/ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNI AT LOS ANGELES GIFT OF R. ROBERT HUNT^'R THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. First Edition, July 1894. Second Edition, revised, and with new preface, October 1897. THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY H prospective Ibietor^ WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND EDITED BY HENRY LAZARUS AUTHOR OF " LANDLORDISM " SECOND EDITION WITH A NEW PREFACE LONDON F. L. BALL IN 5, AGAR STREET STRAND, W.C 1897 CO U45e PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. When the poet Burns wrote those oft-quoted Imes : — " O wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us I " how lightly he must have conceived them, and how idle would be the experience based upon the consummation of CO his desire. Is there any mortal who has a more frequent '- opportunity of seeing himself as others see him than an author ? Especially an author who treads on corns political, social, and parochial, with an utter disregard for ^ anything except the truth, as he is able to see it. I pur- as with a draught direct from the life-spring of Pieria ; ^ others declare they have wallowed in a mud-fountain r^ whose turbidity they require the slang dictionary to describe, t^ But let not the humblest of authors complain of the o vagaries of critics. Where he can learn from them he is t grateful ; where they are spiteful he has sympathy for o them ; where they are malicious he pities them ; where they lack judgment. . , Where they lack judgment ! Shall a small author be discouraged if he is misunderstood, when the greatest of all authors is not only misunderstood but decried and abused ? Eighteen-hundred-and-ninety-five was the centenary of Thomas Carlyle. Froude closed his biography of the great sage with words that have already passed from prophecy into partial realisation — for the house of Carlyle is no longer the home of cats, but has been saved to an appreciative nation by a small body of earnest and loving 245945 VI PREFACE. disciples ; and alread}' pilgrims visit the shrine whence Carlyle sent forth his fearless teachings to the \Yorld. These are Fronde's words: — " In future years, in future centuries, strangers will come from distant lands — from America, from Australia, from New Zealand, from every isle or continent where the English language is spoken — to see the house where Carlyle was born, to see the green turf under which his dust is lying. Scotland will have raised a monument over his grave ; but no monument is needed for one who has made a practical memorial for himself in the hearts of all to whom truth is the dearest of possessions." I have no doubt whatever of the justice and wisdom of that prophecy. I believe that Thomas Carlyle is among the greatest teachers, if not the greatest teacher, that Providence has vouchsafed to mankind. Upon the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of this great thinker appeared the following appreciation by a modern critic ; not spoken in a lunatic asylum ; not in the purlieus of mud-gutter journalism — but given to the world as the deliberate opinion of the Times in a com- memorative leading article : — "Now that the turbid elements of his writings have settled, the sediment of truth deposited by them proves to be small. ... To the youth of these days he has little to offer." . , . To the youth of these days he has little to offer ! To the youth fed with fifty thousand copies of silly sexual novels, Swinburne froth-poems, Clodd-creations, Evolu- tion-gospels, etc. But let the Times' critic continue: — " The last places where the clever youth of to-day would seek for the instruction which he most desiderates are the extinct volcanoes of Mr. Carl3-le." Of "Mr." Carlyle ! Observe that, Mr. Reader, and try to appraise the soul of the critic, and of the Times' editor who could print it. The great Goethe was a contemporary of Carlyle. Think of "Mr. Goethe," "Mr. Beethoven," "Mr. Tennyson." This diminutive-souled critic continues: — "He (Carlyle) had come to _ repeat his familiar formula and incantations with mechanical iteration, much like the revolutions of the rotary praying machine which moved his frequent mirth. . . . . He had learned and unlearned nothing since PREFACE. Vll he wrote Heroes and Hero Worship, he had not even kept u]) his knowledge of what he once knew welL" Those words were written of the man who, since the time mentioned, had given to the world such a work as The History of Frederick the Great, in the preparation of which he had visited Germany, and studied books and battle-fields, the mere enumeration of which would form a volume. And as if the infamous "criticism" already quoted were not enough, the inspired leader writer pro- ceeds to prophecy, listen to him, Reader : We (observe the lofty, magnificent we), "We can con- jecture what is the judgment of these days, and ivhat is likely to be that of times to come, as to Carlyle's" (the Mr. dropped here as not befitting the true prophet) " place in literature." Then, after duly denouncing the mud- products of Ibsen, Neitzsche, Problem-plays, and "The antics of the fishers for novelties in muddy waters," the article dares to add that " some of these gentry could claim to be his (Carlyle's) offspring .... Neitzsche for example, so far as there is sanity in his rhapsodies they do little more than carry out what Carlyle used to say." ... I venture to call this the blasphemy of criticism. But why dare I, the very humblest of the disciples of the great master, presume to refer to him and his vile critic in this place? Reader, it is because that if the greatest, and wisest, and bravest, and most self-sacrificing of men can thus be appraised, shall it not teach patience to the smallest, though earnest, author when the abuse of criticism chances to fall upon him? The ignorant and obscure leader-writer, hopelessly asinine, hidden beneath the editorial lion-skin "we," spurting his foul ink at the titanic Sage, is indeed the very Anarchy of criticism, " for is not anarchy," Carlyle asks, " the rule of what is Baser over what is Nobler, the one life's misery worth complaining of, in fact the abomination of abominations? " Was there ever a time, or has it always been so, when anarchy in the matter of criticism reigned more supreme than it does now ? I do not at all mean the abuse of good and earnest work, tliat has rarely varied ; what I particu- larly refer to is the oily, sugary approval of the unending cartloads of washy sentimentalism which the press turns out with quite " mechanical iteration." In fact there is no VUl TREFACE. more instructive lesson for an intelligent mind than to compare the columns of sleek approval which the Times pours forth upon periodical sensational novelism, with its appreciation of the greatest genius of literature which has been quoted in the preceding page. ■ • • • • The aspiration then of the poet Burns having been granted to me, and I having seen myself (at least liter- arily) as others see me, it will do a reviewer or two no harm if he see himself, or they see themselves as an author sees them. There is the Sotiirdai/ Jicrietc, for example, under the editorship of Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, assuring me that : " It is impossible to read a single chapter of The Eevolution of the Twentieth Century without creditingthe author with a passion for reforming the world that is both deep and sincere ; " and the same review concludes by saying that " The great revolutionary broom has, we think, swept wisely not less than well." Those are not unpleasant opinions to a humble author, nor are they one whit the less to be appreciated — rather the more — because the reviewer expresses his dissent from and condemnation of perhaps two-thirds of the work. But, lo and behold, some months after the review appeared from which I have just quoted, the Saturday Bericic changed editors, and the unionist, Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, gave way to a gentle- man of social democratic fame, Mr. Frank Harris. Poor Mr. Harris — evidently unaware that the Saturday Review had already seen depth, sincerity, and wisdom in the reforms advocated in The Pievolution of the Twentieth Century — seems to have become perfectly rabid with the book because, probably, in spite of his revolutionary doc- trines, the author saw through and exposed the futility of so-called social democracy. Accordingly the new-edited Saturday Ixeriew falls like a cartload of editorial bricks upon Carlyle Democritus, whom his predecessor had approved. Editor Frank Harris determines that there is no wisdom, only " the most concentrated twaddle it has ever been our (Harrisonian) misfortune to come across." It is not wise, it is not well; it is mere " stuff," mere "absurdity," and the perturbed critic proceeds to exhaust his ink-pot in abuse, all most welcome to an unrepentant author. But the Saturday Ileview's conclusion is really curious. The PREFACE. IX author has dared in his book to expose some of the fraudu- lent company promoters in high places. Whereupon the critic weeps forth and sighs : " We suppose the publisher, however, has taken his lawyer's advice on the contents of the book. . . ." The anxiety of social-democracy for the good name and fame of tlie wholesale fraudulent company promoter is too affecting, and in this stage of the book the merciful author will not induce his reader to tears. But it is indeed worth noting how readily, in the delicate organisation of modern civilisation, the millionaire scoundrel finds friends, whilst the poor gutter thief, often driven to crime through misery, finds social (and other) democracy silent. Only the other day a train-thief, practising his three-card trick for sundry pence, received his due reward, upon detection, within the precincts of one of Her Majesty's gaols. About the same time a huge city thief does the three-card trick for £385,000 sterling, his victims, not a few solitary country louts, but a holocaust of poor widows, half-starved clerks, and such silly bait. Will it be believed that the millionaire's fraud was scarcely noticed by the leading papers outside the mere law-report, and not at all by Her Majesty's Government ? The shilling scoundrel is prosecuted, is put in prison ; the lying swindler of £385,000 sterling is let go scot-free! Perhaps not quite scot-free, for one of the victims brought an action against the millionaire for fraudulent misrepresentation, in having induced him to pay two or three pounds for shares not worth as many shillings, and gained his case. And it may be, and I devoutly hope that it has been, that sundry of the poor widows and clerks referred to — those of them who may have chanced to hear of the case — have called upon that wholesale thief and made him disgorge some at least of his pelf. But the fact remains that the public prosecutor who seizes upon the shilling three-card-trick man, is totally blind to the £300,000 trickster. Did space only permit, and were the victim worthy of the trouble, I would treat the reader to some interesting letters which ensued upon the Harrisonian reviews, but, perhaps, enough for the present. There was another reviewer, a reformer this one, though some of his friends opine that he has a bee in his bonnet — I have even heard say a whole bee-hive. And this X PREFACE. reviewer accorded me the honour of fourteen closely printed columns, plus a whole page illustration by his special artist. I hope the reviewer in question will not think me ungrateful for the considerable prominence he gave my book if I only quote one line from his introduc- tory criticism. lie spoke namely of a " preposterous misconception of facts.'" I was interested to discover what could be the " preposterous misconception." For if there is one merit The Revolution of the Twentieth Century dare lay claim to, it is a rigid adherence to accuracy of treatment in substance and in detail. x\lthough in parts, fact and fiction may seem curiously interblended, he who runs may read that the fiction is but the frame to the picture, and it is as impossible to con- found the one with the other as it would be to confound the woi'k of the cabinet-maker with the oils and colours of the painter. I applied to my reviewer for information. Then it appeared that in certain denunciations of quacks and quackeries this good editor was gibbeted as a believer and advertiser of, one of the hollowest quackeries that this century of quacks has perhaps produced. I had dared to denounce the description of coloured water as a "cure for cancer," and alas, also to denounce the folly of the able editor who had backed up the vendor of the worthless compound. "No other preposterousness ? " I humbly enquired. " There is not one statement of fact in that book, Mr. Editor, for which I cannot give you chapter and verse." The worthy editor hesitated, cleared his throat, he could not, and did not. name any other "preposterous misconception." Anxious as I am to amend any untrue thing, or any misconception whatever — preposterous or not preposterous — I cannot do it, for the simple reason that I am not cogni- sant of any, and with the exception of the one quoted, vvhich I must emphatically confirm, and not withdraw, I cannot call to mind any other " misconception of facts " anywhere referred to by any one of my manifold re- viewers. A word might be said here upon the origin of the book. k bookseller's reader has printed that " I know Slumland as no other living Englishman knows it." That may or may not be an accurate description of my knowledge of poorland. Here is perhaps a more accurate description: — PP.EFACE. XI That I have penetrated so deeply into what is called Slum- land, and come to know with such reasonable accuracy the modes of life of its dwellers ; have also been compelled to observe how this so-called Slumland, instead of diminish- ing, is increasing, and how the misery of its inhabitants is becoming intensified, that it occurred to me that some- one should undertake the task of enlightening those who live in palace-land as to what are really the conditions of the submerged millions and — what is infinite!}' more impor- tant — what will inevitably be the result (what in all places and in all ages has ever been the result) if the present condition of things is allowed to go on and increase, as it is going on and is increasing. Indeed I wrote the work in spite of myself. In a manner I was constrained to write it, constrained namely by a mind ripe with the experience of years of toil among the scenes that are described, and of study into the causes which have helped to bring them about, and by a heart sore for the woe and misery it had witnessed. Does not the reader think that he who puts forward a solution of the gravest problems which confront us to-day, is entitled to a little attention and consideration '? Not merely because he puts forward these solutions, but because so many of his critics, even some of the unfriend- liest, have admitted their feasibility and their practical- ness. I shall venture therefore in this place, in a rather long footnote, in very small type, and with such modesty as I can command, to append some " opinions of the press." They are boiled down, from over one-hundred closely printed columns of reviews. The reader may glance at them, or pass them by.* *Publisher's Note to the First Edition. " In this volume the author has described the hydra, called Modern Civilisation, in terms so precise, has attacked party governments with such a wealth of sarcasm and illustration, that the total effect of his work is most startling. Like others, the author comes forward with his Utopia, and of the ingenuity of this invention there can be no question. It is probably the most carefully thought out revolution and instauration yet planned." The Daily Chronicle. " We were prepared to v.elcome any vvork by this author, whose exposure ot the wrongs wrought by ' Landlordism ' earned for him a tribute from Punch and a recognition frcni all social reformers. There is throughout the volume the noblest feeling of sympathy with suffering mankind, very keen flashes of insight, and very useful practical suggestions as to a better way of managing social affairs." The Pall Mall Gazette. •' The author has quite sound views about trade, fair and firee ; India, Mr. Gladstone's policy, the two Houses of Parliament. Radicalism, the Navy, and some other mattets " Xll PREFACE. I assure liim that The Revolution of the Twentieth Century may be really described as a fervent endeavour to prevent a revolution of the twentieth century. Birmingham Daily Gazette. " The author is an earnest man, endowed with a Carlylean insight, a brilHant imagina- tion and a vigorous style. His comments upon nineteentli century company promoting are bold and interesting ; but the peculiarities of nineteenth century libel law forbid quotation." Thi Standard. " The book is marked by a keen appreciation of some, at least, of the perils of modern civilisation. The hero, the champion of the oppressed, is not merely to ride the storm of the coming terror, but, by his wisdom no less than his valour, to usher in a golden age of justice and contentment." The Whitehall Revieu: " The author is a powerful writer of the Carlyle school, and not a few passages in the work are eloquent and picturesque. In fact, as a literary eftbrt, pure and simple, the book deserves the highest commendation, and should establish the author's reputation as a brilliant and incisive writer." The Methodist Recorder. "This really remarkable book is an attack upon the social, moral and political evils ot the present day delivered fiom the standpoint of a right-minded Imperial Englishman, with an impetuosity and directness which cannot but command admiration. We must confess that an attractive and seemingly possible era is opened. The final picture is full of bright colour, abounding in life and health. It is altogether a book to make one's pulse and heart beat quicker. The author finds a solution for every ill, and never pulls a tottering fabric down without erecting something stronger and more beautiful in its place." Black and White. " We are bound to express admiration for the author's powers in tackling a mighty problem There is that in the book which every man would do well to read and ponder." Review of Reviews. "The reader will find in the book much matter for reflection. Of the painstaking effort which the author has made to think out the ways and means by which a better social system might be established amongst us, there can be no doubt." The World. " This work sets forth with force and reason a great deal of truth concerning the social facts too rarely discerned of the multitude, and too little considered by the authoritative few. The book is interesting, and has a great deal in it that is wise and suggestive." Publisher's Circular. " We do not remember any forecast more important looking than this book. The pro- blems discussed are so important, and the manner in which they are dealt with is so bold and thorough, that the work should claim readers among all persons who are in- terested in the solution of the many problems that beset us in the civilisation of to-day." Morning Leader. " The riddle of the Sphinx : Nations have perished in trying to answer it, and nations have perished in hoping to shirk it. The author sees a solution to the English riddle in sweeping reforms. His book is eloquent of social sorrow and struggle. The value of such a work consists in the forcible manner in which an outworn social system is made to appear ridiculous and wicked. With plenitude of scorn, wealth of fact, amplitude of quotation firom poet and philosopher, this remarkable volume drives home the injustice of existing social and industrial relations." Liverpool Courier. " There is a refreshing novelty in a scheme which is definite but not limited to any one specific, and these characteristics belong to the English Revolution of the Twentieth Centurv. The author goes into the question of State finance with sufiicient elaborate- ness to show how— with reduced taxation— the revolutionized nation would command a larger revenue, rid itself of the incubus of a national debt, and establish a national reserve fund in its place' PEEFACE. Xlll Among the questions dealt mth, and for which simple solutions are put forward are : — The Land Question. The Irish Question. TJie Christian Commonwealth. "The work shows much originality, a passionate love of tlie people, and a large grasp of things of the future. No one can read it without being made to think. The writer has manj' visions that can and will be made practicable.' The Scotsman. "These reforms are all worked out in detail. The most remarkable feature in the book is the small amount of reliance wliich the author puts in State interference. He shows a zeal which is much to his credit, to deal with abuses on an individualistic basis one by one, instead of flying to some heroic remedy, such as State socialism." The Chamber of Commerce Journal. (The Official Organ of the London Chamber of Commerce.) " The bitterest critic of the wholesale revolutionary doctrines this work preaches, will derive pleasure from its perusal. There is much to interest business men and leaders of industry. The work is as full of facts and opinions as an egg is full of meat." The New Weekly. "The author has a genuine insight into the real conditions under which society in this country exists." Rochester Standard. " The practical reforms contained in these pages are indeed a valuable contribution to democratic literature. Everybody who reads the book will be offended at something in it. This is pardonable in these uninteresting days, when books without any qualities whatever, neither satisfactory nor annoying, flood the market. Those who cannot purchase the book should secure its adoption by the nearest free library. The whole of the book is eminently readable and unquestionably sincere." The National Observer. "This volume is very enjoyable. It contains telling truths which deserve the earnest consideration of the statesman and the philanthropist. With marvellous skill the author has exposed many Jubilee abuses." The Auckland Star. " The author depicts a state of society as corrupt and effete as that of Rome preceding the disruption of the Empire. He attacks the Church as being undermined by luxury, scepticism, and selfishness, the aristocracy as sunk in extravagance, and an industrial system which grinds the face of the poor and dependent." Liverpool Post. ^" The man who failed to sympathise with the social misery which this book depicts could hardly be a subject tor envy." The Enquirer. " This Prospective History differs from all others we have seen. It is a serious, scath- ing and fearless attack upon the social, political and national evils that abound in our midst, and an attempt to offer a way out of them. It has the merit of appearing in a serious guise, a style which would entitle it to range with the most earnest books of history or ot philosophy on our shelves. The book is most remarkably up to date." Bradford Observer. "The author has much to say that is well worth pondering; he indicates with great good sense the shape which much needed reforms should take. He gives the reader abundant matter for thinking, and he has much to say about party jobbery, inane judi- cial decisions, the sufferings of the poor, the method of dealing with the land and the un- employed, the reform ot the Church, the Law, National education, and a host of other subjects.' XIV PREFACE. Tlie Control (to eventual extinction) of Public- house (or liquor) Traffic. Abolition of the Slums. The Status of Women. Education. Deliverance of what, for want of a better classifi- cation, are called the submerged classes, estimated by various students and historians (and the}' will be found carefully investi- gated in their proper places in the book) at from two to four millions. Free Law and Justice. Church Reform. Simple Wording of Acts of Parliament. Settlement of Agricultural Labourers on the Land. The Abolition of the National Debt and its sub- stitution by a National Reserve. The Abolition of Casual Labour. A Simple Franchise with Equal Numerical Repre- sentation, and National, instead of Partfi Political Organisa- tion. The Westminster Ga::ftlv. " A very able criticism and commentary on the existing;; state of society." The Methodist Times. " Here is lUopianism mingled with shrewd, sound sense. Tliere are a great many very valuable suggestions as to social reform and social reconstruction. The reforms advo- cated in relation to Land, Taxation, Pauperism, Crime, Vice, the Law, the Army, the Navy, the Church, Woman, Education, and Parliament, are mainly wise, and present a capital programme for to-day. There is also a great deal of valuable material casting light on the existing conditions of society. It is a booii full of use and suggestion to all interested In social evils and social reconstruction." The Nottingham Guardian. ['This is a remarkable boot;, one so great as to narrowly have missed being a gigantic failure. There can be no doubt about the pains the author has been at to work out the means by which a better state of things is to be brought about. The chapter dealing with the decline of British trade is one of the most suggestive accounts a political economist could read. The author has displayed an ability in marshalling his ideas which is worthy of the highest praise. Some of the scenes are described with a realism that absorbs the reader's interest." The Investor's Review, " This book is one which should be read by all who are interested in social problems. contains much that is suggestive and instructive, it shows industry, enthusiasm, sym- pathy, and the gift of vigorous expression. I ts richness of oratory and unfettered nreedom of fancy make it an eminently readable book." IVestmitister Review, The English Revolution of theTwentieth Century is a remarkable book. We respect the author's sincerity and admire his enthusiastic philanthropy." PREFACE. XV As evidence of the necessity for the two last reforms, it may be interesting to quote the following analysis of six hundred members of the existing Parliament. The reason that only six hundred members are enumerated is for facility of comparison with the numbers which would be necessary were there proportional representation — say in round numbers, one representative for every fifteen thousand electors, that number allowing nine millions of male elec- tors on a manhood-suffrage, restricted only by an educa- tion qualification, and the elimination of any person who has suffered a criminal conviction : — Dividing the present representation broadly into two classes, we have : — Landlords, Land-owners and Mine-owners 155 Liquor and Lawyer Eepresentatives - 124 Representatives from the Peerage - 96 Cabinet ex-officials - - - 12 No occupation - - - 20 Manufacturers, Ship-owners, Literary and Professional men. Merchants and Com- mercial men, altogether, only - - 71 Labour members - - - 11 Army, Navy, and Civil Service - - 33 407 115 L'ish and other members not easy to specify and not included in the above total - - - - 78 Total 600 And now let any reader who is concerned in the well- being of this nation consider the work that is laid before him in the following pages, naught extenuating, but also naught setting down in malice. Henry Lazarus. 38, Tavistock Square, October, 1897. "RAISE THE VEIL BOLDLY 1" "FACE THE LIGHT!" "GO THOU FORTH, BEARING PRECIOUS SEED» — Ruskin. Be fearless, people, and ye shall be feared ! Tremble, people, and ye shall be despised ! Aim at perfection, and though it is not in man's power to attain the mysterious fruit, all that is achieved on that path is a flower of perfection. Carlyle Dbmooeitus. The people have judgment when it is not misled by orators. When the well-being of a nation is at stake, individual considerations cease to exist. Napoleon. The despair of a nation is the swor^ of Damocles, which outraged Justice poises over the heads of worthless Governments Napoleon said that in Revolutions there were two sorts of people, those who made them and those who profited by them. Be you, my people, as the wise merchants, who make their businesses and who profit of them also. Caelyle Demooritcs. Ye of the fluent phrasemen make your king, Therefore your steps have wandered from the path. Dante. I esteem those to be the best teachers which teach the common people most plainly and simply, without subtlety, screwed words, or enlargements. . . . The Pope's power was above all Kings' and Emperors', which I opposed with my little book, and, by God's assistance, overthrew it. Unfaithfulness is also stealing ; Thieving is the most common trade in the world ; Great thieves go Scot-free, as the Pope and his crew. Luther. Lord Lauderdale. — Why do you, as a private man, meddle with politics ! James Harrington. — My lord, there is not any public person, nor any magistrate, that has written on politics, worth a button. All they that have been ezc«Uent in this way have been private men, my lord, as myself. James Harrington, Author of "Oaaiui," wider examination at Th* Tower, 1661. "History is a free emporium, where poetry, divinity, politics, physics, peaceably meet and furnish themselves ; and Sentimentalist, Utilitarian, Sceptic, and Theologian, with one voice advise us— examine history, for it is philosophy teaching by experience." Caelyle. " The purport of Nature betrays itself in the use we make of these signal narrations of history. I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called history is ; an old chronology of selfishness and pride. Every history should be written in a wisdom which divines the range of our affinities, and looks at facts as symbols. . . I see that men of God have from time to time walked among men, and made their mission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest reader. Every Reform was once a private opinion. Every Revolution was first a thought in one man's mind." Emerson. "If history can tell us little of the past, and nothing of the future, why waste our time over so barren a study ? History is a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong ; RIGHT, the sacrifice of self to good ; WRONG, the sacrifice of good to self. . . , For cruelty and oppression the price has to be paid at last ; not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and Truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long lived, but Domesday comes at last to them in French Revolutions and other terrible ways." Fkoude. " "We are sometimes told that the accumulation of materials has made the writing of edifying history impossible. The tendency to think one fact as good as another, the inability to find significance in the teaching of history tempt men to wish that uninstructive, ponderous accuracy were replaced by lucidity. . . . But the minutest scholarship is compatible with philosophic insight, and it is possible to pass from an acute, critical examination of authorities, to a lucid statement of economical or political problems." The Times (Article on Mommsen). " Think of all the vice and ignorance and disease, of all the sordid abject misery, of all the lawless passions that are festering within our great towns. Consider how grave and how numerous are the dangers that threaten our prosperity, from within and without." Lecky. DEDICATION. " There is Genius, with its pale face, and worn dress, and torn friend- ships, and bleeding heart. . . . Strong only in struggling ; counting all loss gain but truth and the love of God. . . . And there is Respecta- bility, with its sweet smiling home, and loving friends, and happy family. . . . Choose, O man, at the parting of the ways ! Choose. You may have one ; both you cannot have. . . . Yet, if you do choose the first, choose it with all your heart. You will need it all to hear what will be laid upon youl No wistful lookings back upon the pleasant land which you are leaving — no playing with life. You have chosen the heart of things, not the surface ; and it is no child's play. , , , The moments of insight are short, the hours of despondency are long. . . . The absolute worth of goodness is seen as distinct from power. Through all history we find the bitter fact that mankind can only be persuaded to accept the best gifts which Heaven sends them in persecuting and destroying those who are charged to be their bearers. . . ; A thousand patriots go to the scaffold amidst the execrations of mankind. Out of those thousands, perhaps, after-generations remember one.'' — Feoude. CONTENTS. PART I. —DESTRUCTIVE. BOOK I.— REVOLUTION ESTABLISHING ITSELF. st one at rest in heaven shed light upon your efibrts, until, thy uuty done, God calls thee, and me also, to share His eternal peace." There was no lack of such stricken ones. Too awful ;im abundance of them filled the avenues of poverty on al! sid ■- These preachers of revolt, or, to use their own words, "of a m w salvation" — for the actual purpose was not divulged until tin' vast train was ready to be THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 35 fired — wore not the Salvationist uniform. Their only distinguish- ing mark was a scarlet cross, worn on the left shoulder of the coat, bearing the words underneath, " For God and the People." It was not from any spirit of economy, but only of policy, that this branch of the Salvation workers continued externally to appear, as inwardly they were, of and with their audiences. Carlyle Democritus himself lived in the Salvation Army Shelters, not only because he despised all luxury, but he had vowed — and had registered his vow in a manifesto to bis army — that until he had rendered possible to every worker in Great Britain " labour, food, and home," and established that as his countrymen's undying right, he would live the life of the suffering masses around him. This marvellous devotion not only brought him into the heart of hearts of his ever-increasing followers, but his habit of constantly changing from Shelter to Shelter familiarised his person to them all, and helped to inculcate in them something of his own exalted patience, forbearance, and courage. He could not stay the ragged worshippers from falling on their knees in unconscious adoration as he entered their dismal halls ; but he knelt also, and his mighty voice, rich in reverence, love, and sympathy, rang out in the solemn stillness of the night — "To every one of us, God, according as we serve and love each other." This simple, eloquent prayer, uttered in the intense emotion first evoked by the men's grand devotion to him, pealed at last throughout the hearts of millions, like a giant diapason, and ended by making them a mighty company of God-devoted men. He rose in the morning before the men were astir, for he was always at Headquarters before dawn. It was by the ceaseless devotion, perfection of organisation, genius, and inspiration of such a man, that the loyal, brave, well- disciplined forces, military and civil, of the State became gradually but surely permeated with a leaven of revolt so thorough that, at the application of the touch-word on that memorable 14th of February, the gigantic machinery of the State became reversed as facilely as a floating warship to the "Port," or "Starboard" of her commander. CHAPTER V. THE WAR-DOGS OP TERENCE GREY. There was also under the command of Carlyle Democritus a band of xnen trained by one of those fierce spirits which times of revolution never fail to produce. As from the ranks of this band issued the most ardent organisers of the starving multitudes, it will be well to briefly sketch the career of their chief. The "war-dogs" of Terence Grey were a set of men rendered wild and exasperate by suffering and sorrow, physical or moral, or both. Grey had collected them round him, and imbued them with his own devil-spirit, compound of savage despair and uncompromising self-sacrifice. No man was admitted to his League unless he subscribed to a vow of unhesitating obedience to the chief and his officers. The object of the League was briefly declared to be : — L Abolition of Money-Government. 