemned five of your houses on my certificate ' ? It is all very well, Sir, to ask for more legislation ; I am satisfied the wise course is to first see how far present legislation is really carried out. I am of opinion that if existing laws were put in force, gradually, but firmly, with tact if you will, but still with common honesty of purpose, a very great amount of good would be done ; quite as much as we have a right to expect. For where there has been long abuse, violent hasty remedy is apt to fail : an Augean stable can't be cleaned in a day ; broom power and hand training for the work are not to be found to order. That the work is sadly needed few have better means of knowing than myself. That it is sadly bungled in the attempt to do it, I have daily experience. But I must live to see local nature ' human,' very different from what I ever yet knew it before I expect to see local dirt swept away by local hands, if in the sweeping there is offence given to local influence. What we do want is — independent supervision over the action of ' boards,' to whom public money is lent, to whom is given the power of making rates for the work they order. As it is, they have all the power and all the temptation, to say nothing of compulsion, to undertake works which spend money ' in the place ' in matters of no real sanitary importance ; they are next to powerless to order the expenditure of money by those they fear to offend in those very matters which concern the very lives of the class in whose favour sanitary legislation professes chiefly to act. For your edification I enclose a paper showing the condition of a small portion of a town under the sanitary protection of a board of health. It is the printed result of inquiry made by a member of the local board. I could, if I so chose, supplement it with detail of far worse complexion in the same directions, from another portion of the same parish, where the mass of 1 87 SANITATION 313 the poor have to dwell in a condition utterly disgraceful to humanity ; I could, within a few hours' drive from where I write, show any sanitary authority hundreds of dwellings the construction and surroundings of which are in direct defiance of what the law now demands, and, for all I can see, may go on demanding:. 314 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 26 CHAPTER XII. CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREA TMENT. The Pentonville Model Prison was completed in* 1842. The Peni- tentiary at Millbank had lasted from 1816 to 1843, when it was reported a failure, and changed to an ordinary prison. The transportation system was near its end. The Cape Colony in 1849 successfully refused to admit convicts, and the Australian colonies shortly after succeeded in their opposition to a system begun in defiance of all reason, and pur- sued in defiance of all experience. The word ■ Maconochising ' was coined by S. G. O. from the name of Captain Maconochie, who devised and superintended the system of ' ticket-of-leave.' Prevention better than Cure. February 26, 1 847. Scarce a day passes over our heads but we have some fresh evidence afforded us of the utter failure of our present systems for the repression of crime. It is needless to go into the various experiments which have been made with a view to reform as well as punish the criminal ; there is a very general opinion that, in spite of all we have done, crime does increase, punish- ment effects little in the way of deterring from it, no really effi- cient means have yet been discovered to reclaim the criminal. Of one of our penal settlements the public will soon, I fear, have proof that we are fast turning it into a colony which in another age might well have been suspected of being an offshoot from one of the ' cities of the plain.' In other of our depen- dencies we have tainted the whole surface of society by inocu- lating it with a too liberal supply of expiree convicts, of whom I have heard it said it was difficult to say which were the worst, those who were said to have been reformed, or those who laid claim to no such distinction. I, for one, have great doubts whether Pentonville and Parkhurst, with all their penal and 1847 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 315 reformatory machinery, will ever succeed in making out of the raw material of home's worst guilt, juvenile and adult, anything that can be exported to any of our colonies, and not do them serious moral injury. I once asked a police officer about a certain young offender, on trial for a petty larceny, whether there was any chance of his being sent to Parkhurst ; his answer was that he believed it was required of them to do ' a pretty goodish felony ' before they were sent there. I believe the qualification for the Pentonville university don't differ very much from that required for Park- hurst public school ; at all events, in both seminaries it is neces- sary that the matriculating process should prove the intended pupil to be a convicted rogue. When Captain Maconochie undertook the moral cleansing of one of our worst penal settle- ments, he asked the Government for a grant of a certain number of instruments of music, a certain weight of music paper, pro- perties for theatrical representations, and rum to make punch with to drink the Queen's health on her birthday ; he also de- sired a complete library of entertaining and useful knowledge, with an assortment of fancy fireworks, and some chaplains. His aim was to humanise and loyalise this colony of beings, sent out as England's blackest criminals, and made still more awfully criminal under the circumstances of their foreign loca- tion. In our attempts to reform, as connected with our female penitentiaries, we act on a somewhat similar principle. To be very young and yet very degraded is the qualification for ad- mission ; we then surround the penitent with everything that can prevent the commission of sin ; we turn on a full flood of moral and religious advice, do all that zealous chaplains, earnest, kind, and judicious matrons, assisted by pious lady assistants, can do, to reform the character, holding out a hope, which we on our parts do our best to fulfil, that, the time of probation past, the penitent shall be sent back to society under circum- stances in which it shall be her own fault if she does not obtain the bread of honest industry. I have passed a day with the intelligent chaplain of Park- hurst, going with him through its every department ; I have passed a day in a model prison ; I have looked into the 3 i6 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 26 management of more than one penitentiary ; I have studied the reports of prison inspectors at home, reports on the penal settlements abroad ; I have seen much to admire in the pains taken to reform those whom the law and society must con- demn ; but I have seen no reason to wonder that juvenile crime is on the increase, that the penal settlements are becoming so full, and yet such very hells, that the Government may well hesitate before they send any more transports — I beg their par- don, ' exiles ' — to those settlements. It was said lately at one of the police offices by a young prostitute, ' that the streets could no longer find such as her bare bread, there were so many of them! The supply for the gratification of the lowest vice of the lowest men exceeds the demand in an age in which those who look into these matters will tell you there is a greater demand than ever ! This, too, don't astonish me, even when I have lying before me a catalogue of new churches built in the last twenty years, and a statement of money expended in pro- moting Christian knowledge, Christian education, spoken of in a language of almost boastful triumph, that would lead one to suppose there were none untaught, and but few who had not a seat at a place of Christian worship. The Church, Sir, has been very active, her members very liberal of money to aid her in her efforts ; the Nonconformists have been very diligent, and if not so rich in the dead stock of moral and religious advancement, yet daily sending forth their legions of pious and active teachers to try and make head against the growth of evil. As to the Legislature, I dare not venture on the sea of figures which could alone represent the cost and enterprise of the nation's work of attempted reforma- tion of her wicked children — what she has given and lent to aid the schoolmaster at home and abroad, to encourage the building of churches, to aid the law in making its sentence reformatory as well as penal, by Maconochising the convict abroad, and submitting him regardless of all expense to the reformatory discipline of model gaols and penitentiaries at home. Still, Sir, there is the sad fact that the fruit has borne no proportion whatever to the seed sown. The sanitary, the physical, the moral condition of the masses is in just as unsatis- 1847 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 317 factory a state as if the filth, want, and crime of tens of thou- sands of our poorer fellow-creatures had never been made evident. We do not let wasps breed in freedom, and then first try to destroy them one by one when they begin to plague us ; we try to keep down the breed ; we attack the nest. Men do not let filth accumulate in their wells, and then buy filters to make the water fit to drink ; they do their best to keep filth out from the first. Are we not, as a nation, seemingly content to let crime breed, and then try to catch criminals as we can ? Do we take any measures that can be called effective to remove the causes of social pollution ? Or is it not the fact that we do rather spend, our millions in a useless endeavour to pass the thoroughly pol- luted through the filtering process of such penal penitence as the systems of Parkhurst and Pentonville may produce ? Church and State have alike begun at the wrong end. They have aimed at the cure of evil they took too little pains to prevent. One symptom of a coming wiser course of action is the esta- blishment of ' Ragged Schools.' This is a step, and a very important one, in the right direction ; if persevered in, it will, I believe, considerably diminish the business of our criminal courts, and by direct action on the soil from which ' pretty good felonies ' spring will diminish the number of candidates for Parkhurst. I very lately visited one of these schools at Bath. I found in it about 1 30 juveniles of both sexes, evidently collected from the highways and byways of the city. A certain number of respectable persons gratuitously give their time and attention as teachers for three nights in the week, the chief local authority being vested in a very active, intelligent schoolmistress. The school was, I believe, set on foot by some of the clergy, aided by a few charitable residents. The girls were being taught plain work, but they are also taught to read and understand the Scriptures ; the boys were formed in classes, learning to read and write, &c. I was a witness to the examination of a class of boys, who read and answered questions on the fourth chapter of St. John quite as well as any class in any common parochial school. Several of this class were without shoes and stockings ; 3 i 8 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Feb. 26 the clothing of the whole of them would hardly have brought 2s. at a rag-mill. Great order prevailed, and I saw nothing the least like impertinence or levity; they evidently were most grateful for the pains taken with them. In the lineaments of the face and in the dress of the great majority you could at once read the plain tale that they were children reared, if not in the abodes of infamy, at least under circumstances of utter neglect and moral destitution ; no one for one minute would have thought of receiving them into any other sort of school. Here I had before me the evident gathering of the lowest hovels, the worst lodging-houses — the homeless and the un- taught ; there could be no doubt but that they were of those who, failing to obtain bread by begging, must obtain it by steal- ing, or worse — mere boys, whose breeding had made them familiar with the worst vices of the adult ; girls, bred in sin, reared where modesty could find no place, having known no shame, for they had been taught no virtue : they were, indeed, a sample of the field in which the police find their toil, from which the law gathers its harvest, to be garnered in its gaols and penal settlements. The doors of the school are open to any of that particular class ; to be uncared for and elsewhere untaught, on account of their rags or vagrant habits, would seem to be the only qualification. The regularity with which they attend, the progress that they make, and the easily proved fact, that though they may yet by their destitution be forced to beg, they are seldom heard of as detected in dishonesty, prove the value of the plan. Here the passed-on from union to union, the hunted of the police, those whose rags and dirt create loathing in every decent place, are welcomed. Amongst those who greet them kindly, who advise, teach, and encourage, are found persons of high rank, but of higher purpose ; they face, week after week, this scene of motley misery, that they may do the Christian work of seeking to save a class till lately left, in this land of churches, uncared for until steeped in sufficient crime to qualify them for the education of a gaol. I heard them sing a plain hymn ; I saw them addressed by a clergyman on what they were, what was offered them in this school, what it was hoped, through its means, they might become ; it was a tale of hope 1 847 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 319 told, I trust, in ears which had already learned to hear that there was hope even for such as they were. A signal was given, and on the floor of that building knelt a group highly illus- trative of the extremes of society ; there were some of the rank to which the worldly sycophant bows ; there were many of the ragged, from whom the proud and callous turn in disgust. I closely watched the scholars' faces whilst a prayer was offered to God embodying the needs of the orphan, the destitute, the hardened, and the penitent ; I looked, to gather in any one countenance proof of levity or mockery. I have ere now looked on congregations composed of the great of the world, the early educated, the ever cared for, those whose lips were early taught to pray, whose minds were shielded from early contamination ; I never yet saw in any congregation so close and almost universal an attention as that of those then before me. I left the room, thankful at heart that at last we seem disposed to put the axe to the root of the tree, that we are coming to the conclusion that it is better to seek the early eradication of vice by going to meet it in its nursery, than to wait its full growth and then first try to reclaim the vicious. I hail the establishment of these schools as the acknow- ledgment of a fact we seem to have forgotten, viz. that rags and filth are no bars to religious truth, that neither the powers of Church or State are justified in the neglect of any simply because they may have been reared amongst those whose neg- lected condition has stamped their minds with the early impress of vice and given to their bodies no covering but rags. Let us now hope that the establishment of these schools may lead us a step or two further in the right direction. If there are tens of thousands of children, whose rags, dirt, and evident depravity have excluded them from our schools, how many thousands of adults are there who, on the same grounds, find no place in our houses of worship ? We want, Sir, churches for the ragged. At present, Church and State alike leave undis- turbed in their ignorance and vice vast masses of our fellow- creatures, many of whom might be won to paths of industry and probity. Go over the whole of the acres that lie beneath church roofs in London ; hunt into every corner, in every hour 3 2o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Feb. 26 of divine worship, and then see how many you can find of those who are too poor to be decently clad. It is vain to argue that the tramp, the street idler, the profligate, the low prostitute, will not be taught. Have we tried to teach them ? Where will they find the master and the school ? Say that their appearance and certain concomitants of their filthy condition would drive away all respectable persons endangered with contact with them — say that the beadle only does his duty when he turns the half-naked from the church door, and bids them ' go about their business,' — you only arrive at the point at which I aim. Souls are clad in rags, souls live in frames on which vermin take their pastime, the most abandoned have souls. The thief on the cross, the woman who was a sinner, Lazarus with his sores — these were not beneath the notice of Christ, nor should they for one instant be beneath the notice of a Christian State, the care of a Christian Church. We have built churches for the wealthy ; never could such pray with such luxury, or be taught with such inducement to attend on teaching as at present. I ask not for buildings whose architectural beauties shall elevate the soul ; those whose cause I advocate are as yet incapable of such mental elevation. I ask not for the melody of an accomplished choir ; they who live in sin, and want food and clothing, have little in common with such harmony. I ask not for splendid altars, with all the glittering furniture and subdued bustle of many attendant scarfed and coped priests ; this would only awe to repulsion those who, as yet, have known no contact with any but the teachers and ministers of vice. What I would pray to see is a sufficient number of plain buildings, distinctive in cha- racter, as subsidiary to the church, plainly but conveniently fitted, placed in neighbourhoods where these poor creatures mostly dwell, avowedly appropriated to this class alone. Were I to invent a name, I would call them ' Lazarenes ' ; no question should be asked of any that entered the door, no matter what their evident calling ; to be poor, ragged, and evidently of a class that would feel shamed in any other place of worship, should be the title of admittance. The service I would have selected from our own, but with one or more forms purposely written as applicable to the class assembled. If in these days 1 847 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 321 of religious zeal no ordained clergy could be found who would, in a worldly sense, stoop to a work most noble in the eyes of God, why not employ some of the many well-informed pious laity who would volunteer for the work, keeping them under some stipulation which should bring them under the surveillance of the authorities of the Church ? Their commission should be to teach in the plainest language the plain truths of revealed religion, aiming by words of love and kindness to win the confi- dence of their congregation ; using all persuasion to lead them to seek that moral elevation towards which they should have every encouragement ; impressing on them day by day that Church and State both desire to seek their temporal as well as eternal good ; making them feel that we recognise no degree of debasement as excluding from our efforts to raise the debased ; patiently bearing with all the vexations of such a ministry, returning good for evil ; bold to rebuke, but kind and affec- tionate to win their regard. I do not for one moment doubt but that such a ministry amongst such a class would do im- measurable good ; it would be an honour to our Church, an invaluable aid to the spread of that order and honesty which every State is bound to promote. If it is true that four new bishops are to be appointed, to whom respect and authority will doubtless be given, not the less because they are not to be spiritual peers, may we not hope that the Church will not fear lest it lose caste by turning its attention, devoting some of its zeal to dealing with those who as yet have known no fold within its pale ? I cannot see that a minister whose church should be the plainest building with the plainest fitting, whose congregation should be in rags, would be either more lowered himself, or accessory to the lowering of the dignity of the Establishment, than the bishop who consents to wear the mitre shorn of the privileges of the peer. I for one should hail both events as indicative of a new and better era of the Church. Modern criminal anthropology tells us that the mere intellectual rudiments of education have little influence in preventing crime, though they have a distinct influence in modifying its forms. When S. G. O. first wrote on criminality, it was thought that the panacea for crime was VOL. I. V 322 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 7 education of the mind. The proportion of educated criminals is now very large. April 7, 1847. A comment has been made on a contribution to your columns under the above head, in the words, ' But if cure avert contagion, it is also prevention, and it is better than death in all cases.' To cure a fatal contagious disease, and thus check its extension, is, of course, preferable to letting it run its course, to the continued destruction of life. In urging the expediency of education as preventive of crime, I would neither decry just punishment to deter from it, nor any reasonable attempt to reform the criminal ; but I do assert, that it is the first duty of a Christian State to devote its utmost energies to the rearing of its people in habits of virtue, to the preserving them as far as may be from temptation to vice ; it is also its duty, I admit, to do its utmost to deter by punishment, and yet, in punishing, to seek the welfare of the individual criminal, as well as that of the community. The small-pox is a highly contagious disorder ; when it does break out we very properly do our best to arrest its progress, we isolate the affected as far as we can, and we do all that medicine can to cure them ; but the State, as well as most sensible individuals, promotes the process of vaccination, knowing that though it may not prevent all small-pox, it will and does prevent a good deal ; people who have the disease from their neglect of this well-known preventive receive little sympathy ; we count them very foolish. A low fever broke out in a certain part of a village I knew very well ; the doctors, relieving officers, &c, all said it arose from some dirty choked-up drains, and a great accumulation of decaying vegetable matter close to the cottages infected ; the parish went to no small expense for medicines, nurses, port wine, and other necessaries for the sick, funeral expenses for five or six who died ; a pro- prietor of a neighbouring block of cottages, as soon as the first of these cases occurred, had all his drains thoroughly cleaned and strewed with lime ; had all dung heaps and other impurities removed ; whitewashed every room, and thus, I believe, saved his tenants from the disease. I have often stood by the side of the beds of typhoid patients ; rags dipped in chloride of lime 1847 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 323 have hung on the bed-frame, almost touching my face, when, at the same time, I have had to pick my way to the door in danger of falling into an open cesspool, and have had to skip steps on the staircase to avoid other abominations. Now it is evident to the commonest observer that the prac- tice in this country has hitherto been, to apply the chloride of lime of quack reformation in pretty liberal quantities over the heads of the criminally diseased, but at the same time to leave undisturbed every possible source of moral contagion. We have hung, pilloried, whipped, treadwheeled, transported, worked in irons, &c, &c, &c, the criminals we have detected and con- victed ; we have indulged in all sorts of reformatory experiments on the convicts at home and abroad, sparing no expense in our endeavours to find some real use we can put a man to whom we have determined to be too bad to run loose here at home ; we have utterly failed as yet in inventing any sound system of secondary punishment ; but we have not failed in proving that, in the matter of removing the causes that induce crime, we have as yet scarce done anything. The disease is baffling us, the foul sources from which we derive it are open to the cognisance of every sense we possess. There is one public man living and in full force, known for a perseverance nothing can tire — a patience that seems to be soothed by abuse — a zeal that will admit of no hindrance — a power of acquiring and condensing and popularising the result of statistical inquiry almost marvellous — who is for ever pulling forth from all the odd corners and recesses of human life its most hidden sores — where can any moral filth be discovered, and my worthy friend Edwin Chadwick is not found stirring it, turning it over, analysing its pernicious power, proving the source whence it has arisen ?— he is, indeed, the great moral scavenger of the age. Where is there a class whose avocations can give them any experience as to the amount of physical or moral dirtiness existing, to the bane of any one locality, whose brains he has not picked ; giving to the public, in some popular form, the result of this his intellectual mudlarking ? Such is his zeal in the cause of sanitary reform, that, if I mistake not, he has been known to have had his hair cut in hot weather at a 324 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 7 shop in a certain alley, the door of which opened opposite to the grating of a sewer, in order that, during the operation, he might get out of the barber a bulletin of the health of the neighbouring houses, as to how far the effect of the said sewer operated to produce a certain amount of local disease. The sanitary and other reports on matters connected with the moral and physical condition of the poor in this kingdom, produced through his labour, will be, for many a year yet to come, evidence of a useful industry that in any other country would have met with the reward their value deserves ; at all events, they have left us without excuse as to ignorance of some of the chief sources of that degradation which fosters crime. Again, there is a thick blue-book, the report of an inquiry into drunkenness. The inquisitive in such matters may gather from its pages proof of a state of things almost baffling belief. He will there learn that infants at the breast are given gin to put them to sleep ; that the gin palace has its penny glass for the accommodation of its child customer. It is stated, that in fourteen such places which were watched, an average each week of 1,313 children entered each house ! It is proved, from the evidence of witnesses of all professions, that the State, for the sake of the duty on the spirits, licenses, &c, directly encourages these schools of crime ; it is proved that the spirits sold are adulterated with the most poisonous drugs ; that the gin-drinker becomes, at last, but too often a sudden victim of a disease produced by this habit, or ends his existence in hopeless madness ; it is proved, that the absence of proper control over these places makes them theatres for the exhibition of every vice — nurseries in which are reared a majority of those who die on the scaffold, or live out the law's sentence as convicts at home or abroad. The sanitary report proved how, amongst the poor, decency and health are pursued under almost insuperable difficulties ; the report on drunkenness proves how the indulgence of the most morally and physically pernicious of all vices is afforded every facility. Now turn to another blue-book, the Report of the Constabu- lary Force Commissioners, Mr. E. Chadwick being one of them : it is a perfect encyclopaedia of roguery ; there is nothing bad which you may not learn from it, — how to make and use the 1 847 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 325 apparatus fitting for picking the pocket of a gentleman ; how in picking a lady's pocket it is necessary in walking by her side to keep step with her ; the anatomy of window shutters, with prac- tical directions for the operation upon them of bolt excision ; the mechanical application of a very simple apparatus, by which a key is turned and pushed out of a front door, so as to fall within reach of a wire hook which can draw it under the said door for the use of the ingenious practitioner in burglary ; the architectural details of cellar windows, with proper specifications for such alterations in them as may promote forcible entry ; how to manipulate the nose of a fellow-creature so as to perform that twisting of its cartilaginous extremity which will cause pain sufficient to make him insensible to the abstraction of his watch ; the means of obtaining information for felonious purposes ; of disposing of property feloniously obtained ; the characters of various police officers in the United Kingdom ; the accommoda- tion to be obtained in its various gaols — in short, all that a thief ought to know and to do will be found given in a most popular if not pleasing form. This report forms, as a whole, very satis- factory evidence of the utter want of sufficient means for the prevention of crime — for the suppression of the thousands of existing causes which directly encourage it. Having now glanced at the official exposure made of the filth, drunkenness, and roguery of this civilised Christian state, my next step shall be to call attention to the official exposure of the ignorance, heathenism, and mere sensual vice of tens of thousands of the young. ' The Report of the Commission for inquiring into the Employment of Children and Young Persons in Mines, Collieries, Trades, and Manufactures, &c.,' will afford to any one who will take the trouble to peruse its pages proof of a state of ignorance and morals far beyond anything I have ever heard the most zealous of missionary deputations describe, as grounds for us, here in England, giving of our means to send the Gospel to heathen lands ; as to any knowledge of the Creator or Redeemer, in thousands of cases it does not seem to exist at all ; the answer given again and again to questions on these points are such that, if it had not been necessary to prove the fact, I should have regretted that they were ever published. The 326 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 7 wittiest and worst of infidels that ever lived could not have given answers more awful to any thinking person than those given, in a serious endeavour to speak truth, by these children. That swearing and habitual obscene conversation should be pre- valent amongst. a class who till lately were allowed, as children of both sexes, to work in the pits, in attendance on men who were perfectly naked, is not to be wondered at ; but the evi- dence given of the filthy juvenile depravity in word and deed of the young of both sexes in all the great manufacturing towns is perfectly horrifying, as it is most assuredly a shame on us, who, so ready to work in aid of philanthropic measures in other lands, have left this mass of moral corruption to spread and fester and pollute, unchecked, tens of thousands in our own land. As to the masses of children in London and its suburbs who are being reared in ignorance of everything that is not infamous ; and the masses of adults who have no place of worship into which they can enter, who are in fact as separate from any Christian com- munity as if they had no souls, this is so self-evident that it does not need any official report to prove it. There is much cause for thankfulness that the present Government does seem disposed to grapple with the difficulties of our social condition ; we have already evidence of more than one move in the right direction ; still, it will require all the known courage and perseverance of the Minister to confront and conquer the opposition he must expect ; so many have profited by the vice, ignorance, and misery of the lower orders, that there will be no slight outcry against any measures which may tend to elevate those whose depression has made them useful tools ; to teach those whose ignorance has made them easy dupes. The political and polemical disturbers of the day will lose no oppor- tunity of venting their party or sectarian prejudices ; the former will sing the old song, ' More patronage, more commissions,' simply because it is not their own party that has the disposal of them ; the latter cry out against anything that can be construed to favour the Church, simply because they do not belong to it ; have been bred to hate it. Let the Minister tender the means of education to the ignorant ; good air and cleanliness to the filth)' ; protection to the honest against the evil-doer ; the oppor- 1847 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 327 tunity of reform to the criminal ; still, however well-devised his measures, however pressing the necessity for them, because there must be offices to which the Government may appoint, or grants to schools in which that sectarian bugbear the Church Catechism may be taught, a cry arises that the liberty of the people is in danger, freedom of conscience is threatened. The same modest good sense which caused a legislator, who until lately was chiefly known as an oracle to the fraternity of the turf, to get up, and with all the assumed pomposity of matured but conceited statesmanship accuse the Secretary of Ireland as the destroyer of the Irish, because, while he fed millions with English money, he could give no return of the number of deaths that might have occurred from a state of things engendered by Irish neglect, will prompt other equally wise men to accuse the President of the Privy Council of a covert desire to favour the Established Church, to the detriment of the Nonconformists, simply because, in offering a broad scheme of educational encou- ragement to the million, the Church may chance to have her full share of the advantage. Happily, Sir, for the nation at large, Lord John knows something of the world, has been a good deal behind the scenes of political and polemical warfare, he has out- lived the day when a verdict on the goodness of any measure was to be taken from the evidence afforded by party clamour against it ; he can discern between the value of petitions result- ing from the conscientious opinion of the educated, and those signed by the unthinking, through a mechanism established to support the views of a few by this cheaply gained assent of many. I have no fear but that he will persevere, and that the good sense of the nation will support him ; he is looked to, in a true Conservative sense, as the Minister of the people ; as one who will seek that his reign in office shall be distinguished by this one characteristic — that the general social good of the people was its chief object ; that he was less mindful of the claims of party or sect than he was of the general good ; that he sought so to rule that, by the blessing of Providence on his endeavours, her Majesty's subjects should be preserved in wealth, in peace, in godliness. 