2. Establishment of Merit-Government. 3. Eelentless justice upon those who had fostered and defended the oppression of the poor. 4. Deliverance of the submerged people. The band of war-dogs, as they called themselves (not without meaning, as will shortly appear), would have brought about a revolution had there not been a Carlyle Democritus : but it would have been a wild revolution of mere revenge, a second Reign of Terror, leaving the social problems which had called it into being only purged of one form of abuse, in more or less hideous fashion, but open to no wisdom of subsequent remedy. Happily, the leader of this fierce contingent fell under the magic influence of Carlyle Democritus, and instead of wasting its great energies ill mere butcheries, the wise general caused its men to be gradually dispersed through the ranks of his own more disciplined forces. The leader of this band was one named Terence Grey, who in 36 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 37 earlier years looked more like a dreamy poet than a soldier ; had more the appearance of a suffering Christ than of a son of Mars. Yet the once bright painter of word and other pictures — for he could use pen and brush with equal skill — had become the fiercest and bravest lieutenant of the Revolutionary Army, and was always held accountable, he and his troops, for the terrible scenes which took place at a later date outside the slum prisons.* Grey had been a quiet, peace-loving student in his earlier life, with a strange notion that things were not as they ought to be, and whatever he wrote or painted was tinged with a half-savage melancholy which brought him more fear than admiration. He was of high family, and enjoyed an independent income, which he spent for the most part, after supplying his wants in books, paint, and brushes, in the courts and alleys of Slumland, amongst the poor little wasted children, over-abundant there. He was a familiar figure in half the slums of London ; he was an altogether undiscerning and mischievous philanthropist. He filled the slum children's stomachs with cakes and sweets, and taught them an appetite for more, which neither he nor any other had power to satisfy. He would go down an alley just able to walk for his burden of pennies, and would come back with his pockets turned inside out, that being the only signal upon which the children would permit him to retreat, N'one of these little ones ever went to church ; church- men seldom came to them, so the little things readily got to believe that he was the Christ, whose picture he somewhat resembled ; their mothers told them that it was so, and that was why he loved little children. One day it happened that a simple, frail, by no means beautiful maiden met him home-going from such a journey. " Oh, Mr Grey," said she, " is that you ? After so many years, do you remember me ? " Grey remembered having casually met the little lady, and with an abundance of pity in his weak heart for the troubled look in the face before him, and the poor appearance of her garments, he felt — ashamed — his empty pockets, and dared not inquire how it fared with her. He saw with pain that there was cruel poverty here as well as in his slum-regions. They met frequently, until nearer intimacy prompted him to try, in a gentle, delicate, helpful way, to lighten her distress. But no urgings of friendship could gain him permission to afford * Page 90. 24n!MK M8 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF such help. He admired what he thought was her pride, had neither wisdom nor experience enough to know that it was only design. The maid soon began to worship him in a more earnest way than that of the little slum children. "Take me altogether, Terence; then you shall help me as your heart would wish." Now Grey felt pity, which his poetry might liken to love, but which he knew was far enough from that passion ; he felt an unaccountable distrust in her presence, for which his sensitive heart rebuked him directly he was alone ; then he would write to her forthwith some exquisite letter of con- trition, which she mistook for evidence of her power, although the maiden was neither simple nor innocent. So for long months letters of that sort were exchanged, interspersed with occasional interviews. And this went on until a day arrived when they told him there was trial and poverty in the home of the maid, and he sent generous help, in a manner more generous still. But the simple, confiding maiden, full of adoring words and lip-worship, would have the poet and not the poem, and she wrote him coyly that she was used to poverty, which had ever been allied to her, and she only wished she was as near to him. After two years of silly struggle, she refusing any other way to help, Grey went to the maiden, as other Adams have done. Time passed, and fame came to Terence Grey. He had painted a great picture of his slum children — a wide group of little suffering souls cramped in their cruel mud-courts, and in the background, in death-struggle, the gaunt figures of Crime and Death grappled with each other to clutch them. He called his picture " The Babes in the Wood — The Modern Version." The Academy hung the picture on the line, and all London echoed the name of Terence Grey. One morning, shortly after his fame, a strange lawyer came to his studio, sent by the simple maid, to demand "Money, Marriage, or Lawsuit." A third had come on the scene, a poet or non- poet. When Grey was sought for on the morrow, he was not found, but this bit of a letter instead : " I only had money to give the woman from the first, but she would not have it without me ; now she wants the money, and not me. Give it her. One crime shall not make two. Nature wants a devil, not a man, to cope with the evils of the slum world ; and I am become that devil." And the simple maid went with the other man. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 39 Down into the thickest of the poverty-stricken districts went Grey, in grim humour changing his name to Black. He had left himself just enough to live upon, but as his influence over the dangerous people he worked with grew, he shared his little with them, and, their numbers increasing, at last their chief store of food became a strange one. They found they could maintain health and strength on dog-biscuits, and from this, their chief article of diet, they got to call themselves in irony, " War- Dogs." When Carlyle Democritus first met Leader £lack, as his men called him, he had some ten thousand of these war-dogs in train. They joined their forces to the Salvation troops, and Terence Grey became one of the Chief Staff Officers to the General. From the ranks of these determined men went forth the principal preachers of the Eevolution. They left no court or alley unvisited. One of their methods was to collect together the most horrible examples of slum misery and degradation. On their platforms were to be found no " eloquent honourable gentlemen," but more forcible eloquent products of the result of government by "honourable and right honourable gentlemen" — frozen women and men, emaciated and half-naked children, corpses of any who had died from want. No Hell-scene of Poet Dante surpassed in grim horror the awful reality of one of their " Hunger Meetings," as they called them, or "Parliaments of Despair." Let us now enter one of their poor meeting-houses, or rather barns, and listen (87) to one of their Parliaments of Despair. CHAPTER VI. HOUNDING DESPAIR INTO DESPERATION. " Hdnghr Hall " is a filthy, bare, dismantled barn of considerable dimensions. It is night. The dismal place is faintly lighted at one end, where is a sort of platform, upon which are ranged appalling attenuations of human figures, circled round a tall, gaunt, famished- looking man, who is addressing with wild enthusiasm some thou- sands of still wilder, hungrier looking men and women. We must try and hear what this speaker says. This is one of those meetings which preceded for some time the outbreak of the Revolution. They had been held in all the large towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and were continued to within a day preceding the outbreak. This particular meeting is one of the last held by the organisers of the Revolutionary League, a full report of which may be found in the Revolution journals of those times, where also appear detailed accounts of similar meetings held in most of the important labour centres. The ghastly figures which (28) surrounded the speaker had not been difficult to gather together. Although the number of meetings, at which similar incitements to popular frenzy were employed, needed many thousands of such victims to starvation and privation, there was no lack of them ; there was indeed only too fearful and abundant a supply. Ever since Jubilee Year, scores upon scores of such were to be found in every alley of Slumland. The speaker is one of the minor officers of the Revolutionists. It is evident he has been one of the unemployed. His haggard cheeks bespeak not over-f edness ; nor the tattered garments any amplitude of wardrobe. In strange contrast to his rags, and almost ominous, is a scarlet cross on the left shoulder of his coat. A sombre air of silence pervades the eager, listening multitude ; the speaker has worked them into a dangerous pitch of excitement, but it shows itself less in open shouts and gesticulations, than in occasional half-suppressed galvanic 40 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 41 hisses and groans, sometimes rising into a shriek of hate, as if a hell-gate had opened suddenly, and howled forth shouts of defiance — as one after another of the wretched victims of starvation is held up to the audience, with short and meaningful introduction. He has just drawn a ragged shawl from a woman scarcely able to stand for weakness and exhaustion ; at her feet are barefoot children, nearly naked, shivering with cold and hunger. "Look, my brothers, this is a woman, made in the likeness of God, and this is her man, and these five her children ; this shawl is,her only covering, threadbare and filthy enough. Look, see the sunken eye, and the breast but skin ; see the babe not feeding, it's dead. . . . Look again, it's five months born and three hours dead, the mother a-dying, starved ; and these seven have shared a rotten crust in three-and- twenty hours. Brothers, they are the representatives of thirteen rookeries, of one hundred and twenty rooms (tenements they call them, friends), the homes of seven hundred as wretched and starving as these, owned by a Peer ! Howl, my brothers, ay, (29) howl ; but nay, quiet ; dawn comes, for soon will the blackness be complete. — But wait; this one here is Dorothy, the fair-haired little maid of old Jenks. . . . him as was working for forty years, and was turned off with the December lot, eleven hundred of them, from the Government Yards in the winter months to starve. Jenks cut his throat, for he couldn't see his wife starve, nor the girl. The mother lies there, dead of want, and this one's a-going fast. Look at her, brothers, look at her ; she's had a basin o' soup since yesterday morn. . . . These three boys won't last long. We found them huddling their dead mother for warmth, unfed for twenty hours. Who said pity ? Down with him — Revenge J Revenge, my brothers. Revenge ! But look here. We took this thing from a Bishop's carriage. Look, it's a girl. Never mind her tears ; see her fine silks and the soft white clothes. That's a Vicar of Christ's young child, that is. He's one of yer rulers, he is. . . . Lead her safely out, and take her to the Christly Palace of Humility, you, Jim, over at Lambeth there ; her time ain't come just yet. . . . You glance once more, my brothers, at these. This is a frozen corpse — frozen to death in one of Webster's garrets. It's a woman of seventy-three. Her clothes are two sacks, deftly sewn. She was working for threepence a day to feed herself and son. This is the son ; broke his arm some three weeks ago stacking bricks. He's thirty, and weighs six stone. . . . (30) 42 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF Brothers, this is a meeting of which, all over the country, at this very day and hour, many are being held. This picture of welter- ing misery here upon these boards is a type of the want and the woe which is crushing the souls of millions of our people. We've tried, and we've tried, and we've tried to make those Lords of Westminster legislate for our rights — but we'll leave the jawing to them. Our time has come to work ! Hold up your hand, each man, who wills to die short and quick, as lief as this lingering " — and a thousand fists shot wild and grim through the air. "Soldiers of the New Revolution, meet here to-morrow. Women, who have no fear to die for the Cause, give sign by lifted hand. Good ! To-morrow also be here, the head uncovered, the hair in a knot at the top ; you who have babes are to stand first." And, dragging their miseries slowly away, the crowd disappeared in the night. Although the last of these meetings were summoned and held in great privacy, the earlier ones had been public enough. But what were such scenes to a Govern- ment — a Government just back from its partridge-shootings 1 There is a strange hardening of the head and heart of the Government. It would not, until it could not, see. It remained as blind to all these warnings as before it had been deaf to appeal. But there was passing one man through these scenes like a giant spirit of hope. Fierce and morose to all others, the crowd yielded meekly to him. The " worthless," the " abandoned," bowed to him and blessed him as he passed ; rotting, starving, wretched all of them, but veneration yet possible to them, gratitude, love. Strong men touched him in reverence ; the coarsest were quiet when he came. No ordinary Salvationist he. The tall, strong figure of him was familiar, not only to the denizens of London slums and hunger meetings, but throughout the length and breadth of the three kingdoms he was known and venerated by the fiercest and most dangerous of the exasperated people. Attired in a plain, black military-looking suit, and cap which bore the Salvation Army badge, but which he only wore when visiting amongst the people, the Chief of the Salvation Army, like the great general he proved to be, left no detail of his vast organisation unvisited. His face and form were known to every stricken wretch throughout the land. - The sinewy strength of the man, his fervid eloquence, his still more eloquent silence, his undying devotion to the struggling masses, linked all men to him with a fierce, ^ndfppo^11-''- THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 43- bond. He was their giant spirit of hope, where before had been only despair. Throughout the millions whom his Salvation soldiers had infused with his and their own never-failing sympathy, and whom his great pattern swayed, there was never one who would ask in vain a brother Salvationist to share his crust with him. The women and children simply worshipped him. The roughest jail-bird had no evil word for him. In form and feature he appeared a very messenger of love and sympathy to them all. Though still young, the pale, earnest brow was already furrowed by care and by sorrow. As he spoke some gentle word of hope or sympathy to the suffering wretches with whom his daily labours brought him in contact, his countenance would unbend with more than a woman's tenderness. His large, dark, hazel eyes were deep and silent as Truth's well, and, when the black, draping lashes were upraised, they shone fierce and piercing as a flaming judgment sword. The full lips seemed to press each other into constrained silence, but withal bespoke an eloquence as lofty as their intense compression presaged a supernal power of will. Habitually his expression was that of some dread herald of a dies tree. The people knew him as General Carlyle; he had taught them so to worship the name of England's Sage, that in the end they fixed upon him the name which to them conveyed all earthly honour and glory. He had been installed General-in- Chief of the Salvation Army as Carlyle Democritus, and as Carlyle Democritus he continued to be known throughout the country. At first an endeavour had been made to conceal his origin, but it was impossible to disguise his extraordinary per- sonality, nor was it with less worship that the people finally learned that one of England's greatest noblemen had yielded up rank, place, and wealth, and devoted himself and his inheritance to an organisation which to him embodied the noblest attempt the world had ever seen to combat neglect and misery as universal as they were criminal. When he was elected General-in-Chief there went up a shout of real jubilee, far different from that fabricated one of " Eighty-Seven." CHAPTER VII. ORGANISATION. Wb have glanced at the lay element which the new General had introduced into the Salvation Army organisation. This had not superseded the religious element ; he too deeply realised and valued the intensity of the craving of the human soul for spiritual as well as material succour. The two great ministrations of humanity worked side by side, hand in hand, and heart to heart. The authorities did not take alarm at his deep and wide-spreading influence. These and other signs and wonders fell on blind, unheeding Governors. Nor had the sense of security in any way left the upper classes. There had been riotous outbreaks in the streets for years past, but they had been easily suppressed, and ^31) these were never countenanced by the Salvation Army. On the contrary, Carlyle Democritus's entire policy was one of silent, patient working, preparation, organisation. His was not the restless, asinine simmer of the shallow demagogue or frothy agitator. But like the profound travail of the ocean depths, of the seismic- gathering; like the silent, unseen concentrating of the preg- nant hurricane, inaudible before its mighty burst — so he gathered and concentrated the giant forces of the angry multitude, until the time should be ripe for the overwhelming mass to assert its storm-power. There had been murmuring heard amongst the troops, including even the picked regiments of the Guards. Indeed, disaffection in the Army had gone beyond mere murmur- ing, and incipient mutiny had displayed itself abroad as well as (82) ^* home. But the heart and ear of man are more intimately attuned than the thoughtless are aware, and when the heart minds not the moan of misery, its hardness quickly deadens the infinitely less sensitive tympanum; so stolid statesmen were content to 44 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 45 exert all their cunningest ingenuity to invent excuses as mendacious as they were fallacious. " For to him that hath shall he given and to him that hath not shall he taken away even that which he seemeth to have," and thus to the merciful come (although the coming he delayed) love, aflfection, loyalty and devotion; and to the merciless, distrust, ahhorrence, hatred, and revolt. No official or non-o£Scial believed, or even imagined, that the periodic winter gatherings of clamorous, starving hordes, displaying their rags and wasted forms in hungry groups wherever a soup-kitchen doled out merciful, hut almost useless charity, or at meetings in Trafalgar Square and other thoroughfares, meant anything serious to the established order of things. Indeed, was not the established order of things declared by Sorrypebble's greatest law-minister to be that *' the most dire distress and poverty, side by side with the great accumulation of wealth, was a imiversal law " ? Whether (33) of God, Devil, or Sorrypebble that " Universal Law," the record sayeth not. A few thoughtful people may have considered that perhaps an extra policeman was not an altogether wanton luxury, and it was not uncommon in some great households to find a constable, generally in plain clothes, amongst the inside or outside staff. (34) The trained bands of Carlyle Democritus worked noiselessly. Scarcely had the thousands of his patrols been even noticed, though for months, towards the end of 19 — , they had patrolled in and about the squares and streets of the wealthier quarters of the metropolis and the great provincial cities, as also the towns and villages. Not a house but was watched. The method was ingenious and complete ; five men were told off to every hundred houses, the five taking duty on various watches. After six months of patrolling, these patrols were to the full acquainted with the order and way of the houses and their inhabitants in their respective beats. They kept a record of the number of persons in each house, of its general protectionj and of the social position and condition of the owners; these records were carefully entered in cipher in the books of the Central Committee, so that there was scarcely a house in Kensington, St. James, or other of the fashionable or unfashionable parishes whose condition in every necessary particular the General of the Revolutionary League could not at a moment discover. With funds the Committee were amply endowed, yet such was the 40 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF widespread wretchedness that in no case would the most difficult or arduous duty have been stopped for want of workers or supplies. There was scarcely a soldier in the Army whose relation, near or distant, helped not to fill the ranks of the unemployed, in some form or other.* In one regiment, two years before the Revolution, only three men had not signed the pledge which bound a man to protect, if need be at the risk of his own life, the person of a brother member of the League. This had proved the easiest part of the League's organisation. Scarcely two years had passed since the first devoted member of Carlyle Democritus's revolutionary recruits had joined the 113th Regiment, and there was not a regiment, no matter where stationed, but had amongst its men at least ten members of the Revolutionary League, whose duty it had been to gain the soldiers over to the cause of their stricken comrades. If any soldier in a regiment did not readily respond to the overtures of a Leaguer, no eflfbrts were made to bring him over ; but his name was recorded as an enemy, to be left alone until the time of uprising should arrive. The method then was (unless in the meanwhile the constantly increasing numbers of his comrades in active sympathy with the League had enlisted his adhesion)> that the night before the final promulgation of revolt by the Central Committee, the non-subscriber was informed of the leading facts of the organisation, confronted with his comrades who had joined the League, and it seldom happened but that he eagerly espoused the general Cause. Where any signs of weakness or irresolution appeared, no word of persuasion or opposition was used. But the order was secretly given : " A waverer — death by bayonet at bugle call to-morrow." In nearly every such case some friendly comrade of the waverer apprised him of his impending fate, and invariably turned refusal or lukewarmness into energy of assent. Thus it came that on the night before the great upheaval — of the 90,000 non-commissioned officers and men serving at home, not thirty stood condemned, and only a few hundred appeared on the Committee list as " doubtful." Towards the 100,000 men serving abroad the same tactics had been pursued, the terms alone being different — it being provided that any regiment ordered home after the fatal day must refuse, any man disobeying the Revolutionary • Page 304. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 47 order to be at once struck down. Amongst the police a some- what similar method had been employed, but with less success, owing to the greater difficulty of gaining entry to the force. Of the 50,000 police in the metropolis, the League could reckon upon two-thirds, enough to prevent any serious opposi- tion by the rest ; and nearly all had, in self-defence, gone over to the League when the final moment had arrived. CHAPTER VIII. THE DAY OF REVOLUTION, 14tH FEBRUARY 19 — . Thus organised and prepared, the General-in-chief held his last council of war on the eve prior to the great upheaval of the 14th of February. The final orders had been transmitted to all parts of the world, and, in every case, had been acknowledged and confirmed. To the smallest detail the organisation was every- where complete. For the first time since the inauguration of the new organisation, armed Revolutionists were massed in the enormous barracks at Headquarters. Three thousand picked men, armed with revolver and dirk, uniformed in deep black, whereon shone the Salvation Cross with ominous lustre, slept, ready to march with the dawn. The arming of the Salvation fighting men had been the most anxious care of Carlyle Democritus. He knew that revolution was no affair of rose-water, but he was determined no single drop of blood should flow wantonly. Throughout his enormous forces only the most tried and trustworthy were armed, and their discipline was as subtle as their steel. Where any doubt of a corps existed, the commanding officers only entrusted the chosen amongst them, whom they placed in the front ranks, with fire-arms. The rest were armed with sword or dirk. And as each weapon was given out to the men on that devoted day, this printed exhortation accompanied it : — " Revolutionist ! remember thy oath of service ! ' For God and for the People ! ' to bring about His divine justice in the world, and to protect His suffering children, these arms are entrusted to thy keeping. My brother, use them worthily, or use them not at all. Carlyle Democritus, General." The morning of the Hth of February broke amidst gathering fog and rock-hard frost. Towards five o'clock the Barracks at 43 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 40 Knightsbridge, till that moment quiet, cold, and almost isolateil, began gradually to be the scene of a noiseless and weird assemblage. In ones and twos, never in larger groups than five, men might be seen tiding in from the streets which faced one side of the building, or across the Park which faced the other. The police on the beat, and the soldiers keeping guard (where they were not already members of the League), at first unmindful, then surprised, at the numbers and strange appearance of the men, whom at first they thought were labourers trudging to their early work, had little time for wonderment; — before staflF or musket could be even thought of, a dozen fierce deteimined hands had overpowered and bound each sentinel and policeman. Three shrill notes from a fife pierced the cold, gloomy air, and, like magic, the throng, till now in appearance almost purposeless, stood close and serried as the lines of an army. The uniforms, apart from those of the front battalions in each regiment, were rags in every sadness of distress; uniformity was only observable in the head-covering of each man, namely, the Revolutionist cap with scarlet cross, and on the right breast of each man's coat where a similar symbol appeared. The leaders of each company bore the scarlet cross with bars of gold braid, according to their rank, on each shoulder. The call which brought the Revolutionists into line was answered from the barracks by the immediate opening of gates and doors. A company of the men entered, a portion of whom were soon busy serving out swords, bayonets, and guns to the unarmed portion of the Revolutionists ; but not without some bloodshed was this effected. No soldiers of the Army, but several officers of the garrison, opposed the rebels and were slain. About an hour elapsed before the men marched off, ten deep, in silence the more profound because the broken and wretched boots, worn by too many of them, made but slight tramp upon the snow- covered roadways. Sufficient men were left to guard the barracks ; the rest proceeded at sharp pace towards Trafalgar Square, so recently the nightly harbour of hundreds of homeless and starving wretches. For the first time a loud and frightful howl of welcome rent the quiet air — from more than ten thousand attenuated men ^ ' and women, who crowded in upon the steady ranks of the ragged battalions from all sides of the Square and adjacent streets. At this moment arrived a troop of horsemen led by a tall commanding figure, whose appearance was the signal for another outburst of D 50 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF enthusiasm, but which was quickly stayed by the upraised hand of the horseman. He is the man whom we caught sight of, for an instant, passing through the meeting at Hunger Hall. With a loud penetrating voice he commands " Silence ! " and all is still : " Remember the watchword is 'Organisation,' 'Discipline.' Men and women, Revolutionists, let us prove ourselves deserving of emancipation, and we will win it. Think that upon the earnest courage, the devoted obedience, of each one of you, depends success." By prearranged instructions the crowds take up positions, ten deep, in rear of the armed battalions, who from their steadiness of discipline and formation give evidence of the perfec- tion of their training. The women — of whom there were many thousands — formed in close bodies in front and rear of the procession. This was Carlyle Democritus's final effort to stay unnecessary bloodshed. He knew that British soldiers would not slay women, many of them their very mothers and sisters. His men were prepared to die, but before he would give loose to Civil "War he had determined upon a nobler ordeal. Only if that had failed, should the dread alternative of murderous strife ensue. A trumpet sounds in the darkness of the February morning, and all down the vast line huge banners of red unfurl, displaying ominously in large black letters : " The day of His wrath has come." Once more the trumpet cries aloud, and the thousands upon thousands of starving wretches who yesterday had craved for bread and work : " Make us an army of labour," and were ignored and left to starve, are now the Army of Despair, the Army of No- Work, the frightful army of Destruction and Revenge. The time had come when those who had let the poor and wretched starve and suffer, must at their hands expect a similar doom. It is only the difference of the class which is to suffer. Ponder a little on this, reader. Whilst the great centre of revolt pursued its course towards Buckingham Palace, thither were also wending vast divisions which had carried out precisely similar tactics throughout the military depSts of the Metropolis. And although in every instance absolute mastery and success attended the Revolutionists, alarm had spread in many quarters, and messages flew over the wires to Whitehall, and were received by the Revolution officers command- ing there (for the place had been already gained): — "Twenty thousand armed men marching towards St. James's, declaring them- THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 51 selves Army of Revolution. The troops here have declared for them, and murdered or imprisoned their officers." Towards nine o'clock, as the weak winter sun struggled faintly to pierce the fog which had thickened over the entire metropolis, eager watchers at the Palace could see, steadily advancing across the Park, and up each avenue, dense masses of men, whose numbers had been swelled by contingents from all quarters of the vast city. The front ranks marched in steady and unwavering phalanx, small reflected flashes of light now and then glancing from sword and bayonet. Arrived half up the avenue, the procession stopped ; confronting them, in magnificence of military array, sit, fixed upon their steeds, two thousand of the Bang's Royal Guards. But the ministers and their ofl&cers had forgotten that under scarlet cloth, and under the burnished steel, were hearts of flesh and blood. Their General advances close up to the lines of the women ; at a signal, these open their ranks and let the General approach to within five rows of the rebel leader and his stafi", who, with loud, clear voice, speaks : '* Men, fanatics, I call upon you, in the name of His Majesty the King, to dispeise. If you do not turn, and go quietly to your homes before my horse shall carry me to my men, the order stands, and the cavalry shall charge upon you." But the only sign or sound in reply is the rebel leader's call to "march." Slowly the living mass again starts forward. With loud command the Guards are bid to " charge." But louder and clearer is heard the stentorian voice of one amongst the foremost of them, who, rising in his stirrups, thus speaks : " Men, fellow soldiers, we have sworn to do our duty to our country, to bleed in its defence, to guard its sacred borders from the foe. But these before us are NOT our foes, nor the Nation's ; they are our flesh and bone ; our mothers are there, our children, our brothers, and our sons. Not these our foes, not these nigh-starved and stricken ones. Foes are they to the Nation ; the panderers at Westminster, those Commoners and Lords who, in their souls foresworn, have abandoned their high duties and driven a long-suff'ering and laborious people to despair and to revolt — with these and for these we will live and die." A shout of sympathy and approval rewards the speaker, when, with uplifted sword and sudden charge, the General rushes to lay low this utterer of sedition, thinking by fierce and bloody stroke to quench incipient revolt. But, scarcely has his horse approached the