328 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Oct. 19 In 1853 the nurseries of crime and moral degradation were either under the religious care of Nonconformists, or were left alone. S. G. O. feels that the Church of England had her part to play in preventing the formation of criminal characters. October 19, 1853. To any one who will stop half-an-hour in life's walk, and think of an English Sunday, there will be afforded some very curious and instructive matter for consideration. A very busy nation, a restless people, put on the appearance of commercial idleness and rest. Work in the factory, the counting-house, the shop, the farm, in every occupation but one or two, is, with little exception, arrested. The debtor walks free from danger of capture, and even the bailiff pleads liberty to interrupt for a few hours his life of man-chase. No matter how pressing the order which has to be executed by the manufacturer, he will on this day lose hours, in a money point of view, most precious. The harvest weather has been bad, the corn stands ready for carting, but it is too wet. Friday is dry — so is Saturday ; Sunday very fine ; yet not a team goes forth to save that corn, and secure to the owner a return for his industry — it is the Sabbath. Between the hours of eleven and twelve in the morning, and three and five, and six and eight in the afternoon and evening, hundreds of thousands, young and old, of every rank and almost every creed, leave their own homes to go to par- ticular buildings to join in services, and to listen to teaching, all speaking one truth : — there is a great unseen Power to whom all are bound to bow ; whose will it will profit all to learn and do ; whose peculiar day this Sunday is, and to whose worship these buildings are devoted. At these same hours, in many thousand dwellings, they who from necessity are left at home would be found reading one book, the revealed will of Him — the Lord of the day. In many a town suburb, in many a village lane, knots of people will be seen collected round one man, who with loud voice and earnest manner, in plain but forcible language, will be telling them of what they owe to the Lord of the day — how they are for ever angering Him — how He is ever seeking to pardon them— the way in which He offers that par- 1 853 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 329 don — the terms on which He will grant it, and the mercies He will add to it. In all the places in which the Lord of the day is spoken of — in every interpretation of His will, there will be this one almost universal statement — that He knows no distinction of persons ; that a beggar's soul is as dear to Him as that of a sovereign, and that to gain His love and pardon both alike must tread the very selfsame path, and will then both alike equally share in exactly the same reward. The Sunday is a great day of levelling ; all the pompous events of the week, which may have exalted any of the great ones of the earth, fail on this day in its peculiar business to give them any priority in the choice of blessings, any precedence in spiritual honour, above the poorest beggar who believes and begs of heaven. Take Bradshaw's railway map ; abstract your ideas from aught else but a contemplation of the tracery of the 'lines in work ; ' look at England as you look at the skeleton clock on your chimney-piece, regarding the machinery of locomotion as it works — disregarding its end. What a spectacle bursts on the mind ! Our island becomes a mere clock case, the sup- porting scaffold of a most wonderful network of mechanical appliance, on every part of which, from hour to hour, we see the rushing about of thousands of motive powers, drawing tens of thousands of our fellow-subjects in a race of distance against time. This shuffling of human beings by the iron hand of enterprise, changing and exchanging, here, there, and every- where, at almost every moment, the population of the land, of course has its interruptions, its mishaps ; a little confusion on this or that part of the tracery for a few or more hours may tell of some dozen deaths or so, some food for the columns of ' dreadful accidents,' some days of adjourned inquests ; but this is accidental, and in the order of things — it does not make it a bit less wonderful. Just as this tracery of iron on the surface of the land, its daily use, proves our enterprise, our daring, persevering effort, at the accumulation of earth's wealth, and the increase of earth's luxuries, so docs a map of England, looked at in another sense , 33o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 19 prove by evidence equally clear that we English do also show a wonderful outward regard to the worship and will of Him who bids us hold all earth's life's things as secondary to those of heaven and eternity. Look at a map of England again, and try and realise to yourself every place of worship marked with, say, a coloured cross — every village having one or more, many towns very many ; and you would see an amount of tracery of spiritual machinery, marking man's route heavenwards, which would leave an impression on the mind not easily defined ; remember that this display of the actual houses of worship carries with it the existence also of a mass of schools, its feeding stores. Bear in mind the great staff of teachers, stipendiary and voluntary, ever at work on this line of spiritual travel, and who would, with such a map in the mind's eye, doubt the nation's earnestness in the business of eternity ? That the national mind is a believing mind must be true, or our nation is an utter im- personation of hypocrisy, yes, and of self-sacrificing hypocrisy, for religion and its appliances are a thing of cost to us, its observances every seventh day a check upon our earthly gains. The very bitterness of our religious strifes is so much evidence of our professed reverence for religious truth. Now, Sir, turn to another view ; leave outward evidence of man's contempt for all earthly impediment, when he is deter- mined to have the means of extending his commerce or aiding his pleasure, by means of travel nearly as unlimited in distance as in speed. Forget for a while the great existing evidence of the nation's desire to uphold the worship of God, and therefore the great truth that to every being is given an accountable soul. The cholera is among us, has affrighted us, and we are, with our usual national courage and perseverance, calling to our aid every help of science, every result of experience, to disarm it of its power. We are pursuing death to destroy it, as we have pur- sued distance with steam to almost annihilate it — as we profess to pursue religion to disarm death of its worst sting. We find that cholera, as such, is our master ; when once adult it defies us, but we find we can strangle it in its birth. There is vicious inclination before there is vice ; depravity has its premonitory symptoms. So we find with cholera — it has its premonitory 1853 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 331 state ; there we can contend with it and conquer it. We do so, and heaven blesses us in using the means to which the reason heaven has given us has led us. Look at the scenes house-to-house visitation is opening out to us, scenes long known to some of us. The nation which, by- common consent, has stamped its people as immortal has been content to leave a very large proportion of them to live in a state of brutality lower than that of the brutes which die and perish. Portions of our large towns have, by tacit consent, been allowed to exist as the natural refuge of human living refuse. We have bred human beings, as maggots are bred, in atmo- sphere contaminated by the unopposed accumulation of all pos- sible moral and physical filth. Knowing what vice is, what it costs us here — the vicious in common hereafter — we have had but little regard to its premonitory stages ; we have kept by us vast stores of matter directly provocative of vice ; we have accumulated a population existing in and about these stores who must thus be reared in the deepest moral degradation. We had police to live at war with them, gaols and hangmen to scare them from trespassing beyond their own squalid vicious misery to maraud on our better territory ; we are now cleansing their drains, whitewashing their houses, finding them medicines, coffins, tracts, and tents. Did we ever try yet seriously to com- bine a cleansing of the creature with a cleansing of the scene of its existence ? It is one thing to brew gallons of cinnamon-water with chalk mixture and opium, and to implore all premonished of the poison of cholera to come and drink gratis. It is another to tell them there is a mental poison, for which God has given to man, free of cost, that which can arrest the premonitory evi- dence of an approaching life and death in vice. Will any man deny that the lifting of the veil which hid from the privileged classes the filthy, helpless depravity in which millions of the lowest class live, is an appeal that it would be blasphemy on our part to reject ? My own eyes saw in Ireland the moral courage which the clergy of all professions — the medical men, however ill-paid — gave (to the life's cost of many), to meet the fever and cholera of that unhappy land. It was beyond all praise. So 332 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 19 now is it in England : there is no shirking danger, no desertion of the duty the moment imperatively demands ; but the danger will pass away ; may God grant that the lesson to be read in it may abide 1 We have indeed exposed our moral nakedness. We have proved that in towns in which we can show a stranger wonderful proofs of our wealth, industry, love of science, and devotion to the spread of Christian knowledge at home and abroad, there exist scenes to which we will not take him, which, in contrast to all else, make the rites of heathenism, the morality of Mor- mons, the filth of the worst races of our species, comparatively as nothing. At our very wits' end to know what to do with the convicted criminal, we are yet content, except when cholera comes, to leave the foul nurseries of crime unexplored. Man's moral death we are prepared to meet with such weapons as the Leicester prison cranks or the Birmingham gaol garotte ; but we seem to care little about attacking the premonitory symptoms- which warn us where a population is exposed to more than ordinary temptation. How many there are who, hearing of the large sums raised for home and foreign missions, knowing the impulse given to the lodging-house question, hearing of the zeal in the cause of ' the ragged ' so honourably at last shown, go to bed each night thankful that they live in such a land ! It may be, and is, better than other lands ; but, when compared with its professions, who among us does not blush at our shortcomings ? Take any, the most refined part of London, a locality even such as Belgrave Square ; let two dogs have a fight in the street, or a dead cab-horse lie there one hour ; observe the crowd which will gather round, and you will need little other evidence to prove that if such beings can so suddenly appear, on such short notice, in that locality, the population in other less favoured districts must indeed be a study for the moralist I have no hesitation in stating my firm belief that, all-praise- worthy as have been the efforts made of late years to treat the refuse of our species in the light we by profession regard them, i.e. as immortal beings, as yet the effort made has not penetrated beyond the mere frontier of that foul territory in which we have 1853 CRIME-ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 333 bred so many tens of thousands. There will now, I have no doubt, be a great impulse given to the cause of sanitary improvement ; I wish I could believe that the question of immortal sewerage would assume the same importance. Would men of all Christian opinion combine, something might be done ; so anomalous is the present state of things, that for a churchman to have ' a ragged church,' unless he will have the liturgy, and go through many forms which would often be inexpedient, he must license it as a Dissenting place of worship, or those who teach therein have no power to keep decent order. I rejoice to say I have papers before me from Aberdeen proving that, by tact and perseverance, the worst localities can, by the use, at first, of the plainest and most ordinary religious appliances, be so acted on that a desire for advanced means has grown up, and the plain room has grown into the well- ordered chapel ; those who by the first were led from a state of ignorance and filth and disorder, are now regular worshippers in houses of God the proper adornment of which they have now the taste to value. S. G. O. was one of the first to rouse public opinion against the ticket-of-leave system. He assailed it with his wonted force. It was not until 1864 that the system was modified by the Penal Servitude Act. April 8, 1856. In the rural districts there not only very generally is no efficient machinery to aid in the detection of criminals, but there is the greatest difficulty in securing their proper prosecution when by any chance they are detected. In a country village the property of the persons who suffer most from depredation is so exposed to injury that very many are afraid to prosecute those who rob them, lest at the expiration of their sentence they in revenge should do them some more serious mischief. If this holds true with regard to petty crimes and petty criminals, it is even more true as regards a more hardened and desperate class of offenders. Still, when by a happy chance some of these have been 334 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 8 taken in the commission of an offence which gave hopes of their removal by transportation from the country, a prosecution has hitherto in general with more or less willingness followed. A different feeling is now beginning to prevail, for it is known the sentence of transportation is a mere fiction, and that the pro- bable result will be that a few years will scarcely elapse before men of such a character that no one would employ them before their last conviction are to return to their old haunts with a * ticket of leave.' I will not go into the question as to whether the philanthropists are right or wrong in their solemn assevera- tions of the injustice of the cry now so general against ' ticket- of-leave ' men ; the blue-book statistics are, I dare say, to those who believe in the figures of published reports, all-convincing the other way. I do not believe in them, for I know well how easy it is to get anything whitewashed in a blue-book. I read the papers, and I there read almost daily proof that crime is fearfully on the increase, and that scarcely a day passes in which the most desperate crimes are not traced to ' ticket-of-leave ' men. I know enough of human nature — at least, of it as it is in the clever bad man— to feel convinced that the said bad man can make repentance so close a study that he easily acquires the power to counterfeit it with the same skill and the same success as that which makes him a master of our locks, dogs, doors, and shutters. I believe that neither gaol chaplains nor visiting magistrates are any match for the convict who knows that he can cut off the length of his sentence by the docility he shows under reformatory discipline and teaching. A gentleman who had had every opportunity of arriving at the truth in the matter some time since assured me that four- fifths of the criminals who came under his notice, from the moment they entered the cells for three years' probation, « sang the same song,' one they had all well studied before they had entered the prison walls. I am told how hard it is upon the convict that his former misdeeds should be remembered against him when the law allows him to return to his home. Now, Sir, to me this argument is pure folly; loss of character is the penalty of ill-doing, quite irrespective of the law's punishment of the ill-doer. No man will willingly employ a thief if he can 1856 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 335 get an honest man ; true, rather than give large parish pay to a large family, many a known dishonest man finds employment in our villages ; but when he has committed a transportable offence his place is filled up ; his family is recognised as a gene- ral parochial charge. Is it reasonable to expect that he should find employers ready to take him and give him work simply because he returns with a ' ticket of leave ' ? I admit that the poor man suffers more from loss of charac- ter than the rich man — that in the case of the latter he may do deeds, and be well known as having done them, which, exposed in a court of law, would make him a felon ; and yet, after a nine days' talk, tide over the business, and be again seen in his own circle ; but be it remembered that the ' ticket of leave ' the lax morality of society gives to the rich is, after all, only a license to live by his money or his wits ; it is not a passport of service to be about a man's person or property as a clerk or servant. The position I would maintain is that certain crimes should secure to the criminal, as near as may be, a certain fixed appre- ciable punishment to that criminal, rich or poor ; that, while the penalty of the law should be as certain and the same to the rich as to the poor criminal, means should exist for compelling the prosecution of both alike. I am sick of hearing the cases of Paul, Strahan & Co. pointed at as proofs of the majesty of our law vindicating itself, for who of us is ignorant of the fact that as a set-off to the conviction of those and a few other well-to-do criminals case after case may be quoted where men of higher position and equal guilt have been screened from prosecution and afterwards whitewashed through the efforts of powerful and rich relatives ? The police set in motion are capable of detecting most great crimes, but in the cases of wealthy delinquents they are allowed by those who should claim their help to be at rest. We should aim in the nature of our punishment at the refor- mation of the criminal, and justly joy over and encourage his penitence ; but I am satisfied it is in the end as baneful to the criminal class as it is to society at large to make the penitence shown in prison a ground for remission of one atom of the sen- tence. It seems to me very like offering to a knave a premium 336 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. April 8, 1856 for hypocrisy, and placing him in the very best position to practise it. If crime was, as the rule, the result of want of education, one might have some hope that it would soon show some diminution. That it is more often detected and punished among the unedu- cated is quite true, but that the experience of life proves to us that mere learning bars out vice I utterly deny. We are pro- mised a session of great reforms ; may we hope among the number for some measures which may allow of our going to bed in the rural districts, or for a walk in London, without justifiable fear of being found the next day a spectacle for a coroner — a subject for the post mortem investigation of the how and where the knife went or the bludgeon struck which did our death ? I may be comforted with the assurance that the late Police Act will soon be in force throughout all the rural districts. I ac- knowledge the fact with gratitude ; it is a step in the right direction, for I am firmly persuaded that a well-organised police force, well managed, is one of the most powerful agents we can invoke in aid of the reformation of the criminal classes ; but I have my doubts whether provincial jobbing may not give the chief appointments to incompetent men ; whether false economy will not stint the number of constables ; whether, if the force does its duty, it will receive that support from ancient local authori- ties without which its best efforts will fail to do the good so much to be desired. It is, I fear, a great mistake to suppose a real good national police force can work well if the different counties are to act each independent of the other, more espe- cially when many of the constables are recruited from the popu- lation among which they are to act. Wherever the remedy for the present reign of terror in many districts may be eventually found, at present it seems to lie in each man being prepared to defend his house as he would defend his life, by his own use of whatever arms he may possess. Jan. 8, 1857 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 337 Crime and Criminals. January 8, 1857. I think, Sir, there can be little doubt but that the subject of our present system of punishing criminals will be early pressed upon Parliament. There seems to be a conviction in the public mind that something must be done to make the penalties due to offended laws more certain and effectual. With your permission I will now, after my own view of the matter, make a few obser- vations as to who are the criminals who have raised the strong feeling now existing ; and then I would add a few suggestions as to the nature of the punishment most likely to affect the class to which they belong. One great popular mistake is, the meaning given to the word ' felon.' Nervous and hasty people look on every convicted felon — i.e. every man convicted of felony— as a Bill Sykes ; their one idea of a felon is connected with a long apprenticeship to crime of the worst kind. They think a felon must either be an adept at forgery, a proficient in burglary, a master of the garotte and life-preserver art, or, at the least, one so thoroughly hardened in villany that he lives but to do evil ; an associate o\ thieves, known to every detective — just as a polecat is known to a gamekeeper, when seen near a ' preserve,' to be on the prowl for spoil. That these and men such as these do form a well-known species of the genus felon, I admit ; but I assert that our gaols contain a very large mass of convicted felons of no such marked, hardened character. The goose and fowl stealers, the sheep- stealers, the fuel thieves of rural districts, are of a very different species. Poaching may have led to drinking, the beershop offers a market for poultry as well as game ; from the hen-roost they may have graduated to the higher crime at the sheepfold, but there is nothing of the Bill Sykes' type in these men. They arc clodlike, not metropolitan, in their vice ; they are of village earth, most earthy ; they don't, as the rule, live by roguery, but make roguery supply the supplementary luxuries of a clod's life. In the villages to which they belong they worked just as others did, though known to be wild in after-hours, and to have free VOL 1 Z 338 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 8 notions as to the outlying property of their neighbours. It is rare that they commit a burglary of any more heinous nature than the forcible entry of a larder or cider cellar ; in my own ex- perience I never knew but one set of this species who really took to serious housebreaking. Of these criminals I will say at present nothing further, than that they must not be confounded with all those whom the law stamps as felons ; that I believe they might be very often re- formed, even after two or three convictions ; that they do very often become so, after one sentence has given them a taste of gaol discipline. Their home connections may not be good, but still in country villages a moral force is brought to bear against a perseverance in overt acts of serious crime that does not exist in the case of the higher-bred town criminal. A good deal is said and written about the wretched temporal life of the evil-doer, how he is for ever subject to fits of remorse, for ever a prey to the fear of detection. This is theory. In real practice, I believe the class of men we are now considering have a great deal of enjoyment in the life they lead, no drawback to it from any question as to its being a right or wrong life ; the danger of detection sustains the interest of the peculiar existence they have made their own ; they play a game of hourly attrac- tion ; they know the worst they can incur from loss ; each fresh successful ' business ' done gives them renewed satisfaction, fresh stimulus to further exertion. They have access to newspapers, and read assize and police news — it is their ' racing intelligence ; ' they gather from it who on their own course has won, who has lost ; they thus collect, for their own particular edification, fresh knowledge of the risks they may run, but at the same time no little instruction as to how they can best hope to diminish those risks. We have to bear in mind that with these men life is not simply now and then stained with crime, but its entire normal colour is crimina it is for them to be for ever digesting fresh criminal schemes, to be ever aiming to circumvent justice, just as it is the aim of the legislator, magistrate, and policeman to weave a mesh in which they may be entangled in their evil- doing. Do detectives strive to know them — they also take care to 1857 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 339 know the detectives. Whatever society can plan for its own protection as against their class, it is their safety and interest to study well that they may defeat it. The man who is only occasionally dishonest lives with the honest, and, naturally, his is a life of distrust ; the man to whom dishonesty is his daily bread and meat and gin, to whom it affords all the coarse enjoyments of the life he loves to pursue, harbours only with those of similar tastes ; he is one of a brother- hood, leagued together by the bond of common enjoyment, common interest, common danger. Liable each day to be be- trayed, to be subject to the penalty of the ' information he has received ' of a detective, he has well weighed the full result of detection. To him the sentence of the judge or magistrate on a companion at once translates itself ; he knows exactly how much at the worst it may mean, how much by cunning can be evaded ; nay, the gallows itself has often been taken into account by him and his own circle. Such a one ' has done it at last ' simply means that the said individual has ' run against the tree ; ' is ' in for the sheriff's company ; ' anglice, is sure to be hung. It was on the cards with him, it is on the cards with his brotherhood, and they know it, always have known it, and risked it. To a life spent as is the life of these men I am satisfied the gallows has but a small share of real dread. It deters lesser scoundrels to that degree that they will not take life willingly in their robberies ; but to those hardened proficients in crime who go for great stakes it has comparatively little in it to make them hold their hands. They know men will take life in defence of their own, that many will take it in protecting their property. Prepared to meet the revolver, they go armed themselves ; aim- ing at great spoil, they feel the risk to life in its attainment ; they count on the loss of life if they take it from another and chance to be detected ; as for the ignominy of the gallows, it is sheer folly to talk of that having any weight. These men have no ties of kin, they have no home. Living, as the rule, in adultery, they support the partner of their guilty life by guilty gains ; they know she but too often betrays them ; mere animals, they still as such seek this evil partnership, take it with all its risks. The excitement of their profession is only 340 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 8 equalled by the riotous orgies that follow each successful ' busi- ness.' They are ever shifting their lodging, but never changing its foul aspect ; they must herd together, for isolated they would be too easily observed. Where they herd they collect around them everything which can morally vitiate the atmosphere. They can obtain no locality to so vitiate but one so physically impure that all who can live elsewhere shun it. It is these men and their shameless companions which give the tone to those blind alleys, those back lanes, and crooked narrow passages which are festering nurseries of every conceivable crime. The wicked seek and find their shelter in such places, and the tradi- tions of each generation serve to still further stamp infamy on the locality, to still increase the foul crimes of the inhabitants. Say all this is granted me, how, it may be asked, are these men to be deterred from their evil courses, how are these nests of infamy to be suppressed ? Foxes will have earths ; villany will make to itself a habitation and give it its name. Attack the villains with all the power law and right can give. Cease to regard the reformation of the criminal as the first aim of the law ; make that aim to be the protection of life and property by swift, certain, severe, enduring punishment. Punish the guilty so as to deter men from becoming guilty — not simply to visit crime on the criminal. You must, I fear, still have your capital punishments ; where you determine that it is due, let it as the rule follow, but reserve it for well-defined, extreme cases ; give the judges some discre- tion, but let the final result be with them. Imprison for life every convicted felon whose life has become clearly one which, unfettered, is against the lives and property of others. Imprison for long terms of years, certain fixed terms, criminals whose antecedents may give some hope of their yet being one day weaned from crime. For many of the minor crimes now dignified as felonies keep your shorter fixed sen- tences, leaving to the judges power to order flogging in the gaols where there have been previous convictions. If the principle is good in the gaol, that felons by meritorious industry can shorten he sentence, surely it is good that repeated convictions should entail increased penalty even for the same offence. 1857 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 341 I am satisfied one or two large prisons, with high walls, enclosing a great space, closely guarded, jealously inspected, were it known that their gates once passed for life would never be repassed alive, would have more effect, be cheaper, and far easier of management than any system of transportation. There are many species of hard work, of work of all kinds for the Government, which might be done within them, if not to a profit at least to a sensible diminution of their cost. If the prisoner for life can be reformed, find him indulgence within the walls, but never let him leave them. It is my firm conviction these prisons might be conducted so as to ensure all safety, all health, everything conducive to the convicts' real welfare here and hereafter, and, at the same time, from their external aspect and the knowledge that they were life prisons, be what we now sadly want — a real terror to evil-doers. Once thus separate — for good — year by year, large numbers of these men from the ' schools ' and localities to which they belong, you would open out in those localities ground for those who now seek to reform less hardened criminals. As matters are now, to the criminal punishment is a lottery — he takes his ticket when he commences his career ; when he may draw his lot depends on the chance of his detection, the chance of his sentence, his own chance after it of by cunning yet evading it. Many attempts to strangle made by thieves — termed garotters — were made in the winter of 1862-63. In July 1863, an Act to punish those crimes by flogging was passed. It proved effectual. S. G. O. did much to crystallise public opinion on the subject by his sturdy common sense. December 9, 1862. In answering the question, 'What shall we do with our oft- convicted felons ? ' we have to consider the nature of the being with whom we have to deal, and our object in dealing with him at all. The men whose crimes of repeated violence now so seriously attract public notice are the chiefs of their class ; they are accom- plished villains ; they have mastered, as they have for years practised, all the lessons of violence against person and property. 342 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 9 Their thoughts, their language, the society in which they live, their places of resort, all are consistent with the calling to which they are devoted ; they are beasts of prey, herding together, drawing on each other's experience how to best secure their spoil. Society at large is their hunting-field, the property of its members the day and night object of pursuit. Police, magistrates, gaols, are to them simply so many of the keepers and traps the criminal law puts into use to take and retain them — to remove them .from their hunting-field and punish them more or less, according to the circumstances of that particular act in the perpetration of which they were detected, and their own known previous character. They are as familiar with every feature of arrest, accusation, committal, trial, as they are with every shade of complexion in the lawless life they lead. They have had to study locks, shutters, gratings, house and shop architecture, in every step by which modern science has sought to make these safe as against themselves. Sir R. Mayne cannot study with more anxiety how to improve the police force than these men study, for their pur- pose, every police improvement. No man can speak with greater authority upon the nature of hospital practice as regards the patient than he who has entered a hospital for some serious operation, undergone it, then passed months within its walls, until convalescence sets him free of it. He can tell you of the consultation on his limb, its decision, his removal to the operating theatre, what he there underwent, his return to his bed, the daily visit of the surgeons, what they did, what they ordered, how he was ' dressed,' ' physicked,' nursed, &c. The men who pounce upon you in the street, pull and choke you down, by blows make you insensible, then rob you, are, after all, no mere quacks ; they are professional practitioners of long practice, knowing what they are about, their own responsibility, and the risk to yourself. Their detection and apprehension they have taken into account. They bet this against you ; they set their arrest against their success ; it is a question of odds. As they ' go in for a good thing ' — your watch and purse, obtained by simply throttling or stunning you, to them a matter of little 1 862 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 343 exertion — they are only ' down upon their luck ' if they are taken. From the moment the man in close-buttoned blue has them safe at the police-station they know all the rest. It is an old routine — there are to be examinations, remands ; their own, to them, stale history is to be of course recounted by gaolers and detectives ; they are to have their own police paragraph ; they step into the well-known van, are driven where all is familiar to them, and resort to the aid of the particular attorney on whose well-known services to other rogues they had looked for fresh service to themselves. They know whom he will retain ; they enjoy the ingenuity of the counsel they fee ; the day's trial is a 1 day out,' — nothing more. They can calculate on their sentence ; it neither surprises nor disturbs them ; it is the ticket of admis- sion into the law's hospital for diseased morality. They know thoroughly the whole economy of their treatment during their sentence ; there is nothing to them of novelty, nothing to dread in it, for they have gone through it all, and counted on having thus to go through it again. Imprisonment,, penal servitude, is to them a disagreeable method of paying a lost ' bet.' Society won, they lost ; their hope, like that of all gamblers, is ' better luck next time ; ' they don't grumble, but set to work now at a fresh speculation. They have to stake prison penitence, prison obedience, the prisoner's teachable, sub- missive spirit, against so many months or years of the duration of their sentence. They know the game well, play it well, and win it. What is solitude, separate confinement to these men ? In my belief, of all possible methods, the happiest idea for their utter debasement. They are, when at large, a class most self- indulgent. Industry is continuous, and working hours, and the health and character which steady work demands, forbid a life of debauchery. The felon's life is one of secret scheming to get now and then good spoil, to be spent in continued animal indul- gence, until its exhaustion compels him to fresh risk to get more capital. No amount of vicious indulgence, no moral degradation affects him in his own branch of intermittent industry. When not at work he lives with the worst of men, in the worst localities ; 344 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 9 the lowest scenes of noisy riot are those of his enjoyment, the vilest of women his chosen associates. He hears it nightly dis- cussed who is taken, who has escaped, what officers are after particular thieves. Assizes and sessions, executions— all afford to his 'society' never-failing objects of deep interest. It is not that these men are insensible to all that is right ; many of them, again and again, have gone through religious instruction in gaol. As a tablecloth goes under the roller of a mangle and comes out smooth, to be again creased and dirtied in use, so these men have been placed in the reforming mangle ; schoolmasters, chap- lains, books, tracts, chapel — all, month after month, did work upon them, until they were sent back to the State as foul, rough subjects cleaned, polished, with a ticket warranting the fact. Yet here they are again in the fullest career of the lowest vice, enjoying it and making no break upon it, but to go forth, rob, murder, forge, do anything to get the money to return to it. What must be the thoughts, the meditations of one of these beings caged in a model prison, left, as is said, to wholesome meditation on his past life? Will he think on the Ten Com- mandments? Will the chapel prayers, the chaplain's earnest advice, become to him so much food he gratefully takes and tries to inwardly digest ? Does he not feel and regard all this like the work, the diet, the nature of the cell, just as so much machinery to which for a time he must submit ; and the more submission he can show, the shorter that time to be ? Left alone, the cell door closed, I will defy pen to portray such a man's real thoughts. Separated from all female society, perhaps for years, is he unsexed ? Because he cannot get strong drink, is he shut out from the society in which every tale was a villany, every assertion garnished with an oath, in which nothing was too bad to be concealed, nothing too foul to be spoken, can it really be thought that he will not riot over that, in thought, from which his whole inner being has taken its character ? In solitude, such men are driven to live a life of dreaming, waking dreams, as well as the dreams of sleep. They do this to a degree that makes them wicked masters of their solitary hours ; they force into those hours a continued dwelling on the past, until it, after a sort, substantiates that on which they meditate. 