line of red and steel, before it and its rider fall 52 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF pierced by a hundred wounds. Dismayed and conscious of the hopelessness of their cause, the lesser officers endeavour to urge on the stubborn troops, but in vain. At this moment the Revolu- tionary leader, surrounded by his staff, their scarlet banner waving as they advance, approaches the Palace gates. A blare of trumpets at a given signal, transmit an order to the assembled multitude, whereupon the unarmed throngs open up their ranks, and ten thousand armed Revolutionists, their scarlet banners, bearing the Salvation cross in black, looming through the lifting fog, march within ten paces of the Palace gates, which upon challenge the sentinels at once throw open. A halt is sounded ; two companies advance through the ample gates, in their midst the Revolutionary chief surrounded by his staff. As they move, a gentle wind curls up the fog-mist, and reveals the unending multitudes assembled. The red winter sun, as with lambent flame, touched the pale leader's face. His devoted followers saw in the sudden light the halo of a saint ; and with a shout that rent the skies, went up the Revolution watchword, " For God and for the people ! " A visible emotion shook the strongest there. The heart of a mighty nation had cried aloud. Awful was the silence which followed the gently uplifted General's hand, that well-known signal of imited humility, sympathy, and command so familiar to them all. With stentorian voice he addresses the Guards : " Soldiers, brothers of these wasted multitudes, the time of words is past, the time of action has arrived. Patiently and bravely, even as yourselves in time of war, upon the devastating battle-field, have these poor people borne the slaughterer — a thousand-fold more terrible than he of war — the stealthy, cruel smiter by famine and disease. Workless, they have prayed for work ; foodless, they have craved for food ; but only scoffing and neglect have their governors meted out to them. Brothers of the sword, protectors under God of justice against injustice, we swear fidelity to you, as you have sworn to us ; we are one ; your protection ours, our protection yours. Officers, only this — the people will work their own deliverance without fuither- ance from you, but also without hindrance. Your position, your duties, remain unchanged, except that your Parliament, your master, for a time has altered. Life and honour await you whilst truft to your regiments and your office ; immediate death at the slightest attempt to evade the one or the other. Lead back your men to barracks." Stunned by the suddenness of these events, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 53 awed by the immensity of the leader's power, as if mechanically, the order is sullenly given, but with alacrity obeyed. As the breast-plated soldiers pass through the dense masses of the people who, at the order of their officers, make passage for them, men greet them loudly, mothers hold their children up to them, maidens offer warmer cheer. It is a strange procession, a tonder battle-field. Even the officers are warmed to sympathy. The telling of the first act of the Revolution has taken longer than its performing. Leaving one company in possession of the Palace, the Salvation troops march northward to complete their Army's hold of the Metropolis, and to render help to such of their other divisions as might require it. Meanwhile the tens of thousands who filled the Park are divided by their officers into extended double columns, and soon a strange procession arrives and winds slowly between each pair of lines — huge carts laden with bread, and vans with milk bring provisions for such as may not find it at their homes. Hungered as many of the wretched people were, not one man left his place until the provision train was stopped, and then quickly and with military precision the rations were dealt out. Whilst the heavy-armed regulars were engaged in taking posses- sion of all the barracks, armouries, and magazines of the Metro- polis (similar tactics, it is to be remembered, prevailing throughout the three kingdoms), lighter armed troops in small or larger companies, as might be necessary, took possession of all the armourers' shops and every bakery throughout London. Every public-house was closed, and a strong guard posted to keep it so. Alarm was quickly allayed by the admirable precautions which had been taken everywhere by the leaders. A printed notice was handed to the owner of every place affected : — " In the Name op God and thb People ! " Know all Men " That on the morning of this, the 14th day of February 19—, the Government of Great Britain has fallen from the hands of party-mongers, place-hunters, and self-seekers. The Nation has risen in mass against a base and lying Ministry, and has deposed them. The King and the Constitution, purged from abuse, will be preserved. " The rights of every true and honest citizen are sacred to the 54 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF new Government, and shall be held inviolate. The immediate necessities of a long neglected portion of the Nation have rendered it imperatively necessary that the business and premises of , baker (or in the case of gunsmiths the word " armourer" appeared) shall be temporarily attached ; but his general business will not be interfered with, after the pressing necessities of an exceptional period have been satisfied. Full compensation and payment will be made to him for the present requisition of his stores and services, and assistance will be given to him to prevent disturbance to his ordinary customers. — In the name of the Revolutionary forces of the United Kingdom, "Carlylb Dbmocritus, General-in-Chief." The publicans received a briefer notice. Underneath the usual Revolutionist heading it ran : " That inasmuch as the masses have arisen in their might to save Great Britain from destruction by a base and party-ridden Government, and because the public safety requires that temptation to strong drink shall not beset weak and ignorant men, this public-house is hereby closed till further order. Any attempt to disregard this notice, or to give, or sell, liquor from this establishment, will be met by the summary execution of the offender." In all the barracks throughout the kingdom, and on all vessels abroad and at home, official notices of the rising were proclaimed. The sailors and soldiers throughout the length and breadth of the Empire, being parties to the rising, facilitated synchronous and ubiquitous action. From all parts telegrams since an early hour besieged the Home and Foreign Offices, but these departments were already in the hands of the Revolutionists, as were the persons of the Ministers who filled them ; and messages were dis- patched to all parts confirming the rising, describing its success, and commanding the various regiments, and men-of-war, to remain at their stations. Officers of the fleet and of the army, from highest to lowest, were apprised that the outbreak was general, that in no case would any appointment be interfered with, but that any attempt to leave his post would subject the holder to instant arrest wherever and whenever he might be found. In many vessels of the fleet strange scenes followed the posting up of the Revolutionary notices. The account forwarded by the Special Correspondent of the Newtimes from Egypt, dated Hth THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 55 of February 19 — , and appearing in the next day's issue of that paper, may be transcribed : — " Shortly before twelve o'clock this morning the English colony here was thrown into amazement and horror by the arrival of telegrams to the effect that a revolution had broken out in London and the provinces, and that the entire city, the Government and the Governors, were in the hands of the rebels. It is quite impossible to convey, in the space of a telegram, any idea of the dismay and consternation the news evoked. Messages after mes- sages were delivered thick and fast, all in the same tone, some more or less wild, but all confirming the central statement, ' The people have risen against the Government.' At the Embassy all that I can learn is that Lord Wiltshire is ordered to continue at his post and to confirm all officials, military, naval, and civil, in theirs. Terrible anxiety is evinced by the ladies of the Embassy for the safety of their friends at home, yet no one dares to leave. "On board the Great Gommander, anchored off Besika Bay, blood was spilt, but on board the other vessels of the Fleet stationed here, beyond sharing the general consternation, no serious mishap has occurred. Full particulars of the Commander outbreak are not yet to hand ; but it appears that Admiral Oxley, who, it may be mentioned, is very unpopular with his men, on rising early this morning, saw the revolutionary placard, a red sheet about one foot square, printed in black letters, stuck up on his looking-glass, and after reading it imagined that some of his men had placed it there as a daring hint at his known aristocratic tendencies. Enraged at the act, he rushed half-dressed on deck, and ordered the quartermaster to pipe all hands on deck. Holding the red paper in his hand, he inquired what man dared to place it in his cabin. At this moment, other of the officers informed him that they had all received similar intimation, and that already the consul's boat had come off to announce the receipt of ominous news by wire from home, confirming the words of the printed notices. But Captain Oxley still determined that the man who had dared to fix the notice in his cabin should answer for the breach of discipline, but detection proved impossible. It was evident that all the sailors were aware of, and in full sympathy with the rising ; for, when, later in the day, Oxley determined, against the pressing advice of his officers, to disregard the red authority and make for English waters, not one man would help 66 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. to heave the anchor. ' Mutiny ! ' thundered Oxley, • by God, we will go, in spite of them,' and he approached the steam-winch. Thereupon, one of the quartermasters, with due salute, displaying the red notice, warned him to desist. Losing self-control, and towering with rage, Oxley proceeded to strike the man with his sword, but he had scarcely half drawn the blade when the men in a body rushed upon him with cutlasses drawn, and Oxley felL We hear that at the country stations the military have everywhere received similar notices and instructions, so that doubt of some grave national uprising is no longer possible." Meanwhile tragic scenes were occurring in the homes of ministers in London, most of whom were in town in readiness for the Session which was to have opened on the morrow. But this must form the subject of another chapter. CHAPTER IX THE REVOLUTIONARY PATROLS. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in all the wide-spreading network of organisation was the marvellous system of patrolry which the revolutionary leaders had established, the method of ■which has been described in a^'previous chapter. On the memorable Sunday morning of the 14th of February, 19 — , at eight o'clock, there was not one street or square of any importance throughout London (and exactly the same tactics were pursuing throughout the country, never mind how small the village or how large the city) but was policed in this new and ominous manner : — At each corner of a street was stationed an armed patrol in black uniform bearing on each shoulder the red Revolutionist cross. Every such one was a commander of a small staff of ten men, who in their turn patrolled contiguous streets and remained within whistle-call of tbe leader. This system answered so thoroughly its designer's inten- tions that, in all the vast city, but few of the numerous prisoners, whose persons were " wanted " by the Central Committee, had been able to evade apprehension. Nor was the system, overwhelmingly sudden and complete as it was (perhaps for that very reason stunning resistance), productive of any general panic or particular fright. Every house had posted upon its door the red placard apprising the Establishment of the Revolution, and warning peaceful inhabitants against venturing into the streets. In the case where an inhabitant of any house was required to appear before the Council, notice followed that his person would be awaited by the guard outside his house thirty minutes after the service of the notice ; but failing to deliver himself up at the expira- tion of that period, his house would be entered, himself be taken by force if discovered, or failing that, every inhabitant of his household would be seized as hostage. In few cases was there bloodshed. That Sabbath day saw the close of many a modern's 67 68 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF " greatness." But also it was the natal day of a greatness of far more value to the world than the old which it was superseding. Before the church bells had sounded half-past eight, the door of many a proscribed house had opened, and the owner, half- incredulous, half-dazed, asked, as he placed himself in the hands of the watch, what might be the meaning of the warrant ? Of the few cases of resistance which occurred, the following excerpt from the Newtimes of the 15th and 16th of February will convey some notion : — "Resistance to the Patrols at Governor Street. " The patrols told off at Lord Davidxhume's residence having rightly surmised that the Minister would not be likely to yield himself without resistance, were in force sufficient for any emer- gency. Sergeant Dickson with five patrols stationed himself at the main entrance, twenty men as a reserve were drawn up along- side the high wall which runs about fifty feet in front of the garden of the house. All the men were armed with revolvers and small swords. Fifty additional men, armed with rifles, were in reserve at lower parts of the street. At nine o'clock exactly Dickson struck the door three times with the butt end of his musket. The usual flunkey opened the door. ' Better doff that humbuggery before to-morrow ! ' said one of the men to him. 'To- day we want Lord Davidxhume.' ' My lord is away from horn*,' the man answered. 'That's a lie,' thundered Dickson, as he fired his revolver at the man, and as a signal to his followers. The second door in the passage was locked and barricaded, but could not long resist the patrols, who, with shot and blows, f^uickly brought down door and barricade. ' Follow me,' called Dickson, and the party made through the breach. They came upon a frightened serving-maid, who nervously endeavoured to persuade them of her people's absence. * Woman,' said Dickson, ' we know your masters are here. Our men have watched you far too closely for such weak yarns to avail. You have fifteen souls here of the Minister's family and friends. They've defied our order; they'll pay the price of it.' Posting four men with loaded muskets to guard the door, they entered a large room to the right of the hall. 'Now then,* said Dickson to the woman, *we give you one minute, sixty seconds, to send your fifteen swells into this room ; if they are not here sharp to the second, my THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. 59 men will search, and they will find them ; and, mind you, fifteen of them altogether. "With me to rule my fellows, your masters will meet with protection of a sort, but, hark ye, I'm not responsible for one man's action if hide-and-seek's your game.' The last argument seemed decisive, for the sixty seconds had not elapsed when through the open door appeared the form of Davidxhume pale with excitement and emotion. On a sign from Dickson six men seized the Minister and secured his wrists. Anticipating resistance, Dickson called out to him, 'Sir, resistance is hopeless, and can only subject you to indignity.' At this moment the rest of the household filed into the room — the women, emblems of fear and horror; the men only prevented from savage resistance by the imploring voices and entreaties of the women, and the evident hopelessness of such a course." — But let us not descend through details of misery and horror which avail not the action of this history. Lovely women employed their influence in vain upon an outraged people, one of whom spoke truly enough when he said to the beautiful daughter of one of the accused, on her knees before him imploringly, "It's too late for all that now, lady. Had ye spoken to him," pointing to the Minister, " in that angel way, whilst we were all a-starving, our women and children dying for a little help, he might have heard ye perhaps, though he never would the likes of us ; it's too late now." Before noon all the ministers were secured. Some had been taken at their country houses, and were now on their way to London closely guarded. Where any proscribed citizen was abroad his entire family were seized as hostages till his return. Not only political ministers engaged the energies of the patrols ; spiritual ministers were seized in their palaces, and many members of both Parliaments filled the jails. Of the Lords, the whole of the twenty-seven bishops were taken, both the archbishops, seventeen dukes, eighteen marquises, and between two and three hundred assorted peers. Not to be lightly passed over is the remarkable fact that in no instance was a peer arrested merely on the grounds of his nominal nobility. Amongst the seizures were all members of Commissions who had been parties to "granting" himdreds of thousands of the public money in commuting pensions for sinecures held by noblemen and other gentry, and who were, in the end, made responsible to the public 60 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF funds for all those amounts, which had to be made good from their personal estates. Of modern creations all those who owed their rise to so-called political merit, money privilege, fortunes made out of beer, and kindred recommendations were seized, and the prisons were crowded with beer-dukes, mammon-lords, and political time-servers. The patrols also had promptly seized upon the persons of all ' officials who had been jerked into lucrative posts by mere favoiu'. When their time of trial came, their sentences proved as mild as they were just — dismissal from their posts, except in such instances (which proved very few) where they in any way justified them- selves and were found fit for them, The Banks next engaged attention. The managers were early apprised of the rising, and ample assurance of protection was given to them ; military guards were posted at every bank in the metro- polis, over the Sunday, and until the opening of the bank on the following day. All the managers were warned against meeting any ■drafts issued by any member whose name appeared on a list which was appended to each notice, and which contained the names not only of those who were imprisoned, but also of all those large land- owners whose cases had yet to be decided by the Revolutionary Courts. In this way the Revolutionary committee had protected the nation against any sudden withdrawal of capital or evasion of a justice which they had determined should be retributive. The bankers were further cautioned against meeting any exceptional demand for funds from any quarter, and the notice concluded with these words: "Whereas the fullest protection will be afforded to those who respect these commands (and in no way will ordinary commercial business be interfered with), any departure from them will have to be answered before the Tribunal of the Revolution." Meanwhile, another and very different duty had been carried out by another section of the patrollers. Ingress and egress to all the workhouses in the kingdom had been made free. Mothers were allowed to have their children, husbands were no longer divided from their wives, rations were increased, and the organi- sation of the places quickly assimilated to that of barracks. Wherever there was spare room in them, and other quarters were not available, the poor and the rebel troops were there housed and fed. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 61' The streets were almost deserted. The utmost silence prevailed everywhere, excepting in the one or two instances, earlier in the day, where resistance had been offered to the patrols, and also in the immediate neighbourhood of the workhouses and barracks, where enthusiastic scenes of excitement prevailed. Yet there was no drunkenness (all the public-houses being forcibly closed), or riot of any kind. The whole of the vast city was wrapped in a pro- found and wonderful peace. Order was everywhere; the patrols alone broke the monotony of the deserted streets. Although Sunday, the churches remained deserted. London seemed a City of Sleep. CHAPTER X. THE GREAT REQUISITION. Outrage of any jort was rigorously provided against, and wherever it attempted to show itself was instantly, and with the utmost vigour, suppressed. The Revolution, whose history these pages are unfolding, had been silently preparing through many years. Although the whole nation had, in the end, responded to it, still could it not have succeeded without provoking hideous civil war, had it not been for the genius of the great Commander who controlled and directed it. That grave problem which faces every general — adequately to pro- vision his forces — seemed in the case of an army, for the most part recruited from the ranks of the nearly starving, an almost insuper- able problem. True, that want of funds has never stayed internecine or other strife, and starvation has gone side by side with wholesale bloodshed in every Revolution. But Carlyle Democritus had not arisen to increase the misery of the poor ; he had determined to better their lot from the very hour of Revolution, as well as after its successful establishment. The problem before him was to provide food and shelter for the gaunt, famished army, which on that memorable 14th of February was to take the field throughout Great Britain. We have seen how the rations for the first few days were furnished, and whence obtained. But unless the bakers and the general providers received their just remunera- tion, neither their bread nor their services could be long commanded. We shall see with what master-stroke Carlyle Democritus solved the problem of feeding the hungry, without exhausting the food supplies, or touching the necessities of the well-fed, or even of the over-fed, and without pecuniary levying whatsoever. We have seen how the patrols had everywhere established their control. On the morning of Sunday, the 14th of February 19 — , their energies had been concentrated upon seizing, and duly possessing ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 63 themselves of the persons of political, social, or other offenders. At noon of the Sunday they were again at their posts, but engaged in a duty other than man-hunting. The oflBcer in command of each patrol (increased in strength by detachments from the armed forces now released by the fall of the Government, and the surrender of all the military dep&ts) now led his band to the wealthy quarters of the towns, cities, and palaces of the country. At every house they visited, the officer presented this brief printed ■order: — "In the Name op God and the People! " Whereas women, children, and strong men are starving and require bread. Your own stores will not be touched to help feed them, nor your household goods, nor your money, nor anything whatsoever that is useful to you, or your household, — all these will receive the protection of the State and of the new Government, and of this, their patrol. But, that which is absolutely useless to you and to yours, that which lies idle and serves no mortal, beast, or thing, that which is but a relic of barbarism, wantonness, and waste — that you are hereby required to instantly produce and deliver to the officer in command of the Division, of the Corps, of the Revolutionist Patrols. This order refers to every article of jewelry in this establishment, of what nature soever it may be, excepting only watches and watch- chains, articles of personal use (buttons, studs, links, etc.), or memorial tokens bearing an engraved record. Any attempt to resist this order, or to refuse compliance therewith, and your house will at once be given up to indiscriminate search. — By Order of the Revolutionary Army, " Carlylb Dbmocritus, General-in-Chief." If ever there was a merciful and wise requisition, this was one. No one was one whit the worse off after the levy than he was before it. The receipt given by the patrols, combined with the fact that they left the empty jewel cases in every instance with the former owners, soon completely comforted them. The receipt was as follows : — " The Division of the Corps of the Revolutionary Patrols hereby acknowledge the surrender, to the purposes of the State, of sundry articles of barbaric ornament, in gold and gems, to be converted into food for the starving, and to 64 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF furthering the welfare of the hitherto neglected and oppressed. We think too well of the quondam owners of such trifles to believe it necessary to express to them any other sentiment than extreme congratulation that a noble purpose has been found for things hitherto but inert uselessness," The Crown Jewels were not excepted. All fell in the great requisition. Some of the " great families " were found to have possessed millions tied up in this quintessence of barbaric vanity and folly, millions thus idly wasting whilst women and children were dying for want of bread. In many instances these heirlooms filled huge coffers at the banks^ whence — early on the following Monday morning — they were one and all abstracted. It may be well imagined that had such a deluge of precious gems been suddenly let loose " on the market," they would have become extrinsically as useless as they intrinsically were. But, like all Carlyle Democritus's plans, wise measures had been taken against such a possible disaster. Agents for the disposal of the precious things had been appointed long beforehand at all the Courts and fashionable centres of Europe, Asia, and America, so that before the world had even learned of the great Requisition, black, brown, and white barbarians had taken up, greedily and readily, by cash purchase, the entire stock. Within a few weeks of the levy, the Bank of England held to the credit of the Revolutionary Government no less a sum in hard gold, notes, high-class foreign bank remittances, or telegraphic transfers, six hundred millions sterling, which vast treasure did not include a further four hundred tons of gold trinkets, plate, and utensils, to be cast into the melting-pot for mintage. Supplies for food and pressing social reforms were thus provided without any one suffering privation in the slightest way. Now came the not less pressing problem of housing the shivering multitudes hitherto liomeless, or overcrowded in filthy slum-boxes. Here, again, the problem was as triumphantly solved as the first, and also without touching the necessities of any one. The country was full of palaces and mansions standing idle and empty. It was quite a common thing for a wholesale number of Peers to possess from six to a dozen of such. All empty and unfurnished houses in con- venient thoroughfares were temporarily requisitioned from their owners. And wherever a Peer or person owned more than one palace, all his others were reo[uisitioned and quickly converted by THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 65 gangs of labourers, who had long been held in readiness for the task, into warm quarters for the poorest families most in need of them. All works of art were carefully packed and stored away. A perfect army of labour was set to work all over the country to eflfect these alterations ; and as each palace or mansion was completed, the people were housed in them under proper manage- ment and supervision. The most thorough-going measures were taken to ensure order, cleanliness, and discipline everywhere. Any breach of duty, or abuse ot the generous shelter provided, subjected the oflfender to immediate punishment and removal. Thus, then, were the two initial problems completely settled, viz. the temporary feeding and housing of the suffering people until, by the establishment of labour laws, the settlement of the people upon the land, the formation of Colonies at home and abroad, and other remedies, they should be definitely and permanently provided for. CHAPTER XL PARLIAMENT BY PARTY AND OBSTRUCTION ENDS. Fob authority as to the proceedings in Parliament, which met for the first time after the autumn prorogation, on the 15th of February 19 — , we rely for the most part on the publications and despatches of the Revolutionary leaders and of the Revolu- tionary Journal. Few of the daily papers afibrd much infor- mation, as none of their representatives were allowed in the House on that day. A curious evidence of the temper of the people may be noticed here. The Revolutionary patrols had taken steps to protect the offices of the great representative papers from attack, but no attempt was made against any of them, except the Daily Guide to the Gin Shop. On the other hand, the self-styled "People's Papers" were furiously set on by their supposed admirers, and it became evident, when too late, that the wrong offices had been protected. Mud-gutter Radicalism, and its grovelling placards pandering to mere ignorance and vulgarity, had been seen through, and put an end to, in the most summary fashion. Such an evidence of intelligent discrimination on the part of the mob folk caused Revolutionary thinkers no little astonishment. All the offices that had escaped the fury of the people were strongly patrolled, in their own behalf, as well as in that of the public. No paper was allowed to be issued until it had passed the officer in command. All the editors were warned against issuing exaggerated, alarming, or mendacious accounts of Sunday's occurrences. No truthful or unvarnished report was in the slightest maimer interfered with, but any attempt at "Blacks- white's" views, or " Whitesblack's " * commentaries, subjected the paper to suppression for that day. Outside the Houses of Parliament nothing indicated any coming struggle. The police * Pang to the immense proportion of the land which fell to the State by natural sequestrations,* there was never more land stock floating at one time than required an annual interest charge of »;leven millions sterling, including sinking fund. This land st-jck was divided into three categories to meet the requirements of the Lands Department's assessment of value. It is to be remembered that the Revolution classified the landowners who were to receive compensation into various life periods : — 1. Persons who owned land which had been purchased by themselves or by their predecessors. 2. Persons who owned land, the gift of the State for actual service by them or their predecessors. See pages 116, 118. K 146 THE ENGLISH llEVOLUTION OP 3. Those who, without original adequate title, had yet dealt worthily with their existing tenants and with their property. The last class was, after careful examination, found to contain just thirty-seven representatives. The first, who, for convenience of classification, were called "Commercial Landowners," after the value of their holdings had been determined by the Land Assessment Committee, received land stock to the full value of such assessment — such stock bearing, in addition to its uiterest of two-and-a-half per cent., a further one per cent, sinking fund, whereby the stock terminated after fifty years. The second and third class received land stock bearing interest at two-and-a-half per cent., terminable after one, two, or three lives, according to the finding of the Revolutionary Court, or of the Land Commission, which finding was dependent entirely upon the original merit of the State donee, together with the condition of the property and its management at the time of the establishment of the Revolution. The new Parliament also issued a Consolidated Stock of several hundred millions, terminable after fifty years, for the purchase of the Gas, Water, and Electricity Works in the kingdom, held by private companies. But as all of these loans were levied at the current rate of interest, plus a sinking fund of one per cent., which combined amownt was made a first charge upon the respective undertakings, they none required additional taxation, as in no instance could compensation be given beyond actual earning value. The method of working the various enterprises is dealt with elsewhere.* The national expenditure after the Revolution has to be divided under two distinct heads, the one including the temporary annual charges, for half a century, of eleven millions for land purchase, and forty millions for interest and extinction of the National Debt — together, fifty-one millions. Further, a special provision (extending over a lesser period) for increasing the strength of the Navy, fortifying our coaling stations, building harbours of refuge, and generally making amends for centuries of past neglect and laisser-faire. For years after the establishment of the Revolution the expenditure was therefore a thing by itself. After that period the » Pases 221-3. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 147 expenditure became normal. It will be remembered that the Jubilee Imperial Revenue was about ninety millions.* Its expenditure was roughly as follows : — N'ational Debt Interest . . £26,000,000 Cost of the Army . . . 16,000,000 „ of the Navy . . , 14,000,000 Civil Service : — Education, Science, and Art . . 6,000,000 Law, Justice (Jubilee Justice), and Courts .... 7,000,000 Colonial and Foreign Service . 1,000,000 Public Works and Buildings . 2,000,000 Royal Family, including the waste flunkey payments, Cornwall and Lancaster Duchies, etc., . . 1,000,000 Sundry other Disbursements . 4,000,000 Cost of the N'ational Services : Cus- toms, Post-Office, Telegraph, etc. . 13,000,000 Total . £90,000,000 These figures are stated broadly, so as to convey a rough idea of the National Expenditure before the Revolution, in order to facilitate comparison with the new expenditure. Thus, in fixing the cost to the Nation of Royalty at one million in the Jubilee finances, there is no doubt that the figure is substantially correct, and is probably under- rather than over-stated as regards the amount which the Nation actually paid in one way or another to foreign princes, and by land and mining revenues to the Royal House. But only a portion of that amount really benefited Royalty in any way.f A large portion of it was squandered on keeping up empty palaces and paying hundreds of sinecure officers. The cost nowhere figures directly in the particular accounts ; they were purposely mutilated and made misleading, but the sum named may be taken as well within the actual totaL ('^) As to the seventy millions of local revenue, or taxation, raised • Page 137. + Pages 73, 74. 