1862 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 345 Of all methods by which religious teaching can be imparted, there is none in which it more fails in effect than that which forces it upon the individual who is submitted to it. It has, indeed, a poor chance when, as in the case of one of these felons, it is made to him as a part of penal discipline. He regards the chaplain as a warder out of uniform, performing a paid-for duty, doing it conscientiously as a branch of the official work of a gaol, just as he sees the warders and gaoler attending chapel with the prisoners, and going through it with the decorum they exact from himself. It is hard to give to a man on whom every hour of the day enforces the fact that he is treated as a dangerous beast, that tone of mind which will make him forget the images of carnal delight on which he delights to dwell, and devote himself to the acquirement of a knowledge, not only affording to his depraved nature no pleasure, but requiring of him a child's mind to learn its very alphabet. He has entered gaol again, as he before left it, regarding religion as that thing of churches, chapels, parsons, and Sundays known to himself and all his class as in existence, but as that which from his childhood had never in any way alleviated his own lot, contributed to his life, or touched on any one feature of it. Its truest value to him he has found to be in that result of patience under it, and that seeming acquiescence in it, in prison, which goes to swell ' marks ' and shorten sentence. Let all due honour be given to the really good men who seek to preach to these lost spirits in prison ; that they do so often fail is from no want of skill in the workman or power in the instru- ment, but simply because the material and the workman are not in the proper disposition and of proper fitness for the work. The man who garottes A to-night took his mid-day meal with men and women who have taken the gaol degree and come out with its testamur ; neither he nor his companions suffered so much, or were imprisoned so much, that they are afraid or ashamed of felony. They were good prisoners — will be so again ; they are utterly bad men because they love crime, and the love of it outweighs all they have learnt of the suffering which follows on detection. I believe you could not manage Chatham, Portland, Dart. 346 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 16 moor, or even Pentonville, except you had a greater force of officers, unless on this plan of buying obedience by payment in abridged confinement. I say, go to any expense for staff. Let the sentence of the judge be carried out to the day. Avoid long sentences, but in diet and discipline be severe. Transport with- out mercy those on whom it is clear that home penal treatment has failed. If, however, you will persist in giving tickets of leave, let every ticket-holder be directly under the supervision of the police. Let him be known as a felon, allowed to try and be honest, content to be watched in the effort. It would be far better to flog twice in a three years' sentence than to degrade a man by keeping him as a pampered wild beast for five years, pretending all the time that you are reform- ing him by making his patient submission a merit. I own I think the separation from the other sex, the iron repression of all intercourse but what is called ' guarded ' with those of his class for a long period of years, fatal to all that is valuable in humanity. You make the hard harder. A Justice. Twenty-two years after the following letter was penned, the Royal Commission to inquire into the Condition of the Housing of the Working Classes was appointed. To the writings of S. G. O. on the subject is partly due the creation of public opinion which roused the conscience of Ministers, and led to the appointment of one of the most important Commissions of recent years. The ' Guilt-Gardens! December 16, 1862. As it now appears probable that we shall take fresh measures to repress crime, not only by employing a greater force of police, but by making punishment more certain and more severe ; having arrived at the conclusion that our present prison system is only a very costly failure — that it neither reforms nor deters — is it not as well to look a little to the question how and where these men of violence and prey are bred ? The fully developed convict has clearly baffled social science ; he has been submitted to the most carefully devised cleansing process, and yet returns again and again to the prison ever worse than he left it. It must be a strange animal, this, which wears the form and features 1 862 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 347 of a man, and yet defies all human power to reduce the practice of his life into the commonest deference to the enactments of human law, or the commonest observance of man's duty to his fellow-creatures. Were you to trace back the whole life of one of these thoroughly hardened men, you would, as the rule, find it to have been a very consistent life. At the bar of the Central Criminal Court he is only, after all, the plant in full flower which has all along been cultivated to produce that full blossom of violence and guilt it now displays. Where are our ' Guilt-Gardens ' ? Where and how do we raise the seedlings and nurture the young of this species of man-plant ? Under what system of cultivation has villany arrived at its present desperate perfection ? The police, Sir, can show you the ' Guilt-Gardens ' of our large towns ; they are just as well known to them as the gardens of Veitch or Rivers to the floricultural world. In them the culture of the sucker thief, the growth of the felon nursery plant, the maturing of the aspiring convict, may be studied thoroughly. There is, on the spot, no secret as to the process. We will call the locale Larceny Court ; there are hundreds of such in London and some other large towns. From end to end of this said court there is probably not a dwelling which contains one honest man, one woman of the least pretension to what we call virtue. Every dwelling is as full of life as life will bear. Whether any one soul in it ever had a name given in baptism, I know not ; but name-giving is the rule of the place, and every human being in it has a name — as the rule, a short one, and, almost as the rule, not the name by which he or she is known elsewhere. The men vary very much in appearance, but one expression is common to all — a reckless kind of cunning look, that tells of a life spent in the daring pursuit of evil— a life, in that pursuit, ever driven to the utmost exercise of guilty craft. Where men in regular industrial employ live, you will see them going to and fro with a certain amount of regularity ; you will easily trace, from their dress and what tools they take with them, the nature of their calling. In Larceny Court, in any one regular Guilt-Garden, you would soon observe that the goings and comings of the working hands are most irregular ; there is 348 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Dec. io no hour of the day at which they may not be seen going to their business ; there is no hour, night or day, when they may not be seen or heard returning from it. Their dress gives no indication of their calling ; whatever it may be, they don't show the tools it requires. Wives have they, and many of them have families of children. If it is difficult to conceive of the children that they were ever submitted to baptism, or to any one act of inter- course with a God-believing society ; it is more so to believe that these wives are, of any Church, of any real form, married. Anyhow, the fact is patent — from these full-grown growths of this Guilt-Garden came the children to be seen at the breasts of women whose dress, dirt, oaths, and foul language prove them to be of the very lowest, of the most depraved. From them came that numerous, mixed brood, of all ages and both sexes, tumbling about, screaming, quarrelling, rioting at the gutter- sides, at every entry, over every portion of this foul, crowded court. These women are the mothers of the children of men whose calling it is to rob, to prey on person and property, to get the means to support these mothers, these children, and themselves by any method short of wilful murder— not always with that limitation. They go forth to plunder ; they seek to do so with all the cunning caution long experience has given ; they are ready to act singly or in combination ; they are at home only so long as to enjoy what they have stolen while it lasts, then to go forth and get more. Their language is quite consistent with their life, and that of those with whom they live. In such a spot, amid such a people, no language is shameful ; for who among them ever knew shame? They not only call everything by name, knowing nothing of which they may not so speak, but they foul every- thing that should be nameless by the very names they use. If there is no tale so horrible that they will not yet tell it openly, there are no oaths, no blasphemies too horrible wherewith to grace the narration. Can children be called sinners who are bred in this soil of utter guilt ? They are at the feet of parents, drink it all in from the fount of parental lips— they who bore and reared them, they from whom they may have had blows and 1 862 CRIME -ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 349 curses, but yet have had also caress and kindness after a sort, the only sort they ever knew. These are their examples ; from them they learn their language, from them they drink in guilt ; but, as they never heard or saw anything of virtue, how is it guilt in them ? Conceive childhood, maturing into boy and girlhood, in such an atmosphere as this ; it baffles our power to define the process. You cannot say these boys and girls are becoming thoroughly polluted, for that assumes they have once had some purity. Why should you denounce them for their language, their utter defiance of all decency in word and deed ? How could they have been better ? Nay, how — yes, with propriety — could they have been anything but what they are ? They are remarkable instances of childhood developing into manhood without one single drawback from the full force of parental teaching and home influence. Godless, repulsive, guilty according to their power, patiently, under much privation, and at times many blows, qualifying them- selves for more advanced guilt — what then ? Is not this just what they were bred to ? Who could have taught them one lesson of God's which could have weaned them from all they had learnt from infancy ? It requires a few years of life to take in, to the least profit, even the early lines of belief. With these children, the page had been blotted with the Devil's lore from the moment the mind could receive one single abiding impression. Bred, reared thus, in Larceny Court, a seeding-bed of guilt's great gardener, the Evil One, behold the nursery trees now quickly preparing for transplanting — the females to become, by slow, foul degrees, as their mothers ; to be early and late at the gin-palace, ever ready to aid in guilt and make life out of it ; the young men to steal, pick pockets, get money for riot, in youthful imitation of their parents ; to go through a course of summary convictions, to learn their ways in future life by early study of the scenes of which their parents have so often talked — police cells, police vans, houses of ' detention,' ' correction,' all the ' small goes ' through which the young of our Garden have to pass before they further qualify for assize trial by one or two appearances at sessions. 350 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 16 Your nursery gardener assures you his trees will grow when moved, because they have been moved so often. The productive industry of crime is ever moving its productions, keeping them still in the soil of guilty association, but never permitting them to root too long unemployed in any one portion of the criminal field. There is a time, however, when trees are too old to trans- plant ; so with the criminal. At last he is fully developed, an accomplished, oft-convicted felon, thoroughly read in all the pro- cesses of detection, trial, conviction, and penal servitude ; he is also as thoroughly hardened against all he has ever known of the consequence of detection as he is desperate to defy the law to reclaim or repress him. He must live by plunder. If you make burglary too difficult, too dangerous, you drive him to the simpler process of garotte ; if, by your increased police patrol, you make this in London impracticable, you will only drive him further afield. I quite admit that a change in prison discipline, recourse to the 'lash,' worse diet, harder labour, less of that maudlin sympathy which seeks to make the convict patient with pity, instead of enforcing obedience because it is an element in a justly deserved punishment — that these expedients, with also a stern infliction of the full sentence passed, and, if practicable, a wise, firm resort to transportation, would reduce crime thus far — these old convicts would become economists, and make one reaping last longer. I cannot see how it is to do more, for they must live with old associates, having no other quarters open to them ; their address will still be this or that floor in this or that guilt-crammed dwelling, in some one or other of the very many Guilt-Gardens. Surely, Sir, it is time for us to thoroughly explore and expose the real nature of the dwellings into which the honest and dishonest working classes are now, in London, forced to dwell. The honest workman can scarcely get decently, healthily lodged, though he pays a high rent regularly ; it follows that the ' Larceny Courts,' all the vilest, worst-drained, worst-built, never-repaired dwellings to be found in the most out-of-the-way places, are inhabited throughout by nests of criminals, of all ages, both sexes. 1 862 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 351 In ready communication with these are the receivers of stolen goods ; in and about them are the lowest class of beer-houses, gin-shops, and night-houses. The demand has begotten the supply ; whatever the vicious, massed together, can require for the indulgence of their depravity — in whatever way traders can possess themselves of the fruit of the toil of those who live by plunder — all is supplied, all done for the purpose. Ragged schools, shoeblack brigades, the bold efforts of those hosts of pious volunteers who are ever attacking the vice of London wherever it most abounds, deserve all honour ; they are doing, have done, great, good work. The ' mudlarker ' seeks for silver in a sewer — sometimes gets a thimble or a spoon ; he toils on, heedless of the black filth he treads, or of all he smells, and, smelling, tastes. So do good people in London go soul-hunting in these Guilt-Gardens. Gentlemen, ladies, people of refinement scarce less than their zeal, here seek to save the smallest item of humanity possessed of the smallest ray of knowledge of good. Year after year they tread these courts as though they had no eyes, ears, smell, or taste that moral pollution could offend. If they can pick out and save one child, separate and soften one of these from-birth-hardened girls, they joy over this lost piece of silver ; they set about to clean it ; with God's help they do often succeed. But still there runs the sewer ; there, daily and nightly sending up to Heaven the rank incense of the very offal of metropolitan vice, is this seething mass of guilty, guilt-hardened humanity. There is the convict-breeding ground, there the great crime tank, from which flow the violence and the crime which cost so much in public tranquillity, in police, prisons, &c. In my opinion, you will never make head against the criminal population until you cease to force them so to mass, and so seek the shelter that is a mockery of a home, that they must live as brutes even if they do not live by plunder. You are improving your streets, adding to your warehouses ; you are doing this forgetful of the fearful driving of the poorer classes to more and more crowded localities, long since condemned as overcrowded. Let us persevere to amend the criminal law, but, at the same time, let us see whether something cannot be done at the criminal-breeding grounds. 352 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 21 December si, 1862. I have all my life been asked, ' Why lift these horrid veils ? Why spoil good, quiet people's breakfasts with the exposure of what they neither wish to see nor hear ? ' I answer, it is the least any humane man can do for these poor wretches to let their habitat be known. I read yearly column after column of earnest eloquence for spiritual, moral aid to people whom I only know of from my atlas. I know well, few know better, the great and noble cost at which English piety tries to add to foreign Christian folds. I know the zeal in which this vast machinery is begotten ; it would compass the earth to gain one soul ; may it reap its millions ! I have pored many an hour over the wonderful yearly exhibitions on paper of what, as a nation, we do in the way of national education. The figures which represent the cost astound me ; the evidence of the nature of the learning given, its bulk, its quality, is quite beyond my poor mental power to comprehend. Loud each year ring the bells of missionary enterprise, loud sound the trumpets of educational success ; we have our 'jubilee' for this or that great religious institution, and we shriek forth our transports at our rival achievements. Here are the notes of conquerors, here the paeans of triumphant assail- ants of mundane vice. Heaven hears it ; I trust Heaven will bless and reward the gallant hosts who thus joy at sin pursued, overtaken, hunted to the world's confines, there grappled and mastered. What is it also that Heaven hears besides — not at a May meeting, not at any annual autumnal performance of a Social Science professor, not on town platforms, in Chapter-rooms, at Convocation ; not at any annual exhibition of the balance of a year's battle with sin or ignorance at home or abroad — but ever, all the year, in all years, from morn to night, through night to morn ? Take a cab and learn for yourself. Go where cursing never intermits, where the child curses, and the old, dying, curse ; where blasphemy is language, not subsidiary to it ; where harlotry scarcely exists, because the harlot elsewhere is an exceptional character — here the female is born and bred to 1862 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 353 impurity, and therefore never can be said to stray ; where no language we know can describe, translate, give, either the depth of meaning or depth of infamy of the common language of the place. Think of the God of heaven ever hearing, ever seeing all this, looking with the eye that comprehendeth all space on this bubbling up of a hot well of heathenism and crime, in the very midst of space said to be Christian, over which the same eye sees cathedrals, churches, chapels, cropping up in every direc- tion ; in which Christian legislators enact just laws ; in and about which human industry, zeal, and science are ever in full toil to produce, reproduce, and improve all the rich wonders of art and use with which the very streets become as ' Exhibitions.' I shall be told, ' All this is unavoidable. Every city must have its refuse ; humanity in mass must precipitate certain foul dregs.' Alas ! there is some truth in this. But we have learnt to disinfect, at all events to deodorise, our sewage ; we are spending a million or two in conveying it from where it is pro- duced, and is hurtful, to where we hope to utilise it. Must it be that at this season we are to proclaim the o- od tidings of Heaven's message to all, and yet have a quiet rese.ve in our own breasts, admitting that in the very heart of the richest city of the world, the chief city of a Christian kingdom, there are thousands of our fellow-creatures whom this message cannot reach, or, reaching, cannot touch, because we have allowed them for many a generation to live as beasts of prey — plunder their aim from birth, human creatures living to be pests to humanity ? We have no right in this matter to seek ( a sign,' to demand of Heaven miraculous aid to help in work in reality of a very commonplace character. You would discharge the scullery maid whom you saw wiping out a sink with a dinner napkin. Can any religious power, however aided by Church and Dissent's highest united pressure, hope really to prevail over the hearts and habits of people forced to dwell in these foul lanes and alleys ? I declare I have been, in one city, in places so vile that I should have felt a Bible as much out of place as a pack of cards in a pulpit. Religious zeal, by Heaven's aid, may steal a soul or two now and then from these Guilt-Gardens, but the mass you never will affect until you disperse it. VOL. I. A A 354 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 2 I call out for rigid inquiry into the actual state of these places — honest evidence how they came to be what they are, for whose profit they are sustained. I ask, in the name of com- mon humanity, on what principle of justice ground is to be for ever covered with dwellings for the rich while the poor of our towns, who must exist in a certain proportion to those dwellings, have no provision made for their physical or moral healthy existence. Our Convicts. January 2, 1863. There is one truth as to the treatment of oft-convicted felons which no one seems to me to like to speak out — viz. that they are systematically dealt with as men on whom obedience is not to be too much enforced ; they are kept by force in captivity ; they are more coaxed than forced to submit to the discipline of the prison. It would be amusing, if it were not very irritating, to read in the blue-books on convict prisons how the officials congratulate themselves on the amount of submission they secure by indulgence. We are told how cheerfully the prisoners endure their sentences when they find that a certain amount of prison goodness will shorten their term of confinement. The advan- tages of prison life are so naively set forth ; all the little social sugar-plums are so paraded — the lectures on a model of the Tabernacle, from diagrams of telescopic and microscopic dis- coveries — the beautiful quiet of the schools, showing to visitors such a lovely picture of contented pursuit of knowledge — all go to prove that the great object is to enable each prisoner to get through his sentence in the most cheerful, contented spirit. Excellent diet, light work with little exposure to bad weather, a so-called cell — in fact, an exceedingly convenient, well-lighted, warmed, and ventilated cabin, full of contrivances to secure com- fort, with literature, sacred and profane, free of cost ; most respectable attendance, all work to the one end — the inducing the villain, like a good fellow, just to be quiet and good, that he may not only shorten his sentence, but make its days those of pleasantness to himself and his warders. We wonder it don't answer ; the felon class would very much wonder if it did. The great mistake has been the confu- 1863 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 355 sion of the two things— punishment and reformation. We go through the farce of passing a sentence of penal servitude for so many years, or for life. It is only a blow from the fist of justice with the padded glove ; it is a hard blow so far as regards the penal hitting power, but then we have muffled the penal hand, That sentence neither really bruises nor draws blood ; the felon at the bar is neither punished severely nor frightened ; it is the bark of the judge, not the real bite of the gaol. He knows what it means at the very worst— that the Government will be glad to get rid of him out of prison at a date far short of the sentence if he will only be — a good prisoner. It is clear to me that at Portland, Dartmoor, and Chatham the warders are more to be pitied than the prisoners. They have harder work, they never know a moment free of anxiety, their pay is low for the nature of their service, their numerical force not sufficient to secure their own safety and the safe custody of the convicts, except by the system of making things as pleasant to those gentlemen in difficulties as possible. It never would surprise me to hear of convict mutinies far more serious than any we have ever yet known. I am convinced, if the diet were changed for the worse, if the sentences were worked out to the full, and real work enforced, it would be madness to keep the staff of warders at its present weakness. You may keep up a species of separation which shall defy conspiracies extending to large numbers of the prisoners, but the knowledge of their united strength, if brought to bear upon any one common object, is in itself a fearful element of danger. Let me now give my idea in this matter of convict treatment, only dealing with it generally, avoiding close detail. I would never have large masses of these dangerous men assembled in any one locality. I intend only to speak of the oft-convicted, hardened class. The buildings for their reception should be strong in material, but fitted within and without upon the prin- ciple that only safe, healthy custody was the object. The pre- sent gaols are really beautiful penal toys, the perfection of lodging-house for single men architecture, achieved with no respect to cost. In a better situation Pentonville would sell well as 'chambers ' for bank clerks and M.P.'s of limited income. I A A 2 356 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 2 would never have more than 300 convicts in one prison for firm, severe, penal treatment ; always relying far more on a strong, well-armed force of well-paid warders than upon locks and kcys ? chapel and school, lecture-room and kitchen, to preserve dis- cipline and enforce labour. Separation should be the rule at night, association in small parties by day ; but no party ever left without the presence of at least two warders. The actual prison building should be constructed on a principle affording easy complete supervision ; as I have said, strong, but I would have it in all its details rough — i.e. with as little of the comfort- able ornamental dwelling as possible. It should aim simply at this end — the sheltering in health and keeping in safety men who are under a sentence of punishment, not under a compulsory system of reformation. These buildings should, with all necessary accessories, be in the centre of a large space of ground, walled in with very high walls, with but one or, at the most, two entrances. To the out- side world I would show nothing but these walls and the strong entrance gates ; all else should be matter of conjecture, not sight. No free labourer should ever go within the gates ; repairs I would have done by a staff kept by the Government for this s^le purpose. I would call these prisons, ' Prisons for Severe Penal Servitude ; ' in these should be worked out to the last hour the sentence passed by the judge. I would offer religious teaching and schooling, not to give the character to shorten the sentence, but to fit the criminal for a better life when his sentence is over. I would have the sentences never to exceed seven years ; as the rule, to be short of this, except, of course, in those cases of capital crimes where life servitude saves from execution. I am satisfied short severe sentences are better than long ones. There are arguments which will not bear public discussion against a too long separation from all the outer world of male convicts. It is my firm belief that solitary confinement for any length of time is altogether unjustifiable ; insanity is, to me, the least of the evils it produces. In every case in which the prisoner, on a second committal for felony, has been proved to have used personal violence, I would invariably have him flogged at the very commencement of his sentence. As to the nature 1 863 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 357 of the work on which these men are to be employed, it is a matter of detail. I will only say it should not be the learning a trade, but simply hard, tedious work enforced. I do not advocate some such system as this instead of transportation, but, as a matter of experiment, to diminish the number of those whom we must at last thus get rid of. I know it will be called inhuman, unchristian. I am too old to care for misconstruction of motive. I am satisfied that humanity to the peaceable and well-behaved and Christian feeling for criminals lead me to wish the number diminished. I claim for all men, garotters included, fair play. I want to make them better ; the present petting system makes them v/orse. One of the chap- lains of a convict establishment in a British settlement I see wants to stop the prisoners' grog ; but he clearly sees why he fails — it might cause a mutiny. As to tickets-of-leave, not one of these men should quit the gaol but under license for one year ; this should be part of every sentence. Under that license he should be under police supervision, and obliged to report himself from time to time. I am quite satisfied many an employer Would give a man from prison a chance of getting a character for industrv when he knew the police would watch him, who would never take on^ who had been a convict unwatched. I am wedded to my own small penal gaol plan, or I should admit myself wholly a convert to the Irish system. I will only add, I would have the diet full, but coarse — all that is necessary for health, but nothing more. I have faith that a few such prisons, of small cost, would work a penal revolution. The virility of S. G. O.'s mind rarely allowed him to blend compas- sion with weakness. Towards crime he was stern, resolute, and im- placable ; hut from capital punishment he recoiled. His grounds for shrinking from the extreme sentence of the law are stated as follows : — December 31, 1863. It is day by day becoming more important that the insanity which is to procure the acquittal of a murderer should be deter- mined on some principle the public can understand. It is also much to be desired that we should know the principles which 358 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Dec. 31 are to regulate the mercy of the Crown as to the reception of a plea of insanity to bar ' execution ' after sentence of death has been passed, the jury having rejected this plea at the trial. A poor man, one with friends without means, has no power to search out all the evidence of that hereditary taint of insanity which, in the hands of the experts he cannot fee, and the counsel he cannot retain, might save his life. If condemned, he has not the assistance that a rich man has in still seeking mercy by powerful and persevering appeals through the press to the public, by urgent private pressure upon the Secretary of State exercised by those who have the ' means ' to get up a case and the influence to secure a hearing. The judges now severally lay down to juries the legal prin- ciple which at a conference of the whole Bench was long since arrived at, the greatest consideration having been given to the subject. It was ruled — ' Before a plea of insanity can be allowed undoubted evidence ought to be adduced that the accused was of diseased mind, and that at the time he committed the act he was not conscious of right and wrong.' It is, then, quite clear that, to sustain legally the plea of in- sanity in the case of a murderer, his counsel must produce clear proof that he was a man whose mind previous to the murder was in a diseased state ; in other words, he was not mentally sane ; that at the actual time of the commission of the murder this in- sane state had such influence over him that he did not know the deed of murder to be a wrong or illegal deed. Let me here observe that this ' ruling ' seems to exclude altogether the plea of intermittent insanity. It does not allow an act of an insane man, done in a lucid interval, to be excused on the ground of his general insane state ; it narrows the ques- tion to the moment of the deed — ' Did he then know he was doing wrong, he being beforetime proved to be insane ? ' It appears to me that this ruling of the judges is, after all, the only sound one at which they could arrive. It was necessary to come to something clear on the point ; it was impossible to arrive at any thing which could satisfy the plain requirements of justice and, at the same time, meet all the theories of psycholo- gical science 1863 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 359 The point I wish here to press into notice is that this ruling sets aside the question — Could the prisoner control his will? Had he at the moment an impulse towards an evil act, whicfr, knowing it to be evil, he yet could not govern ? The judges decline going into a question so impossible to prove ; they fall back upon that which generally will admit of proof: 'Whether he could or could not control his purpose, did he know that pur- pose to be illegal — one the carrying out of which would make him amenable to the law's penalty ? ' This, then, being the point to which evidence of insanity as a plea to save at the trial of a murderer is narrowed, we see clearly that all evidence after conviction should still be within the same limits if put forth to arrest execution. We may be told that at the trial there was evidence which proved the strong probability that the prisoner was not sane at the time he committed the murder ; but his conduct after the act and at the trial afforded no proof that his mind was so diseased that he did not know right from wrong ; the jury, therefore, did right in their verdict of ' Guilty,' but since the conviction the prisoner has shown just that proof of insanity which, could it have been proved at the trial, would have saved him. This plea for mercy after conviction needs careful consideration, for, in my opinion, it goes for more than its advocates avow. To respite on the ground of insanity on this post conviction evidence you must admit that the present proof of insanity satisfies justice ; that in this particular prisoner insanity — ab- sence of knowledge of right and wrong— existed at the time he murdered ; that then reason ruled again for a while, but now the former state of disease governs the actions and perverts the mind. Without at all disputing that this may be so, to make it a just plea for mercy we ought to have some time fixed after sentence to test the convict's sanity, to see how long it will last. We might hang a man on the Monday who on the Tuesday would have clearly developed that exact evidence of his insane state which the experts in insanity declared to be in abeyance, which they had sworn he was inevitably liable to from time to time, in which at the time he committed the murder, he, in their opinion, acted. 