148 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF annually at the pre-Revolutionary period. It was expended roughly as follows : — On Workhouses, and the Relief of the Poor generally . By School Boards of Education, on Police, the Maintenance of Roads, Drainage carrying out the Sanitary Acts, etc., By Burial Boards . '. On Harbours, Pilotage, etc. Total £15,000,000 49,000,000 1,000,000 5,000,000 £70,000,000 The Annual Expenditure for Fifty* Years Revolution (Income, Three Hundred and LIONS, seepage 143). On the National Debt, and Provision for its Extinc tion ..... Land Stock and Sinking Fund ( New Ships, and perfecting existing ones ( Navy, normal expenditure Coaling Stations and Fortifications . Harbours of Refuge Increasing the Number of Sailors, and forming tlie New Reserve , . . . Army, normal expenditure . Improvement of Barracks, and General Reforms Civil Service — Education, Science, and Art Law, Justice, etc. (including the various Guild Courts t) . . . . Colonial and Foreign Service Public Works and Buildings (including new Post Offices) ... after the Thirty Mil- £40,000,000 11,000,000 10,000,000 20,000,000 10,000,000 2,000,000 2,000,000 20,000,000 10,000,000 10,000,000 7,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000 Carryforward, £151,000,000 * The fifty years only applies to the National Debt and Land Stock Charge, etc. ; the Army, Navy, and other great Reform charges lapsed after much shorter periods, varying from twenty years to twenty-five years. t Page 209. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 14^ Brought forward, .£151,000,000 Royal Family (including cost of State Palaces and entertaining Imperial guests) . . . 500,000 Various ...... 4,000,000 Poor Law, including State Contributions to Fund for National Insurance against Old Age, etc. . 12,000,000 Bounties to Trade and other Unions . . 3,500,000 Reclamation of Waste Lands, including cost and maintenance of Penal Labour . . . 6,000,000 Re-afforesting ..... 1,000,000 National Improvement of the Dwellings of the Working Classes and others . . . 2,000,000 Colonisation and Settling of the people on the land ...... 10,000,000 Local Expenditure — School Board, and Grants in aid of Education In aid of Technical Training Police and Street Keepers County, District, and Parish Councils for main tenance of roads, drainage, and carrying out the Sanitary Acts, etc. . The same Bodies for planting trees, and archi tecturally improving the cities, towns, etc. Burial Boards .... Harbours and Pilotage . . . Total Expenditure, Imperial and Local Total Revenue* .... Balance to accumulate as National Reserve . £190,000,000 £12,000,000 6,000,000 22,000,000 35,000,000 12,000,000 5,000,000 8,000,000 £290,000,000 330,000,000 . £40,000,000 In the above figures the cost of Customs' collection, of Post Office, etc., have not been included, inasmuch as Jubilee dodges are dispensed with, and only the net Revenue is entered on the Credit side. With regard to the funds of the National Insurance against Old Age and Accident, when the reserve reached one hundred v80) Pase 143. 150 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. millions by the joint accretion of the State bounties and of the accumulating subscriptions, the State bounties ceased. The National Debt of Great Britain used to be eight hundred millions. The Revolution, having provided for its extinction, had established, as we have seen, a National Reserve instead. The limit of the National Reserve Fund was fixed by the new Con- stitution at five hundred millions, and the new taxation could not be reduced until that reserve was attained. The amount would only accumulate gradually and was not to be left idle. One tithe of it was to be in bullion, the rest to be employed in the extension of remunerative Imperial works in any part of the Empire, such as railways, irrigation, reclamation of waste lands, opening up new territories, etc., according to the decrees of Parliament; and a special sub-department of the Imperial Executive was appointed to deal with this matter. It will be seen that the entire revenues of the country became collected by direct taxation, with the exception only of the Customs and the Spirit Duty, and no distinction was made between Local and Imperial rating. The people exactly and justly shared the burden in proportion to their wealth. Under the Jubilea system the Vestries or District Councils collected the whole of the local rates, although only a very small proportion of tliem was actually expended by those bodies. They included the School Board, the Police, the County Council, and the Poor Rates, over none of which the collecting authority had any control. After the Revolution, each of these different bodies received their rates direct from the one central Taxation Depart- ment. Their expenditure was restricted to a certain maximum rate per head of the populations over which they had control. Any desired expenditure beyond the normal maximum had to receive the sanction of the Superior County Council or Local Government Board. The greatest change in the Local Govern- ment was the disappearance of the Poor Law Guardians. They were no longer required, as will be seen on reference to the chapter dealing with the measures affecting the poor, the unemployed, and the labouring classes generally.* Note. — No separate account has been taken of the Jubilee National Debt Sinking Fund, because, like all Jubilee measures which had any wisdom in them, it was for ever abused by the lawyer-Chancellors, and its fund diverted to hide their free trade deficits, etc. ♦ Pages 156-60. CHAPTER VL THE CONSECRATION OF THE GREAT REQUISITION. How some of the Six Hundred Millions ivere employed. The Quietus of Pauper Immigration. Before any great lasting social reforms could be brought about, Carlyle Democritus and the Revolution were confronted with that vast, inert, seething mass of misery, the product of generations of legislative incompetence, neglect, ignorance, and cupidity. But it did not dismay them. On the contrary, like the slums which had to be removed before wholesome dwellings could be rebuilt upon their sites ; like the debased and soulless legislators, who had to be rusticated before a new franchise could be evoked to establish a worthier set of Governors ; like the carnal, priest-ridden. Mammon- controlled Church, outraging the very name of religion, needing Augean-stable treatment before purity of worship and the pastorate of Christ could be in any manner wisely introduced — so there was necessary a fearless, manful grasping of the terrible social nettle of pauperism before any possible lasting labour-reform could hope for success. The fearful pauper problem was twofold: on one hand was an insidious poisonous inflow of dank and festering foreign beggars; on the other was a widespread so-called "sub merged class " — a nigh hopeless mass of pitiful, suffering human beings. With these two classes Carlyle Democritus had to deal, and thus he dealt : — Pauper immigration had been allowed to dump down upon Britain's narrow shores for years and years endless thousands of the waste beggary of Europe, in spite of loudest protest. The (81) Revolutionary Government would tolerate no cowardly turning of the back to a problem by means of so-called "Royal Commission " 161 152 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OP Jubilee-Parliament dodge of evading legislation by smudging and burying the issue of a problem in mountains of hollovr ^2) twaddle and make-believe.* The extent of the evil was known to those who cared to know it only too well, and Carlyle Democritus had caused a rough and effective classification to be laid before him of the actual state of this pauper immigration. It showed that there were in Great Britain one hundred thousand foreign poor or unfit labourers, so utterly broken and sweated as to be scarcely removed from the lowest depths of pauperism, adding to the want and misery of the great centres of population throughout the * One of the last of these Royal Commissions and mockeries appointed by Sorrypebble was a so-called Labour Commission. It consisted of some thirty Honourable and Right Honourable word-spinners. They sat for three years, and laid wind-eggs in the shape of sixty-five volumes of bulky Blue-books, and issued two reports — a majority report (majority of words, since it con- sisted of over one hundred foolscap pages), and a minority report (minority of words, consisting of some dozen or so foolscap pages). At the waste cost of between fifty and sixty thousand pounds sterling, they had scraped together information and facts which had been in the possession of every poor and wise student, or any other, for years previously, and they discovered — 1. That there were at least five millions of British people on the brink of starvation. 2. That more than 25 per cent, of the population fell below the "poverty line." 3. That two millions of British souls were driven every year to seek Poor Law relief from hunger and unbearable misery. 4. That horrible destitution was not confined to the poorer classes only. 5. That in London alone 100,000 little children were brought up in incest dens (mother, father, and entire family " living " in one room) ; [the clergy at their Mansion House Conference, the year before, declared 300,000 chil- dren to be nearer the truth]. 6. That the landlords, or devils, sucked in rents, royalties, etc., from the oppressed British nation, five hundred millions sterling annually. 7. That public bodies bought their uniforms, etc., from the vilest sweaters. 8. That overwork and under-pay and the filthiness of Slumland were rife everyTvhere. 9. That boys were condemned to work in underground mines, and remain there ten and eleven hours at a stretch. 10. That cheap and incompetent foreign seamen were being increasingly employed in British ships whilst brave British sailors were increasingly starving. 11. That agricultural labourers and their families were " living " on wages below eight sliillings a week, cooped up like pigs, in styes and mud-cabins. 12. That women and children laboured like slaves from twelve to THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 153 kingdom. The hundred thousand his officers had classified a& follows : — (1) Fifty thousand foreigners, speaking or understandin,^^ a little English, partly skilled, all capable of field work, provided they were placed under adequate supervision and determined discipline — most of them political, or religious refugees. (2) Thirty thousand foreigners, speaking little or broken English, mere food for sweaters, unskilled, and ousting poor English labour. (3) Twenty thousand foreigners, knowing a smattering of English, for the most part beggars, and following waste employments, such as organ-grinding, street hawking, and ice-selling, German band " musicians," and a motley crew of paupers of the most hopeless type. fifteen hours a day, for wages insufficient to provide decent maintenance — and under sanitary conditions utterly damnable. That hundreds of thousands of females, demoralised to the lowest possible depth, were thus engaged in the manufacture of inferior boots, shoes, and saddlery, slop-clothing, "cheap" furniture, iron nails, cutlery, etc. And . . . they did woi find that Mammon was riding his devil-horses of "progress of the species," "survival of the fittest," " political-economy-party-word-spinning, devil take the hindermost " — upon the racecourse of "free-trade" — to hell and eternal perdition. Nearly the whole of the information adduced in that period of three years in those sixty -five bulky blue volumes, at cost of fifty to sixty thousand pounds, had been similarly compiled only a very few years before by a similar Royal "Sweating" Commission, which had also wasted three years of valuable time, unending number of thousands sterling, and a whole library of volumes blue. Jabber, jabber, jabber, and only jabber. Let any sane mortal try to examine the huge wind-egg of that Royal Commission — called majority report — and he will be fit afterwards for no other place than Han- well. The above findings are from the minority report, for at least the minority report is honest : humanly, from the heart — though tremu- lously, timorously, the still small voice in the Babel of Cant, endeavours to suggest remedies. Three true men out of thirty— all honour and God-speed to them. But that other— the majority report— is a mere confused mass of cowardly futilities, asinine stupidities, and Parliamentary vacuities— leading nowhere, touching no general reform worthy the consideration of gods or men, fit only for the party asres and cant wind-bags who had evolved them — a vast, mad, cruelly expensive and wasteful illustration that "ex nihilo nihil fit": "Out of Sorrypebbles you will only get stones— stones which by futilities, company-mongering, eternal political party-cant. Mammon- mumbling worship, he, and the likes of him, will persuade you to be not only bread, but actual manna from Heaven. poor heavy-laden English people ! Well might the starving multitude cry before the face of high Heaven : " We asked them for bread and they gave us stones ; we asked them for wisdom and they gave us but wind." 154 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF For the last two orders, the twenty thousand foreign beggars and the thirty thousand pauper labour, quick arrangements were made. Ten of the largest transport ships, thirty cruisers, and forty large vessels hired from the merchant fleet, were ordered, without any one but those concerned being made aware of their purpose, or intended destination, to prepare to receive and trans- port fifty thousand men, women, and children. Within ten days of those orders the ships were victualled and ready for sea. Three days before the ships were ready to sail, short notices were served upon the persons to be deported, apprising them that they would be given free passages to their respective countries, good food on their journey, and a gift of twenty shillings to each person, together with seven days' free rations for every man, woman, and child upon leaving the ship. As each ship was filled with its live cargo, it quickly left the port and steamed, as the need might be, to Italy with its organ-grinders, its vendors of ice, and sundry assorted beggars ; to Germany with its itinerant minstrels and beggars ; to Kussia and to Poland with their respective beggar squadrons ; to each nation, in fact, its pauper-due. Our consuls at the various ports had apprised the various Governments of the act of the Revolution, and no difficulty arose in any case. Tents were supplied with all the ships in order to provide temporary encampments for the poor emigrants where necessary. The instructions of our consuls, or ambassadors, included a written notice to the Courts to which they were accredited, which courteously explained that Great Britain had found it imperative to adopt the steps which it had done, as she found it already a sufficient task to care for the poor of her own people. For the remaining portion of the foreign poor a difi'erent method was adopted. Many of them were political refugees, or religious victims, and they implored to remain under British protection. For these, settlements were acquired in South Africa, on terms agreed with three of the chartered Companies.* Upon these settlements the people were as quickly as possible provided with land allotments, shelter, tools, seed, and live stock. Super, intendents, with absolute authority, were established over each community, all under the control of one of the wisest and most experienced of British Governors, a Viceroy entrusted with * See pages 290-2. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 155- supreme responsibility. Penal settlements were set up in eacli colony to deal with refractory persons ; free schools were opened in every community, where the English language was compulsory. In later years these settlements became important communities of English-speaking}; to England grateful, agricultural landowners; and they eventually paid off the whole cost of their emigration. But at the time of which we are writing, the first cost to the Revolution of the entire emigration of the hundred thousand foreign poor, and paupers, absorbed nearly twenty millions from the great requisition fund. The details of the organisation of the settlements need not here be gone into, because they were as nearly as possible identical with those described in the chapter on Colonisation.* One great caution Carlyle Democritus impressed upon the Governors, and upon all those concerned in the gigantic scheme, viz. not to expect, and not to take any steps towards enforcing payment of any sort for the first five years after the settlement of the people. But, in every instance, the most careful accounts were to be kept, so that eventually, when the people had become established, the cost of settlement should justly fall upon each head of a family. Great Britain, thus freed of its first great incubus, one of its great poison-sewers cleansed and sanitated, was not allowed by cowardly no-legislation to fill up insidiously, or in any wise again. Every ship-owner was made responsible for his passengers. Any non-self-supporting foreigner imported after publication of the edict which peremptorily put an end to pauper immigration, not only was obliged to return whence he came, at the expense of the offending ship-owner, but rendered the said owner further liable to a fine of £100 for every offence. These fines were intentionally made prohibitive. At the same time, compare the noble impetus and support that Carlyle Democritus afforded the mercantile navy in all their glorious province of legitimate trade and enterprise.! Pauper immigration was killed. "Within three months of the edict, not one foreign pauper or unfit worker was to be found on British soil. * See page 250. f See pages 281 --L CHAPTER VIL WORK FOR THE WEAKEST AND THE WORST. Next came the yet heavier problem: The caring for the "sub- merged " of British origin. One of the gravest Councils appointed by Carlyle Democritus was that on poverty. It consisted of five members, the five bravest and most experienced men, whose names were respected by all men but "statesmen," who in Jubilee period merely ignored them. A characteristic interview between the Eevolutionary chief and this Council took place the day following their first assembling. Happily the record of it is yet extant, and here is a portion of it. The House of Commons' Committee Rooms were alive with State Councils actively engaged in carrying out reforms already devised, or providing the mechanism for future edicts. They were no mere talking, time- squandering, lawyer-jargoning, bigwig idiocies ; but they were ardent, active, practical, business-like directorates. The " Council on Poverty " was one amongst many, and its composition affords a clue to understanding the methods of them all. Carlyle Democritus once having selected the best and most practical men in the kingdom to serve on these various committees, whose numbers he always left as small as possible, his next great care was to leave them entirely unhampered by red-tape rules of any sort. Their duties once clearly and tersely set before them, th6y were one and all zealously besought to consider only the cause they were called upon to serve ; to keep steadily and unerringly before them no other consideration, but to manfully and fearlessly fulfil their duty, with God and their consciences for guiding-light. Upon his appointment to serve on one of these great committees or councils, each member received a thousand pounds. Whether his council sat many days, or few days, mattered in no way. The fee was for invaluable service, was not measurable by time- 156 ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 157 service, or by windbagism. The five members constituting the Council on Poverty were : — Colonel Andrew Black, who, for many years before the Revolu- tion, had slaved to better the condition of the unemployed, had times out of number headed deputations to Jubilee Ministers, only to be scoffed at, jeered, and grinning-Pilate-questioned, " What is truth ? " Colonel Black knew a little of the people he was now at last called upon practically to work for ; he had with rare devotion lived the very life of the roughest and the poorest, had left for a time his gentle wife and home, disguised as a navvy, and had at one time actually starved with the hunger- stricken. To Carlyle Democritus Colonel Black was one of God's own workers ; he would entrust such a one with almost indefinite power in the direction of his appointment. (83) Another member was Harley Tent, also an indefatigable worker amongst the suffering multitudes, and who had published perhaps the most complete history of poverty ever compiled by man — quite an anti-Giffen sort of person ; one who used figures to enlighten the world, to explain the truth, and not to obscure it. (84) A third was Pastor Truslove, adored by the people. Rumour said that it was he whom Carlyle Democritus visited in an awful London slum-hell many years before, Truslove had since that time lost his only son, a little child of ten years or so, victim to the stench of Slumland, — eternal sun-ray of the poor Pastor-life gone out into far-star radiance. The Pastor's countenance of subdued resignation and sorrow had little of earth in it : " For the sweet child whom God has taken from me," he would say, "that same God has laid upon me the care of many other children. And He has said to me, Pastor, as thou lovest these little stricken ones, so will I love thy son ; finish thy task, O beloved Pastor, and I will call thee to Me as an Angel of Eternal Light, thy golden darling here awaiting thee upon My right Hand." . . . The small, gentle Pastor, embodiment of Christ-like love, raised to the highest post of veneration by the Revolution, had starved in a slum vicarage at the Jubilee Period on a salary of some thirty shillings a week, unheeded and unknown. When they lifted his poor fiock out of the slum-hell into Christian, help- ful worksomeness, and told the gentle Pastor, now growing old, what had happened, and that the loving people and their great Leader had made him Chief Pastor of the Church, the poor old 158 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF man sank down upon his knees, and the devoted ones around him heard his sigh-prayer to the Great Father : " Thou hast answered Thy servant, Eternal One. Now take me, I pray Thee, to Thee and my lost one." And as the soft silvery waves of the old man's hair fell like the down from an angel's wing upon his recumbent breast, they lifted him half-unconscious, reverently, lightly as a dormant child, and brought him to the Leader of the people. This poor, little wasted Love-man, a living saint upon earth, when they, in reverent worship, looked into the way of his life, and found how, from his Church-pay of weekly thirty shillings, most had gone to his flock — and the Archbishops all that time in their palaces, with their ten to fifteen thousand pounds a year, and the Bishops and the Articles Thirty-Nine ! It was then that the people vowed they would sweep all priest-craft away — and have no more gilded Bishops ^but servitors of God, like this saint. And they printed the tale of his life, of the love he had lost, and of the love he had gained, and down into the slum prisons they sent it, and there, on the Sunday morning, in the barn-church provided there, the simple story was read by a rescued son of toil to the fallen kings of the Church and the broken lords of the State. Next to the Pastor Truslove in the Council sat a work- ing farmer of large experience. Next to his own farm he had seen, in the old Jubilee time, fifty acres of rich land cleared of its tenants for sport-shooting; and when the Jubilee sportsman tired of his toy, the farmer bought the land for a kindly experiment. He hired ten broken Irish peasants, who, with their little families, he had seen evicted one winter's day from a Jubilee lord's estate, turned adrift by bailiff and bayonet to starve.* The old farmer divided his land, set those ten families upon it, and bade them work, with a promise of the land to each family, with the hearth, and the sheep, and the pigs, as each one should perfect the wasted soil — he remaiaing there to counsel and direct. In three years the fifty acres waved with golden corn; fat cattle and woolly sheep fed on the hill slopes ; pigs and poultry thrived on the waste. Bright, happy children outvied the merry flowers in the corn ; brave and sturdy peasants lustily directed the plough, every man of them owning his own plot. Carlyle Demo- critus had a long list of such men as Farmer Trieditt, and they • Page 100. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 159 became infinite powers for good under a system which, quietly and unerringly, sought out merit in action, instead of lotten jpretence of merit and political word-mongering. The fifth member was another such farmer, only a younger man. And to this Council of five Carlyle Democritus entered. They had made Pastor Truslove their spokesman, though Colonel Black was their chairman, "Gentlemen," said Democritus as he entered, "though we may know little of each other personally, except our dear Pastor here, we have each one of us an intimate and well-understood know- ledge of the Cause which you are here gathered together to help forward with your loving counsel. Let us be as brief as we can — time is so short, the misery so wide," Pastor : — " General, we come here at your bidding, to serve with our hearts and our understanding the great Cause which God has entrusted to you to establish. We have longed for this time to come, longed — until now — without hope. General, we can utter no idle words to tell you our devotion and our love ; we will not return to our homes until our work is done that you have called upon us to do ; we fervently thank the Eternal Power that He has raised up a trusty servant to work His Divine will and way. Oeneral, we pray you to accept our service unpaid. We would prefer that our work be a labour of love." General: — "Pastor, I, too, cannot speak my heart's reverence for you here assembled, nor is there need of it ; your loving presence here, my prayer to you to come, are our best, our only speech on that. Beautiful indeed is that to me and to you. As to the State payments, do what you wiU with the money, but it must not be returned. Let us bravely regard this one thing, and not confound State work and personal regard. Your independence, your desire to serve gratuitously, does you honour, but all cannot spare their time ; many that I have had to caU are, indeed, as poor as those they are called to work for ; our dear pastor here is not a million- aire. For the sake of all, therefore, I pray you keep what the State but too cheaply requites, for true service is unpayable. And now, to sterner things. Do you need other directions than the printed sheet affords ? " Ool. Black: — "fYes, General. We are entirely agreed that we shall be able promptly enough to lay before you the information ^nd the scheme you desire. Nor are we at all dismayed by its 160 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF probable cost. All we would ask is how that cost is to be met, and are we to treat that part of our scheme as though it did not concern us ? " General: — "Precisely that, Colonel. But I will at once reassure you as to cost. Apart from the fact that the Revolutionary funds are ample for all purposes ; even were they not we should make them so. "We are resolved. Colonel, that the same Britain which could free black slaves for twenty millions sterling shall not stop even at ten times that cost, if necessary, to emancipate their white slaves. Nay, more, we say that the Britain which hesitated not to squander seven hundred millions in mad wars of butchery and folly — for remember. Colonel, the greatest of England's conquests were not the cause of that foul and accursed political expenditure — we say that were another seven hundred millions wanted to save our poor from their wretched sufferings, we would have those millions. But enough ; we have ample funds in hand ; we now ask you to furnish us with fearless, thorough, practical, and most speedy counsel how to mitigate, and finally remove, the burden which presses out the life-blood of millions of God's creatures, our flesh and blood." All stood as the General prepared to depart. The old English hand-shake of each one stirred his heart-blood into warm and uncontrollable emotion. As Democritus took the gentle pastor's hand, he raised it reverentially to his lips. "Within twenty-four hours of that interview the Council on Poverty laid before Carlyle Democritus a brief outline of the approximate numbers of the actually suffering poor with whom it would be necessary to deal. They explained that whereas the total number of the submerged class had been variously estimated /gr by experts — in figures ranging from two millions to five millions, not including mere political statisticians, whose figures were absolutely worthless — they felt justified, after the deepest study of the facts, in naming the sufficiently sad figure of iour millions. "Whilst it was tolerably certain that there had been far larger numbers in the direst straits a short time previously, yet the large numbers of men drawn into employment by the recent measures of the Revolution had very materially reduced them ; they referred especially to the great activity in all the ship-building yards;* the * Pages 319-20. THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. 161 immense number of men employed in rebuilding the slums,* and the further impetus in the building trades everywhere which would result from the barracks they were about to propose to erect for the penal colonies and other settlements. The four millions whom they named they divided into three classes : — 1. The most abject class, loafers, semi-criminals, drunkards, and the worst portion of the inmates of workhouses, they estimated at 200,000. 2. The honest poor, so demoralised by semi-starvation, casual work, or absence of work, as to be broken alike in will power and in physical power; this division included a portion of the inhabitants of workhouses, partly able, and wholly willing, to work — and was esti- mated at 1,000,000. 3. The hard-working, or would-be hard-working poor, weakened but not spoilt by the evils of casual labour, under-feeding, bad housing, and general neglect, but anxious for and highly capable of healthful work under wise superintendence and direction ; in this class was also included that proportion of the workhouse inmates not coming under the first and second divisions. The total number under this division was set down at 2,800,000. Four millions of neglected labour ! The figures seem appalling. (86) They are, nevertheless, rather understated than overstated; nor is this the place for a wise historian to enlarge his difficulty. For the wider the maze of misery, the more insuperable must appear the possibility of its solution. Yet it was solvable, should be solved — swore Carlyle Democritus. Let us discover what he and his brave Council ordained : — Throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, wherever there was marshland, moorland, waste land, or foreshore, or rivers to be embanked, or wherever there was fallow and waste, like the poor 200,000 abject ones — there, everywhere, on the confines of such places, as quick as willing hands could build, huge labour barracks were erected — not inelegant ; they were staunchly constructed, well warmed, drained, and lighted, brightly and strongly decorated. * Page 176. L 162 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF There was always provided within them resources for genuine human comfort, cleanliness, and recreation. Each barrack had its club-room and library. There was one thing never to be found in any of them — spirits of any sort. Good beer was included in the rations, one pint per man per day, no more, or any means of obtaining more. Good warm clothing, wholesome food, perfect human shelter, rough but manful labour were all there. That labour was compulsory ; God had made man to work. If he could not work for lack of will, the strong and wise will of his brother man must direct him. There was no escape from that great law. The work of those penal colonies was the reclamation of waste land. Each colony or settlement worked like the regiment of an army under duly provided officers and generals, with tools instead of arms ; ploughing the bosom of mother earth with spade, instead of a brother's heart with lacerating lead or steel. "Women were there too, and in abundance, set to work on lighter and more domestic matters. Each colony had its four great divisions : There were the single men's quarters, the women's quarters, a division for married couples, and the officers' headquarters. Did a man wish to marry, he had but to emancipate himself from laziness, prove steady even in the poor labour he could perform, and he might win, if he could, a wife from the similarly reformed women labour- ers. Into infinity of detail we need not descend ; suffice to say that Carlyle Democritus knew and understood human nature well. He was no party-seeking minister, content to see a few hundred (86) anarchists sporting his effigy on a gallows' rope in Trafalgar Square, and considering that action and the talk that accompanied it " liberty of speech." Carlyle Democritus knew well the difference between liberty and licence. Man's first and highest command and privilege in this world is work — " Work, that thou may est eat." If any man could work, so that his superior industry could raise him from a penal or reclamation colony to the agricultural colonies, or to other labour, he was at once free to go, but he had to prove that power. And in this manner : As every acre of soil was reclaimed and rendered cultivable, the best labour was rewarded by transference thereon ; once on the cultivable soil, his labour was assessed ; and where, without exceptional superinten- dence, any man could prove his capacity to earn a wage as a free labourer, such assessed wages were allowed to accumulate for him, and when an independent sum was reached he might command it THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 163 and be free. But in the first years on the penal settlements this class of labour showed but a sadly poor percentage who were able thus to emancipate themselves. The cost of establishing these reclamation or penal colonies drew twenty-five millions from the great Requisition Fund. But as the land was reclaimed, it not only became valuable, but men commenced quickly to realise that former mere poisonous idleness, contaminating and harming wherever it spread, was not only set to useful work, and by its absence from slum filth rendering healthier town life possible, but that the money expended upon the food and clothing of the former waste labour was in itself now productive of further industry. For years to come these penal settlements required three or four millions annually to support them, but two hundred thousand loafers converted into even the poorest of workers is to a Carlyle Democritus God's own labour, compared with the old cruelty of do-nothingness, starvation, and criminality. With the next order of the submerged there was greater hope, large as the numbers were. Upon analysis it was found that more than half of the 2,800,000 of the Third Division had been origin- ally agricultural labourers. The h^^^^t of these were at once settled on small farms and allotments, under the conditions set out in the Land chapter.