360 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Dec. 3T One of the most useful writers on the subject of medical jurisprudence says: 'It is impossible to give any consistent definition of insanity ; a medical witness who ventures on a definition will generally find himself involved in numerous in- consistencies ; no definition can possibly comprise the variable characters which the malady is likely to assume. The power which is most manifestly deficient in the insane is generally the controlling power of the will.' I do not believe anything more like common-sense than the above can be written on a subject which no living man can wholly master. The human brain dealing with the brain human, not only finds its equal, but something more ; it is the battle of intellect with intellect ; but the battle-field is such, so wonderfully constructed, so curiously guarded, the disposition of its forces, where understood, is so complex, and so much is yet hidden of them, that men with the wisest brains stand as fools when they seek to define the brain's action in others. We may as well hope to photograph the dreams of a dis- turbed night as to reduce to rule or expose for exhibition the real action of brain matter upon the will, the passions, the reasoning powers of our lives. A great deal has science done to solve some of the mysteries of physical and mental life ; year by year we add to our store of knowledge as we study closer physi- cal and mental cerebral phenomena ; but as yet the space gained is as nothing to the vast field of inquiry still daily opening out to us. There can be no doubt that the really insane are very deficient in power to control the will ; that they are driven to action very often when they knozv the action to which they are thus irresistibly impelled is %vrong It is equally true that persons most clearly insane have very often a perfect sense of right and wrong. It is indisputable that there is no disease more heredi- tary than insanity. It will not be denied that what are called ' mad doctors ' are, very many of them, most able, conscientious men ; that from their constant study of mental disease we are wise in conceding to their opinions great weight. As the law stands, as the judges have ruled, all this may be granted, and yet a judge be fully justified, nay, legally bound, 1 863 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 361 to tell a jury that, whatever may have been urged by counsel, whatever proved in evidence, however great the authority of that part of it given by the medical witnesses, still the whole question lies in this — not what the prisoner may have been from the antecedents of his birth, not what he is now before them, not whether he could or could not control his will at the moment of the murder, but did he know he was about to do a murder, that the doing it was wrong, and would, if detected, bring him to the bar where he now stands for acquittal or conviction ? The real truth, Sir, is, the ruling of the judges lays down principles which are in direct antagonism with the dicta of medical science. The judge has to make the knowledge of good and evil the rule. The mad doctor adds to this — knowing the good from the evil, the prisoner, being insane, could not compel his will to avoid the latter ; he was as helpless in mind to with- hold his hand as a palsied man is to move his limb. The misfortune is that this conflict between the science which comes forward to defend our poor brains from the consequences of their liability to disease, and the law, which must seek to pro- tect life by plain rules, capable of being understood by common juries, concerns an issue which is in each case soon beyond further aid from argument. The hanged man can no longer be helped by law or medicine. Our only comfort must be that we have done our best to arrive at that rule in the matter which is the least exposed to abuse. Some ' ruling ' must protect us from a too great reliance on the speculative theorists whose opinions can always be ob- tained where a life is concerned ; and theory has so much to urge. The ' rule ' at present laid down puts the poor man and the rich at least as nearly in an equal position as is possible in a world where wealth must ever be a source of power. There is something very painful to every thinking mind in the fact that we do for ever hurry out of this world beings for acts which are declared on oath, by men of high character and deep study of the diseases of the mind, to be acts the commis- sion of which they, from mental disease, could not avoid. Be- cause some of those skilled in mental science have given utter- ance to rash and unreasonable theories, we are not justified in 362 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 7 lightly rejecting the great truths which psychological science has arrived at. The fact that the murderer has sent his victim, without any preparation, into eternity, is in itself no justification for our doing the same by him, with the little alleviation that we do give him a few weeks to prepare for his violent end. Let any man suffer his mind to rest on what is taught from every pulpit as the law of God as it affects the soul which dies in unrepented, unatoned-for guilt ; let him regard the man to be hanged for murder, with just the chance of being brought to a state of sound hope in the condemned cell in those numbered days ; failing this, as sent violently, by man's sentence, to meet that eternal sentence the nature of which, as it is preached, is so dreadful that all shrink from the ideas it but too literally 'presents. Who among us would not pray to see the day when some way of escape may be made for us, by which we may hope to deter from murder without sending the murderer into eternity not only with so limited a preparation, but, alas ! sometimes with a doubt left on our minds whether from disease of brain, obscure but all-powerful, he was before God guilty of this act, though he has gone before Him loaded with other guilt ? I know the fair, patient trial given every prisoner ; I have no maudlin pity for the manslayer ; but when I look at what Reve- lation declares to be the sinner's fate, I shrink from the contem- plation of a man with this guilt sent so quickly to the last Judge of all. George Victor Townley, who murdered Miss Goodman through jealousy, was convicted and sentenced to death, but escaped execution through a certificate of insanity too hastily signed. He committed suicide in prison, February 12, 1865. January 7, 1864. It may be said that a prisoner is rightly condemned because he committed murder, at the time knowing right from wrong, but that after his conviction it is made plain that he is a man of such peculiar ideas of what is right, what wrong, one who sets his own judgment so above all that Revelation or reason lays down as good or evil, that to hang him is to hang a man who, 1 864 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 363 acting according to his own conscience, is found not to have the ordinary conscience of a human being, and therefore to be, according to all rational human estimation, not in a sane mind. If this is to be the law or the practice to set aside law, I shall never wonder at the increase of murder, for I feel satisfied there are a great number of people who scoff at all idea of Revelation, who regard laws as so many restraints on man's free action, the result of the combination of men of particular ideas to rule all who differ from them. I think I know where to go to find the published opinions of men who, if they don't go this full length, at least go very little short of all I have read of this man Town- ley's ideas of right and wrong. If men with this independence of idea, this bold, determined spirit to carry into practice their contempt of death, their utter negation of all the laws of civilised life, are too mad to hang, it is time we were taught the fact by positive law, not left to gather it from occasional proofs that it is so held in quarters where there is power to set aside the law's sentence. If this reprieve is justifiable — I do not say it is not — let us know, from authority, its exact grounds. I trust at the meeting of Parliament the Government will be forced to show the whole correspondence ; to print for public use, for public consideration, a truthful statement of everything said or done on which this murderer has been taken from the gallows' foot to the asylum for the insane. There may be a good case for the executive ; but in my opinion the best case which can be made will still leave the impression that, if this man is rightly saved, many have been wrongly hung who had not the means to command the interest in their behalf that he had. The fibre of S.G.O's mind was such as to compel him to assail cant and fraud on all occasions, and without respect of persons. His con- tempt for wrong in high places energised his pen with something of ancient Hebrew fire. He seizes an opportunity of exhibiting to the public mind the guilt of rich knaves in a letter containing a moral on a well-worn theme, but not the less forcible because the theme itself was not new even in the days of Jeremiah. August 23, 1864. A great and wise step has at last been taken in the amend-' ment of the law dealing with criminals a r ter conviction. There 364 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 23 is no longer any premium offered for religious and moral hypo- crisy. Prison discipline will enforce the order and decent con- duct prison rules require of prisoners. The endeavours to make them better men, to Christianise them, will not be relaxed ; but mere religious profession, or even a fair indication of real moral amendment, will be of no account as regards any shortening of sentence. It is not easy to deceive in the matter of industry, and this alone will now avail to obtain any reduction of the term of detention. Up to a certain point, every sentence will be carried out to its letter ; beyond that point, and only then, can any amount of ' marks ' aid the convict to obtain remission of any part of his sentence. The diet of prisoners will now be no better than what is absolutely necessary to sustain health. The knowledge of these alterations in our dealing with con- victs, when it once reaches that class of old offenders against the laws to whom it will be so little palatable, will, I have no doubt, have a good effect. They will, from their experience of the old system, be excellent judges of the consequences to themselves of a renewed acquaintance with penal discipline. The ' ticket-of- leave ' they now know can only be hoped for after a fixed time of severe discipline and continued industry. They will also fur- ther learn that even this ticket, or license, to be so hardly obtained, will only be held on the condition that they keep themselves under police inspection ; that if thus free under license they indulge in crime they will be returned to prison, there to work out the remainder of that sentence the remission of which had cost them so much. With regard to ' life sentences ' passed on atrocious crimi- nals, they are, except under special circumstances, to be literally the penal seclusion of the prisoner for the whole remainder of his existence. It is to be borne in mind, also, that nine months under every penal servitude sentence is to be spent in separate confinement. I think the general public have now no cause to complain that the particular portion of the community who live by depre- dation are, when convicted, dealt with in too lenient a spirit. I, Sir, have no sympathy for a thief. I have long been con- vinced that we ought not to forget that Bill Sykcs can say, ' Am 1 864 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 365 I not a brother ? ' But then, I argue, it is for the good of these our brethren that they should be deterred from evil-doing. I argue, we should not punish in a spirit of revenge against the criminal, but in mercy to him, in mercy to all whose lives and properties his calling endangers. We hope to make the indi- vidual Sykes better ; failing this, at least for a time, to prevent his becoming worse. Stealing is bad for him, being robbed is bad for us. We impose suffering on the thief in the hope that he will not only thus be frightened out of a course of crime, but that also, while suffering, he may be taught to see that his true interest here and hereafter lies in the direction of honest industry. Still, there is one ground on which, I own, I find some space for sympathy with the professional stealer. He way well argue, ' You law-makers detest the thief, hunt down the thief, offer rewards for his detection ; maintain, at enormous expense, an army to watch him ; treat him as above when you catch him and convict him. But then you have such very peculiar ideas as to what is stealing. You war against the man with the jemmy, the crape, the list-shoe and lucifers, with whom your police are familiar, as having been bred to housebreaking ; you are very indulgent to the very large class — " stealers " — to whom a policeman touches his hat when accosting them.' Thieves read newspapers, and thus for ever read of first- class ' stealings,' the work of swindling companies, individual swindlers. They know it is a hard and perilous day's work to net two watches or a haul of plate ; they also know that three or four or more gentlemen well dressed, with an excellent secre- tary and as good a luncheon, with police in their pay to watch their offices, may almost daily be found, in many an 'office,' quietly and comfortably concocting false balance-sheets, false prospectuses, conspiring to abstract the money of thousands, after a sort as clearly stealing it as if they robbed tills, picked pockets, or broke into houses. The gentlemanlike, well-bred stealer who appears in the Bankruptcy Court may be subject to a few days' infliction from the Linklater who has to prove him a rogue ; but having no fear of cropped hair, prison fare, and penal retirement, he takes it 366 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Aug. 23 quietly — nay, very often answers the questions which extort his villany with a quiet smile. He knows very well the indignation of the opposing counsel is just as much a distillation from his brief as the plaintive pleading of his own counsel in mitigation of his villany is according to his ' instructions.' He feels quite satisfied that, after all, his ' world,' the ' world ' in general, will be very merciful to him ; that he will go quietly back to it — to begin again. His stealing is not vulgar theft ; no, for such there is penal servitude ; his appropriation of other men's money is of that condoned nature, so common, so commonly successful, that respectable gentlemen join him over his claret, and only call his failures or detections misfortunes. Thieves attend racecourses ; they watch the congregations of * the ring ' and ' the corner.' They have, I think, some title to feel a little hurt if they should overhear an experienced turfite point to a noble lord getting off his horse, and say to a friend, ' Now, in my opinion, that is the biggest thief of the whole paddock.' Thieves know the slang of thieves ; they are also well aware that so common are the ' thievings ' committed on the turf, that for every separate dodge to obtain winnings dishonestly there is a slang term as well recognised by turfmen as the language of magsmen is by all of their own order. I say that the feelings of the stealers the police hunt are with some justice aggravated by the very barefaced way other stealers, whom the police do not pursue, intrude their peculiar ' stealing ' upon their notice. After a life of great trouble, a professional stealer of the baser sort retires ; he has worked out his last ticket-of-leave, shaken hands with his last prison officer ; a happy coup or a chance inheritance has made him ' a man now living on his own property.' From the horse he drives, through every article he uses, to the very reel of cotton from which his shirts are mended, can he acquire any one, and not have to take great care, exer- cise grievous suspicion, lest he be ' robbed ' ? Does he not, once the thief of low life, now the gentleman of middle life, very soon discover that the most orderly and respectable of the scenes of commercial life are scenes of fraud and theft, equal in reality — i.e. in taking money dishonestly — to those of any lane or alley in which he spent the days of his disreputable former life ? 1 864 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 367 I agree with Sykes ; we hunt down the offensive, vulgar, violent 'stealer,' but all the time a very great proportion of what we call commercial enterprise and noble sport is ' stealing ' and nothing else. It is the use of means directly dishonest to obtain possession of the money belonging to others for our own immediate gain and pleasure. I must also add that I think the class of the ' guilt-gardens,' now to be so stringently dealt with, have daily before their eyes the proof that we can scarcely really so desire their religious reformation as we profess. Chaplains exhort them, warn them, seek to lead them to see the better road to a better world, in honesty, purity, and sobriety ; they come to their cells as missionaries go to the heathen, to tell them tidings of that virtue the world outside feels they should be taught. They go back to that world, and what learn they there ? Simply this, that while as against the baser sort of sinner every denunciation of vice is made, and to them earnest appeals to virtue are made, while home missionaries, active ministers, for-heaven-working, kind, honest men and women enter their vilest abodes to try and wean them from evil and teach them good, no such zeal, no such work is really sought to be done among the rich and well-to-do, whose gilded licentiousness and prosperous ill-doing is just as patent as their own. There are ' stealers and stealers,' ' wicked and wicked.' Thieves convicted, thieves condoned ; vile men and women re- buked, preached to, sought out for saving ; just such men, such women are there left by the parson, the missionary, to their own devices, as if what was true to the poor vile had no application to rich sinners. We are improving penal discipline, raising hundreds of thou- sands to aid the preaching to and teaching the poor bad. We shall never prevail in this field till we acknowledge that stealing is stealing under any other name ; that claret or port insobriety is no better than gin drunkenness ; that what is guilt on one side of Temple Bar is equally guilt on the other side. Is the action of the Bishop of London's Fund to be confined to those quarters of London where the rogue is a poor man ? Charity begins at home ; arc the alms of the wealthy to be given to 368 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Aug. 5 morally enrich the poor, they themselves to be left just as they are ? Charlotte Winsor was a child murderer convicted on the evidence of an accomplice in July 1865 and sentenced to death. On account of legal irregularities in her trial, her execution was long deferred and her death sentence was commuted on May 23, 1866. S. G. O. adopts the case as a text for a lay sermon on infanticide. The Infant Life Protec- tion Act was passed in 1872. August 5, 1865. I am glad to see that you have called public attention to the trial for the above crime in which the woman Harris gave evi- dence against her accomplice, Winsor. It is certainly one of the most horrible criminal exposures we have known for many years. It is my firm belief that it exhibits a state of things not at all uncommon. Child murder has throughout the rural districts, and, for all I know to the contrary, in large towns, long ceased to be con- sidered in the light of other murder. It is a crime to which there is very great temptation. It is one which for many years those who administer the laws have viewed, with the greatest indulgence. I have again and again sought to call the attention of the public to it ; I have conversed with the highest authorities about it ; I have never met with one single official who would deny that it is a crime fearfully on the increase, and yet one that neither judge, jury, nor magistrate seems disposed to treat with any real severity. The present assizes have shown in more than one case, that when the evidence as to the slaughter of a child by the mother is so clear that if it had been the murder of an adult her conviction would have been certain, the most ques- tionable speculations of medical men and others are received as evidence to qualify the crime, and secure conviction for the lesser crime — concealment of the birth. It is quite true that a child coming into the world with no help but that of the mother, who brings it forth under circum- stances making it most important to conceal its birth, is exposed to circumstances which may cause its death by pure mischance- This being the case, and all juries being very rightly charged to 1 86s CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 369 give the accused every benefit of any real doubt of guilt, it follows that a large number of acquittals of the capital offence must take place. There is no question in the minds of those who are conversant with the business of criminal courts that grand juries always try to throw out the bill for murder — lean towards the construction of the evidence in that direction ; that the prosecuting counsel, and the solicitors who give them their instructions, if a bill for murder does come down from the grand jury, show no real zeal to procure the conviction of the prisoner for that crime. The counsel for the defence knows well the sort of evidence he can extract from the mouths of the medical wit- nesses ; he can get from them almost in every case admissions of the possibility of this or that mischance at the birth, if the child was known to have been ' separate ' and yet alive, tending to prove that the contusion on the head or the black mark on the neck might have been the result of accident. Then there is the old question of the inflation of the lungs — had it ever lived at all ? — when there was no evidence to prove directly that it had. Again, the jury are men ; being men, the jury lean to the condoning of one who stands at the bar accused of a crime with which, without man's guilt in the first instance, she would not have been charged. It must be a very young counsel who cannot successfully appeal to the feelings of a jury in these cases ; the dust he throws in their eyes is just what they desire. An old practised counsel knows he need not take much trouble in the affair, for he is quite satisfied the judge will so frame his charge to the jury, in accordance with the feelings of every soul concerned in the pro- secution or defence, that they will have no difficulty in accepting his ' ruling ' as one for an acquittal. The real truth is — we all know it — that the sentence for murder being death, even if there were twenty convictions for infanticide of the ordinary character in any one assize, not one woman would the publid'bear to see hung for the offence. It is high time some new Act of Parliament was passed with regard to this crime. ■% If the deliberate murder of her own child by a mother, immediate upon its birth, is not murder, let it have some other name — be liable, as a crime, to some other penalty — VOL. 1. B H 37o THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 5 than that of murder. As the law now is, I have seen again and again women dealt with more severely for cruelty to children a little advanced in life than they would have been had they mur- dered them as soon as born. The present system appears to me a mockery of all justice, an insult to our common humanity; in truth, I must add, it leads to a large amount of direct immo- rality. It is as well for us, now and then, to try and take a common- sense view of some of those questions which, as the rule, are viewed but too much in a very false, sentimental aspect. That a woman should bear a child, not being a wife, is an offence against society, against the chastity religion enforces. Human nature, however submissive to social rule and religious impres- sion, is, after all that can be said in the matter, as a ' subject ' under an authority against which it is ever liable to be roused into rebellion. Neither all men nor all women can marry when they will ; in neither sex is there power to suppress all inclina- tion at all times to do so. The loving too well, but not wisely, leaves the man with little disgrace if it is discovered — leaves the woman with every probability of great disgrace, and, what is worse, the pains and perils of a condition which, safely passed, throws on her the burden of a child's support, with none who can help her to share it. Poor married mothers, with strong, healthy bread-earners as husbands, have trouble enough with their infants ; but they get a sympathy from their neighbours, get help from the charitable, which the ringless mother knows she will not get, has no right to expect. Put the matter in what point of view you will, brought up as the majority of the women are who are tried for infanticide or concealment of birth, it can be no great matter of wonder that they have sinned ; that female nature—the instinct of attachment to some one of the other sex — has made them easy victims to a ' ruin ' which in their ' society ' was considered as very common, against which any religious principle they had ever really had was powerless to resist the temptations to depart irom it in which they had been bred. As to ' shame,' in the true sense of the word, being the cause of these murders, it may sometimes be so, but, in the majority 1 865 CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 371 of cases, I don't believe it is. The great majority of marriages in the rural districts are ' late ' — some so ' late ' that the baptism of the infant follows very closely on the mother becoming a wife. This has long ceased to be held as shameful. It follows, then, that a large proportion of children are born legitimate, because their fathers kept a promise, not because they sought to be the husband in esse before they became father in posse. We all know full well that promises, under most circumstances, are apt to deceive ; under no circumstances do they oftener do so than where a woman trusts her good fame to the truth of her seducer. The old law of affiliation was liable to such abuse, and was so abused, that its alteration became absolutely necessary. No man was safe under it. The woman's oath, if it failed to saddle him with the money cost of imputed paternity, was sure to affix a stigma to him for life. It was made a means of the grossest extortion. As the law now is, it requires corroborative evidence in the case of a crime, of all others, the one where it must neces- sarily be very difficult to obtain it. If the woman does now affiliate her child, gets an order on the father for its support, and he fails to pay the allowance ordered, she will not be the party to send him to prison. We have made our workhouses gaols to such women ; if they will not then give up liberty to obtain the support of their bastard children, it is only open to them to fight a battle of life for themselves under a condition most penal. I not only do not wonder that so many infants are slain at birth, or wilfully neglected to death afterwards, but I am sur- prised that so many of these poor children are ever allowed to live. It is not, in my opinion, any pressing sense of shame which induces these women to try all possible means to hide their fall. In the great majority of cases they know full well that in their own rank of life they may be considered unfortunate, but not guilty. But ' the love child ' is in itself a real affliction ; it prevents their going to service ; it makes them when received at home most unwelcome, as they entail expense upon those already very poor ; they are crippled in their own power to earn bread for themselves, and have yet to provide for another mouth. Again and again have I heard the wish expressed, by those who should have desired the infant's life, ' that it would please B B 2 372 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 5 God to take it ' — an expression we have learnt to translate into the intention of themselves doing nothing that can be avoided to save it. There are few districts in which women are not to be found ' sage ' in these matters. They are consulted by the young who begin to suspect their sin will find them out. They have all knowledge of the ways by which exposure may be saved their clients, if they are applied to in time. They are ready, if not to play the bold game of Mrs. Winsor, to play a game of their own, and often with perfect success, by which these expectant mothers are saved exposure beyond their own immediate circle. I am well aware that the popular idea of maternity is that which poets are so fond of apostrophising. I have lived long enough in the world to have come to the conclusion that where the mother's interest in life is seriously affected by her having a child, the maternal instinct of love for offspring is very often a mere feather in the scale. I am quite satisfied there is no human being requiring the law's protection more than the illegi- timate child does — from its own mother. Cold philosophy argues it would lead to worse evils if the law were made more penal against the fathers of these children, and real efforts made to ascertain who they are. Plain justice seems to me to say that the being who causes the burden which the law seems content to think is so great as almost to justify its destruction should not escape all penalty, and leave the weaker partner of his guilt in all the temptation to murder out the evidence of it, then to go through a trial for murder, only to escape its penalty by the lax interpretation of evidence, a deli- berate perversion of justice, connived at because to be strictly just would be cruel, in that you would condemn the woman and take no steps to secure the punishment of her seducer. So long as infanticide is held to be the one crime to discover which, and prosecute the offender as a murderer, is to be avoided, Mrs. Winsors will exist, and women will seek their aid. If infant life has not the ordinary value of human life, let the law say so. If it has that proportion of such value which should make it to be a thing worthy of protection, make that protection a reality. Do not, by making an offence capital which you at the same 1 86j CRIME— ITS ORIGIN AND TREATMENT 373 time think venal, and are determined to treat as such, hold out the present premium to child murder. If not found out, the mother escapes the consequences natural to her sin ; if it is dis- covered, she goes through a mock trial for murder, secure that her sentence will be the light one passed on those who simply- concealed the fact of their having given birth to a child. Of all the dissolving views fashion ever yet exhibited before the eyes of those who watch its scenes, I know none so strange as that which converts the moral scenery of provincial upper class life, as exhibited to country neighbours, into the London picture, as shown by the same class, for the season, to all who care to go and look at it. I don't wonder that country servants get into terrible perplexity as to which code to follow — the sober morality of the country, church-going, prayers-at-nine rule ; or that which meets the eye and ear at every turn in London. The witty Dean who said his squire went to town to relax his country morality might have added, ' takes his servants there, not to relax, but to lose all respect for it.' Certainly, Sir, this is not an age so prudish that we need abstain from the public discussion of means to preserve our women from becoming infanticides, to discover some way by which those we so tempt to evil may part with its result without murdering it. When so much is done to provoke to a crime which, once committed, is so lightly punished, there could be little national disgrace if at some cost we provided these sinning mothers with other homes than the grave for their offspring. 