* Here the cost was at first very large, but not unexpected, the principal cost in both the first and third class being the need of building, supplying tools, seed and cattle, and providing adequate superintendence. One million and a half of men were settled back upon the land, every allotment whereof would become a man's holding upon his proving himself capable of satisfactorily working it. In Ireland alone, within two years of the restoration of the people to their land, and the granting to them of their own peasant proprietories, inalienable and non-subdivisible, f over three hundred thousand Irish families returned to the soil To the purpose of the re-settlement of the people upon the land one hundred millions of the Requisition Funds were set apart — not that the whole of such a sum was likely to be required, but the provision was made large in order that, at any future time, any worker desiring to settle upon land should not lack the oppor- tunity. Of the second class of suffering labour, and the remaining * Page 126. tPage 128. 164 ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. portion of the third class, a very large proportion were found to be aged workers over sixty, or bodily infirm. These became provided for by the National Pension Fund, as will be explained in a subsequent chapter.* The workhouses were eventually converted into almshouses for decayed workers over sixty years of age, and for those whom infirmity prevented working upon the reclamation colonies 'or labour settlements. But in no case was any possible worker permitted to lead a life of mere idleness either inside or outside a so-called workhouse. After the Revolution had completely provided for all the terrible arrears of waste labour, and had lifted misery into decent protection and comfort, there remained of the great Requisition Fund one hundred and fifty millions, plus the plate which had since been coined, and had produced fifty millions more. How the Revolution dealt with these remaining two hundred millions will be seen in the chapters on the Navy, Labour, etc. ♦ Page 264, CHAPTER VIII. WASTE HANDS ARE WEDDED TO WASTE LANDS. This fragmentary record of an interview between Carlyle Democritus and his Council on Poverty, which took place aft.er the Council had drawn up its report, and was shortly afterwards adopted by the Revolutionary Tribunal, will serve to explain the working of certain of their propositions, which were little more than referred to in the preceding chapter : — Col. BlacJi : — In setting the numbers of neglected labour requir- ing help at only four millions, General, we have taken into account the several important considerations notified in our instructions, or referred to by you in our last interview. Thus we find that the eight hours' labour day which you have introduced in the Government factories, workshops, and municipal employment throughout the country, together with the permanency of the men's employment and the new order of keepers * that you have established, the increase in the Navy, the old age pensioners — all these will remove from the hitherto congested labour market at least a million men. In the mines now worked by Government on the six hours' day and permanent engagements, at least half a million men will be required. Then we have had to reckon a large increase in the number of men employed throughout the country in private shipbuilding yards as weU as the Government ones, consequent upon the immense increase of the Fleet.f Indeed, we have every reason to hope that by the time all your great measures are thoroughly established that the figures we have worked upon will be found beyond the provisions required. "We need only observe that we have adequately arranged for any possible requirements ; and if, as indeed we hope, it be found that your noble reforms have lifted * Page 196. T See Chapter on Navy. 165 166 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF out of penury into manful employment half the masses we have hitherto had to deal with, no waste will result, inasmuch as our reclamation colonies will he established only as required. Furthermore, it must be remembered that when any colony is reclaimed, and the land rendered fertile, the buildings which at present are designed to serve as labour barracks will, without any material alteration being necessary, be available as labour dwellings, inasmuch as they are being built on identical lines of comfort and convenience with those designed in all the urban settlements. We start with fifty colonies at first in different parts of the country, each capable of employing five thousand hands, not including the labour required to erect the various buildings, nor the permanent staff of officers and men to drill and superintend the settlers and colonists — a staff which, of course, will be larger the more worthless the men they have to deal with. Have we understood you rightly to determine that in this matter of drill and discipline you require almost identical rules to those prevailing in an army ? Carlyle Democritus : — Entirely so. In no other way could the waste masses we are to deal with ever be made available. A Labour Army, Colonel ; and you are right to provide no lack of officers for the lowest workers, practically no-workers. "We re- cognise facts, and are not pretending to blink at difficulties. Your first division — the loafers, and I am not using this definition other than pityingly — worthless as these poor wretches are, we here at least agree that the old infernal social system must be held responsible for them ; but they, being there, must be made as useful as their desperate condition will permit. They will not prove babies or baa-lambs to deal with, nor as such are we contemplating them. Col. Black: — Assuredly not. General. Not only will these men not readily work, but they will imitate the Jubilee Governors, and declare any attempt to make them work "an interference with the liberty of the subject." C. D. : — Most decidedly will they, for we mean very much to interfere with the liberty of such subjects, have indeed interfered broadly and deeply in that direction already. We mean to stop the " liberty " of many thrice-damned abuses ; of that have no fear. Colonel. Col. Black: — By no means any fear, General. We have given THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 167 orders for notice to be served on every out-of-worker, informing him that worthy labour is now ready for him ; the Kevolutionary patrols have already cleared the streets of all touts and do-nothings. In any case where a man objects, he is taken before the Revolu- tionary Magistrate's Court, and, after due examination, an order in legal form is obtained, authorising the action of your officers. Acting upon your decree, we have already started the preparation of five reclaiming stations, and our contractors promise us that within three months they shall be ready for occupation. We shall be also ready by that time with twenty thousand men already undergoing daily drill, well cleaned, clothed, fed, and sheltered. "We have also made arrangements with the County Councils' Sludge Stations, and you may be sure, General, tliat before twelve months are over, waste hands and waste lands shall have been put together not in vain. Although we have not considered cost, we are absolutely convinced that before seven years we shall have converted some two hundred thousand idle vagabonds into workful men, converted also as many acres of swamp and sand wastes into richest soil, at infinitely less cost than a Marlborough War, and whose eventual return will bring a rarer glory to England than any Marlborough war ever did. C. D. : — Now that you have completed your report, gentlemen, I have to inform you that the Eevolutionary Council have appointed you permanent officers of the Department, and the fullest powers will be entrusted to you to carry out the practical application of it. Your annual salaries will be two thousand pounds each member. You must confess that such service as you are rendering to the nation may reasonably compare with the Jubilee '• services" of over five thousand of our slum prisoners, of whom an interesting list some fifteen furlongs deep hangs on the posterns of the various slum-prisons. Lest your Modesties have not perused those lists, let me quote from a few of them : — One Jubilee palace had a Department called " Green Cloth Board," served by some threescore peer-, and other flunkies at a cost of at least nine or ten thousand pounds a year. Then, gentlemen, another palace had sinecure and other officers of the peer-flunkey order (87) exceeding several hundreds in number, and that vacuous, do- nothing peer-crew got more out of this snob-ridden Nation than all my devoted Councils, working with hearts, heads, and hands from morning to night, in spite of our edict of an eight hours' 168 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF day, put together. Therefore no word, my brother labourers. After ten years of our service, let us stand before the tribunal of our people, and render them account of these great doings, side by side with the doings of those Jubilee creatures, and then let a just Nation judge between us and them. Ool. Black : — Before you quit us, General, we should like to lay before you the plan of our engineer for working our first estate, and also the methods we propose adopting with regard to the social side of our Reclamation Colonies. We have had to look some angry questions well in the face ; questions which cowards sneak by, but which we mean to face, for they will not be over- looked, but must be overco?ne. You see, General, there is the old Adam in these men, debased as they are, and there is more than the old Eve in the women amongst them. There has been no difficulty in regulating work for either the women or the men. To briefly explain the method we intend to pursue, we will lay before you our plans of the Great Hope Colony. We have purposely taken a tract of marshland of the most repellent description. Its very air of hopeless reclamation, and, as far as eye can reach, dismal swamp-appearance, determined us to make it our first undertaking. In times of drought only sullen mud-fissures are visible ; for nine months in the year it is practically an unending silurian bog. We have had to fix the camp and barracks at two miles from the scene of operations, as we required a high and healthy site to counteract the conditions under which the men will have to work. The barracks will be erected upon the summit of a small range of hills or slopes, and will, when complete, afford permanent accommodation for five thousand men, with provision for double the number in temporary camps in case of emergency. Our engineer has carefully surveyed the place, and it is certain that within ten years this vast waste tract will be converted into one of the fairest farm areas in England. A light railway will run from the foot of the hills to the marshes. At a spot a thousand feet from the base of the slopes whereon the barracks are being erected, excavations will be made to a depth of ten fathoms, and the basin of a lake completed, having a diameter of fifteen hundred yards. The soil removed by the excavations will be used to form a double embankment one hundred feet wide, between the banks, leading from the lake basin in a slightly undulating course towards the marshes. The lines of Bail will run at the inner bases of these slopes. As the lake-basin THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 169 "becomes completed, the ground between the slopes — at a distance of twenty feet from their bases — will be excavated to a wedge-shaped bottom, with a slight declination towards the lake-basin, the canal thus formed having a width of sixty feet. As this artificial river- bed approaches the marshes it will gradually drain them, and locks being provided, the water-course will be used to facilitate transport. When the lake and the canal are completed, we shall then connect our railway with one of the lines in direct touch with the nearest Municipal Sludge Station, and thenceforward the work of reclama- tion, drainage, and enriching the soil will go forward until comple- tion. We shall plant young trees and shrubs around the entire sides of the lake and along the embankments, from base to summit ; and for that purpose, and also because it will afford additional strength, the slopes of both canal and lake will be built in gradually ascending terraces, three feet wide. So far the plan of the colony. Now as to the labour drill. The men will not use the railway; it will be devoted entirely to the transport of materials. The men are being drilled absolutely upon army conditions. Discipline, obedience, and order are rigorously enforced. The men are provided with strong working uniforms, in addition to their home or barrack dress. At bugle-call every morning they will assemble, armed with their implements, on the parade ground, according to their various companies and under their respective officers. Each company will then march to its alloted field of labour. Precisely similar regulations will prevail in their ranks as in those of a regular army. The humblest worker can, by brave conduct, raise himself to the highest post, that of commander of a battalion. Orders and badges for faithful service and good conduct will carry with them pecuniary and other reward. The women will have the care of the laundries, cookshops, repairing wards, etc. Discipline with them. General, has to be even sterner than with the men. They are women mostly in name only. Some of these poor unsexed things are not to be dealt with by touch of velvet. As regards hours of work, these fall into three grades. First comes the generally adopted revolutionary order of the eight hours' day; but we are compelled to provide for recalcitrant workmen. First offenders will have to work nine hours, second offenders ten hours, for periods longer or shorter according to the nature of the offence. Our penal code compares generally with the regulations 170 THe ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF provided for ordinary military offenders; perhaps with a few additional severities to meet exceptional cases. Flogging will not be resorted to except in extreme cases, and we have provided that in the first instance any such extreme cases shall be tried before a jury drawn from the nearest town, or later on, we hope, from the good conduct men — if found practical — in the respective settle- ments. But in any event we leave to the Governor and Council of each settlement the amplest power of discretion. As for the relations of the sexes, that has been a matter of no small difficulty. These men and women, well fed, well clothed, in honest regular work — never mind how low they may have fallen, often because they have so fallen — are mortals of passion, perhaps beyond the rest of us. They will meet in their concert-halls, at their various social gatherings, in the parks or gardens we are laying out in each of the settlements, for — except that they are tied to the colony until, by their own industry and capacity to stand alone, they may gain their independence — perfect freedom will prevail in all the colonies, and as far as possible the Revolutionary laws and customs on this subject will prevail. We have therefore decided to encourage marriage, but not indiscriminately, and our pastors, all married men, will previously convey that necessary and wise instruction to a colonist, impressing upon him the duty of incur- ring no greater responsibility than his means and his station enable him to fulfil. No marriage will be permitted until a pledge to this effect has been subscribed to by the intending contracting parties. Before we separate. General, we would add that every care has been taken, and every provision made, to elevate and ennoble as much as possible the lives of these poor people. A band will play in their gardens every afternoon when weather permits, or in the concert-hall in winter and bad weather. Educational classes for intellectual and moral training will be compulsory upon all the men and women. Every care will be taken that the reasonable labour hours are not misunderstood, nor the leisure misapplied or wantonly dissipated. Work will begin at nine in winter, and at eight in summer ; the "Out Lights" bugle will sound at eight-thirty in winter evenings, and nine-thirty in summer. Such, General, is the brief sketch of the first Great Hope Colony, which will start work within three months, and upon similar lines THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 171 all the Colonies will march. We have only to add that should economy, and the interests of the scheme, recommend any increase in the numher of the lahour settlements on this first land reclama- tion scheme, our site affords us barrack room for extension in three directions, totalling a capacity of twenty thousand men and women. Book If. LABOUJ^ CHAPTER L SLUMLAND REGBNBBATED. However elastic tlie term " slum " may have been, tte Revolution quickly gave it a definite and by no means narrow meaning. They included within the scope of the measures of reform they were introducing not only the rebuilding of the foul courts and alleys, whose utterly brutal condition rendered them unfit for decent human habitation, but also those streets which had been from time to time debased by the jerry-builder, and the mercenary grasping of the old ducal and other freeholders. Included also in the building reforms were all those new blocks of flats situated often in ^the most fashionable centres, whose rear spaces admitted neither sun nor air to the rooms which were relegated to the ser- vants of the premises. The Revolution would not tolerate any of those blocks whose courtyards gave not an area open to the light and air equal in breadth and depth to the height of the buildings abutting upon such area. As nearly all these flats, never mind how magnificent their design, or how " fashionable " their locality, had been built by the soulless landowners without any other con- sideration than how many human beings could be crowded into them, they were one and all treated in a similar fashion, viz. the interior small rooms were demolished, and a wide, healthy, asphalted courtyard substituted. The work was done gradually, and as fast as one block was re-modelled another was immediately taken in hand, until all of them were transformed. There was no difficulty in arranging the necessary transfer of the residents, as they were all compensated, as were also the various companies who had owned the buildings, and who were not responsible for the infamous overcrowding, inasmuch as they were but the victims of the free- holders, just as absolutely as were the tenants. As for the cost of 176 176 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OP the alterations, they were amply met by the fact^that the entire free- holds were sequestrated to the State, and the accruing rents and ground-rents more than requited the outlay ; indeed, such reforms, pressing and necessary as they were, would have been impossible, because of the expense, had it not been for the wise and just law of the Revolution, which treated all these mercenary free- holders precisely in the same fashion as of old were treated the (88) swindling purveyors of foul or adulterated food, viz. by confisca- tion of their poisonous property. How utterly futile it had been to attempt any other method of dealing with the infamous abuses of the old land system may be quickly seen by referring to the experiences of the London County Council, before the Revolution discovered to them the only possible method of dealing with long- established abusedom. The Council, after demolishing one of the filthiest slum areas in the Metropolis, and erecting thereon, with utmost economy, healthy artisan dwellings, found themselves (i.e. their ratepayers) burdened with an outlay more than double the value of the new buildings ; and this notwithstanding the fact that they had substituted comparatively rotten pig-sties by wholesome and worthy labour dwellings. In the Chapter on Land Restoration has been described the method of dealing with the acquisition of property by the Revolution. This is how they dealt with those portions of Slumland not comprised within the areas reserved for slum-prisons. Commencing in the south or south-east of London, they first converted the empty Bishop's Palace at Lambeth into commodious quarters for workmen ; the grounds were then laid out as a building site, and blocks of magni- ficent dwellings were, with utmost despatch, erected upon them. Why commence at South London, and why at the Archbishop's Palace? Because, reader. South London, although flanked by an Archbishop's park and palace, was one of the very cruellest slum and poverty areas in the United Kingdom. The humble historian cannot expect that statement to be accepted at his bidding. He proposes, therefore, to introduce the evidence of the Church itself, as offered by a Bishop and a Canon ; further, the evidence of the Lambeth Local Authority ; and, as also worthy of consideration, — the stern authority of fact — the damnable fact, viz. that the horrors here following — the rats and the incest, the quintessence of misery, filth, and degradation — were all rife at the very skirts of the Lambeth Archbishop's Palace itself. ... So far had it (89) THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 177 Fome in Jubilee period 1894 ; and not only were Christ's vicars preaching to the starving multitude that " the Kingdom of Heaven was for the poor," but they were practising the doctrine which was not Christ's — that "the Kingdom of Earth was, meanwhile, lor the Bishops." And now silence for the Bishop of Rochester, who, at Corpus Christi CoUege, in the year of Jubilee 1894, su oaks : — " It is a curious fact how very little the area described as South London is known to the people of England ; but the region con- Tains one and three-quarters of a million of people, and is the largest consecutive poor area in the British Isles, and probably in ihe British Empire. The poverty which exists in it is something terrible." So spoke the Bishop of Rochester, at Body-of-Christ College, Oxford, in the year 1894. And in the midst of that (go) terrible poverty lived the Fifteen-thousand-pounds-a-year Arch- bishop of Canterbury, with his park there at Lambeth, and his other — Addington Park — at Croydon. Whilst the Rochester Bishop was eloquently preaching at Body-of-Christ College, Oxford — at that very time, down there at Lambeth, hard by the Archbishop's Palace — home of the supposed representative of the Spirit of Christ — the Law Officers of the Lambeth Local Authority were applying for the payment of rates at some slum dens, property of *' a lady [Jubilee lady] living in the country." Listen : — " The Local Authority found most of the occupiers unable to pay the rates, and distresses could not be levied, as the goods of the occupiers were worthless. The parish constable and three members of the Local Authority visited the premises, and they found — in the neighbourhood of the Lower Marsh there [just at the back of the Archbishop's Park and Palace] — a six-roomed house, occupied by six families, every room in the house in a filthy condition. In another house in the same street, with underground rooms overrun with rats, twenty-two people were living. Another small house in the same street was inhabited by twenty-six people. In an underground ' room,' seven feet by nine, a man and two children slept on an old box. AVhen the authorities called, they found the man preparing, in this filthy room, baskets of comestibles for sale in ' first-class ' houses. The officers say in their report that the stench in the room was unbearable." [Put even an Archbishop, with his wife and two children, in an underground room, seven feet 3*1 178 THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OF by nine, swarming, or not swarming, with rats, with a box for bed for them all, constrained to prepare comestibles for bodies instead of for souls, and even an Archbishop might not keep clean.] " In another house twenty-five people 'lived.' One underground room, a mere scullery, was occupied by a man and his wife, his daughter of seventeen, and his son of fourteen. ... In another room, nine feet by nine, lived and slept a man, his wife, and four children. Upstairs a piece of sacking was nailed to divert the rain Avhich came through the ceiling in a stream down the stairs. * It would seem to indicate ' — [happy Jubilee phrase] — ' It would seem to indicate ' that Lambeth stands much in need of a house-to-house inspection." (90a) — Jubilee newspaper of the year 1894. Preaching at the Church of St. Edmunds, in the City of Lon- don, at the same time, within the same week of the year 1894, as the before quoted authorities, Canon Scott Holland thus addressed his congregation : " The clergy has arrived at a point where it stands convicted, by the outraged conscience of its fellows, of the most inhuman injustice, harshness, cruelty, greed, and ambition. The Church of Christ, founded in mercy and pity, has suffered itself to arrive at a position where it has become the very bye- word for arrogance and merciless ambition. Is there not evidence on every side, far and wide, to make us suspect our- selves?" Is it necessary to further inquire, British people, wherefore Carlyle Democritus commenced to rebuild Slumland in (91) the South of London ? And wherefore he selected the Arch- bishop's Lambeth Palace site as the most fitting corner-stone for the rebuilding 1 The worthy Canon who fired the above quoted rhetorical blank-shot at the Jubilee Church was quite a fashion- able Canon ; for he who can pour forth tuneful abuse, and not propound a remedy, is never feared, and the sound of mighty words fascinates some men — and more women. And now we will return to our history. The Revolution, as we have said, converted the Archbishop's Lambeth Palace into a commodious artisans' block. The park of his Fifteen-thousand-pounds-a-year Grace was laid out in building sites, and blocks of labour dwellings were erected upon them. The external architecture was as beautiful as artist could devise, and as the whole of London (and indeed the country generally) was treated upon a similar plan, it will be as well to enter some- what fully into the Lambeth Building Reforms. The National THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 179 Council on Buildings, public and private, having examined and selected from the designs submitted to them by the various competitors that one which, by virtue of its external beauty and internal fitness, best recommended itself to their judgment, the Government immediately proceeded to have their plans carried out. As under the new Labour Code employment was now permanent,* and no labourer was engaged upon the barbaric Jubilee system of pay by the hour, not only did the men work with a will, and a real interest in their labour ; but, knowing its purport, and also the unending boon their fellow-workmen would enjoy from its achievement, they laboured to prove themselves worthy of the great future which the Revolution was opening up to them. Upon the debated question of size of building we need not enter; the centre of employment at Lambeth was much in request, large buildings were a necessity, nor was there objection so much to the size of the old artisans' dwellings as to their wretched air of dismalness, dirt, and depression. That " livin^ in common " was not objected to may be readily proved, because even in the most fashionable neighbourhoods, where cost was not a consideration, flats were everywhere sought after. It was just such structures that here were erecting ; the internal accommoda- tion was in keeping with the bright and beautiful exterior ; suites of rooms were complete in themselves ; not only had each set, or flat, its own domestic ofiices, bath-room and kitchen, with hot and cold water supply, but there was also provided a general kitchen from which all the tenants could be served if they desired it; there was a large club-room and library, ample laundry accommoda- tion for the women, healthy playground and gymnasium for th« children, and either bowling alley or tennis court for the men. Throughout the whole building the same care and regard had been displayed as if they had been in Mayfair instead of Lambeth. If the rooms were smaller, they were also cosier. No reasonable invention of modern comfort and convenience was omitted. The premises were warmed throughout by means of steam pipes, and lighted by electricity. We must not forget to mention that, in addition to the bath-room attached to each set of rooms, there was also a number of baths provided in the basement of each block, ♦ Page 194. 180 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF and having separate entrance from the rear, for the use of labourers whose calling required especial attention to cleanliness. Each block had also a creche, or common nursery, under the charge of a matron, who for a small fee looked after young children and infants whose mothers had to leave their homes for work. Add to what has been described, that experienced superintendents were appointed over each block, and that a committee of nine, selected from amongst the tenants by themselves, managed the affairs of the dwellings generally. One of the duties of these occupying tenants- committees was to care that only those workers were admitted to tenancy for whom the buildings had been erected. This precaution was necessary, because it frequently had happened that, after the clearance of a particular area, and the substitution of improved accommodation, a class superior to the residents, for whose require- ments the improvements had been designed, would rush in and raise the rents against the poorer class of labour, who often thuswere forced into thoroughfares more overcrowded than the ones they had left. To protect the tenants of each locality, therefore, directly a new scheme was put in hand, a number of the best conducted men in the area under improvement were nominated by the Department on the Housing of the Working Classes, and from this number the people affected were allowed to select the nine referred to. It must be remembered in this place that the worst, or loafer class,. had been removed to the Penal Settlements.* Where any of that very difficult, or rowdy element remained, do not let it be thought that they were allowed to destroy the peace of the general body of decent labour. There was none of that infinite cowardliness of misrule existing in the twentieth century which the leading paper of the year 1894 described as characteristic of the nineteenth century : — " Civilisation must be pronounced rather a stupid affair if it is not capable of devising efficient protection against its domestic enemies. There is a flabby and sentimental condition of the public mind which refines away the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. A large portion of the British public is steeped in a sloppy and slushy sentimentality. It shudders at applying the lash to the shoulders of some brute for whom hanging is a great deal too good. Any knave or charlatan Page 162. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 181 obtains toleration," etc. Now those are really brave words, and (92) worthy of the great "Thunderer." And, moreover, they accur- ately described an immense proportion of Jubilee people. On such lines a Carlyle Democritus is not constituted. We have seen, and shall further see, how he dealt with the villainous Jubilee swindlers of all sorts and conditions. We have not seen him start or stagger at any fetish, be it called Free Trade Fetish, Survival of the Fittest Fetish, Political Economy, Eights of Property, Progress of Civilisation, Liberty of the Subject, or any other fetish. The truth is, that a Carlyle Democritus sees in mere names absolutely nothing, but in FACTS absolutely everything. What Jubilee lunatics called " Free Trade," he saw was mere " Unbridled Licence of Trade." Their *' survival of the fittest " was the corruption, starvation, maceration, of the entire manhood of Britain, in order that some few thousands of idle, sport-loving, ancestor-seUing peers, or worthless mammonites, might live in fulsome luxury. What the ruling class called " rights of property " was a huge stench- bladder which, when pierced by the Revolutionary sword, poured out the stolen and misappropriated national wealth which a few land-robbers had fraudulently stolen from successive generations. Their " progress of civilisation," he saw, was a progress to Hell and Eternal Damnation. Their " liberty of the subject " was the license of might over right, of pretentious ignorance over innocence, of stalking quackery and fraud over retiring integrity and worth. High or low, rich or poor, strong or weak, let them, if they value their souls, conform to the rule of Justice and of Wisdom. Abuse of any sort met with instant punishment ; no dead fly was per- mitted to make the Revolutionary ointment stink. A Carlyle Democritus spares not the rod. There was no difl&culty found in dealing with the management of any of the labour palaces. The superintendents were everywhere in proportion to the requirements of the places. Order was not a more absolute law of Nature than it was of the conduct of the Revolution everywhere. With regard to the assessment of the blocks of labour dwellings they all had to accommodate themselves to the rates which had pre- vailed in the old hovels, which were in some proportionto the earnings of the tenants. The question as to whether these buildings " paid " can be safely answered ; for in place of unending filth, degradation, misery, and disease, starving and mud-covered children, and filthy men and women, there were bright and merry little ones playing in 182 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF protected asphalt courts, away from mud gutters and general contam- ination, and there were clean and self-respecting men and women. There was health where there had been disease ; there was pure air and water where before had been unending stench and impurity. It was not the "pay" of a bishop's ten thousand pounds a year. But it ivas the pay of duty done, of godliness and justice, in place of former infamous and merciless neglect. Another essential feature in the assessment of these beautiful labour homes was the wise provision which the Revolution had caused to be added to the general Assessment Laws of the country, and which was to the effect that, after the assessment of every block had been completed, the following system of rebates should apply to all artisans' buildings, viz. : — A reduction of from five to ten per cent, was to be allowed off the rent of any tenant whose rooms were certified by the Committee and Superintendent to be kept in an exemplary manner. Ordinary cleanliness and care were secured by the regulation and discipline enforced in all the dwell- ings ; but the rebate referred to was an inducement to more than mere cleanliness, it sought to raise a spirit of worthy emulation in the tenants, and to induce them to brighten and beautify their tenements. In addition to the conveniences already mentioned, lifts were provided in all high buildings ; and, in a word, the exterior beauty and the interior comfort of the new labour homes throughout the country were not to be distingviished except, perhaps, for superior solidity of architecture, from the best quarters of the towns and cities. Directly the Lambeth Palace buildings were complete, which afforded accommodation for over two thousand people, an area of corresponding population was cleared ; and after permanently housing the quondam inmates in the new buildings, similar magnificent labour palaces were at once built over the sites of the former slum wastes. In this manner was the whole of London and of the country generally in course of time gradually dealt with. Wherever temporary buildings could be obtained to remove the people into whilst new buildings were being erected, there the great work went on apace, as fast as willing hands and eager hearts could carry it. Nor let it be thought that there was the slightest difficulty in acquiring temporary buildings to house the workers in whilst new labour palaces were being erected on the old slum sites. The 1891 census proved that there were no less than 372,184 empty houses at that time in England and Wales alone — THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 183 a fact not a little notable when compared with this other fact, that the same census returned 481,653 tenements of the poor as overcrowded. That is precisely one of those vivid characteristics of the whole Jubilee period, of the whole political economy, supply-and-demand, devil-take-the-hindermost civilisation. Wanton, idle waste on the one hand, and crushing, maddening misery, wretchedness and suffering, on the other. Jubilee Government Census, Progress of the Species glorification, Pinnacle of Civilisa- tion theory ; Sorrypebble, universal prophet of the whole civilised world ; and yet, declares the official record, over three millions (3,258,044) of English and "Welsh subjects crowded into pig tenements, whilst there lie absolutely empty more than a quarter of a million of houses. But damnable as those records are, they are as angel-figures compared with Scotch or Irish House Census Eeturns. The Scotch returns show that their four millions of people consisted of about 874,000 families, or an average of about five people to a family (in England and Wales the average family is rather higher). Of those eight hundred and seventy-four thousand families, more than three-fifths (to be exact, 535,566) lived in one or two rooms, some of those " one or two rooms " not having even a window in them. Over sixty per cent, of the entire Scotch (93) nation were rather to be described as kennelled than housed. With our poor Irish brothers and their mud-cabins it was yet worse. As to the cost of re-housing all these neglected thousands, Carlyle Democritus never let ^the work stay for funds. " The soldiers of peace should be as dear to the State as the soldiers of war," would he say ; " issue land loans, if need be, but house my people worthily and without delay; they have waited long enough." It must not be imagined that there was any unnecessary costliness in the style of architecture adopted; anything like meretricious ornament was rigorously eschewed ; so also was the old deliberate ugliness of mere bricks (and they generally bad ones) and mortar (and that, for the most part, mud). Indeed, it (94) was not only in the architecture of workmen's dwellings that Carlyle Democritus introduced and insisted upon an outward beauty of form and style, as well as an inward regard to cleanliness and com- fort; he had instituted amongst his other councils, one on the "dwellings of the people," as well as one "on public buildings;" and to this latter body, consisting of the ablest artists and architects of 184 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF the day, was referred the plans of all buildings proposed to be erected. And whilst the County Councils determined all matters of con- struction from a sanitary and local point of view, the Art Council protected the land from desecration such as prevailed in Jubilee times, when a money-grubbing duke and his agents, or a jerry- builder, could run up whole streets of mere brick walls with square holes in them, and call them houses. It was not only the slums that were rebuilt and beautified ; the unending miles of jerry-built hideousness were also reformed and beautified, either by the new landlord — the State — or inducements (mitigations of rent, and other facilities) were given to occupiers to improve the frontages of their houses in conformity with the requirements of the Art Council. Throughout London and the country these great reforms in the housing of the people went forward ; nor did the improvements draw largely on the requisition fund (they were nearly all defrayed out of the improved and sequestrated pro- perties); but large loans when required were at once forthcoming, and were always promptly recouped. After ten years of this treatment Slumland in the United Kingdom had disappeared, except in those parts still incarcerating the old tolerators and abettors of it — the peers, bishops, legislators, slumowners, etc. All prisons in large towns and cities had disappeared. Upon their sites had grown labour palaces, their centres wide courtyards, where clean and merry workmen's children could play untrodden by sewer-carts, uncontaminated by gutter mud. There was not a street in London but showed unmistakable evidence of the wisdom of the new land laws. Nearly every man practically owned the house he lived in. In place of one peer owning ten thousand houses, and sucking the life-blood of the people in oppressive rents, ten thousand householders enjoyed an undisturbed possesssion. Streets which before had been but long-drawn miles of dreary bricks and window-panes, now shone forth in tasteful architecture. Jerrybuilding had had its day ; the jerry- builders and the swindling, grasping abettors of all that infamy had paid their penalty by sequestration of property, and, in some cases, of life. Throughout all the cities, towns, and villages, young trees beautified the streets, and in summer-time flowers from the park greenhouses were added also, and gave a brightness And freshness to them which was everywhere reflected on the national life. All the parks were lighted by electricity, and THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 185 remained open until ten at night. Bands played in them, and order was everywhere preserved by the widely organised system of park-keepers, who were set to protect all parks and gardens in the proportion of three men to every two acres. A similar class of men were appointed to superintend all the streets of the great cities, a system which not only afforded an enormous and worthy outlet for pensioned labour, as is explained elsewhere,* but which effected a long needed-reform in the general condition of the streets. Street-keepers were appointed in the proportion of one man to every fifty houses ; they were in direct communication with the police and fire-stations and the various councils by means of telephone stations provided on their respective beats. They thus afforded a great protection against disastrous fires; they reported any cases of accident ; and they helped to preserve perfect order in the streets. It was their duty to call the atten- tion of their District Council to any street whose condition required repair or cleansing ; and they assisted the authorities in superin- tending the carrying out of all regulations as to street traffic. The old abuses of street cries, street fights, street advertisements, street mud, street organs, and street nuisances generally, had disappeared as effectually as the slums and the slumowners. When in years to come the people saw the noble labour palaces which Carlyle Democritus had caused everywhere to be erected, and when they saw the bright, merry children playing in their broad, clean, well-sheltered playgrounds, and the cheerful, contented women, and the strong, reliant men, they admired the cleanliness and the beauty and the godliness of it all, for they had not quite forgotten the old order of half-naked gutter children, reeking in mud-filth and starvation, cramped in worse than pigsties, and the women distraught with hunger and misery until the God- likeness was forced out of them, and they would " insure " their little children in Jubilee Insurance Companies, and then slowly murder them for the few shillings money-gain which the law of Jubilee England winked somnolently upon.f — there was indeed much wonderment, and some of the descendants of the old political economical crew asked the Revolutionary General if it would all "pay." Then Carlyle Democritus told these people that they could get their question quickly answered, for he had caused to * Page 196. T See Chapter on Women. 186 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF be prepared a brief special report upon these questions, not in the form of the old Parliamentary Reports by Royal Commission, for it was contained on one page, instead of on one thousand pages, and had been compiled in only a few hours instead of a few years. And the burden of the report was this : — "The Revolutionary Council having at various times been asked through the public newspapers, and otherwise, whether the new system of the housing of the working classes 'pays,' as compared with the old, the said Council have caused to be pre- pared a statistical table of the life and death rate in the slum prisons, as compared with the new labour centres. The said table shows as follows : — The Arctic and the Antarctic of Slumland : A Table which shews the Injurious Results of Existence in regions where it is not meet for Man to dwell, and where the Divine Laws of the Great God to Man have for generations been set aside : — DEATH RATE PER 1000 OF THE POPULATION.' AMONGST THE j POOR IN SLUMS I BEFORE i THE REVOLUIION. I Owing to the i tainted and poi- j I sonous air, semi- ] I starvation, over- j crowding, and [general wretched- I ness, deaths in the I slums ranged from 45 to 60 per 1000 ' of the population. IN LABOUR PALACES AFTER THE REVOLUTION. The annual mor- tality, owing to purity of sur- roundings, has become reduced from the old massacre - figures to between 15 and 20 deaths per 1000 of the population. IN ARISTOCRATIC PALACES BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. The annual death- rate, owing to healthfulness of surroundingsand, in spite of excess- ive feeding, and I of other intemper- i ances, was very j low, and varied I between 18 and 20 j deaths per 1000 of population. IN ARISTOCRATIC SLUM-PRISONS AFTER THE REVOLUTION. The annual mor- tality in the slum- prisons, due to the filth and misery of the sun'ound- ings, varies be- tween 45 and 60 persons out of every 1000 in- carcerated. * The average death rate in London was about 20 per 1000 of the population, but it varied more than the above figures set out as between a Park Lane and (86) a Seven Dials. '* To that Table the Revolutionary Council have only to add that it is open to any earnest and enthusiastic advocate of the pre- THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 187 revolutionary doctrines to prove his belief of the old Jubilee Political-Economy-Gospel by changing his present mode of existence, and adopting that still prevailing in the few remaining slum- centres. The Kevolutionary Government here again make it generally known that they will not permit the question of amnesty of the slum prisoners to be brought under public discussion. "They feel that there is the less necessity for such discussion, inasmuch as owing to low birth rate amongst the prisoners, and the high death rate — which remains the same as in the pre-revolutionary period (and is therefore ' not exceptional ') — it will not be many years before death will have naturally amnestied all the prisoners. The Revolutionary Council remind those interested in the question that already the original twenty-seven slum centres, which were reserved for the slum prisoners have been reduced, by the natural means before referred to, to eleven ; and as the populations of the various remaining sites gradually diminish, their inhabitants will continue to be transferred to other centres, as it is part of the sentence of the Grand Tribunal of the Revolution that all the conditions of the old slums shall be rigorously preserved ; and as over-crowding was an essential feature of the Jubilee slums whilst the poor were compelled to occupy them so is it maintained now when their only remaining occupants are those, who formerly owned, tolerated, condoned, or abetted them. " By order of the Revolutionary Council on the Housing of the People, " Jamks Cusole, Colonel, " Presicf- '." (96) (97) CHAPTER II STATE EMPLOYMENT AND NEW AVENUES OP LABOUR. Innocent people are prone to accept indiscriminately as truth, with an ease amounting to conviction, the assurances, or even the opinions, of those in authority ; and they aire still more prone to adopt those assurances and opinions if they are supported hy their daily newspaper. Were a modern Galileo to arise and tell them that the political world-system they had hitherto believed in was as false and unreal as the old-world theory that our earth was square, it is tolerably certain that such a daring new Galileo would share the fate of most wise teachers who have been also innovators. How many would regret that we have no torture inquisition to drag his limbs and his opinions out of him, and vow that such was the will of God. good people, you are by no means so far removed from mad and ignorant superstition as the complacent amongst you comfortably imagine. Has this present history not already shown you how a Great Authoritv, one GifFen, Statistician General to Britannic Majesty's Government, had assured you that the "world was nearly full," as far as the purpose of emigration was concerned, and how the "greatest newspaper in the world" had wept crocodile's tears over that awful revelation, commenting upon it that : " It is sad to think that an outlet for poverty which has existed all these years of the World's History is coming to an end." This is indeed a remarkable doctrine of Messrs Giffen, Times & Co. But is it more remarkable than this other : That it is unreasonable on the part of British working men to demand that the wage accorded them by their employers should be a living wage ? Yet that is also the doctrine of the " greatest newspaper in the world." In spite of the formidable Government Statistician, and the leading newspaper in the world, Carlyle 188 ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 189 Democritus determined that the planet Earth was not yet full, and that every Briton should be able to live by the honest labour of his hands. And he also determined various other equally astound- ing principles of humanity and natural justice, not hitherto recognised by Political-, Giffen-, or Times' Economy. Having duly provided worthy human habitations for worthy human beings, the Revolution next took steps to obliterate the degrading public-houses, which, in the Jubilee period, diverted seventy millions of the Nation's savings anni;ally from thrift to waste, washing along with its bestial poison-flow tens of thousands of men, women, and children into the slough of poverty, pauperism, misery, and crime. One brave worker amongst the starving (98) children of the poorest of the poor in those times, who spoke with the written life records in his possession of some twenty-four thousand of these little suffering outcasts, has left it on record that the "most potent factor in the ruin of the young lives that came into my hands was drink." " Were it not for the drink," he writes, " MORE THAN EIGHTY PER CENT. OF THE CASES THAT COMB INTO MY HANDS WOULD NEVER HAVE NEEDED MY AID. ThIS IS A STRONG STATEMENT, BUT I SPEAK THAT WHICH I DO KNOW." Another great (^^) authority, in an address delivered before the Royal Statistical (100) Society on the subject of " The Perils and Protection of Infant Life," stated that : "Deaths (of young children) from suffocation in bed were found to have a definite relation to intemperance. By far the largest number, over twenty-eight per cent., occurred daring Saturday night" (refer to page 84 for a full description of a slum- hell, drink Saturnalia), " and on that night about thirty-five per cent, of all the apprehensions for drunkenness take place." The consumption of spirits was narrowed to near vanishing point by means of an exceedingly high duty, which practically confined their sale to chemists for medicinal purposes. Malt liquors could only be procured at eating-houses, restaurants, and general provision sellers, or (for consumption off the premises) from the brewers. The quality of the beverage (which had to be made from pure malt and hops) was jealously superintended by Government inspectors, and any adulteration by a brewer or dealer rendered him liable to enormous fine and loss of license for a second offence. The old abuse of " drinking clubs " was cured by their suppression, immediate a-nd complete. With regard to working-men's clubs, it quickly followed upon the general 190 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF improvement in the condition of the working-classes that their clubs became raised in tone along with those who resorted to them; and, furthermore, the loathing with which the crime of drunkenness grew to be held and punished, after the establishment of worthy labour laws, tended to stamp out the filthy vice alto- gether. Though before the Revolution drunkenness was allowed, in numerous cases, to extenuate guilt, after the Revolution it was made an aggravation of offence. Furthermore, on proof before a magistrate, or judge, that any man, never mind what his condition (101) ^^ ^^^^ might be, had been three times drunk, he was liable to a minimum period of six months' incarceration in an inebriates' prison, and to a minimum period, after one conviction, of two years. The old Jubilee theory of " liberty of the subject " was most piously " considered," but it was not permitted to mean licence of the subject. Also a faithful Government considered more the innocent wife and the tender children than the bestial and depraved drunkard ! Remarkable, is it not ? Probably, for did it not require the Revolution of a Carlyle Democritus — a social Galilei Galileo — before a party-ridden and beer-governed nation could be induced to even recognise that the claims of maternity and innocence, of outraged women and suffering children to pro- tection, were superior to those of the besotted beast-thing — God forbid, we should call him man ! — mad with drink, ready to commit on them, or on any one, murder, or other crime? As for the so-called music-halls — as such they were allowed to continue, but their old filthy trade of drink jiilus vulgarity was instantly sup- pressed — the drink — not the vulgarity ; that was not suppressed, it quickly suppressed itself ; for when once the besotted idiots who used to revel in those places could no longer become more or less comatose in those places, it transpired that neither could even tlieir intelligence, when unfogged by liquor, tolerate the old class of leg and haunch exposure, set off by more or less silly or allusive " soncrs." No bar was allowed in any such hall, theatre, or kindred place whatsoever. Coffee restaurants were permitted for the ravenous frequenters who might otherwise perhaps have succumbed if left without means of other sustenance than that which the proscenium afforded between the hours of eight and ten. The first great reform of the Labour Code was the abolition of casual employment, and the substitution of yearly engagement. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 191 The hideous barbarity and folly of the old system needs only to be realised to be condemned. Even in the Government labour yards it was a common thing, in Jubilee period, to dismiss hundreds of men from work in the depths of winter, a proceeding which ensured misery and starvation to men, women, and children in the most trying period of the year. It requires no argument '102) to convince any thoughtful man how infinitely superior must be the permanent workman — assured of his livelihood, rendered intimately familiar with his surroundings and his fellow-workers — to the poor casual labourer engaged for a fleeting period, paid bjf the hour, and dismissed, uncared for and unthanked, when his task is done. Carlyle Democritus introduced a nobler system. Throughout the country, in Government workyards and factories, and in all Government service whatsoever, from the postwawto the •post7naster, in all municipal employments, whether by County, District, or Parish Council, he ordered that all engagements should be by annual agreement. In order to promote harmony and goodwill between employer and employed, he caused to be established, in every centre of public employment, a Board of Keference, before whom all questions of estrangement should be submitted. This Board was constituted of nine members, one in every three of whom was a representative selected by the men employed. Its object was not to take sides in any labour ques- tions which might arise, but rather to prevent their arising by affording the employers, or their managers, a permanent council of information as between masters and men. These Boards of Reference were required to meet in private at least once a quarter, and, if necessary, report to their respective public bodies, or departments, upon any matter requiring their attention. By this means the men were safeguarded against possible dismissal with- out cause, protected against high-handed action by unjust over- seers ; or, on the other hand, they could bring before their masters any question of reform, or of management, by virtue of their office, and without its assuming the nature of ill-will or complaint. No dismissal could take place until such a Board had heard and decided upon a case, but any workman guilty of misconduct could be suspended until their decision could be obtained. This establishing of permanent labour staffs throughout the country, together with the eight hours' work-day which accompanied it, again combined with the fixing of a minimum or living wage, 192 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF formed a strong starting-point from whence to promulgate the system eventually in all industries, private and public. Carlyle Democritus had always held that the Government, and its satellites — the municipal authorities — must be model employers of labour ; it is they who set the great example to the Nation ; indeed, if the matter is seen rightly, no universal and general improvement is possible until Government has set the ideal before the people. But, in justice to the great General, let not any loose poetic meaning be attributed to that word " ideal " as he inter- preted it : *' The worthiest, truest, most practical, and most just conditions of employment," those were the pure and simple con- ditions which he insisted should characterise State service. What were such conditions ? These : — 1. Healthy, adequate homes; HOMES, not hovels, for the workers. 2. Permanency and regularity of employment. 3. Just and honest wage, in manful recognition of the fact that the man's labour is to be requited, not the acci- dental circumstance that one other man, or one million other men, could be found to supply his place. 4. Insurance and provision against the worker's untimely death or disaster ; assurance that his wife, children, or dependants should never suffer by reason of his service : " Be not to me as a servant, who serves his master merely for the sake of reward ; serve me with all your heart and will, and I will protect you and yours, as a father his children." (Carlyle Democritus, in the name of the State, to the workmen engaged under the new Labour Code.) Pension and provision in old age, 5. Definite and moderate hours of labour, justly and wisely apportioned to the nature, conditions, and arduousness of the work. G. Inducement and opportunity to worthy and elevating recreation in hours of relaxation and leisure. Not temptation of bestial gin-hells on all sides of the labourer, thus the Government encouraged in all directions : Well-laid-out parks, good music, public libraries, manly sports, gymnasia, etc. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 193 7. The system of apprenticeship was introduced in all the Government workshops, mines, and laboratories. Espec- ially were the sons of the workers welcomed. 8. In addition to all the wisdom of arrangement which the Government thus established in its dockyards, work- shops, arsenals, and factories throughout the Empire, it also established in the United Kingdom " model work- shops " in every branch of trade. These were not to compete with trade. Quite the contrary. They were formed to induce co-operation in all trades, co-operation, viz. in the determination to reassert Great Britain's lost prestige in the markets of the world for sterling thoroughness of work and material. Only the most perfect articles of workmanship were allowed to bear the Government stamp, and the prices fixed upon these articles were never less than ten per cent, higher than the prices current for the best manufactures of private makers. But the value of these State work- shops was inestimable. They speedily caused the death of shoddy everywhere. People soon grew to appreciate the value of a good article, and the absolute worthless- ness of the old fraud stuffs. Manufacturers were at last compelled to supply genuine goods, and one after another applied to Government for the right to mark their goods with the proud guarantee of perfect workmanship which only actual fulfilment of the Government conditions could secure them. When once the object of Carlyle Democritus was attained, and a true standard of honest and thorough workmanship in all trades established, he transferred all the State model factories to trade guilds, but preserved them against future degen- eracy by uniting them under the supervision of the Board of Trade, which department was represented by one Government Commissioner on the council of every guild. Wherever any of the old guilds existed, they were reformed in the following manner : — Their funds were declared liable to public audit ; a special council of the Board of Trade was appointed to help in restoring the original purpose of their existence. All the mere dummy or feeding members of the guild, who were not connected with the trades they served, were at once expelled; in their place the foremost members of the respective trades were elected and on 194 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF one was admitted to membership of any guild unless he was directly connected with the trade it represented. And not only the masters, but, in the proportion of one to ten, representative workmen were also admitted to the guilds, for it is ever an essen- tial condition of any wise reform in trade or manufacture, that the conditions of the worker, as well as of the material, shall receive perennial consideration. All those ancient squanderings on ful- some banquets were stopped ; not only that, but wherever responsibility could be brought home to those who had wasted the revenues of the guild, they were made to refund the corrupt and greedy waste of funds which had been originally devised for a noble purpose. We have seen how the Kevolution dealt with its workers. It is necessary to further explain some of the eight divisions under which the State dealt with its various grades of labour. The First Division — that which provided good housing. The method pursued was upon lines similar to those described in the first chapter of this book.* It is only necessary to add that wherever cottages had to be provided within the vicinity of the workmen's factories — at the arsenals for instance — as much care was given to structure and design as in the case of the highest officials. Tlie Second Condition — Permanency of the Labour Contract. No difficulty was found in carrying out this reform ; the branches of the Government Service were so various that if at any time one portion was slack, another would probably be brisk. The entire service was interdependent, and men could be transferred from one branch to another as might be required. In fact, the system was precisely that of an army, the men well drilled — with tools in place of arms. The various departments of labour were so many various labour regiments, and the men soon well appreciated the brave and independent position the new conditions of service established for them. As in the fighting army, so in the labour army, a worthy spirit of love and pride in their service engendered and spread amongst the men. Just as only the best men were selected for military service, so were only the best working men selected for State labour service, and it was not long before the uniforms of the State labourers evoked a splendid emulation in their wearers. * Page 175. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 195 The Third Condition. — An adequate wage carried with it the provision of a working uniform, appropriate to the different branches of the service. It is impossible to overrate the value of this innovation ; the advantage to the men as an addition to their wages was its very least benefit — " the honour of the cloth " has a deep meaning in it, never mind whether that cloth be the black of the parson, the blue of the sailor, or the red of the soldier. The Labour Army of the State became the sturdiest and worthiest body of men in the country ; there were few prizes more cherished than a good service stripe of a labour regiment, carrying with it as it did an addition to the wearer's pension. The National Insurance, dealt with fully in a later division of this book, covered all men in State employment, but they enjoyed besides a pension according to the length and merit of their service, which ranged from one-tenth to one-quarter of the sums detailed under the General Insurance System,* which addition to the ordinary annuity vv'as paid by the State. With regard to the rate of wages paid by the State, they followed the rules laid down in the general trades, as indicated further on ; but the men enjoyed the State pension and uniform in addition. The Fifth Condition — Hours of Labour. These varied consider- ably. The mines, it will be remembered, were now all owned and worked by the State. Amongst the changes which this brought about was an absolute cessation of competition between mine and mine ; and, as the fundamental condition of all employment after the Revolution was the wellbeing of the people, all labour under- ground was restricted to six hours a day. The rest of the miners' time was devoted to the cultivation of his agricultural holding — every minor having his own allotment of from one to three acres, or, where the position of the mine did not afford facilities for small allotments, larger areas were worked in common. Before proceeding further, it will be well to remind the reader that under the term " State Employment " is included all public service of what nature soever. From the earliest days of the Eevolution Carlyle Democritus had come to an understanding with the municipal authorities throughout the country ; therefore let it be well grasped that, from the smallest Parish Council to the greatest Metropolitan County Council, the new labour code in * Pages 181-4. 