374 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Aug. CHAPTER XIII. RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. Maynooth College was founded by Parliament in 1795, for the educa- tion of students intended for the Roman Catholic priesthood in Ireland. The permanent endowment of this College was granted by Parliament in 1845. The endowment of Maynooth occasioned much controversy in England, a motion being made for its abolition almost every session. The third Parliament of Victoria was dissolved on July 23, 1847. In the ensuing general election many Protestant candidates evinced much apparent zeal against the continuation of the Maynooth endowment — a zeal S. G. O. regarded as sheer cant, and dealt with accordingly, August 3, 1847. The constituencies of England are showing an amount of religious zeal really quite edifying. The whole country has put on the appearance of a vast pro-Protestant, anti-Papal league. The solicitors who manage the purchase of the borough seats are forced to cram their candidates with a sort of theological catechism, now published for the occasion, in which they are taught where and what Maynooth is, and the awful sin of con- tributing to its support. Further, from the same source they learn how to proclaim in proper hustings language their attach- ment to religious truth as held, pure and undefined from any- Romish adulteration, by all true Protestants ; their utter abhor- rence of the idea of endowing the Romanist priesthood of Ireland, &c. The newspapers teem with addresses to electors, all breathing the same firm attachment to Protestant principles, all professing the most intense love for the reformed faith : Protectionists, Free-traders, Whigs, Radicals, and Conservatives, all unite in expressing their devotion to the pure religion held by the majority of Englishmen, their determination to preserve it from. 1 847 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 375 any the least Romish taint. Now, Sir, far be it from me to say- one word in disparagement of the Protestant faith, one word in favour of those who would rob us of one particle of its full possession ; I don't wish to advocate the Maynooth grant, or to see the priests of Ireland for the present endowed by the State ; but, Sir, I hate ' cant ' in any shape, and I do verily believe that with a very large portion of the present candidates for seats these professions are made in the spirit of the purest hypocrisy. The grocer who told his apprentice to finish sanding the sugar and then come down to prayers showed no greater hypocrisy than a vast number of the present candidates do by their present professions of love to pure religion. I should like to know how many of these warm friends of the Church and true religion are in the habit of attending regularly on the services of the Sabbath. They have a horror of the mass that makes them most popular with the pious electors they address ; do they ever communicate at all in the form in which the Reformed Church gives them opportunity ? Of all blasphemy, what is more awful — of all hypocrisy, what can be more con- temptible, than that which guides the pen of the man who makes up his betting-book on the Sunday at Hyde Park Corner, who makes the London Sunday a day of worse than worldly idleness, who is known to be a profligate gambler, or at the best a mere trifler in religious matters, and who yet pens an address to the constituents of a borough or county he has purchased, or on which he is forced by the owner, declaring his sense of the value of Protestantism, his desire to see the multitude educated in the truths of the reformed faith, his earnest intention to preserve to the people the unfettered use of the Holy Scriptures ? To those who know them, many of the addresses of the candidates would be little worse than simply amusing for their unblushing effron- tery, did they try to throw any other dust in the eyes of those they address than that which they collect from the Bibles they have never used. Do the electors of England centre all religion in a horror of Maynooth, a dread of paying priests in Ireland ? Does the religion they wish to keep so pure enjoin no other duties on the performance of which candidates should be questioned ? 376 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Aug. 3 An infidel would gladly pledge himself against the endowment of schools for priests of any sort. If, then, these pledges are to be tests of worthiness, I see not why a Parliament might not be chosen that should choose an unbeliever for its chair. England might, indeed, hold her head up amongst the nations of the earth if no worse outrages against the religion she professes could be proved against her than the Maynooth grant. I should like, Sir, toj add a few questions to the hustings' catechism, immediately to follow those on the candidates' duty to the electors, the Protestant Church, and the Nonconformists — such as, for instance : — Is the labourer worthy of his hire ? Ought he to be allowed to earn a sufficiency of wholesome food by the sweat of his brow ? Has he not a Scripture title to the gleanings of the harvest field? Is there no injunction in Scripture against defrauding him of his hire by paying him in the refuse of the granary ? Is it scriptural to foster a state of things which engenders impurity of mind, and then to pass laws against bastardy, the effect of which drives the woman who is ruined to the despera- tion which leads her to hate, if not to destroy, her offspring ? Is it scriptural to profess when corn was low in price that a bushel of wheat and a shilling were the fair wages of a labourer, and then when corn rose to 24/. a load to pay him, and that grudgingly, 8s. or gs. a week ? (This question is adapted for particular county constituencies.) Is it scriptural to keep wages by combination so low that the labourer is ever half a pauper, and then to treat pauperism as if it was a crime ? Does the pure Protestant faith prescribe the rearing of Eng- land's bold peasantry in hovels in which ages and sexes are confounded together each night in one mass of beings crawling to seek rest in an atmosphere as impure as the circumstances undar which they breathe it ? Is it scriptural to build palaces for legislators to inhabit for a few hours daily for a few months in the year, costing, with their ventilation, &c, a few millions of the money paid in taxes by the people, and yet to let session after session pass by with 1847 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 377 no one Act passed to arrest the work of that death which slays its hundreds of thousands yearly, by the agency of impure drain- age, and the absence of sanitary laws ? We have farmers' friends, the friends of trade, staunch sup- porters of the Church, able advocates of Nonconformity ; mammon first, and then God finds zealous partisans ; whilst the class who produce the farmers' and the traders' wealth — the class who are God's peculiar heritage — the most useful, the most enduring, the most patient — yes, and the class in which there is the most of pure religion, scarce finds one advocate who avows his love for it, or one constituency that demands its protection from oppres- sion ; and yet the walls, the newspapers, the hustings, all speak attachment ' sincere,' ' devoted,' ' eternal,' to the religion of the Protestant. Surely this is blindness of heart, it is pride, vain- glory, and hypocrisy, it is uncharitableness ; may we be delivered from it ! If the endeavour to educate priests with the barest amount of the necessary means to fit them to be gentlemen — if the idea of making them dependent rather on Government for their support than on the contributions of a half-wild people, who will only pay at all so long as they are left uncontrolled in their deeds of violence — if these things savour of danger to our re- formed faith — I give no contrary opinion — if these things have roused England to a sense of danger to her religious liberty, how is it that the pure Protestant candidates and constituencies have not yet hitherto bestirred themselves to force on the attention of the bishops and the legislature the daily performance in many a so-called Protestant church of service conducted in a manner no one possessed of common sense denies to savour of Popery ? Is there no approach, on each celebration of the Lord's Supper at more than one fashionable London church, to the adoration of the consecrated elements ? I am convinced that were the goings-on at these places of worship, on any one Sunday, taken accurately down and published, the public would feel, as I do, disgust at this straining at the Maynooth grant whilst the wicked folly of the ultra-Tractarian perversion of our service is just as notorious as any other accompaniment of any fashionable place of Sunday resort. 378 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 23 For my own part, I fear far less danger to the Protestant religion from any effort to make the Irish priesthood gentlemen, as far as a liberal education can tend to that end, from any measure putting their temporal interest beyond injury from the caprice of their flock, than I do from the open assumption of religion on the hustings by those who have none elsewhere — the return to Parliament of men who play on the stage of their everyday life a part the very reverse of that which, for the sake of an object they covet, they are content to act till they obtain it. I fear the degradation of our religion from the yielding al' its kindest principles to the call of political expediency ; I dread the fall of the Established Church far more from those who arc taking the part of Judas within it, than from any help given to the cause of him who assumes to himself the place of Peter without it. With the half-hearted revival of Convocation in the province of Canterbury in 1852, S. G. O. expressed the contempt for that body which he maintained to the end of his life. October 22, 1852. I earnestly hope the report to which you have alluded, viz. that Lord Derby contemplates allowing the revival of Convoca- tion, may prove false. The late election of proctors in very many archdeaconries, I have reason to believe, was carried on in a way which, the more it is revealed, the more it will reflect discredit on the parties who were the chief movers. I know that in my own archdeaconry all but those who were in the secret were taken by surprise. These elections have ever been mere idle forms, often carried out in a way which would justify the term ' farce.' The real truth is, and the sooner the laity know it the better, the bishops are very much under the guidance of a particular clique of clerical busybodies, who get up the Church meetings for them, and manage all advisable Church agitation. These gentlemen, by means of Church unions and the clever working of the machinery of what are called the Church societies, have opportunity to concoct any amount of ecclesiastical mischief. The bishops give them all the importance they can, though they take care not to commit themselves to all their doings and i8 52 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 379 sayings. There are few dioceses which have not from time to time had to rue the working of these mitre parasites. Now, so long as they only wore a particular dress, patronised particular societies, and were great at meetings which no one else now cares to attend, the great body of the clergy and laity were quite right in enduring them ; but, if these silly innovators think that we are going to let them in Convocation call them- selves the representatives of the Church, they are very much mistaken. The Lord Mayor's dinner is postponed, I believe, until the funeral of the Duke is over. It was felt that such an affair would be out of keeping with the nation's hour of mourning. The Convocation meeting at this time for serious business would really be so great a farce that its indecency as regards the nation would exceed its folly as regards the Church. For my own part, I care not how soon the crisis arrives which is to determine whether the Church to which I belong is purely protestant against the errors of Rome, or only a make-believe opponent of that Church. I think Convocation may hurry that crisis, and the result, I believe, will be to raise a feeling which will purge the bench and the priesthood of those trifiers with the real pur- poses of a Christian Church, who for years past have conspired to enslave the laity under a yoke forged at Rome, but bearing the Lambeth or York mark. Let the word but go forth that the present members returned to Convocation are to be trusted with anything like the real functions of Convocation in the days long since happily gone by, and I, for one, have no doubt but that the great body of the laity will then let their voice be heard, this monster folly will at once be crushed, and the Church saved from an exposure of her weakness which would be the forerunner of her ruin. Bishops and Clergy. November 3, 1852. These are days which need plain language to set forth im- portant truths. Permit me in this letter to give utterance, without reserve, to observations on an important subject, which, however just, I admit I can scarcely hope to make palatable. Nothing can be more unsatisfactory or prejudicial to the real 380 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 3 usefulness of the Established Church than the present relative positions of her bishops and clergy. Once in three years we have a visitation ; we are summoned to a neighbouring town to meet the bishop ; we follow him to a morning service in the church, and hear one of our brethren preach a controversial sermon ; our names are then called over ; we stand before the communion rails, within which the bishop sits ; he, from his chair, proceeds to read a long essay on Church matters in general, his own views regarding them, and the par- ticular legal measures on Church matters which have been passed since the last visitation, or which may be expected before the next. We receive his blessing, and disperse — until the hour of dinner. This space of time is spent by the clergy in general either at the bookseller's shop-door, discussing the Charge and the sermon, or in taking a walk into the country. A small knot, however, generally contrive to get quietly together, and, with the bishop's chaplain, determine as to the policy of certain con- templated measures of clerical agitation, to either commence or be furthered a stage by the getting petitions signed at the dinner. The bishop in the meantime sees some half-dozen curates or new rectors, to whom he wishes to put some commonplace in- quiries, or, perhaps, to administer some gentle rebuke ; he then takes up the inn ' Times,' and waits with patience the hour of the next stage of the visitation — the dinner. At last all are seated who intend to dine with the bishop ; poor curates and indifferent rectors are gone home — the former cannot afford to dine — the latter it would bore ; they know the routine by heart, and gladly avoid its repetition in their own presence. The chaplain and the preacher, and some of the rural deans, are the bishop's neighbours ; the dinner is an inn dinner, and in general a very good one ; at its conclusion the waiter comes round for its cost — 8s. ; the rural deans come for the contribution to the Clergy Widow Fund — 10s. The bishop's health is drunk, and he is thanked for his admirable charge, and requested to print it ; he is modest in his reply, and acquiesces. If the chaplain's sermon has been very strong either way, his friends stay to dinner ; when his health is drunk, they request him also to. 1852 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 381 print ; he blushes, thinks how it will please his wife, and con- sents. After some small ecclesiastical talk at the episcopal end of the table, and some good stories from the secretary at his end, relished by his less awed neighbours, a petition or two for or against something is handed round, and gets a few signatures ; the bishop rises, bows to all, and goes away for another three years. A neat London-built brougham, with his lordship and the chaplain inside, the episcopal mace in the swordcase, and his butler, who has acted as macebearer, on the box, soon takes out of the sight of the assembled clergy and the boys in the street their right reverend chief and counsellor. The clergy get into their ' four-wheels ' and go home. Rural Dean Rubricus tells Mrs. R., ' The Charge was able, but evasive. He wants courage, my dear, to speak all he feels about our need of Convocation. The sermon was a sad exposure ; a Dis- senter might have preached it.' The Rev. C. Lowvein, rector of Gorhamville, tells Mrs. L., with a sigh, ' The Charge was able ; his lordship is very clever ; but it was very unsound. It is evi- dent he leans towards Exeter. But, my dear, we cannot be too thankful ; Octavius Freeson preached the truth as boldly as if he was on the platform of a C. M. meeting : we have asked him to print it.' Dr. Oldtime, the aged rector of Slowstir, tells his curate the next day, ' It was a slow, dull business ; the bishop prosed, the preacher ranted, the Red Lion sherry has given me a headache.' The next episcopal appearance among the clergy is at the confirmations. This is a hurried affair ; eleven o'clock at Pump- ford, three o'clock at Market Minster, and so on for a week or two in each year ; travelling some twenty-five miles a day, being so hurried that he is forced to transgress the rubric by saying that to four children at a time which he is ordered to say to each one : it is no wonder that his clergy see but little of him on these occasions. Some few may meet him at dinner, wherever he may stay to dine and sleep ; but they find him fatigued, and he has to play the guest to his host's family ; he could hardly be expected to do more. The next usual rencontre of a country curate, vicar, or rector with his bishop is at the meetings for the P.C.K., S.P.G., A.C., 3 S2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 3 and C.B. societies, these letters, in the ecclesiastical literature of the day, standing for the lengthy names of those societies for which Queen's letters are granted, and in aid of which Church Unions are very active. At some of these meetings the bishop takes the chair in person, arriving the night before at the rectory of some well-to-do active rector. Of late years they are but scantily attended by male laity ; the chief part of the audience in the body of the hall consists of the wives and relatives of the clergy on the platform. The breakfast at the consecration of a new church is another opportunity afforded to the clergy and laity of seeing the bishop. I may be asked — could a bishop do more than this ? I at once admit that when I regard the great extent of the several dioceses, and the peculiar position of the bishop, it is hardly to be expected — nay, hardly possible, that he could. I know very well he has to get his information about the real details of his diocese through archdeacons, some of whom know even less, for they move about less than himself; and through rural deans, who are but too often chosen, not for what they can see and tell, but for how they will tell of what they choose to see. My sketch is that of an ordinary diocese with an ordinary bishop. In an extraordinary diocese, with an ultra Anglo-Catholic ritua- listic bishop, there would be some alteration in the details. A communion at the church ; a sermon on symbolical architecture or consubstantiation ; a charge full of invective against latitu- dinarianism, i.e. everything which is not Church first; a deplor- ing of the degeneracy of the day, and imploring the accession of a time when the Church should be purged of untrusting children, have her own Convocation, and by her synodical action repress schism and advance her pure apostolical system, &c. At the dinner the clergy would be dressed like Roman Catholic priests ; the waiters like orthodox Protestant parsons. So far as any real useful end being answered by the occasion, there would be little difference between the two visitations. A palace — house in town — seat in the Lords — the metro- politan charity sermon duty of each London season — a large income, with its attendant snares and cares, — these are elements 1852 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 383. in the present episcopal position which seem to me to defy the bishop being to the clergy what he ought to be, and what he must be, if the Church is ever to be active and yet at peace within herself. The bishop of our day is far too elevated above the heads of his clergy. Superior as many even of the curates of his diocese may be to him in general scholarship, and especi- ally in theological learning, they can never feel quite at ease in his company. If they call upon him at the diocesan palace, or at his house in Belgravia, or his suite of rooms at Hotel, they are uncomfortably awed. The spiritual peer is too obvious to them ; they cannot at their ease venture on the homely parochial topic on which they would seek advice. There is a very large amount of duty a bishop could do in his diocese were he a less great man, which he now is but too glad to leave to those clerical volunteers whom he can well pay with a smile on public occasions, or an annual invitation for one night to the palace. I am willing at once to admit that, considering the grounds on which, in bygone years, bishops have been appointed by the Crown, the Church has fared well in that she has fared no worse. To have been a bold and unscrupulous advocate of an unpopular measure ; to have had a relative who had spent 10,000/. in contesting an important county on the ministerial side ; to have been tutor to a Minister, or to his son ; to have been an active partisan, on the right side, in a university elec- tion ; to be an actual relation of the Minister — these, and such like, it is well known, have been the claims most powerfully acknowledged in the appointment of bishops. We have had, and may have still, bigots bad and bold in their bigotry. The bench has, even of very late, shown in some of its members a deplorable mercenary spirit. A spirit of nepotism has at times been very rife, and we have had very worldly men, but I cannot call to mind one offensively bad man. What we really need, Sir, is more bishops, but of a very different worldly position. The public do not know a tithe of the ritual and other antics played in out-of-the-way places by some of the clergy to the injury of religion. The state of the 384 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 3 churches, in very many places, is quite shameful ; within half a mile of where I am writing there is one, belonging to the Chap- ter of Salisbury, in a condition as unsafe as disgraceful. Divide the dioceses into manageable districts, and have what I will call ' gig bishops ; ' men of learning, of piety, of some parochial experience, whose incomes should be, say, 1,500/. per annum ; men who would visit the clergy in their own houses, keep up a regular acquaintance with them, become known, in some measure, to the congregation of each village church ; men who would come to the rectory on a Saturday in their gig or four-wheel, stay the Sunday with us, wish for nothing better than the rectory's best room, and what the rector's limited establishment could afford, without fuss ; preaching in our churches on the Sunday, going to the Sunday-school to en- courage our wives and daughters in their task there ; had we any very sick and dying, going with us to the bedside of such sufferers, kneeling with us to seek the blessings from above the poor creature before us needs ; quietly discussing over the Sabbath cold dinner plans of parochial usefulness ; kindly touching on the duties we might yet add to our work ; as kindly warning us, or even admonishing us, as to observances omitted to the injury of our flocks, or rashly innovated to their offend- ing. The Monday would give time to the ' gig bishop ' to look in at the day-school, to delight and encourage the teachers ; to call on and also delight the churchwardens ; carefully to inspect the church, and all this without preventing him moving on by an easy drive to the next scene of an episcopal kindly visit. He would thus gain a real knowledge of the state of his diocese, and the peculiarities of character among his clergy. He could make himself their confidential friend, and gaining, as he would, so much practical experience, he would become a valuable adviser. Temperately and firmly opposing Tractarian treason to the Church's Protestantism on the one hand, he would, on the other, equally repress the opposite extreme, of a wild contempt for all order. Whether on the week-day or the Sabbath, all would be glad to see him ; his visits would be as gratifying as useful. He would get a pride in his clergy, and they would be the more easily ruled as they would be reproved in private, and 1852 RELIGIO.X AND THE CHURCH 385 affectionately advised in a pious and humble spirit, and dealt with in a way which must win their love. I feel satisfied that to some such ruling machinery as this we must come, if the Church is ever again to have any episcopal supervision in which the laity will have confidence, and to which the clergy would give allegiance. Thus, I should hope we should get rid of scandals which attach to the bench, to the hurt of the whole body of the clergy. My ' gig bishops ' would be working men, practically acquainted with their work, and in a condition to follow it out under far less temptation to error or to idleness than now besets the spiritual peers with their 8,000/. a year. We should then get rid of plotting Church unions ; we might be spared the, in many dioceses, useless office of archdeacon. At present few clergymen really know or are known to their bishop, except as mere acquaintances, unless, indeed, they are active agitators. The laity are left to the mercy of endless, ever-changing forms, ceremonies, and rules for divine service. They see large sections of the clergy meeting at clerical socie- ties, some to conspire to exalt the forms of the Church far above her spiritual teaching, others to throw contempt on all form and decent order by their neglect of it. They hear brother rail at brother — they know not which way to turn ; there is no quiet, no peace. They hear of a bishop's riches, and the fallacies of episcopal accounts ; but they seldom ever hear of or see a bishop acting as a friend among his clergy, treating all in a spirit of love, trying to reconcile their differences, and improve their practice. I am satisfied, Sir, that within these next two months the Church will shake off many a rotten branch, Rome's priests will pick them up — I would they had had them sooner ; but far worse will follow, unless some means are taken to show the laity that unprotestantising bishops cannot be borne in a Pro- testant church. We are saved from a Convocation which would have made our sores yet more public ; let us now hope that the good sense of the country may look for measures which shall heal, not aggravate, those sores. Let who will proceed to the work, Church reform must be VOL. I. C C 386 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 12 worked by lay aid, and the less the bench have to deal with it the better ; all mistrust them. Forty years ago that which is now known as the Sweating System lived and thrived, and was termed the Slop System. Sub-contracting was generally one of the elements of the Slop System, and, as applied to curates, was the subject of scornful reference. S. G. O. was very good to his own curates, and never failed to practise what he taught. Poor Curates and Old Clothes. November 12, 1852. The sympathy of the public has of late years been a good deal directed to the evils of what is called ' the slop system.' Poor Hood and others have done much for overworked ill-paid seamstresses and tailors ; the contrast, however, between capital in cash and capital in sweat and toil does still, and I fear ever must, present many painful features. There is, Sir, a class of workmen to whom little sympathy has as yet been afforded, but whose condition deserves all sympathy, and I think is capable of amendment — I mean those unfortunate gentlemen who as curates do a good deal of slopwork for the Church capitalists. So far from the field of labour in which their strength is ex- pended being overstocked — so far from it being the fact that at the gates of the Church vineyard there stand masses of men waiting to be hired — we are told that there is a cry from its highest bench for more workmen. To be a curate at all, a man must have passed some years of his life in the process of acquiring a costly education at some one of the universities ; he must possess testimonials as to his piety of the very highest character ; and he must have not only passed the ordeal of a university examination for his degree, but a further examination at the hands of a bishop or his chaplain as to his theological attainments. According to the bias of the bishop's mind will be the particular line of examination for orders. In some dioceses things would be held to be orthodox and scriptural which in others would be anathematised as un- scriptural, unauthorised. The would-be curate, if a conscien- tious man, has then to look for employment in the particular diocese with whose bishop his opinions may accord. If he is of 1852 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 387 the histrionic school, he has a very limited number of dioceses open to him ; if of the old-fashioned orthodox, he has some chance in any diocese ; if of the evangelical school, he has scarce a chance in one or two, a slight chance in a few, a good chance in many. Behold him ordained — through the diaconate now — a priest. In what does he differ from a bishop ? Of the same raw mate- rial, he has gone through the same ecclesiastical fabrication ; he possesses even the same property. He may appear before the public eye in the old ironmouldy surplice of a neglected rural parish, or in the well-cut monogram-buttoned white robe of a modern Belgravian chapel ; he is still simply a man in the full orders of the Established Church ; the Crown can find no superior matter out of which to make a bishop. It is true, the bishop can ordain, confirm, consecrate a church, churchyard, or a brother bishop elect, and has certain authority in matters of ecclesiastical discipline, with a seat in the House of Peers ; but he is, after all, nothing but a fortunate priest — a promoted, exalted curate. The Established Church is the nationally authorised instru- ment for the promotion of Christianity within the realm — the supposed best instrument in the nation's eye for that purpose — and on this plain ground it is protected and cherished by the State. It would be a church without this connection with the State, but it is adopted by the said State as its own peculiar church— the one it has chosen in preference to all others, as its great spiritual machine for advancing the eternal good of the people. The curate of a parish can do for the souls of the people every single necessary thing that the rector can do, or even a bishop, for I do not assume that many think confirmation neces- sary to salvation. The curate is often left in sole and entire charge of a very large parish ; he represents in that parish all the Church offers, all the State demands, for the cure of souls in it. The rector or vicar may be drawing from 300/. to 800/. per annum from the said parish as master spiritual workman of it, and this net, clear of all deductions ; the curate — the slop hand — ■ is doing the work at a salary of from 80/. to 120/., with unavoid- c c 2 388 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Nov. 12 able calls upon that income, seldom leaving to any curate a clear four-fifths of the nominal payment to him. We hear with truth of the wealth of the Church ; we know now what have been, and still are, the incomes of the bishops ; we know something of the amount of money falling into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners ; we know how they have aided in building palaces, and been blind to knavery in highly reverend quarters. Will the public believe the fact ? — for years past there has been a society whose aim is to collect cast-off apparel for — poor curates ! I have read with my own eyes the letters of curates and their wives, full of gratitude for gifts of worn-out clothing, giving painfully interesting details of how they worked up our old things into their own and children's best apparel. If merit should ever lead to promotion, I can quite conceive the possibility of a gentleman stepping into Fulham as its rightful occupant who had lately worn gratefully the cast-off trousers of the late bishop, and made Sabbath coatees for his children of the worn-out gowns of his wife. Why, Sir, ladies' maids and valets have a right to complain that charitable ladies come to master or mis- tress and beg for poor parsons the perquisites of their order. Let me tell those fortunate domestic officers of the great laity, or hierarchy, or rectorate, that the same charitable pirates will gladly, for the same purpose, accept clothing they would blush to wear any longer. The hour of Church reform is, thank God, I trust at hand. It is my firm belief that a comparison between the pay or profit of the sinecurists, dignitaries, pluralists, and well-endowed incum- bents with that of the curates and poor clergy who do the work in the Church's hardest posts, will prove a case utterly disgrace- ful to us as a body. It would be a just and good application of some of the fund in the commissioners' hands if it were applied to the buying out the existing pluralists ; they evidently hold on for the money — give it them, and then give the wages to the men who earn them. If the property in the custody of these commissioners was fairly applied, who can doubt but much of the disgrace of the present state of things would be removed ? I know that to talk of taxing good livings or chapter pro- perty in aid of poor working clergy is to raise a storm on all 1852 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 389 sides : we cannot help storms in the world of nature, they are inconvenient and injure a great deal of private property ; we may as well try to forbid gales of wind as try much longer to obtain toleration for the present amount of Church abuse. I can conceive no higher object of just ambition in a statesman of the present day than one which shall aim at restoring the affection of her members to the Established Church, by reform- ing, at any cost, her palpable abuses. Let who will suffer, this must be done. If a curate has the responsibility and work of a vicar or rector, he surely should in justice have something like his emoluments ; but to starve him into debt, and to send ladies about to beg old clothes for him — this is simply disgraceful, undeniably unjust. The Bishop of Oxford requests me to state that he never told anyone that the Queen would license Convocation. In my letter of the 26th of last month I gave my informant's words ; I did not think that anyone would be so simple as to believe that the Queen had made any personal communication to the bishop ; I took the word ' Queen ' in the sense usually taken in matters of State — i.e. as a term used to represent the Minister of the day. The bishop, however, denies that he spoke of Convocation being licensed in any way. My informant can only admit he wrote under a misconception ; from inquiry I have made, I believe this may have been the fact. Church Reform. June 25, 1853. I see in your report of the debate upon the bill of the Mar- quis of Blandford for the prevention of future chapter and episcopal peculation, Mr. Phillimore remarked that ' pluralities were rapidly disappearing, and, under existing regulations, could not be renewed.' Now, Sir, one of the evils of pluralism was non-residence. Is this the Mr. Phillimore who, as chancellor of the diocese of Sarum, is legal adviser to the bishop of that diocese ? If so, is he the legal authority who advised that the Bishop of Sarum could not refuse to institute a man of eighty, many years past duty, into a large and most important bene- 390 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. June 25, 1853 ficc, it being notorious that the octogenarian nominee of the patron was only put in to enable the said patron to sell the next presentation at a great advantage — further, that the old man in question had for years, though beneficed, been allowed to non- reside, on the ground of incapacity ? Let me tell Mr. Phillimore, if he is ignorant of the fact, that this rector of Spetisbury, so instituted, as the bishop says, on good legal advice, has never resided, nor I believe has the re- motest intention of doing so. I am truly glad that the axe is to be applied to the root of that baneful avarice which has turned to selfish purpose so much of the property of the Church, for which there was just demand of the highest character. But, Sir, Church reform must not stop here ; there is other jobbing besides that which perverts the revenues of the Church. Talk of the milliners and their workwomen ; why, the recto- rial dealings with curates utterly shame them. I have given up answering and am sick of reading letters from curates, working on salaries starving at best, but, as the bishops well know, even then imaginary, for the evasion of the payment is notorious. I have a list before me of offers made by rectors, &c, for curates, the highest salary in which would not retain the services of a whipper-in to my neighbour's hounds. Since I wrote to you on the subject of the supply by charity of cast-off clothing to pious clergymen, I have been inundated with requests to know where such men can obtain such clothing. We are making bishops important articles of colonial export, and sending out yearly more than 200,000/. to uphold the Church and spread Christianity in other lands ; and yet who is bold enough to deny that, so far as episcopal superintendence goes, this our home land has a very stinted allowance ? and, as to heathenism and infidelity, why we may count in millions those who have no real knowledge of God, no real opportunity of being brought to it. You are right, Sir ; the Church must adjust itself to the necessities of each period it is called on to meet. There is, I believe, more desire to work in its behalf at this moment than. July i, 1853 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 391 there ever was ; but what between the suspicions fairly engen- dered of the honesty of many of the hierarchy, the evident proof of their incapacity to fulfil their duties, the strifes on trifles, and the neglect of essentials, we are in a fair way to ruin ; and so let it be, rather than that we should survive our claim to respect. Simony. July 1, 1853. I have this morning been favoured with a copy of the « Simony Law Amendment Bill ' brought in by Dr. Phillimore and Viscount Goderich. I have also seen the notice given by Mr. Butt of an intended amendment to defeat it. I do not, for one moment, believe that it can be carried, for it would effect a deterioration or destruction of private property sufficient to raise an opposition quite certain to upset it. It is difficult at all times to get at the common sense of an Act of Parliament ; the neatest and most minute operations of che- mistry are easy compared with the task of getting at what is intended out of what is recited in legal language. As far as I can understand the measure in question, it aims at placing all persons in the position in which the statute of the 12th of Anne, c. 12, has placed ordained priests. When this Act is passed no layman or clergyman possessed of ecclesiastical patronage will be able to sell, directly or indirectly, the next presentation to a benefice. The sins of certain patrons — moral, if not legal — in manoeuvring to make gain out of vacant benefices, by filling them up in such a way as to ensure a speedy vacancy, are to be visited on all proprietors of Church patronage. There is no pro- vision declaratory of the law as to whether a patron can force a bishop to put in a dying or an incapable man (I do not think such a provision was necessary) ; but this new Act simply con- templates the arrest of all sales whatever of next presentations. Now, Sir, it has been decided long since by Chief Justice Grey, that the sale of the advowson of a living at the very time when seller and purchaser both knew the existing incumbent to be in extremis was not simony. I can find, however, even in the pretty full records of Church malversations, no case of a patron being held justified in nominating to a vacant living a man 3Q2 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July t either hi extremis from disease or approaching the very extremity of life from old age, in order that he might at once sell well the advowson or next presentation. The judges seem to have held that, as far as regards the action of disease, it was not for them to take a plea that the incumbent was so near dead that he could not be considered alive ; their common sense forbids their laying down any opinion as to recovery from any, the worst state, in the case of a living incumbent. I do not believe that a patron could now be tried for simony who put a man in the last stage of phthisis into a living, with the avowed intention of selling the next presentation well, even if it could be proved he dressed his proffered bargain with medi- cal certificates to the fact. But I do believe, if the bishop knew the truth of the case, he could in all legal discretion reject the appointment, provided examination proved that the nominee of the patron could neither reside nor do the duty. Now, let me take a case, and not a very uncommon one, where this endeavour to excuse the want of firmness in bishops or their advisers by an indiscriminate attack upon all holders of certain property would tell most unjustly. A clergyman is in most cases desirous that one or more of his sons shall follow his own profession. He has no interest with those who have Church patronage ; he looks about him and finds certain next presenta- tions to livings to be sold ; he takes the ages of his sons into calculation, with the ages of the existing incumbents ; he buys a presentation to a living, the possession of which he can reason- ably expect to come to his own hand or that of his executors about the time when one or more of his sons will be qualified to take it. He has a right to argue : ' If my son is qualified in the eyes of the bishop, according to what the law and spirit of the law of the Church require, he will be appointed.' He thus considers he has done a just and prudent thing. Who will question it ? And yet this can be done no more if the new Act passes. Laymen often buy advowsons and presentations on exactly the same calculation. Laymen and clergymen often inherit advowsons and next presentations ; they were bought by the money of those who went before them, and are as much bona 1 8 53 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 393 fide good saleable property as any other freeholds they may inherit. A man may have no relative to serve with a presenta- tion ; he may be too poor to give what he has a right to sell ; or he may be a Dissenter, and not like to have the presentation to a living thrown upon him ; his heir or heirs may be Churchmen ; he may think it, therefore, unjust to alienate the advowsons he has inherited ; he is informed that the incumbent of one of his livings is very old — is he to be forbidden to sell the next pre- sentation, or must he be forced to sell the advowson ? I will give a case somewhat notorious : A rector died in the occupation of two livings ; he left the advowsons (he was patron of both) to his heirs. His eldest son was in orders ; he could not, under the existing Acts of Parliament, hold both preferments, as his father had done. The family were not left in a condition to be wantonly generous ; he could not sell either living while it was vacant ; both must be filled up within six months. What was he advised to do ? That which he did : presented himself to benefice A ; was instituted ; sold the next presentation to that living ; resigned it in time to present himself to living B. In law I believe this was perfectly justifiable. I am well aware of all that can be said about these sales of the cures of souls, as I am of all that can be said of the whole system of patronage. If the whole principle of Church patron- age is to be gone into, so be it — I shall be the last to regret it ; but I do protest against inroads being made into matters of small comparative importance, when the graver matters are to be passed by. At a board of guardians, if a candidate for a medical district has passed ' the Hall ' and ' College,' he may be elected without challenge by a majority, even though a still greater majority of the electors may know he is a very weak and perhaps not over-skilful man. This is a thing for ever happen- ing ; all law can do is to see that certain qualified examiners have tested the knowledge of the candidate ; if he has got through that ordeaL no matter how, he has a right to all the privileges of his profession ; but the veriest set of poor law jobbers would never dream of electing an armless, or blind M.D., or one from age utterly incapable of duty. If they did, just perhaps to keep the post open until some guardian's son was 394 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July i, 1S53 qualified, the Poor Law Commissioners would not sanction the appointment. A chapter will, without scruple, let the great tithes of a parish for a term of years, although they know from old experi- ence that the consequence will probably be that the tenantry will be screwed, and, as I have seen, the chancel left to decay : to my poor mind this is quite as scandalous to the Church as the custom of the sale of next presentations ; hay, more so, for what with a bishop to see to the fitness of the presentee, to episcopise or overlook him afterwards — what with archidiaconal and rural diaconal machinery, there is reason to suppose the nominee will be fit for his post and kept to his work, whereas the lessees of chapters pay, I dare say, punctually, but seem effectually to defy all interference from those who should see they do their duty towards the Church property. However much I desire a most thorough Church reform, I can regard this Simony Law Amendment Bill in no other point of view but as an injurious attack upon private right, with no ground of defence on the score of real public benefit. The pre- sentations to chapter livings are, I believe, generally offered in turn to the privileged members, either for themselves or their nominees. Now, no one would venture to predicate of an eccle- siastical corporation, any more than they would of a civil one, that the individual members would ever be men deeply im- pressed with the responsibility of Church patronage ; they are elected to their own chapter positions as qualified for them ; it is charitably supposed that they will make no appointments but of qualified men ; and yet I will venture to say, that the pre- sentations to Church preferment bought in open market will bear the strictest comparison with those of any existing chapter. The one and only safeguard that exists to protect parishes from hurtful abuse in the appointment to their cure is the power of the bishops to reject for ordination or institution im- proper persons ; if they have not this power, let it be given ; the presentee can only then choose from a qualified list of persons ; how he may get his right to make the choice will be compara- tively a matter of small import. July 26, 1853 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 395 A Paralytic Warming-pan. July 26, 1S53. A very short time ago I received a letter from a clergyman, giving me a particular and succinct account of the following transaction. Although I took some pains to ascertain that my correspondent was in a position to be well informed in the matter, I still could hardly give my belief to so extraordinary a narrative ; I therefore procured the assistance of a third person, of equal respectability, to ascertain for me whether I could rely on the information I had received. I am now in possession of his answers to my queries, and am compelled to yield my belief that the story I now relate is true. There is in Cornwall a certain parish called St. Ervan. In or about the year 185 1, by the death of the then incumbent, the living became vacant. The patron wished to sell the said living (the next presentation or the advowson, I am not informed which) at the highest price he could obtain. A gentleman was found, very infirm, paralytic, utterly incompetent to do the duty, and giving every prospect, from his state of health, of affording to the purchaser speedy possession. To this gentleman the living was given. It was some time before he was brought to the spot for induction, &c. ; he had then to be supported up the aisle by two persons ; jelly and wine, says one informant, wine and water says another, were supplied him at the reading-desk. He was not able to get through reading the Thirty-nine Articles in the morning ; becoming very unwell, he was removed from the desk to the inn in an almost fainting state. In the afternoon, how- ever, he was again brought down to the church, and did succeed in finishing the reading of the said Articles. Another clergyman from a neighbouring parish had been sent for, to be ready to finish the service, in case this new incumbent should through weakness fail to do so. So fatigued was the poor man with the effort that he was detained in the neighbourhood under circumstances causing great apprehension for his safety. He never resided ; within these feiv zveeks the living has become again vacant. ' The whole scene,' says my correspondent, 'was one calculated to inspire unqualified disgust.' 396 THE LETTERS OE S. C. 0. Aug. 15 The Institution of Clerks. August 15, 1853. I have just received a copy of a letter from Mr. Barnes, legal adviser to the Bishop of Exeter, addressed to his lordship, in answer to mine, published in your columns, exposing the St. Ervan case. It appears to me to contain matter of the highest importance as affecting the Established Church. Mr. Cox was, it seems, instituted to the living of St. Ervan by the bishop's commissary at Exeter, by virtue of a flat ob- tained from his lordship. Mr. Barnes says, ' At the time of his institution Mr. Cox appeared to be very infirm, but I have no recollection that there was anything indicating his being para- lytic. Of the truth, however, of the details which are stated in Mr. Osborne's letter of what occurred at the time of Mr. Cox's in- duction, shoiving his incapacity personally to discharge the duties of the parish, I entertain no doubt.' Now, Sir, I might rest satis- fied with this almost entire testimony to the truth of my state- ment, but in such a case I was bound to be careful as to the positive truth of each separate averment. I am bound, then, to re-assert my belief that Mr. Cox was affected with paralysis, and to add, that I purposely suppressed certain minor offensive details, which would have made that day's work at St. Ervan appear a far more aggravated pollution of the Lord's Day, ser- vice, and house. Mr. Barnes concludes his letter in these words : — ' May we indulge the further hope that one effect of the publicity of this case may be to put an end for ever to a practice of which it is not possible to speak in terms of too earnest reprobation ? ' I am, Sir, truly thankful to you for having allowed me to be the instrument of obtaining such a prayer from so influential a quarter. But, Sir, on what grounds do the public suppose Mr. Barnes defends his client for having allowed institution to this poor man ? In the early days of the episcopate of Dr. Phillpotts, a very aged clergyman, deaf and of great bodily infirmity, was pre- sented to a benefice for the purpose of enabling the patron to sell the advowson to the highest advantage. The bishop at first i853 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 397 refused to institute. On consulting high authority, he was in- formed there was fear whether his refusal could be sustained in law. He does not tell us whether this superannuated cripple went through the farce for which his holy services had been purchased ; but we are certainly left to the conclusion that he did, and that the bishop, in his next charge to the clergy, ex- pressed his indignation at the circumstance. Mr. Barnes now tells us that the Gorham case cost the bishop 3,000/., and there- fore, unsuccessfully as that sum had been spent, he (the bishop) could hardly have been expected to incur fresh expense by liti- gating with the patron in the St. Ervan case. I know quite enough of the reputation of Mr. Barnes for all the qualities required in one who acts as legal aide-de-camp, even to such a bishop as Dr. Phillpotts, to satisfy me that he knows as well as I do, that a writ of quare impedit in the St. Ervan case would have been as mere waste paper against the justification he and his client could have put in. We all know, Sir, the amount and versatility of talent possessed by the present episcopal bench ; I believe the whole bar could produce no abler special pleaders than some of the bishops have proved themselves. From the depths of abstruse doctrine to the breadths and depths of minute financial transactions, they have proved themselves apt and skilled in making out appa- rently strong cases on evidently weak foundation. How, in the name of offended decency I ask, is it that these same able men have been dumb in Parliament on the point which Mr. Barnes now prays may receive its solution by publicity given at my poor hands ? With some ability, considerable cunning, and not a little courage, the bench conspired to give episcopal and priestly power a vigorous impulse in the colonies. They must have known that in the House of Commons the move would meet exposure and receive its quietus. Why not have brought in a short declaratory Act to strengthen their hands at home against these worse than simoniacal cases ? Is there a lower idea to be formed of human nature than that which gives us men, ordained as holy ministers of the Gospel, who, for a brief enjoyment of a little more income, take 39 8 THE LETTERS OF S. G O. Sept. 2 their bodily weaknesses, their age, their near expectation of death, into the market ? I can form one lower idea. It is that of those who lend themselves to seal the contract, for fear of money costs, or private animosity, and who yet, having the op- portunity to prevent this pollution of our Church at its very heart, have been content to toy with such matters as the resto- ration of poor defunct Convocation, or the infliction on the colonies of a spiritual burden they would soon reject. A relative of the late rector of St. Ervan's wrote to the ' Times ' to deny the imputation of paralysis. To him S. G. O. replies as follows : — September 2, 1853. A relative of the late rector of St. Ervan's has in your columns given him a very high and, for all I know, a fully deserved character for amiability and general devotion to the duties of his profession. He has also passed some severe cen- sures on myself. I am not disposed in any way to take offence at his having done so ; under the circumstances, it is only natural. He distinctly denies, however, that his relative was paralytic at the time of his induction. I did believe it, because I had it so in writing from a source I would not suppose to be mistaken on the point. I am now, I presume, called on to believe that that distressing bodily debility, which was so evident as he passed to the reading-desk, while he was in it, after he was taken from it — which was the general theme of observation during the time that the illness induced by the efforts of that day detained him in the neighbourhood — was the result, not of paralysis, but of general physical prostration. I can have no object in refusing my belief to that supposition. If I hesitate for one moment to do so, it is out of deference to my original informant, and because I feel that, so far from that view making the whole exhibition less disgraceful, to my sense it would make it more so. The whole facts of this unhappy case have now become notorious on other authority than mine. Mr. A. Cox may com- fort himself with this consolation, such as it is — that, though there are clergymen who hold with me, that the receiving a 1853 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 399 living by a man of shattered health, for the purpose of increas- ing its saleable value by advertising the probability of an early vacancy, is the sale of one's infirmities, the putting a price on one's near prospect of death, there are very many who hold it quite justifiable to do so, who would do it to-morrow, had they opportunity. In this case of St. Ervan's I have some reason now to suspect the transaction will fail as to its intention ; it is said, the late rector died so prematurely that it is doubtful whether the sale is legal. It will be no subject of regret to me if this is true. I again repeat, let the sale of advowsons and presentations be made legal at all times, whether the benefices are void at the time or not ; leave to the bishops the full responsibility of seeing that capable presentees only are instituted ; thus, and thus only, can I see any way of escape from that shame on the Church which the present state of things entails. If I have in any way been the means of calling the attention of those in authority to the necessity of some alteration of the law, I can easily bear a little more of that which I have borne with for many years — the misconstruction of my motives. Pensions to Resigned Bishops. July 15, 1856. Two bishops are about to retire on the ground of infirmity, the natural result of advanced age — what Churchman can lament the fact ? There is a third, known for his curious commentary on foolscap paper, who might join his wiser brethren and give us additional ground of satisfaction. While, however, these two wise episcopal abdications command our respect, and the third case to which I have alluded may yet, I trust, speedily do so, I think we may be permitted to compare the lot of the working clergy, when worked out, with these brighter lights whose oil is failing. If the rector of Broadbean-cum-Appleton survives his next birthday, he will be eighty-one. His income has been, for the forty-eight years of his present incumbency, a nominal 400/. a year, subject to all manner of outgoings. If he retires, i.e. resigns, he is a beggar at once, and out-relief is all he could by 4oo THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. July 15 law obtain, and this only as a favour from the board of guar- dians, who respect him highly. They know his circumstances. It is no secret that he could not afford the 12/. to the gentleman who fixes false jaws ' without springs,' though he desired it from his heart, that he might be more distinctly heard by his congre- gation. He has insured his life for the benefit of the excellent woman who has so long shared his cares and toils, should she survive him ; the only hope his old maiden — because portion- less — daughter has of future subsistence is also from this insu- rance, and the sale in prospect of his library of ancient Fathers. If he retires, how is he to keep up his policy of insurance ? As the bill for the future support of the Bishops of London and Durham is brought in by what is called ' the present Govern- ment,' I have every hope that it will follow the fate of other measures so unfortunately begotten to be ultimately deserted ; otherwise I think I could easily undertake to show that it is in principle as unjust as at this moment it is in policy most inexpedient. With what consistency can Church or State be taxed to give high pensions in these cases, on the simple ground that the pen- sioners are aged, infirm, or even altogether incapable ? Is age — is infirmity — nay, is incapacity good ground for the retirement on pension of a bishop ? If so, surely it is as good ground in the case of such a rector as I have described above. But then, if the bench admit this, how is it that they do not hold extreme age, positive infirmity, evident incapacity to be grounds on which to refuse the institution of clergymen to livings? A Bishop of London or Durham is to be pensioned and re- leased from further toil on account of the very physical and moral causes which have within these few years made, and may yet make, many a clergyman most eligible for an incumbency. Should my friend of Broadbean-cum-Appleton resign from positive exhaustion that cider-famed benefice, I think I could give him yet one chance to escape parish pay, or the dole of his sympathising brethren. A mercenary patron or some conscien- tious executors may need an old failing man, to put into a benefice they must sell, but which being vacant they must first fill up. 1856 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 401 This shame on the Church and the State I long since ex- posed in your columns ; in certain quarters I was promised that it should not much longer exist. Not one step that I am aware of has yet been taken to remove it. Neither Lords nor Com- mons, nor their cassocked shadow, Convocation, have cared or dared to interfere in the matter. True, a mitred friend has told me, ' it is a most delicate business, requires much consideration, great caution, &c.' I never knew a system of jobbing to approach which did not require all this and much more ; and yet I have lived to see many of these delicate matters, when boldly taken in hand, become strangely easy of solution. Ladies'-maids declare they — in the season — lose as much sleep as the wretched working hands in the dressmaking busi- ness, to whom sleep at all is a mere dream of rest. I don't believe it ; even if they did, I could strike a strange balance between the suffering in any one year of the well dressed and fed and paid women, who sit up, or lay up, to take off the dresses of their mistresses, and that of those poor creatures who toiled to make them. I don't dispute that a conscientious bishop is hardworked at certain seasons ; but when I compare the circumstances which surround him in his toil with those of many a harder-worked curate or incumbent, and bear in mind that both, for original ordination, required the same qualifications, I must say that I think, if pensions are to be the order of the day, it would be but fair to offer them first, where 6,000/. a year would give honour- able, well-earned retirement, to some twenty men who have worked life out in the deep ground of the vineyard, rather than to one man who may have worked as long, but at far lighter, better sheltered, higher paid, and more world-honoured work. Preaching — ' The Working Men.' January 12, 1858. I have all my life been partial to that class of my fellow- creatures known as ' the working men ; ' I don't mean the 'roughs' of society, but mechanics and such like — men who to gain their bread need thinking heads to guide practised hands. I have seen a good deal of this class, and, though I cannot vol. 1. D l> 402 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 12 say I think them as a body what is called ' religious,' 1 must say I do not think them in moral conduct at all inferior to their employers, or those who are the customers of the said employers. The working men are not, I think, an ungrateful class ; they may not esteem themselves the race of unbelievers whose pecu- liar infidelity is said so earnestly to call for the monster efforts making to preach it out of them ; still their powers of observa- tion are great, and they do, I have no doubt, put a charitable construction on the rather questionable humility of some of those great men who are so fussy about their conversion. They are quite content to be preached at with any amount of decla- matory force that so-called Church or truly called Nonconformist zeal can bring to bear upon them. It is true, as yet, they have not cared to struggle with believers who are not ' working men ' for seats at the great preachings ; still, a great many do go, I am told, and I am sure the whole body must feel the sympathy shown for them in the great ' movement ' for their spiritual good. The crusade is against the working man's unbelief, at least so the working men say ; I would pray from my heart for the success of any and every attempt made to bring men ' to believe ' ; my fear is that, in this mania for high-pressure preach- ing of ' faith,' the duty of ' practice ' is too much lost sight of. The working men may, I do not say they do, believe less than the higher orders ; how is it as to practice ? Judged by the 1 Gospel,' they may appear very deficient ; judged by the ' Ten Commandments,' are they worse sinners than other folk ? The leaders of the preachers came from the ' West,' the working men are expected from the ' East ; ' is the West more pure, more honest, more really moral than the East ? Among ' working men,' men who wear flannel jackets and, perhaps, paper caps — pure artificers, there are, as all the great employers know, many very able and, in their way, very elo- quent men. I am quite certain some of these would by their strong common sense, aided by a plain, earnest delivery, be able with little effort to hold the attention of large assemblages of the highest educated of the land on such a subject as their i8s8 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 403 mutual social condition ; it is one of never-ending discussion among them, and one on which their various callings have given them great opportunity for observation. We of the upper crust of social life have taken immense pains to spy out and declare the various points in which the working man is most degraded, and we have fully illustrated for the world's contemplation the sources of that degradation. The penny theatre, the ginshop, the small pawnshops, the beershops, the low ' hells,' the low night-houses, &c, have all been pen-o- graphed ad nauseam. How are we prepared for a working man's crusade on our end of the town ? How, if the men of the hammer, chisel, brush, and needle, should set to work to unfold our sins, their scenes, their results ? Does not the Mormonism of the clubs support the same sin that is said in its lower grade to curse the pavement in its richer guise in which it adorns those dancing rooms where the beauty of the music can scarce be surpassed, and into which, while an enforced decorum reigns as the rule, no woman enters whose character has not been sold or is not now considered to be on sale ; a scene where, strange to say, fathers and sons are sometimes seen together, where the police will civilly point out to the astonished country visitor many a public man advanced in years, holding a position in the State which would seem incompatible with so flagrant an exposure of want of principle ? Are the low gambling resorts at Mile-end worse in their blasphemy, nightly riot, nightly rascality than those at the West-end, into which are seen to enter men of all ' ages,' ' posi- tions,' and possessions ? Who imports French guilt to minister to the tastes of Eng- lish sinners ? Not the working men, but the wealthy customers of their employers. Are churchwardens and clergy now roused in earnest to seek some means of cleansing the streets of that flood of bold, aggressive sinners who have so polluted the principal thorough- fares that they arc closed to every man who cannot shut his wife or daughter within a carriage ? Is this working man's work ? Arc there in the East worse evidences of greater moral degradation producible ? 4 o4 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Jan. 12 Say that working men are fascinated by ' sweeps,' by the speculation offered in the low betting-houses ; that thus many are ruined ; does not a spirit of gambling eat, year by year, as a foul moral cancer into the very life of educated, wealthy, ennobled society ? Give to the working men the use of the Royal Exchange and the Horse Bazaar in Baker Street, or Exeter Hall, for three evenings in the week through the season ; secure that none but believing men — Christians of their class— shall hold forth ; let the invitation to hear be to the men and their families who have this world's rank, this world's wealth, education — who are of those who live by the brain, not by the hand. Let the peers come, the rich commoners, the bankers, the merchants, the pro- fessions, the flourishing tradesmen. I will venture to say, we should soon see the tables turned ; London west would not endure three such preachings as would then be heard. It would be voted the rankest Radicalism ; clubs, mess-rooms, drawing- rooms, chambers, the turf, the exchange, wherever men or women of wealthy or hitherto privileged guilt do congregate, there would the cry be loudest against this vile democratic lifting of a curtain behind which ' the working man ' had no business to peep. I say this would be the result, even if the 'working ' preacher was limited to the 'Ten Commandments' as the ground from which he was to extract the wholesome food of reproof he was to offer. We all know it would ; and yet oh how we weep over that poor working-man class, because as yet they seem so ill to appreciate the efforts we would make to bring them to Christ — to make them moral ! Surely, Sir, the end and aim of all preaching, founded on God's Word, is the reformation of sinners, the turning the wicked man — as a man — from his wickedness ; in the sight of Heaven all are of the working-man class, for all have the work ordained from Heaven to do. Why should we murmur if the West- minster Abbey special services attract sinners in broadcloth and silk, instead of cotton and fustian ? The preacher has the same message of peace to both, and the Decalogue has an equal claim on both. When a powerful preacher, fresh imported from the provinces, is ushered to his rostrum or preceded on the platform 1858 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 405 by men of rank and note, if he is honest he will not forget them in his discourse. True, they may have besought him to adapt his style and matter to the comprehension and the moral or immoral condition of ' the working men.' They may have schooled him beforehand in the statistics of working-man vice ; but I repeat, if he is a true servant of the Great Preacher, he will hesitate to denounce the sins of his supposed working-man audience without also warning those noblemen and gentlemen ushers of his train whom he well knows to belong to a class ust as amenable to the commands of the Decalogue, just as hopeless without the simple faith which leans on that ' Atonement ' he delights to preach. It is my firm belief that the seats at these special services cannot be better filled than by the wealthy and educated and noble of the metropolis. It would be the most hopeful of all ways of reaching the working classes if it was known to them that there were great weekly preachings addressed to, and faith- fully aiming at, the notorious vices of the wealthy and privileged class. They can now buy the penny copy of a sermon warning themselves against the very sins in the East which they see to flourish unrebuked in the West. Let them buy an equally cheap copy of bold, straightforward, earnest eloquence, rebuking the harlotry, the gambling, the Sabbath-breaking, the fraud, the wanton extravagance, which none can deny as prevalent among the more favoured class, and they will begin to believe that preachers are in earnest, and that what they preach comes from one who is no respecter of persons. It is clear to me that at present the working men are likely to regard this movement as a mere tournament or passage at arms between parties in the Church, and the Church as a party against all comers. The antagonists have chosen a common field ; they would fight the devil where he fights for souls among the commonalty. They think preaching will expel him from the mechanic, and so they get the best preachers they can, and invite the working man to give them a chance of trying their power of words upon him. The Surrey Gardens begat Exeter Hall, Exeter Hall has begotten Westminster Abbey ; the Bap- tist body began it, the Evangelical Church party took it up, the 4c6 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Jan. 12 Nonconformists fell in when these were interrupted, and now High Church and Low Church have occupied Westminster Abbey, give some promise of St. Paul's — still for ' the working men ' : why for them only? I would not undervalue faithful preaching ; I am not blind to the value of such preaching, ever enhanced by an earnest, eloquent delivery ; but I am alive to the great danger of the lofty patronage given to pulpit declamation as directed against the vices of one class, and hitherto restricted to men of one party in the Church. Itching ears too often belong to those who have idle knees ; a craving for the best of preaching does often exist in those who listen but to forget. There are politics in faith nowadays which make men the blindest of partisans ; they will revel in the doctrines that should condemn their own sins, simply because, as doctrines, they are hateful to — the other side. For my own part I think the preaching which is to win the working men should have less of parade about it, must seek them in their own neighbourhoods, and this the Bishop of London rightly perceives. I also think that the time is come when preaching should be less exclusive ; I am not aware that any man was ever ordained to deal with working men only, and I have yet to learn that it is just to scourge vulgar sin and leave refined guilt to go free. I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that the past year has recorded an amount of flagrant crime, of cunning, accomplished villany, among the favoured in purse and in intellect which can scarcely be equalled by the most careful gleaning from the discovered crime, fraud, and robbery of the lowest classes among us. If the Church is to hold on as the specially authorised exponent of God's will and Christ's Gospel ; if the Noncon- formists are to preserve their position, as free to expound and declare the same holy will and message, let them not overlook the working man's need of teaching, or the rich man's need of warning. The one may sin in ignorance, the other does sin, knowing better. We shall have plenty of wran- gling for freedom to assault the vices of the lower millions. In common justice let some zeal be shown as against the same 1858 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 407 vices when seen in more refined guise among the ' upper ten thousand.' We rush unbidden into the poor man's house to assault his sins, if we can discover them ; we invite the poor to come in masses, for their souls' sake, to our monster preachings. Why- give Lazarus this high feeding in spiritual matters, with peers to wait on him, bishops and deans to prepare the food, and leave Dives to the prose of an inoffensive sermon at his comfortable church, or to a dull Sunday at his club, or a rather too lively one at Richmond ? The St. Leger and Poor Curates. 