196 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF every detail applied. The old cruel form of Vestry labour, with its wretched rags-and-tatters decrepities, was for ever abolished. No more were those ignorant bodies permitted to degrade the name of employer by filling their filthy roadways with half-starved, half- (103) paid, worn-out beggar labour. In a word, only the best men were selected for parochial and municipal, as for Government employ- ment, and the rules as to pay, uniform, pension, hours of labour, were identical. To revert, then, to the hours of labour. The maximum was eight, but it was not the minimum; all labourers in unwholesome trades, such, for instance, as workers on sewage stations, furnace-stokers, miners, etc., served fewer hours, ac- cording to the decision of the Labour Councils, who regulated all matters arising out of the new code. In all those employments where work was required during long periods, such as road clean- ing, from five in the morning till ten at night ; gas-making (all the gas, water, and electric light works had been taken over by the State or municipal authorities), park superintendence, etc., there were double relays of men. And it may be incidentally mentioned here that the result of this wise policy was as evident in the perfect cleanliness and safety of all the roadways, whatever might be the condition of the weather, as it was in the bright, manful, and worthily independent bearing of the labourers everywhere. The men no longer bore that sluggish, hang-dog, sullen air of listless misery which in Jubilee times too often characterised them. Work and workmen at last were worthy of one another. With regard to the men employed to superintend the parks and public gardens, and to preserve order in the streets of large towns — this branch of service, light and healthful, was reserved entirely for pensioners, not only those of the State, such as soldiers, sailors, and workmen, but for all pensioners over sixty, who, under the National Old Age Insurance scheme, were already fairly provided for, and (by the large avenue here opened to them) could for five years, or for a longer period if they desired it, and if their health and strength warranted it (a matter which the Labour Council decided), further increase their pension by a wage which was based upon an addition of one-half to the amount of the annuity they were entitled to. They received also the uniforms pertaining to the Services. This Service must not be misinterpreted as any infraction of the minimum wage. It was a j)art of the National Insurance scheme, and afforded a worthy THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 197 opportunity for those who, whilst compelled to retire from the ranks of active labour, still desired an outlet for remaining activity of a light and not exhausting kind. This outlet for pensioned labour had been reserved by the authors of the reformed code as a valuable means of supplementing the Insurance Pension to those workers who, by good service, deserved recognition. Both the Street and Park Corps were available only to those pensioners who had earned their employers' or the State's good-service certificates. The number of street-keepers thus absorbed was immense, nor was the number of park-keepers inconsiderable. At the commencement of the twentieth century London alone con- tained about 750,000 houses, with a total street area of about 4000 miles. This vast city was ridiculously undermanned. Street pests abounded everywhere, but rarely was a policeman discaver- able when most required. It was not so much an increase of police that was necessary as the institution of a subsidiary force, similar in constitution to the private keepers provided, even in Jubilee times, by the residents of some of the richer neighbour- hoods, who patrolled their squares or streets, and kept away loafers, beggars, organ-grinders, and other nuisances too numerous to mention, which were the unending torment of London residents in those times. The corps of street-keepers established from the good service pensioners called into requisition nearly fifty thousand men in London alone — viz. one man being allotted to every fifty houses, required fifteen thousand men — or three times that number on the eight hours' system for night and day reliefs. Shelters were provided somewhat similar to those which had prevailed for cabmen. Where cabmen's shelters already existed, the street- keepers used them in common, the local authority duly paying for such accommodation. The total number of these keepers required throughout the kingdom for similarly patrolling all the cities and towns, large and small, including those men already enumerated, afforded an outlet for 650,000 pensioned labourers. A slight digression may be here made to^explain one central feature of the organisation which characterised the entire force, and which characterised also the entire municipal service throughout the country. Variety in detail of management was not wanting in the different country towns and cities j but there was one dominant feature particular to them all We shall confine our illustration to London, but it will be understood that the discipline and 198 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF pegulation was common to the whole Service, The Revolution left to the various Municipalities and Councils the nomenclature of the streets, but they insisted upon the universal adoption of a system which was independent of mere street names — which in the metropolitan city was almost chaos itself. The new system consisted in the numbering of every street, small or large, in addition to its name or postal division. The tortuous construction of many of the streets did not permit of an absolute approach to exact consecutiveness of street numbering sufficient to directly guide an erring pedestrian in search of any one of the score, or twice a score, of similarly designated London thoroughfares ; but it materially assisted even him. The value of the street numeral system as a postal and telegraphic facility it would be difficult to over-estimate. It was enacted, therefore, that underneath the name of every street its number should also be added. For instance, one of the numerous " High Streets " of London appeared written thus : High Street, Kensington, S.W. (1376.) The advantage of this system to colonial or foreign telegrams and cables need not be urged: 9, 1376, would be all the address that was required to designate the inhabitant of No. 9 High Street, Kensington, London. There is only to be added that the enumerating was entrusted to practical experts, who took steps to make the system as simple and scientifically accurate as possible. Wherever vacant land existed, numbers were missed to allow for future street extension without disturbing the local consecutiveness of figuring. Every street-keeper bore upon the collar of his uniform his street-number ; plus an a, J, or c, in the case of streets which exceeded fifty houses. Nor was it any longer left to a small local authority to neglect its duty * of properly marking up the street names on buildings and lamps. It had to carry out the law, * One system of road-eleaning was compulsory throughout all towns, districts, and parishes. Instead of the old no-system of the Vestries, with their gangs of twenty to forty IneflBcient poor labourers, under-paid, under- fed, miserably clad, getting in each other's way, without responsibility of any sort — strong, well-paid, well-uniformed, and properly trained men were engaged. One man, or two men, had a definite length of streetway to keep THE TWENTIETH CENTURV, 199 and the law now compelled it to have the names and numbers of streets plainly and legibly marked on the corner house of every street, and upon the corner lamp-post of every street, or turning ; furthermore, in the case of long roads and streets, the names had to appear on every twenty-fifth house, on both sides of the street, and upon the street-lamp-glass nearest such twenty-fifth house. It was one of the duties of the street-keepers to report any such name which required renovation or repair to the District Council, and in default of remedy within seven days he had to report it to the County Council, who would compel the delinquent smaller body to take action. The London and Suburban woods, parks, and public gardens covered an area of about twelve thousand acres before, and about fifteen thousand acres after, the Revolution. (The parks were cleared of private houses, which had been erected in some of them, new gardens had been laid out in centres requiring such air spaces, and the existing gardens increased in area wherever possible.) Three park or garden keepers were appointed for every two acres of ground ; a double staff was required to work the eight hours' shift, for although only one shift was necessary in the short winter days, the summer seasons required double relays, and some additional numbers were required for the smaller gardens, numbers of which were only one acre or less, but which all required better superintendence than they had hitherto received. With regard to the fewer hands required in the parks in the winter months, this was also the time when more men were required in the streets, because in the inclement weather the hours of service were shorter ; therefore the street-keepers and park-keepers were made inter- changeable. This was a feature of all State and Municipal employment after the Revolution. None of these keepers in any way dislodged the existing gardeners, as their duties were strictly confined to the maintenance of order. In London a permanent staff of park-keepers required, and found an outlet for, twentj thousand hands, and the number similarly employed throughout the kingdom, including London, absorbed altogether sixty thousand clean, varying, according to the density of traffic and width of thoroughfare, from ten house-lengths to fifty. For his portion of the road and footway each man was made responsible, and with the two shifts of eight hours, the system made London and all British towns and cities the cleanest and best- ordered of all Municipalities in the world. 200 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF men. There was thus provided an outlet for future pensioners — in a service honourable to the employer and employed — placing at least seven hundred thousand men in a situation of worthy service. However, the requirements of the State could not wait until a sufficient number of workers, under the new Labour Code, had passed through the various grades which were to entitle them to fill vacancies in the keeper service as they might arise. The first places were therefore allotted to all those men over sixty years of age whose health, strength, and good character recommended them to the Labour Council. The staff of men already serving as park- keepers remained in their places ; but in future no keeper under sixty years of age could be so employed. Such employment was not fitted to young, active men, whose work was required in sterner places. Before leaving this section of State labour, which deals with the number of hours of all servants in the employment of the Government, there remains only to be added that in certain branches of the Civil Service a system of average was continued to be observed, as in pre-Revolutionary times; in such cases, for instance, as officers and clerks to Parliament, which only sat during a period of the year. All salaries were annual, and all engagements were permanent, even to that of the humblest charwoman, but the hours of attendance depended upon the sittings of the House. It was provided, in all cases, that the average work hours must not exceed the statutory eight. The Seventh Cotiditionpi State labour — the System of Apprentice- ship — calls for some elucidation. As it was the determination of the Revolution to put an end to incompetent workmanship in all trades, it was essential that the State should set the example in a reform which the State was inaugurating. It was enacted by a law — which naturally only applied to persons less than ten years of age at the date of its enactment — that future employers should only engage workmen who had obtained a certificate of competency from their respective Trade Guilds. All that was necessary to obtain such certificate was a due period of apprentice- ship in technical and theoretical training as the nature of the trade required, and the certificate had to state whether the finished apprentice was ordinarily skilled or highly skilled in his craft. This wise law protected men and masters alike, and prevented any incom- petent foreigner— as in the old Jubilee period — ruining the price of labour by offering his unskilled services at mere starvation wages- THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 201 A foreigner could obtain service rightly enough, but not unless he was able to pass the Guild test of the trade he wished to work in. The Labour Unions which, after the Revolution, were not only countenanced, but supported by the State, by an addition, or bonus of one-tenth to the sum subscribed by its actual members (on condition that any cause of complaint or dispute should be referred to the Boards of Conciliation, or other arbitration, for settlement), welcomed the system of apprenticeship, and fostered it in every way. The Government welcomed apprentices in all branches of its service, and it was seldom that a Government apprentice failed to obtain the highest-class Guild certificate. As will be seen under the division of this History which deals with child labour, fourteen years was the minimum age for admitting a child to apprenticeship or service, and the rate of wages for lads who had passed out of their apprenticeship was regulated by the Guilds at a minimum of one-quarter the adult rate for lads below seventeen years, one-half between seventeen and nineteen, and three-quarters between nineteen and twenty-one. At twenty-one years the worker came under the laws governing adult labour. One reason that had weighed heavily with the framers of the Labour Code in fixing their wages rates liberally was to enable and induce young workers to early marriage — that is to say, after their attainment of the statutory period of twenty-four years of age.* The proposal of the Revolution to inhibit young men from marriage before their twenty-fourth year, and women before their eighteenth, had been adopted not only by the workers but by the whole nation, and had been made a law of the land. It is dealt with elsewhere and is only here referred to, because one of the many recoKimendations which induced Carlyle Democritus to urge all employers to foster the apprenticing in their works of their labourers' children was the steadier influence which such a method exerts on the fathers, the consequent stimulus by example and emulation that the fathers exert upon their sons, and the certain impetus that hereditary employment gives to improvement in all crafts. • Page 354. CHAPTER III. MASTER LABOURERS. The last chapter dealt with the State employees of Labour, the next chapter will deal with the ordinary employees of labour. This is an apt place, between those two chapters, to record the institu- tions and reforms which the Revolution adopted on behalf of employers as well as employed. Carlyle Democritus was too just and wise a statesman to invest industrial legislation with that mephitic atmosphere of ill-will, distrust, and antipathy which characterised most of the Jubilee measures. He knew that the masters had suffered from the old cruel social system often as deeply as the men. He knew that it was not a question of men against masters, but of men with masters. Their interests were as identical as those of a sea-captain and his ship's crew. He knew that there never could be any true benefit to a working man which did not also, and as truly, benefit the working master. Then let it be realised how this identity of interest was recognised by the Revolution. For, if Carlyle Democritus had an unbounded sympathy for the sufi"ering working men, he had also a deep admiration for the working masters, who had fought the world in arms, as of old the naked Britons fought the cuirassed Romans, because the modern — like the ancient — Britons fought after being beaten. For, in spite of ever-increasing loss and suffering — loss of trade and merciless competition — they fought on until branch after branch of industry was killed out by the operation of the infernal Jubilee system. If any mortal doubt this let him probe the life-records of thousands upon thousands of the small manu- facturers, merchants, and tradesmen who suffered in the Jubilee period. There were master victims as well as men victims, only 202 ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 20o less numerous because officers must ever be in a minority to men. If any there be who doubt the reality and the extent of the evils from which the great and the small trade»B and manu- facturers suffered in Jubilee Period, let them ponder over this record : — 1. Just as there was no adequate provision for the labourer against the evils arising from untimely death or accident, old age, or decay of vigour, inadequate protection in dangerous trades, etc., so there was no provision for the vast numbers of small trades- men and masters, who also were liable to those evils, and seldom had opportunity of guarding against them. An analysis of the broken-down paupers inside or outside workhouses showed always a considerable percentage of men who had been employers. And of that vast number who lived in a perpetual struggle against the demon of poverty, their lives one long slavery to feed and main- tain their wives and children, only those know who submitted to or witnessed the struggle. Scores of thousands of such middle classes wrestled with poverty in a grapple which only ended with their death. For ever let those who wish to understand and help in solving the great social problems of modern civilization discard that narrow, cruel division, fostered and bred by Jubilee Sorrypebble and his like^ which would make irreconcilable enemies of what he and they called the " classes and the masses." The greatest cause of the failure of his and their cowardly legislation was mainly due to that brutal doctrine. This is a far truer one : — Any legislation which benefits (causes good to) one section of a Nation, and malefits (causes harm to) another, contains in itself the ingredient of danger and death to both. It was in recognition of this principle that Carlyle Democritus, when he introduced his National Insurance against old age, accident, and death, made it include the whole Nation — masters and men. 2. An evil which beset the honest trader and manufacturer on all sides was the unfair competition which quackery, in all its myriad fraud and swindle forms, was permitted to offer against him unopposed. Jubilee laws rightly enough tried to prevent the master employing his men in unhealthy factories ; they got as far even as proposing to forbid — or at least reporting upon — the cruelty inflicted by the use of dangerous ingredients in the manu- facture of pottery and glazed ware, match-making, lead-smeltino-, glass-blowing, chemicals, etc. Extreme politicians dreamt of the 204 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF wisdom and necessity of compelling the provision of expensive, but highly necessary, accessories in the shape of ventilating machinery, baths and wash-houses, in all the lead, paint, and otbftr injurious industries, and of forbidding altogether the use of such poisons as arsenic as an ingredient of glazed ware, white phosphorus 104) in match-making, etc. Indeed, the Government Gazette went so far as to one day announce that " the following processes carried on in factories are declared to be dangerous to health : The manufacture of red, orange, or yellow lead ; lead-smelting, tinning and enamelling of iron ware, certain electric works, flax mills, and linen factories." They restricted and sought to further restrict the hours and the ages of women and child employment. How righteous all that as a step towards protection of the workers ! As will be seen in succeeding chapters, all those, and far wider, wiser, and more merciful provisions and protections were made absolute law after the Revolution. But your Carlyle Democritus is not a crazed Jubilee party ranter, forcibly stripping naked his own son, and pitting him mercilessly against a thrice "protected" rival. He knew that the English master and the English man, like any wisely wedded couple, were one — not to be treated separately, but to be united in one strong bond of just-dealing. "An English potter shall not use arsenic to glaze his ware with, must use a less dangerous, if costlier, ingredient," said Jubilee "Free Trade." "But the foreigner shall be allowed to send his poison-made glazeries free and broadcast, to compete with your honest English ones." And so English potter-masters and men alike may starve, so long as our fine Jubilee idiocy of unrestricted " Free " Trade totter hell- ward on its Cobden-apex of word nonsense. Carlyle Democritus protected labour more righteously than ever a Jubilee Word Parliament even proposed to do, but he knew that there was no justice for men which did not protect the masters also. An eight hours' day ; no poison-ingredients ; healthily ventilated factories ; complete and worthy provision for the workers ; absolute pro- hibition against employing women and children in dangerous trades. Right godly all that. But how are you going to preserve those noble conditions ? How are you going to preserve any conditions whatsoever, if your shilling article made under righteous con- ditions of manufacture, of true purity and fineness, is to be left unsold, whilst a foreign poisonous one made by slave and sweated THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 205 labour is, by "Free Trade" Jubilism, saleable for some ninepence- half penny ? * Now upon that matter let there be no manner of doubt whatso- ever. The extra cost of an eight hours' day over a ten hours' day is precisely calculable ; of cheap poison-ingredients over healthful and more expensive ones also calculable; of little eight-year old Sicilian children slaved to a cruel death in dangerous industries at two shillings a week wage, whilst innocent English children are (106) protected from labour until their fourteenth year,+ that is also calculable. And the eight hours work-day has to be reckoned upon machinery as well as upon men. In the latter case the cost may be redeemed by the superior fitness and energy of the workers ; in the case of the machinery additional cost must be allowed for. Foreign and English manufacturers employing a thousand horse-power of identical machinery for, say, fifty hours a week by British restric- * Listen to this short extract from the record of English trade, published in 1894: — "Owing to the American Prohibition Tariff, manu- facturers of Axminster carpets were much concerned by the introduction of low-grade American carpets. Worsted-spinners ha-ve naturally [Jubilee naturally] suffered with carpet-spinners, and the output of the mills has been reduced twenty-five per cent, below the average." "Hopes have been raised by the prospect of a reduction in the American duty" [no hopes from a mad, party-ridden, license-of-trade-to-foreigners, whilst we hamper English manufacturers on all sides Government] ; " but," continues the report, " the hopes are practically futile " ; and so the great carpet industry of Kidder- minster is oppressed. In Leeds also, says the same record, " foreign trade has been unsatisfactory. The United States have taken next to nothing [send us their inferior produce 'free,' or even plus a bounty, whilst it taxes our best British goods up to eighty per cent.]. France formerly used to take considerable quantities of Leeds cloth, but last year scarcely any. The clothing trade has been the worst ever experienced ; manufactures have declined twenty to thirty per cent. ; the United States' demand has run down to almost nothing." It is the same story everywhere, even down to poisonous spirits. The same report says: "Foreign plain spirits would appear to be quite thrusting home distillations out of the market. Owing to the operation of the American Tariff, which practically prohibits the importation of molasses, it is made into rum chiefly of inferior quality and shipped to this market." For is not anything, from low grade soft goods to (105) poisonous spirits, good enough for Jubilee Parliaments,- so long as they, and everything, be cheap and nasty ? That the British workmen starve, that British mills stand idle, what is all that to word-mcngering party factions, so long as license-of-trade spins merrily on its apex, whirling British Trade into limbo ? t Page 262. 206 THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OF tion, and seventy hours a week by foreign no-restriction, would run an unequal race, a sort of Jubilee-race, survival not necessarily to the fittest, but perhaps most-sweated product of labour. Shall no wisdom of justice step in between the British freed labourer and the foreign enslaved labourer 1 Shall only Jubilee blindness prevail — Jubilee oppressed trade for the much-enduring British manufacturer, and universal license of trade for the foreign manufacturer ? Good English people, open your eyes, take your brave but ostrichised heads out of the free-trade sand, and see ! For the sake of truth and wisdom, let not political party idiots longer blind you with rhetoric twaddle. If indeed you are to be eternally affrighted by a lie-word, a catch-phrase, Heaven protect you — which indeed Heaven will not do, Heaven having set its great law upon mankind, which commands that mankind shall help and protect itself, and not hide its head in catch-words and rhetoric-idiocies. Let all the Eadical Jesuit party fanatics in creation roar themselves hoarse against unswervable Fact, and yet shall Fact abide, and not the Jesuit- Eadical party-fanatical sham fact ! It is true that some of the largest manufacturers might economise both machinery and work- men on the eight hours' day, and survive all the many restrictions of the Factory Acts, etc. But the best proof that the generality of manufacturers stood no chance against such one-sided competition is the Jubilee trade-return for the year 1893, which showed how the iron machines and iron-ware of England were fading in export, v^^hilst, from Germany alone, in that one year, England imported iron machinery and iron-ware to the extent of nearly two millions sterling. That is not a light record, for we find in the latest Jubilee census return that 800,000 men were employed in the engineering and ship-building industries alone, all of them riding those iron steam-horses upon that strange Jubilee free-trade race- course. The foreign manufacturer running his iron horses seventy hours a week, and your British manufacturer to run his only fifty hours a week ! Could a wise and truth-loving man promise you victory in such a race ? Fkee Trade ! you mad, party-ridden, Jubilee word-governed ones ? Free Trade ? Yes, upon just and equitable conditions ; it is no free trade else. Mad, party-governed England gave cruel, unbridled license of trade to the foreigner, whilst it hampered, restricted, and shackled trade for the Englishman. Among the interesting articles of commerce admitted from THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. 207 Germany by Jubilee "free trade," free to compete with British goods, we find "hardware, hosiery, brushes, lithographic-printing, ^^^"^^ joinery, and other articles, stamped with the English words ' Perfec- tion,' 'Reliable,' etc., with a view to deceiving the British purchaser." Naturally the British Trade Unions protested against the competition of such prison-made goods. But the British Jubilee Radical Government, intent only upon Disestablishment and general disruption, in answer to the usual " question " said : — " There is ' no power ' to prevent the importation of such goods, and we [supine, idiotic, free-trade-Radical-Government] do not think the German Government would ' like ' to have their goods marked 'prison-made,' etc." No more of that infamous Jubilee idiocy for sane men, for Heaven's sake ! Unbridled murder-license on both sides, if you will. Work your babies from their mother's womb ; slave your adults from sunrise to sunset in poisonous sweating dens. Work young girls in white lead factories till they fall palsied, or dead, after a few months or even days.* Steep your women in Ijhosphorus fumes till their bones rot as they stand, and death seizes them in its most ghastly form, and the corpse can be buried at night by the light of its own disease. All that and more was practised wholesale at Jubilee period, and if any more righteous manufacturers, as a few endeavoured to do, discarded the cheap and deadly poisons, they were nigh ruined because " free trade," with its lunatic devil's pass, welcomed the poisonous things free from abroad. Aye, do all that, and more. Put your tender women to the cruellest drudgery, even from babehood unto puberty, and from puberty to pregnancy ; for all that is freedom, of a sort — of the hell and the devil sort — Jubilee freedom that. But, by the eternal Heaven, if English laws are to protect 'Englishmen, so shall co-equal laws protect the English masters of those men.t Of that a Carlyle Democritus permits no doubt. * See page 341-2. •r As far back as the year 1879 the German Parliament petitioned its Imperial Chancellor to take steps to prohibit the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches, and simultaneously with this prohibition to impose an increased duty on them. (^Ooy Is not that but mere justice for German, as for all manufacturers? Protect workmen from cruel disease — yes, indeed ! But protect masters also, from a not less cruel disease, ruin, brought about by free import of the very goods they are forbidden to fabiicate, which ruin would overwhelm the workmen too. 208 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OP Distinguish well, English people, between go6\y freedom of trade, or of anything else, and mere brutalising license of trade, or of anything else. The Revolution inaugurated quite an unequivocal law against quack manufactures of any sort. Mere lying advertisements made their owners responsible for every word they printed. No rival house, or enterprising newspaper, had to do the dirty work which a corrupt and cowardly lawyer-party- governinent had neglected. All such cases were imperative upon the board of public prosecutors. What a man advertised, that had the man to make good, or take himself and his quackeries off. The trade guilds preserved and watched over the purity of all manufactures. Only those goods which reached the level of true excellence were permitted to be marked " best.' As every quality receded from the true standard, each article had to record indelibly upon it, in unmistakable plainness, " second," " third," or further removed from " first," or best quality, as the case might be. "Caveat emptor" ("Buyer, beware, for I may delude and swindle you according to my ingenuity, cunning, and power of infinite lying") got changed into "Caveat venditor" ("Seller, beware, I give you my honest coin; in exchange, I demand your honest ware ").* That law did not alone protect the buyer against fraud; it protected the honest manufacturer even more, and the able work- man most of all. That it utterly squelched the fraudulent quack called for no explanation from the fearless Revolutionary leader, only evoked from him, and all true men, such infinite psean that the bellowings of the quack genus were little heard, and not listened to. As for the remedy against foreign quackery, the method was similar, plus the indelible mark of the originating country; and plus also the duty levied on any foreign article manufactured under conditions inferior to those obtaining in English factories and workshops. The exact margin of such inferiority was imposed as import duty. And where wise English laws forbade the use of poison ingredients to English manu- * It is worth noting that the old Romans distinguished well between seller and seller ; they had a very different word for the seller of honest goods and the seller of trash and trumpery. The former was " venditor," the latter "scrutarius." The scrutarius tribe was very numerous and assertive in Jubilee period; their altar was " Free Trade," and their religion " Political Economy," THE TWENTIETH CENTUEY. 209 facturers, so were all foreign goods, made with such ingredients, debarred admittance into English markets, or taxed according to the requirements of the Guilds. 3. Another sore evil of the Jubilee manufacturer, trader, and farmer, was the preferential rate which the railway companies aflforded to foreign goods. That was at once determined by the Revolution by a law which compelled the companies to treat the humblest English trader on "the most favoured traffic rate," even although he was an Englishman. Any railway company levying a higher rate per mile, or per anything else, on any English goods, than was levied for the same class of goods, even though foreign, rendered the offending company liable to a fine of from £100 to £500 for each offence. 4. Next, Carlyle Democritus remembered the Jubilee law humbuggeries, and herein he worked a great reform. He estab- lished, or assisted and subsidised such as already existed. Trade or Guild Courts of Arbitration in every branch of industry, with an appeal to the central or county Chamber of Commerce. Members of such Courts were elected by the traders and manufacturers, through their committees, or other central bodies, and after ten years' service they were eligible for selection by the Government as judges of the State Courts, for trial of commercial causes.* It will readily be grasped how far superior were such practically trained men, understanding every detail of the cases that came before them, to the old Jubilee judges with heads stuffed inside and outside with mere horse hair. These trade Arbitration Courts were supported by the State ; in no case did either plaintiff or defendant have to pay any portion of the cost of the Court or trial. Justice cannot be had on such terms, for the rich has thus ever the advantage of the poor. But it was in the power of the Court to impose a fine upon either party if, in the Court's judgment, there had been needless litigation, or obvious right or wrong on either side, as the case might be. Still, neither party was allowed to incur any expense in connection with the case in Court. Law was free ; there never can be true justice where law is a matter of toll. The trade Arbitrators were appointed always in sufficient numbers to be able to deal freely and speedily with the cases requiring hearing. Neither party See Chapter on Law. 210 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF was allowed to appear by proxy. The Court provided any aid that might be necessary to both plaintiff and defendant. This wise and merciful system was the end of all litigiousness. Not one case in a hundred but was settled in a day, often in an hour or two. All hearings of the Arbitration Court were private, and only appeal cases came before the public. Cases of bona fide litigation, as has been said, bore lightly upon plaintiff or defend- ant ; but any attempt at mere litigiousness, often another word for blackmail in its most insidious form, was punished with a heavy hand. It was seldom, indeed, that an appeal case became necessary, for with the end of lawyers had come the end of dissension. But there arise in the course of trade, and men's dealings and intercourse with one another, questions and problems nicer than a legal court can be always called to adjudicate upon. It was to meet this want that "Courts of Honour" were established in every trade and calling, both among masters and men.