1861. Mr. Pollock, of St. George's Hospital, invites me to plead the cause of a particular suffering class — clergymen in absolute want. Some years ago I did this in your columns. I have always felt that there can scarcely be a more pitiable case than that of a man of education, irrevocably bound to one of the highest of all professions, and yet either starving in it or gaining scanty bread in a state of physical and mental suffering which utterly incapacitates him from the proper performance of its duties. I have known many such cases ; there are, I have no doubt, many hundreds to be found. I know as a fact that to many a hard-working clergyman the cast-off clothes of a butler would be a gift gratefully received. I have, however, never heard of a more pitiable case than that on which Mr. Pollock has addressed you. I have taken care that, at least for a short time, he shall not continue in this state of want. Who has won the St. Leger ? W T hoever it may be, if he or any other so fortunate a being will send me 50/. or 100/. for this poor man, I will see it safely to his hands. Why appeal to a worldly turfite ? I think I hear it said. I answer, because I have learnt of late years that in men whose pursuits I hate, and in women whose calling invokes the world's scorn, there is often a charity, when appealed to, for which to 4 better' people we often appeal in vain. They like, however, to do their good quietly. 4 o8 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. April 14 The following letter on the indelibility of orders was published anonymously. Mr. Bouverie's Bill. April 14, 1862. The doctrine of ' once a priest, always a priest,' is a mere mockery of all decency when we come down to the fact that men are made priests, ' once and for ever,' with scarce any pre- paration to qualify them for the duties of the priesthood, at an age when they have not the knowledge of the world about them which could teach them on what they really enter when they become a priest. You may tell me of the solemn ordination service; all the deliberate preparation, by 'examination;' the test of fitness, from testimonials : I admit it all, I admit we were examined for orders, and grave men testified of us in terms which in many a case would indeed have astonished our friends and relatives, had testimonials any real value ; all I argue is — was the fact of our real desire for orders ever proved, our fitness for orders ever ascertained ? I go further ; I say — of what young man of twenty-three, fresh from the university, can it be safely predicated that he is fitted to be bound for life to a pro- fession — the noblest, where fitness is given from above ; but alas ! one most humiliating, where life's struggle in vain seeks to overtake a fitness for duty for which mind and body may be alike constitutionally unfit. Mr. Walter is right ; the age at which the layman is irrevocably made a clergyman is far too early an age. It would be an early one at which to make any of life's vows : but who, in common sense, dares to say that, at this age, any one man in an hundred is really fitted by reflection and by life's discipline to take upon himself to be the soul's guide to the living, and the pilot through the disturbed or calm passage, as it may be, of the soul dying its way from the body into eternity ? Give the clergy, at least, a locus pccnitenticB, some stage in life at which they can stay hand and voice, and say, ' I have erred, let me return to laism ; for, though I would not forsake the temple, I feel unfitness for its priesthood.' Offer no inducement to the waverer, but do set the honest sufferer free ; exclude him, if you will, from the bar, from the House of Commons ; bid 1 862 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 409 him, if you will, quit orders and starve, but do give him the choice of penury, if it must be, with ease of mind, rather than a competence for the body, with daily sacrifice of the mind's peace. Many a man has gone into orders for fear of, or out of the purest love, for a parent who demanded that sacrifice, thinking little of it, which the son has, too late, found to be great indeed. Many entered orders on a false idea of what the work was ; very many chose the clergyman's life because, poor fellows, they thought it would give them position ! How many a parent has half starved his daughters to make the one son a gentleman, i.e. a clergyman ; but too late finding that the said son would have had a higher position in the white of his father's flour mill than in the black which ordained him a gentleman, with scarcely the food of a butler, and with but too often less respect from the footmen of the squire's household. There is no question about the fact that the Church as a profession has now great difficulties in her recruiting service. Rectors won't have dull drones for curates ; patrons won't give livings to men who only have the uniform and the enlistment of the corps, with none of its real esprit or efficiency. Why not allow men to admit that they are failures ? Why not permit a man who reads badly, can with difficulty preach at all, who is nervous with the dying, who feels himself at every ecclesiastical trial utterly devoid of power, and with little will to stand up against it, to retreat at once, spare himself — spare the people, who love him for everything but what he is ? Alas ! Sir, I know — I foresee all the arguments which will be used to still chain the few bound to the pile of a burning conscience, rather than permit the sanctity of orders to be scorched in one hair. The old world-worn delusion will prevail, — the office has set apart the official, the Church would be scandalised if it was proved that any of her ministers could be good men, but yet feel she has not made them altogether good for her purpose. For my own part, seeing, as I do, how men with ' diplomas,' the prizes of long study and continued schooling for the M.D. or R.C.S., do often prove utter failures— do sometimes, in conse- 4 io THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. March 3 quence, take orders — that these arc not irrevocablj/ bound to set fractures, amputate limbs, and prescribe drugs, when they have the good sense to admit that they can do nothing of the sort conscientiously — I cannot see why the most solemn of all professions, and the one the least prepared for, and undertaken, at the earliest moment, as to its full practice, should be made the one profession from which there is no escape, except by the door of gross misconduct, or, as it is now offered, by assuming you dissent from the Church because you feel unfit to be one of its priests. A Weary but Resigned Rector. Over the signature of ' Gravestone ' he writes on ' Godly Discipline.' March 3, 1864. Constitutionally indisposed to take any active part in contro- versy of any kind, wishing, as an old member of the Established Church, to take Church matters as easily and as quietly as I take the teaching of my rector's sermons, ever since, after a wholesome breakfast, I had read your leading article on the proposed restoration of godly discipline in the Church, I have been in that state of mental irritation which can only be allayed by pen-and-ink aperient. Some clergy, it appears, are liable to conscientious disturb- ance when compelled to express, in the language of the Burial Service, future hope for the soul of the dead before them, such dead, in their belief, having lived in, and left, the world offering no grounds to those who knew them on which to build this hope, perhaps having evidenced in their way of living a state of mind opposed to all we are taught to be consistent with a sure and certain hope. Well, I have been at a large number of funerals, have seen men and women of every rank in life, of many different religious denominations, of every degree of ' character,' committed to the grave. Over all the same Church Service was read ; in my recollection I never met with but one case in which the clergy- man expressed himself warmly as to the condition of the dead man just buried, and, as he expressed it, ' the mockery it was, 1 864 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 411 reading the words of the service over him.' It was a bad case, a most deplorable one ; and yet I saw nothing in the after part of the day in the conduct of my reverend friend and certain others who shared his feeling to make me think he and they really believed Joe was, as they had intimated, ' really burning in hell/ while they had heard the service express some charitable hope in the other direction. There was none of the depression of spirits I should have expected in an earnest clergy- man, and several most pious and kind ladies, who were talking over the condition of a late neighbour, one who used to shoe their horses, make little hoes for their children, always had a kind word for them as they had for him, though, poor wretch, he did swear, was very often drunk, and showed no affection for the church, except as a ringer entitled to certain perquisites at Christmas. I suppose it was my sad, apathetical disposition which did not suffer me to be convinced that Joe was worse (he was all I have said above) than old , who never missed church, was a very loud responder, occasional — when quite convenient — com- municant ; and yet, after he had been duly buried as a most respectable churchman, before the order could be given for the stone which was to hand down his integrity and confirm his hope with a text at an extra ?s. 6d., he was discovered to have forged deeds which had enabled him to gamble away the inheri- tance of certain young orphans, leaving them beggars on earth ; he having, at the same time, forged the character which gave him, in the ears of those who heard ' the Service,' a sure inheri- tance in Heaven. Somehow, I have settled down, or at least never could be roused up, out of the belief that we men are poor judges about the dead, utterly incapable of saying, where one man is saved another man is damned. There are so many sorts of sins, so much of degree in sin — the sin of some seems so much the result of breed, rearing, and temptation ; the sins of others seem so wilful, so against knowledge. The poor can hide sin so little, the well-to-do conceal it so easily, that I have always thought no judge or jury at the church gate could, in nine cases out of ten, say how far the coffined corpse, waiting their verdict, was 412 THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. March 3 sufficiently guilty, or sufficiently the reverse, to make the words of the Church Service applicable beyond all doubt. When I say to my rector, 'How about the Marriage Service? Is your conscience never sadly wounded by its mockery when read evidently very late ?' 'Ah,' he says, 'yes, that is sad ; but then it is of everyday occurrence, and it is better, after all, to marry them.' Well, Sir, I may be wrong ; but I think if we, as is the case, marry all comers, we should act in an equally catholic spirit in the case of those brought to the grave ; — as we do not call for a jury of matrons to decide how far the service will be in harmony with the condition of the bride — a thing capable of proof — why not, still in charity, bury those without a murmur whose utterly hopeless state can scarce be said to be capable of proof 'by any human power ? Godly discipline, prevenient in action, is, it appears, to be invoked, to save the consciences of very scrupulous clergymen. Churchwardens, with the clergyman, or the latter without the former, are to ' present ' for exedmmunication the godless of the parish, that these, being made excommunicate, may know the Church won't bury them. This does rouse me. It is enough to rouse dispositions more ecclesiastically dormant than even my own. Is the being a communicant to be the test of godliness ? Is this to be the claim for Christian burial ? I knew a rector who gave the alms away — at least, a large portion of them— at the rails after the Lord's Supper to the poor who attended it. The number was very large, the characters of many very question- able ; it was not at all questionable that many came only for the money they were sure of, not for the grace they might seek. He gradually limited the distribution ; the number of these communicants diminished. He left it off altogether, and there was almost open rebellion ; there was open confession on the part of many, ' They never should have come but for the plate money.' In small parishes vicious life is very open to observation ; the rector knows our peccadilloes as soon as anybody. If he acts impartially I can easily conceive cases where, if he is to present the frail of the cottage, the free liver of the farm, he will have to add to the list the noble lord or esquire of the ' great 1 864 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 413 house,' perhaps his patron, his occasional host, the source from which come necks of venison, game, and asparagus. I can't see how a strict programme for godly life can be laid down, subject to the penalty of this proposed godly discipline, which would not catch some fish in the net with whom the rector and church- wardens could only deal to their own certain discomfiture. Mary Jane, Bill and Bob Fustian, could be safely anathematised ; banished church and yard they would go to ' meeting' for doctrine, and trust to the nonconforming half of the nearest cemetery for burial ; peers, baronets, squires, and yeomen would, I suspect, despise the order that banished them their pews and deprived them of their death right in the vault in the churchyard ; the Church might call them the hard name ; I suspect they would soon convince the Church these are not the days when they would allow any such tyrannical power in the hands of any such strangely constituted body as the said Established Church. Great folk nowadays are birds of passage ; they hibernate in the moral climate of their provincial residences ; they in spring and summer wing their way to the less pure climate of the metropolis. Small folk are necessarily rare goers from home ; they live under the rectorial and churchwardenian eye ; their evil is ever before their own neighbours. Fair play demands that godly discipline should go up to the ' season in town ' with the squire and peer and their households, if it is to keep watch over the smaller Church fry of the estate at home. Godly discipline, I presume, will not deal in indulgences, and give the peer and his children a season-ticket, making them free of ex- communication for certain months ; assuming that, going where Convocation sits, they must, as good churchmen, be all that awful body would have them to be, that they may be buried as their forefathers were. The conclusion at which I have arrived is this : this is not the day in which to revive any discipline which shall make incum- bents and churchwardens attorney-generals to indict the non- communicants of their parishes and seek their excommunication. Such a power in such hands would be either a contemptible farce, if it was really sought to put it in force, or, if allowed to remain as the rule a dead letter, would still leave room for the 4M THE LETTERS OE S. G. O. Sept. 12 exceptional exercise of the silly judgment of weak men, or the malicious spirit of bad men. It would be far better to let the Prayer-book alone than to try and support its integrity by any such extraneous bigotry. Gravestone. Chnrcli Help for Colonists. September 12, 1864. The four archbishops have made use of language in their ' Address ' for which, in my opinion, they have little justification. They assert that if we fail to plant the Church of God — by which term I presume they designate the Church of England — in the colonies, the large number of our poor who emigrate will lapse into heathenism ; that it is obligatory on us to do this for the sake of the heathen people — the natives, I conclude — among whom our emigrants settle, and to whom they inevitably carry the contagion of our diseases and of our sins. I altogether deny that the poor emigrants who now for so many years have left us for the colonies are a class whose religion was so dependent upon access to the worship, &c, of the Established Church that for want of it they would become heathens. I know that it has been a fair source of complaint among employers that the greater part of these poor who have emigrated has consisted of the best single labourers, and the families of the most industrious of the married. It tells but a poor tale for the English Church at home that her poor will become heathens as soon as they are beyond her jurisdiction. I have not lived to see that the Established Church has been so successful, in town or village, with our poor that it is at all safe to assume that without her aid we should have been a nation of heathens. I have lived to see that with all the energy and means, not only of the Church, but of every denomination of Christians, a very large proportion of our popu- lation at home are, as yet, quite as far from a true knowledge of God as any heathen can be. Our ' poor emigrants ' have been a very fair sample of the better part of our labouring classes ; considering how they were bred and reared, they, to be as good as they were, must have shown no little power to resist temptation. 1 864 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 415 But, Sir, we are told that these poor emigrants ' inevitably carry the contagion of our diseases and of our sins.' Whose diseases ? whose sins ? Do the archbishops, asking for money to support colonial branches of the English Church, describe the nation under the wings of that Church as so wicked, so vile, so morally and physically corrupt that those who go forth from it inevitably carry with them moral and physical contagion ? If they do, may I not venture to ask whether they are quite sure that a Church the children of which at home are so bad is the right sort of Church to found elsewhere? It would be a poor puff of a pill for dyspepsia in the colonies to say that it was the English pill, but at the same time to confess that wherever the English went they inevitably were found dyspeptic. It would ruin the market, for would not the pill be open to the suspicion of itself causing the disease it professed to cure ? I deny that the gin, the gunpowder, the cheap muskets, the novel diseases and vices, brought into heathen countries by those who have colonised them, were so brought by the poor emigrants. I think any such assertion made to a Maori convert would be at once denied. He would quickly tell us that these curses came upon his land from a very different class ; not a class which left England uneducated, poor, and owing all religious knowledge to Church charity and love, but a class well endowed in mind and means — men of pews, not of free seats in the Church at home — men quite equal to the burden of founding churches for them- selves in the colonies if so disposed. It is true that the accounts sent home of the amount of demoralisation in some of the chief towns of our colonies are most lamentable, but it is not true that this licentiousness and its contagious result is that of the poor emigrant class, although very many of that class are doubtless seriously affected by it. In pushing for subscriptions to aid Church objects, it has become too much the fashion to ground the appeal as one made for the sake of the poor. I sometimes am inclined to think that the Church authorities are of opinion, either that the souls of the rich are, as such, by riches saved ; or else, that the task of saving them at all would be so great an one that the Church feels no strength for the attempt. The cry always is — the poor man's 416 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Sept. 12, 1S64 soul is in danger ; and now this cry comes through the channel of this Address, a cry from colonial bishops, archdeacons, &c, all to the old tune : — ' Your poor in the colonies are soul-starved ; more of us officials are wanted, more clergy for us to work, more money to pay for both. You send us poor emigrants, men, women" and children, from your Church-nurtured land ; they come to us dependent, for their very souls' lives, on still having the teaching of our Church ; they come with disease, with vice in their train, to pollute our natives. Bishopless, churchless, without archi- diaconal superintendence and clerical service, they will be lost themselves, destroying the poor natives also, as they are them- selves destroyed.' I can understand money being wanted for the societies which find funds for this colonial ecclesiastical enterprise. The public have had too much reason to suspect that the object may be not so much to propagate our common faith as to extend the system of a particular Church. The subscribers to the company are hardly satisfied as to the intentions of the directors. God forbid we should live to see the day when England's heart is closed to a cry for spiritual help from the heathen of any land ; but with the great demand we have for Church work among the heathen of all classes at home, we are but prudent when we seek economy in our charity, and expect the end at which we aim to be sought with no more than necessary expense. We have a right to expect that those in the colonies who can afford it should find their own Church, as we have also a right to question whether, for the poor colonist, the poor heathen, a Church establishment in all respects like our own is the best instrument to advance the knowledge of God and the practice of godliness. Is there no danger, also, lest in establishing these distant churches we, by their failure from local causes, bring contempt upon the very system we advocate ? When so many colonial bishops are always to be found in England it is hard to believe that the need of the colonies in spiritual matters for episcopal machinery is so very pressing. However that may be, I am quite sure that, while the Christian public will never let working missionary societies want for funds Oct. 20, 1866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 417 so long as they are earnest and prudent in their work and accurate in their accounts, there may be some doubt whether appeals may not be too urgent for money to start little ' churches,' with second-rate bishops, to be supported at very great expense, and in the matter of converting heathen, or preserving religion to those who already love it, not doing more, if so much, as a less costly, less pretentious form of missionary work. His dislike of sacerdotal pretensions is nowhere shown more strongly than in the two following letters. Ritualism. October 20, 1866. Your leading article on Ritualism in the Times ' of yesterday will be read with sincere satisfaction by a very large proportion of those who believe themselves to be members of the Reformed English Church. There is a point, however, connected with the subject on which you have not touched ; it is one of the gravest importance to a large number of your readers. The Church is a profession, and one of most peculiar character. It requires an education of a peculiar kind ; it differs from all other pro- fessions in this feature — once chosen and entered it cannot be left. Men, as yet mere youths, go into it at an age which has known little of worldly experience. There is, therefore, the greater necessity that what it is, and what it requires, should be clearly known. Parents of future clergymen are rarely men of large fortunes. When a son in put into training for the Church as the profession of his future life, his father has not only to con- sider his moral fitness for it, but at considerable expense to provide him with the education the performance of its duties requires. As the young man will be ordained when very young, it is of the highest importance that the demands the duties of his future life's profession will make upon him should be so far clearly defined that he can readily understand them. As matters are now, it seems to me utterly impossible for a parent to say whether his son can be made by any course of instruction a good clergyman, or that any young man can predicate what will be required of him to do and believe in the English Established Church. VOL. I. F. E 4I 8 THE LETTERS OF S. G. 0. Oct. 20 If the Church Congress at York has done anything for the Church at large it has made confusion worse confounded. There were present an archbishop, and several bishops, among the latter that great episcopal platformist, the Bishop of Oxford, the Bright of all Church demonstrations, who, in the House of Lords, was so thankful that ritualistic folly did not exist in his diocese. Now it appears that at this congress there was a sort of Tussaud exhibition of ecclesiastical millinery. The Church Millinent displayed the contents of its wardrobe. Every parent had op- portunity to study the kind of trousseau he might yet have to provide for a son about to take orders. Besides this, the out- ward demonstration of the garments of ritualism, there was what is called ' daily celebration ' and other unquestionable exhibition of the development of the doctrine and practices of this class of cleroy. Had we any proof whatever by word or deed that the archbishop and bishops present at the congress disapproved this open challenge of their sincerity as opponents of extreme ritualism ? Is it not notorious that the ritualists proclaim the contrary to be the fact ? It may be very true that these weak people disregard the remonstrances of the bishops. It is my belief that they are more wise in this than in anything else, for I am convinced they are privately satisfied that the episcopal remonstrants have little real sincerity as such ; that, in real fact, some bishops should, if they dared, go a very long way with them, that one or two are in private altogether with them ; that of the few who really are opposed to them there are not above two or three who have the courage to do more than offer a timid remonstrance, which is very much of the nature of a compas- sionate condonation of what they cannot approve but will not condemn. When members of the bench, who on occasion are eloquent to denounce this mischievous folly, are yet found ready to preach in churches where it is in full vigour, when it is noto- rious that in some dioceses the only road to episcopal counten- ance — so much coveted by so many — is in the direction of this extreme ritualism, how can we wonder that the thing increases, that the extreme anti-Reformation party go on and on, until they have become a pitiable misrepresentation of the Romanist Church in a great deal, deliberate traitors to the chief principles 1 866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 419 of their own Church, at least the one in whose service they are ? What, I ask, is a father now to do, who, being a Protestant, has a son wishing to make the Church his profession ? Is the ' Directorium Anglicanum ' to be accepted as a manual to be studied, that the youth may be up in the business of the intra- Church work ? There was a time when the wits of the day were hard on what was called the cant of Clapham. The expression of evangelical thought had certainly then taken a phraseology to itself, which laid it open to much just criticism ; but, after all, it was for the most part scripturally derived, and the earnest men of that line of thought were great Bible readers. Naturally enough, they spoke and wrote under the moving impulse whose emotions, begotten of Scripture study, found their readiest clothing in Scripture language. They might have shown bad taste in their too common use of sacred words ; it was in no hypocritical spirit that they spoke as their hearts moved them. The so-called cant of Clapham could be understood if not ap- proved. It offended taste, not faith. The ecclesiastical jargon of the new party owes little to Prayer-book or Bible. Like turf language, it is caviare to the external world. It is a thing of postures and priestcraft, ceremonies, mysteries, doctrines sacra- mental amalgamated with fashions vestmental ; it is a thing of days and seasons, furniture, fastings and feastings, of music and architecture, hymnals, church ornamentation, and decoration according to ' days.' With the general knowledge possessed of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, it is easy to talk with and understand an intelligent Roman Catholic priest or any Roman Catholic manual. To the uninitiated the talkings and writings of this new school are as difficult to understand as their dresses and postures. We need much a glossary for their litera- ture. Where are we to find an authoritative guide to their cere- monial, any one generally accepted candid avowal of what they really believe, what their real idea of the Established Church is ? How, I ask again, is a parent to have a son prepared for orders ? Is he to get up all the phraseology of mediaevalism, to study the inventory of a large and ever-increasing church wardrobe ; to E E 7. 420 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 20 acquire by practice the posture, power, and accuracy of the best Anglican examples, rejecting the plain teaching of Articles, Canons, Catechism, as received for generations ? Is he to study all the ingenious perversion of old accepted truth, ingenious evasion of wholesome Protestant truth ? Is he to learn that the imposition of the hands of a bishop gives him an authority which is to command obedience from his parishioners, but leaves him free to refuse subordination to the bishop, who is his own over- seer ? Is he to study before ordination to the office of priest in the Reformed Church all the literature which is put forth to denounce the Reformation, and justify within the pale of the Church opposition to the teaching and practice on which alone it is accepted as Reformed ? Because it may have been dis- covered, or is alleged, that in the day of Edward VI. some stitch was dropped which was wanting to make the whole principles of the Reformation faultless, is the young man to be prepared for orders to believe in the days of Victoria that the people of England are wrongly instructed when they reject what it is clear — admitting the dropped stitch — they have for centuries been in the habit of rejecting ? A clergyman or layman may be well satisfied of the piety of his son, that he is of an earnest mind, has every qualification to fit him for the position of a parochial clergyman. Who among us, clerical or lay, really feels that his son at the age of twenty- four, with the ordinary education of an English Protestant, is fit to become a spiritual director, claiming authority over the inmost thoughts of every individual of his flock, hearing their confes- sion, extorting under authority the exposure of their every mental frailty ? The freedom of an English Protestant family is no school of training for that awful assumption of authority which this new school claims. Too much of the ordinary man is known ; it is beyond the power of the family faith to believe that ordination confers authority on mere youth, to offer the sacrifice these men say they offer, or to dictate to the souls of others according to their method of dictation, to pardon as these men pardon. That they do hold transubstantiation the honest of them will not deny, it has yet to be proved what of Roman Catholic doctrine they do not hold, if the practice of ^66 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 421 their chiefs and the burden of their literature is to be accepted as true. If the present state of things must press heavily on the hearts of parents, with sons wishing to go into the Church, it presses with equal weight on every clergyman who is honest in his appreciation of the doctrines and practice of the Church as it was when he was, years since, ordained. I am quite prepared to admit that very many of these ultra-ritualists are earnest, pious, self-denying men. I do not deny in communion with these are to be found many of the most devoted, charitable people of the age. I should say as much of the various bodies of Nonconformists, for I know well that they, in their fashion, are as earnest, pious, self-denying, and charitable. No one who has seen their work can deny that the Romish Church does foster a large number of priests of the most sincere piety, active in their calling, and in that calling the centres of great active charity in others ; but the question at issue is, not whether this or that form of religious belief is perfect, true, and the best basis of good work, but whether a Protestant Church is as such so loose in its definitions of what it protests against that a man of ordinary Protestant ideas must be bound to act with, and believe he is of the same Church as men who openly uphold all he has been taught to protest against, and teach, as his Church's truths, that which he was bred to believe it held to be false. The time, Sir, is in my opinion come when the laity of the land who are Protestants in any degree should decide whether their Church — the clergy are but its ministers — is to stand on the old truths, or be refashioned to suit this new school ; whether they will be content to be ruled by a priesthood who claim that they should interpret the Bible by the Prayer-book, and the latter according to their priestly interpretation, or make a stand for private judgment in the matter of Scripture, a common-sense acceptation of the Prayer-book as it has been accepted by their immediate forefathers. As to any reliance on the authority or the good intentions of the bishops, it is leaning on a reed. The bench stands committed to the movement by its long sufferance, its weak opposition, its but too frequent connivance, not very rare approval. I am quite satisfied in my own mind that the 422 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 20 bench, as a whole, has never for one moment contemplated any- real opposition to the movement. There is but too much evi- dence that in the working of some of the societies with which most if not all the bench are connected, and in the carrying out some of the foreign and colonial work of the Church, which also has so much episcopal patronage, a tendency to ritualism is more likely to qualify a candidate for employment than the reverse. There are those who argue that it is better to bear and for- bear to any extent than to so act as to endanger a large secession from the Church. I am not of the number. I hold a sect within a Church, which disowns all that has given it its name and position, however large it may be, whatever influence it may possess, is in a position as dangerous to that Church as disgrace- ful to itself. It is said such a secession would so swell the numbers of the Roman Catholic Church in England as to make her power most dangerous. I answer, it is better to have an open powerful enemy without than a treacherous friend within. When the members of a Protestant family come in contact with Roman Catholics in religious matters, or in ordinary society, the position on either side is known ; when clergy and laity who hold Roman Catholic views still mix with the world as Protes- tant churchmen, there is no safeguard for the faith of the young. It is true these people say, although you accuse us of causing many perversions to Rome, you cannot deny we are the cause by our own services and doctrines of retaining many who would otherwise go. How poor the consolation to a parent, on one son having passed through St. A.'s Romeward, to be told, remember your other son, your daughters, &c, would follow him, did they not find, with us, that for which they crave ! The day may not be just yet, but, in my opinion, it cannot be far distant, when, by some rash overt act, some of the leaders of this movement will betray its real aim. I strongly suspect, if the truth were known, that aim is no secret to certain members of the bench. There will then, I trust, be a departure out of our pale of the greater part of a body of men who must, in all honesty, feel that they are unfitted to remain in it. We shall probably have an Anglo-Catholic Church independent of the 1866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 423 State. It will, doubtless, have many adherents, for novelty is attractive ; to it, I have no doubt, certain colonial Churches will affiliate themselves. It will have no real difficulty as to a head ; there are those who say with confidence — one or more bishops will join. Ambitious of great spiritual power, utterly opposed to earthly authority, aiming at the sort of union which would make the priest of all lands powerful over all people ; starting on its new independent life with the prestige of a kind of persecution, — such a Church, independent of pope and king, has a fair field for trying the question — whether, in a day in which men think more for themselves than they ever did, are as jealous of eccle- siastical as of political dogmas — in a day when even Romanism is shaken to its centre, and Romish discipline has had to yield to Royal mandate, England will view with anything but com- passionate contempt the attempt to build up a permanent eccle- siastical system out of material which disfigured the Church from which it was taken, and has no one bond of union than that of a common, all-pervading belief in its own self-sufficiency. Priests and Priests. October 27, 1866. The claim now so openly avowed on the part of some of the clergy, that the whole body should be considered as priests in the very widest acceptation of the term, is one which fully justi- fies some inquiry into the process by which they have arrived at this their priestly condition. We must first regard some of the most prominent of the features of the office as they exhibit them for our consideration. The parish priest is, as they assert, to be considered as a man possessed of the highest conceivable authority in that matter of our life itself the most important. He derives this authority first from his ordination. This, it is avowed, gives him positive apostolic power, a spiritual authority derived through succession direct from the Apostles. No matter what he really is before God, within or without, if he can compass his ordina- tion by going through certain forms and examinations, he, once ordained priest, has received a power divine not to be questioned 424 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 27 and from which he cannot be separated. He is now appointed by certain legal forms to a parish ; nothing but very gross con- duct can force him to leave it. If he is suspended for such conduct or disqualified from legally doing duty in the Church at large, suspension, or unfrocking as it once was called, is a legal disability to exercise the office of a priest ; but I am not aware that it can obliterate, is ever held to do so, that change from the secular to the priest life which was said to be wrought in him at ordination. It seems to be now held that such a priest has power not simply to perform certain Church ceremonies and convey to the members of it the benefit of its most holy ordin- ances, but that he can declare, and it is his duty to do so, that he, by virtue of his office, is the direct agent of the Deity, quali- fied to receive and to demand that in spiritual matters of the highest import his teaching is to be held as indisputable. The Bible is not to bind him except as the Prayer-book may explain it, the Prayer-book is to be interpreted as the Church shall will it, and he is to be held as delivering this, the will of the Church. He claims in the Holy Communion, by virtue of his office, to give to very simple elements, used in accordance with a Prayer- book service of language ever simple in its devotional beauty, the nature of a sacrifice, awful in the depth of its mystery, claiming a faith in the recipient such as the greatest devotee who ever yet existed, in a calm moment, must contemplate as little short of miraculous. The priest, it appears, having established this faith in this his power within the church to effect this wonderfully holy act of deep mystery, may well claim without the church an authority not less extraordinary. Having by the office of his priesthood brought home to the souls of his flock the fact that, in a conse- crated building, he can by consecration work out the doctrine of transubstantiation or consubstantiation, offering, as a correspon- dent sets forth, the sacrifice of the Son as a reminder to the mercy of the Father, he may well further claim power to hear confession, and to follow it up by direct absolution. He does this, and naturally enough, because he does so, exhorts his people to come to him to confess, thus claiming to be their spiritual guide not only in the pulpit and on all ordinary occasions of 1 866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 425 general intercourse with them as their clergyman, the legally- appointed incumbent of their parish, but in private, as their priest, to be entrusted with the whole secret working of their inner life. What no relative, however near or dear, what no parent could do, he claims to do ; to him young and old are to look as to one divinely appointed, Heaven's own special officer, one to whom their hearts are to be made bare, by whom their hearts are to be tutored, from whom they can receive and ought to seek frequent absolution— a plenary forgiveness of all their past sins. That any human being can be invested with this wonderful authority, seek to live in its full exercise, and yet give no extra-official proof that he is so, can hardly be believed. We can conceive it possible to train men from childhood for this assumption of spiritual prerogative. If from early days of life the priest has been carefully nurtured in a moral atmosphere specially adapted to further his growth in a belief that his whole man-life is to be dedicated to the duties of an office which requires the entire sacrifice of every natural feeling which shall militate against it — a life which will demand of him the most implicit continued obedience to his spiritual commander on earth, the most perfect surrender of all self-judgment on matters of doctrine, discipline, and practice — if thus reared to be a reli- gious separatist, one who is to walk out life among his fellow- creatures with a stamp divine upon him, giving him authority over their souls ; if he is further, from a very early age, thoroughly taught in all the tradition and rule of the body to which he is to belong, initiated by degrees in all its most mysterious tenets, gradually qualified for the performance of its most sacred offices — I can easily understand one so educated becoming a firm be- liever in the fact that his ordination has transformed him from the ordinary nature of a human being into that of a being inter- mediate between that nature which is of the earth earthy, and that which is to be of heaven heavenly. Such a being I can well understand to hold and enforce doctrines as true which men not so reared could not believe. Familiar in his younger life with all the pomp and circumstance of priestly celebration of religious worship, its vestments and its instruments are but so much of necessary material for its proper performance, the savour 426 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 27 of incense is but as that of a garden in which he has been bred to work. He long since surrendered, if indeed he ever possessed, any idea connected with private judgment. It is not that he does not venerate the Bible of his Church, but that he regards it as so much revelation, to be construed by so much tradition, or to be at any time explained and re-explained, as the spiritual head of his Church shall ordain, he being in this infallible. He is taught to consider himself so much a being of imparted holy authority over men's consciences, so thoroughly qualified and authorised to be the physician of their moral ailments, he has so learnt the confessor's duty, has been himself so confessed, that to him the laying bare of human frailty is just as much a matter of course as the surgeon or physician's questioning. As these must put questions few would like to answer to anyone else, but few shrink when necessary from answering to them, so he considers, and with much justice, that his 'separate' life, his whole life's training, combined with the holy authority of his office, must remove all difficulty, on his own side or that of his flock, in the way of his searching inquiries, and their candid, however painful, replies. To receive confessions and give abso- lution is purely a professional matter, and he has been trained to the profession of a confessor, as he has been to that of a sacrifice-offering priest, and be it remembered he has no special local tie, no special abiding home, no family for ever observant of him ; he is only a spiritual father. Where he is ordered to go he goes. Wherever he officiates, he does so anywhere, every- where, under one clearly defined rule of conduct. Wherever his services are accepted, they are so with no question as to ability or experience ; he is a priest, hence his power ; his Church binds him to think in its thought, to speak its language, to act simply as its instrument. Now, Sir, I may and do altogether reject as true that there is authority for such a priesthood, sufficient to exact my belief in it. But I readily admit that if there be any such authority, there is wisdom, thorough knowledge of human nature, in the training of such a priesthood, their separation in much from all other men, their self-renunciation, their implicit obedience to their spiritual head on earth. For this alone could preserve to 1 866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 427 them the obedience of the laity who accept the doctrines of their Church. Such a training effects all that is possible to keep in subjection the pride so great a power would be likely to produce. To such men all the splendour of the scenes in which they act a part is no matter of self-exaltation. The properties of that theatre of action are in harmony with the whole tone and object of their existence. They start on a priest's life in a self life ready formed to it. Is this the case, can it be, with those who seek to act out the priest, having been bred in Protestantism, in school and college, to the very day of their ordination, having lived a life purely secular ? The personal identity of the man is but the develop- ment of the boy. His surroundings in youth leave their impress on his whole life. The stroke oar of the college boat, the merry- hearted genial partaker of all that social family society can offer, becomes by ordination a priest of the National Church. There is no profession for which a youth or grown man can have been educated from which he may not pass into the Church. No matter how little he may have studied the depths of theological controversies, have acquired knowledge of his fellow-creatures necessary to make him the recipient of the burden of their hidden trials and failings, let him but be one, with no deep moral taint, certified formally to have qualifications very easily acquired, he is ordained and soon becomes in orders — a priest. Within his own family, he is thoroughly known in what he was ; with- out it, he has been living a wholly secular life, in nothing differ- ing from those around him ; he may or may not be a man of earnest piety, anxious to do his duty in his calling, but does ordination affect to himself or to others his old personal iden- tity ? At the age of twenty-four is one so reared in any one way qualified at once to assume the authority now claimed, to per- form the offices now said to be his duty ? Can he at once recast his whole nature, and really believe that gaudy vestments, prac- tised postures, an atmosphere of incense in a temple rich in decoration, can make his fellow-men believe that the genial man of a year ago, so light-hearted, so social, so open to observation, so free to observe, has surrendered his soul to the direction of fellow-men, given up his judgment, made his Bible a book he is 428 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Oct. 27 free to read, but, reading, to receive as a teacher with no appeal to his own reason, to be explained and accepted according to the whim or disposition of the Church as it may at any time determine ? Does ordination so fetter reason that the learned priest is to sacrifice the result of study, the unlearned only to study in mental fetters ? He has donned a new dress, is life- bound to a profession, has closed the door by which he can retreat and again become a layman. How much less does he feel he is yet secular ? Has the imposition of hands so wiped out the past, so obliterated all secular nature, that he, the Mr. of yesterday, the Rev. of to-day, feels himself already qualified, calmly, stonelike, to listen to the confessions of the young, to use the manuals which tell him the searching questions he is to put to them ? Has he no feeling for the degradation of the penitent girl, called to whisper to his, a mere youth's ear, her failings ; can he exercise himself, unmoved, the power to extract more and more from her ? What is he, what has his life been, that he should be fit to say, ' Go in peace, I absolve thee ; thou art absolved of Heaven ' ? Nominated by interest or by pur- chase to an incumbency, very often where he has been known from a boy, his sphere of action is the parochial boundary. Within this, can it be that he expects his own family, his neigh- bours, any around him will believe that at his hands the miracle of the altar can be worked at the table of the communion ? The clergy are, under the impulse of this modern movement, much given to processional exhibitions. It is no rare thing for a bishop to walk with the crozier carried before him, followed by a long train of incumbents and curates. It is a good occa- sion for common sense to review the brigade ecclesiastical, especially as these processions in general co-exist with a great deal of that ultra-ecclesiasticism which is very often but an early stage of advanced ritualism. What is the effect in a cathedral town or elsewhere of one of these processions ? Has it one real feature in common with what it evidently mimics— a procession of Roman Catholic priests ? Does it in any way impose upon the beholders to the extent that they regard it with reverence ? I believe it does not. The processionists are far too easily indi- vidualised ; their everyday identity is in no way affected by 1 866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 429 their processional incorporation. The bishops are well known, so well that the bystanders justly smile at the attempt at effect the bearing of the crozier before them and the tailing of the clergy behind them produce. An ordinary procession of Odd Fellows with their insignia, or Foresters in their costumes, raises much the same feeling ; it is only Jones in his apron, Brown in sylvan attire, Robinson uneasy on horseback — it is simply so many ordinary individuals, of many dispositions, calling attention to their holidays by this display of their insignia, &c, aided by a brass band. The clergy never size well ; it is evident on the face of the thing that they are not up in this sort of work. As they pass, do the lookers-on feel as men would feel who beheld their priests thus engaged in some solemn religious demonstra- tion ? Are they so many spiritual fathers, the confessors and directors, of the people ? Do men look with reverence on this very assembly of men as that of those who have forsaken all else that they may become what they are, the celibate celebrants of awful mysteries, direct descendants of the Apostles, men in whose breasts are the secrets of fathers, wives, sons, and daugh- ters ? No, they are for the most part recognised in a very different way — owners of four-wheelers, or even, perhaps, a brougham, the fortunate possessors of glebes, heads of families, the lesser powers of country and town parishes ; so-and-so lately married, this one said to be about to marry so-and-so' s daughter, or lately refused by her ; there is one great as a farme* ; another famous as an antiquary, the man who gives such long prices for old oak chairs ; then there goes the man who wins prizes for flowers, walking with another who is great on the subject of bees ; then there is the man who never will let the farmers alone, and that other who all thought would be the last archdeacon ; so on to the last curate. The men are but clergymen after all, doing a kind of holiday demonstration, excellent fellows most of them, with their families making a great part of the staple of the pleasant social life of their respective localities, as such more or less respected ; but as priests, in the now asserted sense of the word, does one man in a thousand who may look on the exhibition for one moment heed them, or would he do so even if the bishops wore mitres and they and all their following were 430 THE LETTERS OE S. C. O. Oct. 27, 1866 attired according to the full fashion of the days of Edward the Sixth ? It is quite possible all this may be changed, but in my poor opinion the whole English character, and, therefore, its entire social condition, must change before that day. I know it will be said that I libel the laity of England when I declare I believe them in the mass to be Protestant. I may be rash in the avowal, but I do assert my respect for the good Yorkshire squire who so openly and solemnly declared ' he believed in the Holy Protestant Church ' ; if he yet lives, he will pardon me if I add my own conviction that, as things are now, a few years more of life would make his confession one laying him open to the charge of easy credulity. I cannot believe that what was won with such cost, has existed for such good, is yet to be so treacherously dealt with as to now, in this our day, fail us. No, I am hopeful that the good sense of the laity may compel the heads of the Church to take such action as shall convince this new sect that the Estab- lished Reformed Church of England will not suffer her ordained officers to preach doctrines she has repudiated, to act within her temples a travesty of Roman ceremonial, clad in garments long since wisely cast off, and now worn in supposed defiance of their spiritual superiors. Were we to re-adopt these doctrines, re- establish this ceremonial, I have a higher opinion of English good sense than to believe we should have a priesthood of the materials of which we form our clergy. We could not in these thoughtful days believe that men to have such power should not have the rearing, the teaching, all the preparation that its exercise would demand. The worst thing a man can put out for cleansing is a foul heart. It is a work, of all others, requir- ing to be done within. But if it is to be so put out, if our brother man is to examine its every stain, if he is to be accre- dited with power to cleanse it, the least we should require of such a man would be far more than we could hope to find in men brought up as laymen till they are on the threshold of manhood, and then made priests by bookwork and the mere act of ordination, at the hands of one who has been lucky in his profession. Nov. 9, 1866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 431 The Bishop of Salisbury (Dr. Hamilton) publicly denounced the foregoing letter as ' ungenerous, undutiful, inaccurate,' and rebuked S. G. O. in a long communication which appeared in the ' Guardian ' in November 1866. S. G. O.'s rejoinder to his Bishop deals with the presence of ' the Scarlet Woman ' in the Church of England. November 9, 1866. The Bishop of Salisbury has published in the ' Guardian ' a letter of remonstrance and rebuke he thought it right to send to me. He has done this, I presume, without waiting for my answer. He was at perfect liberty to do so, and I have given him full liberty to make any use of that answer. The ' Guardian ' may, for all I know, be the gazette for episcopal rebuke, and he may have felt there was no time to lose. At all events, there the matter rests as between him and me in my more private capacity. I have withdrawn no word of what I wrote. I hold to every opinion I expressed in the two letters on Ritualism. In those letters it was my endeavour to show the danger to which principles dear to all Protestants were exposed by the practice and doctrines of the ritualists. I tried to bring common sense to bear upon the nature of their pretensions to priestly power. I sought to prove, that whereas clergymen were made out of the ordinary material of human nature, and thus made at a very early age, and with little, if any, preparation for an office which is now said to give them miraculous power — power to hear confessions and absolve sins by Divine right — it was next to impossible to believe that ordination, according to the Esta- blished Church, could really aim at giving such power. I pointed to the fact that after all was said and done which could be done or said at their ordination, they remained to the world at large, to their families and friends, men, with an identity of disposition, altogether unchanged, and that, therefore, they could not be socially qualified at once by virtue of ordination to claim that dominion over souls, that power to work a miracle, which is now claimed by so many of them. It was of no importance to my argument whether some of the men ordained were more or less devout, earnest, learned. The same office was used in every case ; whatever power it 432 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 9 conferred on one it gave to all. I declared my belief that the party within the Church claiming these extraordinary powers and gifts was preaching doctrines and pursuing practices directly opposed to the teaching and practice of the Reformed Church to which they belong. I made no secret of my hope that, if they thus held to be true what the Church at the Reformation shook off as false, their secession was to be desired. I have seen no one denial of the charges I brought against these clergymen. I have now far more reason to believe that, as I hinted in a previous letter, the millineristic proclivities and Roman Catholic doctrines of these men have been so condoned by the long sufferance of the bishops, so connived at, if not encouraged, by some of them, that there seems no reason to doubt that to expect any serious resentment against this trea- chery to the principles of our Church, any vigorous attempt at its suppression on the part of the bench, is vain. The letter of the Bishop of Salisbury to myself is conclusive as to the fact that members of the bench can hold much of the doctrine I denounced as held in opposition to the Established Church view of what is orthodox. As the ceremonial and vest- ments of the ritualists are avowedly used as a proper accom- paniment of such doctrine, I feel I have a right to assume that where a bishop can sanction the teaching he would only consider the vestments and ceremonial as so much of accessory element in the matter necessary to give it its full dignity. The Bishop of Salisbury is not, as I believe, a man who would use words for the mere purpose of concealing thought ; he would not choose, as some do, phrases capable of double interpretation, and there- fore always offering a way of escape. He distinctly avows that the form of words used at the ordination of a priest is to be taken literally, and it therefore follows that then and there the gift of the Holy Spirit is conveyed by the imposition of hands, accompanied with a power to bind and loose — in fact, something very like the power of the keys ; that, in addition to this, the priests then ordained are right and justified in believing 'that they have committed to them the same powers which the priests of the rest of the Catholic Church, both in the East and West, have ever claimed as their inheritance.' He considers it as one, 1 866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 433 not the least, evil of my letters to you that I may disaffect many thoughtful and still attached members of our Church who have so rightly believed. Now, Sir, if the words of the Ordination Service are to be accepted thus literally in that portion of it which at the mouth of the bishop gives the Holy Spirit to the priest, and with it a power over the spiritual life of the souls of others — a power to bind or loose, such as the first apostles had — I assert we are bound to construe the words of the candidate for orders as literally in that portion of it in which he answers certain ques- tions. In the case of the deacon, he says he trusts that he is moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon him the office. In that of the priest, he thinks he is truly called according to the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. Will any bishop have the courage to say that, in nine cases out of ten, men enter the Church either as deacons or proceed to the higher office of priest, this moving and calling being their only or their chief motive for doing so ? Is it not a fact beyond all dispute that the Church, as the rule, is entered as a profession, just as men enter the law, army, or navy ? That there may be some exceptions only goes to prove the general rule ; no one more rejoices than I do when I hear of youths, pious, zealous for God's cause and man's good, seeking ordination to advance both, as their chief inducement ; but I must blot out the experience of a long life if I am to credit these exceptions as true samples of the whole bulk of those who seek ordination. Has the hope of worldly provision nothing to do with it, the will of parents, unfitness for or a dislike of other pro- fessions ? That it is the noblest of all fields of life's work, that the fact of its being one from which, once undertaken, there is no withdrawal, should make it with every man a matter of solemn consideration before he enters on it, I admit ; but, hold- ing as I do man to be ever but human, and as such, in this world of ours, ever liable to regard bread, more or less of it, position, be it higher or lower, as a great element in life's action, I see it as no matter of wonder that men should seek to be called to the Church, just as they may be called to the bar, as a means to an end, that end being the obtaining employment, the returns for which shall give them the advantages ever sought in a pro- VOL. I. F 1 434 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 9 fession ; and this is the more the case in the Church than else- where, for all men hope for an incumbency, which is the posses- sion of a fixed income for life. The bishop suggests to me, as I have said above, that I am cutting away no small portion of the ground on which the Church of England rests her protest against the exclusive claims of the Church of Rome, that I may thus disaffect many thought- ful and still attached members of our Church, who have rightly believed that she justifies those she ordains in claiming all the power that the Greek and Romanist priests claim. Now, I cannot see how there is much, if anything, of a protest against the exclusive claims of the Romish and Eastern Church in the fact of our Church claiming, as he says she does, to give powers to our priests identical with those they give to theirs, and on the same grounds — that of inheritance. To my poor understanding such a statement conveys a consent to what those Churches profess, not a protest against their exclusiveness. It seems to areue that these Churches are identical with our own insomuch that the only protest Rome or Russia could make would be against our abstaining from direct union with them. Certainly, in one sense, his words hold good, if we assume that these Churches, knowing we have this identity of belief with them in the power of ordination, exclude us from their communion, on the ground that going thus far with them we ought to go a great deal further, and take to ourselves their entire system. We are so closely approximating in practice and doctrine to the Church of Rome that it can hardly now be said she has much reason left to consider her exclusion of us a barrier against union which can exist much longer. We are fast cutting away all grounds for exclusion ; it is hardly worth while to go out of our way to pro- test against what we are so rapidly removing. The inheritance the bishop speaks of includes, I presume, all priestly power, said by the Romish Church to be derived by succession from the apostles ; not merely power to loose and to bind, to leave man in his sin or release him from its penalty, but the claim by masses to relieve souls in purgatory who may not have been relieved here, the claim to work out the sacrifice of the mass, to give to Scripture a dogmatic interpretation as the Church may ordain. I deny that the powers of an inheritance 1866 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH 435 of this nature can be held in part, or rejected in part, at the will of the heir. If our powers are the same as those possessed by these priests, the binding and loosing power comes to us so bound up with all the rest that it would be less sin to lavishly use them as prodigal sons than to leave some unused, and to choose what we would use, as it may suit some worldly end. Men who can hold these views seem to me to have more reason to sorrow that they want the courage to join the Church of Rome than to pro- test at her claiming powers from which they are excluded. I cannot in silence allow one part of my letter to you to be misconstrued. I consider a curate lucky in his profession who obtains a living, just as I consider the barrister fortunate who is made a county court judge. I hold the incumbent to be lucky who is made a bishop, just as I esteem an attorney-general fortunate who becomes lord chancellor. I may be told, and with truth, that all things are ordered for us ; but this does not change the nature of the language we apply to the ordinary events of life. A child and a dog may both fall out of a window, the dog on a stone and be killed, the child on a flower-bed and escape unhurt. We certainly should speak of the poor dog as unlucky, of the child as most fortunate. If a man who would have been a bishop dies a rector because Earl Russell goes out of office, I hold him to be a rector out of luck ; if a Conservative rector is made a bishop by Lord Derby, I should call him, and I think he would proclaim himself, very fortunate. But I do think it wise to avoid the frequent reference of ordinary events to the direct interposi- tion of Providence. In my letter to you I never contemplated that the use of the words ' lucky in his profession ' should be applied to any one particular bishop. I never yet could understand how men are to regard clergy- men as apostles when the process of their allocation to their fields of duty is taken into view. I can hardly conceive it possible that men with this Divine power would be subject to such accidental allotment of the field for its exercise. I think solicitors, clerical agents, and patrons would hardly argue that the labourers come into their particular vineyards under any especially Divine direction. Nor can I understand how the power to bind and to loose can be submitted to parochial bound- ary. Parish A may have a priest with strong views on some 436 THE LETTERS OF S. G. O. Nov. 9, 1866 sins, parish B one with very different views ; those left in bonds in one parish might have them loosed in the. other, and vice versd ; if the effect of the power is so vital, it is strange that its use is liable to so much which is accidental. Again, how is it that bishops and clergy, who claim in the same flesh as the apostles to hold apostolic powers, do so for ever differ from each other ? I cannot accept the fact that all this mysterious, heaven-born power can co-exist with the differences on points called essential, not unnatural in ordinary men, but certainly very unaccountable in those who have in common a spirit from above, adapted to rule ordinary men's souls in the most moment- ous concerns of time and eternity. No man, Sir, can regard with more grief than I do this pre- sent controversy. But no fear of rebuke, no power of remon- strance, can induce me to be silent when I see daily the growth of this attempt to destroy what our forefathers established at so great a cost. I will not submit in silence to be a member of a Church whose every principle is being steadily undermined. I am fully satisfied that unless the laity make the cause of truth their own the evil will increase, until it gets to such a pitch that the question will arise whether, for the sake of religious liberty, for the sake of Scriptural truth, a far stronger course must not be pursued to compel the bishops to their plain duty than I hope is now necessary. Begotten of an earnest, misled fanaticism in some, in the mere pride of power in others, we are soon likely to have a sort of bastard form of worship which no existing Church will own — of which any Church with the slightest pretence to consistency would be ashamed. Far better would it be to dismiss to Rome a thousand or two of those who clearly love her better than us, and serve us with a traitorous service, than to allow tamely the spread of a poison which, carefully adapted to youthful, weak tastes, snares our children into a creed which palliates the deceit that covers the belief of the Papist under the clothing of the Protestant. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. SJ>ottiswoode & Co. Frintcrs, Ncw-strcet Square, London. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Tos Anareles QmiTu C r,H niversity of California 305 D^ M HER n REG ' 0NAL LIBRA RY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 . Box 95-n«ft LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095 13 8 8 8 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 789 771 3