* They formed the inmost and most honoured section of the Guilds, trades, and professions throughout the country. Ten members constituted each such Court, and the members were entitled to use the initials M.C.H. after their name, meaning Member of a Court of Honour — a more meaningful thing than the Jubilee Bath or Washtub Order, Garter, Fleece, or other empty strap nonsenses which the Revolution had abolished, together with every other title which had been conferred without real merit, and served no worthier purpose than to perpetuate frothy names of characters without substance ; and it may be incidentally men- tioned here that all the peerages which had been conferred for mere party, money, or royal favour considerations were cancelled. Any act of dishonour perpetrated by the holder of a title or of a judicial office, or indeed of any office under State, caused the immediate extinction of the title, and the rustication of the offend- ing judiciary or office holder. A judge, or magistrate, selling fried fish in prohibited hours, would not be the object of admiration and justification by a minister in a Revolutionary Parliament, however sweet such an ornament of Justice might have been to the heart (109) of Jubilee time-servers. With regard to the severity of the order which extinguished a title for an offence against honour, Carlyle Democritus and the Revolution had not hesitated to determine • See page 249. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 211 that either an aristocracy means the noblest and the best, or it means nothing. They therefore remorselessly snuffed out the titles of bankr,upt peers, ancestor-selling dukes, divorce-court marquises, and such kindred gentry. In the twentieth century "noblesse oblige" had its pristine and beautiful meaning restored to it. After the Eevolution a title in Great Britain got to mean something more than prostitution to party for many years, or money amassed by swindling the public. After the Eevolution, instead of 150 titles being created in a year, it was more common to find that quantity (of the old ones) cancelled. 5. Of the loss, often ruin, brought upon traders'and manufacturers by the arbitrary and unscrupulous action of the Jubilee landlords abrogating the leases of old tenants, much has been said in the Chapter on the Revolutionary Land System, It need only be emphasised that by the granting of perpetual leases, with right of the tenant to compensation for improvements in the event of removal, the State protected the trader and manufacturer against disturbance or dislocation. Again, it was a great benefit to all tenants, but especially to commercial men, that every practical means was employed under the new land code to prevent the growth of anything like red tape, which was the curse of most official bodies under the old regime. It was to defeat the Jack-in- Office tendency of all weak people, dressed with a brief authority, that — at the quinquennial assessments — and wherever land or house property came before the land courts or councils, any trader might employ the services (in evidence) of his particular trade committee, or Chamber of Commerce, in questions arising out of the assessing of his premises, or other matter concerning his relation with the State or any local body. Good laws have often been rendered harsh and irritating by ignorant or arbitrary interpreta- tion or application. To prevent any such abuse by officialdom, the Trade Corporations were endowed with power to protect the rights of their members in the manner indicated, and the case in dispute had to be put in a straightforward business-like method, no wiggeries were permitted on either side, to confuse words and confound justice. 6. Of the vast new markets opened up to English trade, and of the restoration of England's lost supremacy, the Chapter on the Pan-Anglican Union * gives further record. In passing may be * Page 287. 212 THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OB mentioned the simple but wide-reaching edict which compelled the plain marking of all provisions from the countries whence they came. The British colonies produced the best and purest butters, cheese, and meat ; yet in Jubilee time the poorest foreign stuffs were fraudulently sold as theirs. Two convictions for such a fraud, and the provisioner was turned out with ignominy from the Trade Guild, and forbidden to practise provisioning any more. Butter, cheese, or meat, or any provender, had to bear the plainest impress of its origin. No cavilling with that law. The prevention of waste of English capital by Government repudiation abroad and by fraudulent directorates at home are all dealt with under their respective chapters.* They are all measures protective of capital, and therefore beneficial to labour ; for labour is not of two classes, but only one and indivisible, even as is an army. From the Commander-in-Chief to the last private in the ranks, throughout the great diversity of oflBcers and men, an army is one great living machine, only valuable as it is mobile and united. Its structure may be precisely likened to that of the human body, which, though built up of many distinct organs, subordinate to one supreme brain or nerve-centre, is in itself one complete whole. Whether labour-army or fighting-army, thus must the national structure also be. No clash of opposing interests then, the cruel invention of Mammonism — qua selfishness — but one, undivided, the poorest wounded soldier as of deep concern as the strongest and the sturdiest. "With the commercial or working army thus must it be — one great inter-dependent living mass. 7. Let us now advert to the working of the mines. Of all the far-reaching boons which masters and men enjoyed from the patriotic and wise government of Carlyle Democritus and the Eevolution, none exceeded in value the reforms they introduced in the working of the State mines. It has been previously stated in this chapter how, amongst the other madnesses of political econ- omists, the Jubilee unrestricted Free Trade was helping to ruin the country. At first glance this may scarcely seem the place to enter into a slight detail of figures to establish that conclusion ; but inasmuch as Jubilee England, amongst her other delusions, was, after having cast her hands and arms to the all-devouring Free Trade dragon, parting with her very entrails also, her great and * Pages 265, 266. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 213 last resource of coal, this is precisely the place to insert the record which will prove how limb after limb of her great superiority was withering and falling away. The Jubilee Condition op British Trade. Taking first of all some of the articles which were England's chief source of manufacture, we find that where they remained not stationary, or almost so, they had fallen largely away. Thus the value of her imports of raw cotton, which stood in 1880 at ^43.000,000, had fallen in 1892 to £38,000,000. And her exports of manufactured cotton, in the same period, had fallen from £64,000,000 to £56,000,000. This faU is not to be attributed to the disastrous cotton strike of 1893, which practically stopped manufacture for three months, for the figures deal with the year 1892 only. In the linen manufacture the position was worse"; for whilst in the same period our exports (which employ British labour) had diminished from £5,800,000 to £5,200,000, our imports (which employ foreign labour) had increased from £246,000 to £381,000. Similarly, our manufac- tures of haberdashery and millinery — this includes the Nottingham lace fabrics — showed a decline in export from £3,800,000, in 1880, to £1,800,000, in 1892, or of more than half. The silk industry showed a falling away in imports of raw material of £2,000,000, viz. from £3,000,000 in 1880, to £1,000,000 in 1892. Wool and woollen manufactures showed a falling off in exports of £600,000, but an ominous increase in imports of £2,200,000. Our great hardware and cutlery industries fell in exports in the same period from £3,500,000 to £2,200,000, and our exports of telegraph wires and appliances feU from £1,300,000 to £910,000. " As a matter of fact," declared the electrical trade section of the (110) London Chamber of Commerce, on the occasion of their declining in the year 1894 to take part in a certain International Exhibition, " as a matter of fact the Continent is very largely closed against English firms who manufactured electrical apparatus, owing to the duties, which are very heavy in Germany, France, and Austria." (Ill) The leather trades suffered still worse; for whilst we imported nearly £2,000,000 less of raw hides (which in 1880 British labour converted into leather), we imported over £2,000,000 more of the manufactured leather and leather goods made by foreigners. Our export of manufactured iron in the same period fell from £28,400,000 to £21,800,000; whilst, on the other hand, our 214 THE ENGLISH EE VOLUTION OF (112) imports of manufactured iron increased by £1,600,000. Foreign bounties reduced our sugar industry by nearly a half ; and England imported in 1892 manufactured sugar (which used to give her labourers employment) to the extent of £4,500,000 more than in 1880. In another leading British industry — the tin-plate trade — the Times reported in 1894: "The American tariff is working with disastrous effect; one-third of the productive capacity of South Wales has been at a standstill for the last six months, and some of the mills for the last twelve months, and even longer. More than 5000 tin-platers" — that meant, with the men's families, 25,000 souls — "have been thrown out of employment, besides a large number who depend upon the industry indirectly for their living. The direct loss to the wage-earners is computed at £12,000 weekly. That of the employers, at a low estimate, is £4000 a week. Out of a total of 500 mills, 160 are idle. In addition to this are many mills running at a loss, in the hope of the dawn of better times. Great distress prevails amongst the tin-platers, and many families are living ["living," ye Jubilee Free Trade fanatics], living upon two shillings or two shillings and sixpence a week." Twenty-five thousand "Welsh working people ** living " on two shillings a week per family. And the masters continuing " in hope of the dawn." * Synopsis op the above References to Jubilee Trade. IMPORTS. ARTICLES. EXPORTS. 1880 £ Sterling. 1892 £ Sterling. 1880 £ Sterling, 1892 £ Sterlivg. 43,000,000 2,500,000 269,000 246,000 3,000,000 13,000,000 1,260,000 108,000 27,000,000 9,500,000 38,000,000 2,800,000 790,000 381,000 1,000,000 11,000,000 889,'000 133,000 27,500,000 11,700,000 Raw Cotton Manufactured Cotton Linen Yarn Do. Manufactured Raw Silk Manufactured Silk Haberdashery and Millinery Goats' Hair Do. Manufactured Wool and Woollens Do. Manufactured Hardware and Cutlery Telegraph Wire and Appliances 64,660,000 5,800,000 2,060,000 3,800,000 5,160,000 17,300,000 3,500,000 1,300,000 56,o6o,*000 5,200,000 1,655,000 1,800,000 5,450,000 17,900,000 2,200,000 910,000 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 215 Amongst the many other victims to the insensate craze of unrestricted licence of trade (called "free" trade — meaning literally freedom of foreign nations to ruin English industry) fell the great works of Saltaire, whose labour homes had been models of (118) perfection. In addition to all that ruin and disaster, English (114) trade with her own colonies and abroad showed everywhere the same ominous shrinking. Taking first her own colonies and dependencies, we find for the same period, 1880-1892 : — With Canada, her imports nearly stationary, in spite of the immense increase of population on both sides. British West India, our exports stationary ; our imports fallen in value from six millions sterling to three millions. India, imports stationary ; exports fallen in value two millions. As to our trade with foreign countries, it was a record of shame : — With China, England's imports had faUen from twelve millions in 1880 to three and a half millions in 1892. With France, whilst our imports within the same period The trade returns for the following year (1893) were still worse. Taking raw materials altogether — or textile goods, tanning, dyeing, etc. — the im- ports (which employed British labour in manufacture) showed a further fall of over ten millions sterling as compared with 1892. But, as was usual in Jubilee period, the import of manufactured articles (which employed foreign labour) showed an increase. On the export side, the figures (for goods of British manufacture) also continued the decline, and the total values for 1893 were less than those of 1892 by over six and a half millions sterling. "The falling off in the exports for 1891 was seventeen millions ; in 1892 there was a further decline of twenty millions ; and in 1893 there had been a further decline of eight and a half millions." — The President of the Asso- ciation of Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom, at the Annual Meeting of the Association, 1894. (^15) In 1894 the figures were growing yet worse. This is an extract from the Board of Trade Labour Gazette, volume 2, 1894 : — " The total value of imports in March 1894 was more than in March of the previous year by £1,281,552, . . . but the exports were £1,334,001 less, and over two millions sterling less than the average for the last five years. . . . This decrease would have been greater if the exports of coal [the disembowelment and ruin of England, page 219] had not increased by £1,052,091. . . . Nearly all the other grosps of articles have decreased. Metal manufactures have decreased in three months (1894) £1,307,714. . . . Re-exports have also decreased during the same period (three months) £1,467,999." 216 THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OF increased in value one million and a quarter, our exports fell one million and three-quarters. With America, our imports increased one million, whilst our exports decreased four and a half millions. Germany sent us nearly two millions more of her "made-in- Germany" articles in 1892 than she did in 1880. "We sent her seventeen and a half millions sterling of English goods, and took from her twenty-five and three-quarter millions of her German goods.* Thus was limb after limb of Britain's old supremacy withering and falling away. Even the Parliament, whilst shackling every avenue of home industry, imposing necessary Factory and other Acts upon manufacturers of all sorts — necessary, indeed, for the protection of the workers — but necessarily enhancing the cost of manufacture, that same Parliament was obtaining its national supplies, if not directly from foreign countries, certainly 1116) indirectly, as witness the use of German pencils in the House of Commons itself ; she subsidised foreign fleets — all this |117) on the political economy " buy in the cheapest market " theory. Tie up the hands of the British giant, loosen the toils of the foreigner, and then the British Parliament, who has tied her own children's hands, will encourage and subsidise the unhampered foreigner. That worse ruin had not overtaken patient England because of the worthlessness of her governors is simply because other nations were yet more worthlessly, incompetently, or corruptly governed, Germany alone seemed to stand pre-eminent amongst the nations, blessed with a manful, fearless, truth-loving, cant- hating king — or emperor, a worthy descendant of the Great Frederick. But her enforced swollen armaments chained even her in the shackles of financial difficulties. The Germans were marching step by step under his leadership into that commercial pre-eminence which Britain under her mud-gods was gradually relinquishing. France, with her toy-governments spilt like round- bottomed skittles by the silly breath of folly and faction, had no stability, and divided her energies pretty evenly between no- legislation and over-legislation, very much in the British Jubilee fashion. Russia, a huge giantess, all grossness of body and micro- scopic smallness of head, floundered over the political world * The Report of the Ctllector of Customs in Calcutta shows that trade with Germany had increased threefold in the last five years, while that (117a) with England— in the same period— had decreased from 65 to 57 per Cent. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 217 like a mad whale on a surf-beaten shore. She was so intent upon cutting ofiF the small remaining portion of head left to her by ruthless persecution of the only intelligent portions of her population, that such a blind colossus was becoming only danger- ous to herself. Italy, Portugal, Spain, with their Parliaments spinning in chaos and inanity, were only cognizable by the comity of nations. As Governments, they were mere expressions. The great American people stood aside, whilst a vile fraction of them played at so-called Government, which meant merely robbing, cheating, and swindling the nation just so long as infinite courage and nobility would tolerate infinite loathsomeness and corruption. The lion will not lie down with the lascivious ape, nor will he even hunt after him; a time will come when the filthy thing, become over bold, will approach too near the silent, much enduring lion-king, who will then turn and squelch the jabbering ape. Meanwhile, the universal corruption was the sole reason why England's sun had not for ever sunk. Where there is universal solar system of lurid brimstone and hell fire, those whose eyes are fixed upon it are likely to be more attracted by the flames than by the smoke ; they become aware of the smoke only at a later stage. Lest any may think we have over-coloured the American villainy of Government, let America herself be heard. One Wilson of the American Parliament, Chairman of its Ways and Means Committee, spoke to the world of mankind these words in the Year of Grace 1894: — "The Eepublican Government during one administration (a period of three or four years) con- verted an overflowing Treasury into a bankrupt Treasury, dissipated in one short administration three hundred and fifty million dollars (£70,000,000 sterling) of the national resources." (ug) One need not be astonished to discover that the great American people were the first not only to acknowledge, but to enthusiastically welcome the British Twentieth Century Eevolution. America joined hands with Carlyle Democritus across the seas, and entered the great bond created by him of all English-spaaking nations, of which more in the Pan-Anglican chapter.* There was a wisdom in Carlyle Democritus which could distinguish between a nation and its government, as between a man and that man's shadow. And which knew how to discover whether the shadow was the * Page 292 218 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF cast of a luminous sun-ray or of a lurid brimstone stench-fire. To Carlyle Democritus one heart beat beneath the true American and the true Englishman. Father and son had quarrelled ; the son had been outraged, not by the father so much as by his vile and incompetent advisers. The Revolution abolished the corrupt politicians of both nations, and the people at last saio one another, and became reconciled. And now let us revert to the Kevolu- tionary reforms in trade. "We have seen how, on all sides, English manufactures had suffered; how steadily and surely Britain's pre-eminence was passing away. But there was one line in which she showed a great increase of "industry," an ever-growing immensity of export ; but the line was a terribly fatal one. . Fatal, for England was pouring forth to the foreigner, as fast as mad Government could allow the mother-womb to be destroyed, the one resource which her politicians had left to her. England's rich store of coal was disappearing under the constantly increasing reckless export of it, which in one generation (twenty-five years) had increased from ten millions of tons to twenty-four millions of tons. One last record, and we are done with this awful Jubilee indictment. And that last is a reference to the great shipbuilding industry of the United Kingdom. We will condense as briefly as possible from the official return for 1893, which shows that in 1876 eighty-eight per cent, of all ships engaged in the carriage of British goods which entered and cleared British ports bore the British ensign. Twenty-three years later (in 1893) a large portion of that great shipping industry had gone over to foreigners, and Great Britain's shipping had fallen off twelve per cent. That represents the decrease in our own carrying trade only. Our loss in the ocean carriage of foreign trade was stiU greater, and year after year fell away as fast as that of foreign nations increased. Between 1880 and 1893, in the case of Germany, our total steam entrances and clearances fell away some thirty per cent. In the case of the United States, in the same period, we fell away over fifteen per cent. Well might the great and the thoughtful in those troublous ante-revolutionary times tremble for England's supremacy. It was indeed already departing. THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. 219 HOW OARLTLB DBMQCRITU8 COMPLETED THE EB-ESTABLI8HMENT OP BRITISH TRADE. THE MINES OP THE UNITED KINGDOM. The Nineteenth Century mining fi-urcs stood somewhat thus : — 1. The value of all minerals raised in the United Kingdom in each year was about eighty-five to ninety million pounds sterling. 2. About eleven or twelve millions of this amount was declared to Income Tax as profit or income from the mines. Most authorities agreed that the sum of ten millions was a low estimate of the royalties, or toU, which the British people paid to the land- lords of those mines. 3. In all mines taken together, 560,000 men were in one way or another employed, that is to say Jubilee-employed. In actual receipt of permanent work and full wage, such as the Revolution established, one-half that number would be nearer the mark ; because the 560,000 miners returned in the Jubilee statistics included such of the poor agricultural labourers who had been ejected from their homes, and evicted from their lands all over the country, and who flocked to the mines to seek work, but rarely to adequately find it. Of those 560,000 men, who after the Revolu- tion became fully employed and paid, and worthily housed — either at the mines, or resettled on their old agricultural farms — 517,000 were in the coal-fields alone. 4. The yield of coals from English mines was increasing by " leaps and bounds " in that mad Jubilee period. It stood at sixty-seven million tons in the year 1856, and had risen to eighty-six million tons in 1863, and in the year 1892 stood at the enormous total of one hundred and eighty-two million tons. Wise and far- seeing statesmen, like Carlyle Democritus and his followers, viewed with far other than a rejoicing spirit this disembowelling of the national wealth. For in the same period, viz. 1856-1892, the export of British coals had risen from four million tons to thirty million tons ; many of the mines were let on lease by the landowners to capitalists or companies, whose only idea was to force out of them as much coal as they could during the period of their lease ; only one mad, State-destroying idea being in the brains or brain places of those Mammon-worshipping Jubilitcs : "To make them pay." Exhaust the invaluable coal resources of (119) the country, sweat labour, ruin anything and everything so that a 220 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF few more gold coins may cram Mammon's already bursting pockeBs. All this infamous waste was made to end. The Revolution stopped the export of coal. In Jubilee period that export had given occupation to a large fleet ; it had been held to be a necessity for the adequate exchange of English goods, and as a means of effecting the carriage of produce from abroad to these shores at a nominal or very low rate. Certain authorities held the opinion, and widely disseminated it, that England's coal export was the great means of her salvation. With regard to the ship? engaged in the coal-carrying trade, it will be seen in the chapter which deals with the navy that not one of these in any way suffered. With regard to the men employed upon them, all were absorbed into the State service, where they were not required to replace the foreigners,* who, on the Jubilee cheap or sweating system, had been engaged to man English merchant ships. As for the contention that the exhaustion of England's coal-fields was the necessary saviour of English manufactures, the whole history of the Revolutionary Charter with regard to trade will abundantly disprove it. The Revolution, then, absolutely stopped the export of British coal. Except for the service of supplying our coaling stations in all parts of the world, not one ton of coal was permitted to leave British shores for sale outside English dominions. And where the coaling stations could be supplied with convenience and reasonable economy from our vast colonial coal-fields, the British stores were spared. Immense coal reserves were established at home in the neighbourhood of all the mines for use in war or other national purposes. In these, as in all kindred matters, the Revolution left it not to future political degeneracy to risk the national welfare ; but made it an article of the Constitution that at every naval, and military, and home coal depot there should be a minimum reserve, to be certified as sufl5cient by the Board of Admirals for the time being. The export of coals having been stopped, and the mines being entirely the property of the Nation, directly worked by the State for the benefit of all, not for the benefit of a few hundreds, to the detriment of all, it became necessary to regulate the supply. There were altogether about 3500 collieries working, most of which, at Jubilee period, were in wild competition with one * Page 276. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 221 another. After the Revolution they worked absolutely in co-operation. This great national industry was no longer a throat- cutting process of fratricidal trade warfare. The six hours' work- day adopted in all the coal mines absorbed all the 517,000 miners. But in spite of the full wages they were paid, and the shortened hours of labour, it was found impossible to keep this number attracted to the mines ; the opportunity which the new Land Code afforded to the men to get back to their old and healthier caUing gradually reduced the numbers to a considerable extent. But not- withstanding this, and the shortened labour hours, it was found that the average cost of the coal was considerably less than it had ever been under the land-owning and royalty system. The average cost of coal at the pit in Jubilee period, down to 1894, had averaged about seven-and-threepence a ton ; in the latest period it had reached nearly eight shillings a ton. There can be no doubt that the rise in wages had little to do with this figure. There liad been a time even in the land-owning period when coal at the pit's mouth had cost less than four shillings a ton. As worked by the Revolution with full wages to the men, the most merciful labour hours, (12O) provision of palatial homes in place of the old colliers' slums, the maximum average cost of coal at the pit, taken for the United Kingdom, was under five shillings a ton. One prolific source of waste, before the Revolution, had been the quantities of coal burnt for heating purposes in all the large towns and cities. By concentrating the consumption in all the great blocks of labour dwellings erected by the Revolution, by means of one central heating service, the saving of coal was as considerable as was the space gained in all the rooms by the aboli- tion of flues and fireplaces, and the cleanliness occasioned by the absence of smoke and dust. Wherever a furnace was erected, if it was worked by coal, it had to be absolutely smoke-consuming ; but in the end, when the gas manufactories of the State were completed, as will be indicated later on, gas engines and boilers took the place of coal in all these great dwellings, and in an infinite number of smaller dwellings as well. In private houses, gas as a heating power in stoves, or for water tubes, was encouraged in the place of coal, by supplying the gas at a cost far below that of the dirtier article. The result of this policy was, within a very few years, to completely cure London and all great cities of their baneful smoke-fogs. The average cost 222 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF of coal at the pit enabled it to be sold at a profit on tbe working at five shillings a ton. These were the methods of its disposal : — To all British manufacturers who adopted the profit-sharing scheme,* which eventually they all did, as will be seen, coal was supplied at six shillings per ton at the pit. That might be called the basis price, and the varying qualities were duly adjusted by a Committee appointed by the Coal Guild, in conference with the Mines Department of the Board of Trade. To any manufacturer who had not adopted the profit-sharing scheme, the price charged was the market price of the day for coal as it stood in the general foreign markets. With regard to the smoke nuisance, a somewhat similar method was adopted : All factories were required to have smoke-consuming furnaces. This formed a clause of the coal con- tract, and any breach of that clause by a manufacturer subjected him to one month's increase of price by ten per cent, on his next contract, and a repetition of the breach to three months' increase for each additional offence. To prevent any abuse of the coal supply or its diversion from British manufacturers, no tenders were entertained except those from the manufacturers direct, and a clause in their coal contracts prohibited the use of such contract-coal except in the contractor's factory. An abuse of this clause subjected the offender to a twofold increase of price for three months on his next contract. The next great step was the gradual abolition of all gasworks (it will be remembered that all these were taken over by the State) f in or in the immediate vicinity of towns. For lighting purposes electricity was almost universal, and, wherever possible, in large cities and towns, or even in small ones, gas was the motive power. The gasworks were erected in the neighbourhood of the mines, but not so near that in the case of accident in mine, or gasworks, the one could affect the other ; gas reservoirs were erected in isolated districts, whence a double set of underground mains at sufficient distance from one another as to be entirely unharmed in the event of either one suffering disaster, conducted the gas to the towns and cities all over the country. What with the reduced price of coal, the absence of land-rent, the perfection of the State labour, and the general improvements in every field of invention and organisation connected with the works, the cost of the gas produced Pages 243, 244. t Pages 146, 196. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 223 by the State works enabled it to be sold at a profit at one shilling per thousand cubic feet. The Jubilee charge varied, according to the nature of the ownership of the works, between 2s. and 3s. 6d. the thousand cubic feet. In order to induce the adoption of gas as a heating power, either by means of gas-stoves or gas-engines for heating water-tubes, etc., in place of the old dirt and smoke-producing coal fires, the minimum price at which coals were supplied for private consumption was forty shillings a ton. But gas for heating purposes was charged only at Is. 3d. the thousand feet. And for lighting purposes — with a view tp encourage the adoption of the healthier and purer illumLnant — electricity — the charge was made of 2s. 6d. for every gas- burner per annum. This charge will be found to have brought up the lighting charge for gas to about its old rate of 3s. the thousand feet, and, as has been said, was intended to act — and did in the end, act — as a deterrent to the use of gas for any but machinery and heating purposes. The immense saving eflfected by this great system of gas production at the mines, together with the cessation of the foreign export, reduced the annual output of coal from the mines from the old one hundred and eighty millions of tons to about eighty-five millions of tons. Nor did there seem any probability that the Constitutional limit which had been fixed at a maximum of one hundred million tons per annum was ever likely to be reached. The average of many years post-revolutionary working proved that quantity to be well within the requirements of the country. With regard to the railway companies, the same rules applied to them as to manufacturers, both with regard to the profit-sharing and to the smoke consumption ; but it may be here stated that, before many years, electricity had so developed that most of the engines in the country were worked by this means. The system had long been enforced in all underground railways, the State having temporarily subsidised the companies to enable them to adopt the change. This subsidy was provided for by a lien upon the various companies so assisted, and was to be repaid according as the profits of the working would permit. It may here be said that, inasmuch as the general feeling of the community was averse to the taking over of the railways by the State, the Revolution contented itself with the enforcing of certain necessary legislation which will be dealt with elscAvhere. It would be diffi- cult to exaggerate the value to manufacturers of coal at a uniform 224 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OP price, the supply of which, let it not be forgotten, benefited the Avhole nation directly by the profit that was put upon the cost price, and indirectly by the cheaper production — and, therefore, sale — of the manufactured goods, though, of course, it benefited those more who used it — viz. masters and men. It would be as difficult to exaggerate the beneficial results produced by the permanence of the labour contracts, and the humane regulation of labour hours, not to mention the new avenues of labour. The result of all this was that the old cruel cry of " want of work " was getting fast changed into the happier one of " want of workers." And indeed it required all the wisdom of the Eevolutionary laws to prevent an influx of foreign labour attracted by the godly conditions of the new code. What were those laws will be found fully set out in various portions of this work. But the Guild Examinations were efi'ective in themselves alone ; for, although the Guilds were never allowed to become monopolistic or merely exclusive, their rules were justly rigorous with regard to requiring the thorough efficiency of the labourer and his complete under- standing and speaking the English language. Most of the Colonies adopted on their own initiative the entire code of the Revolution ; indeed, several of them had been beforehand with many of its wisest provisions — notably the land laws and the farm, or (121^ agricultural settlement, factories. Britain's next great mining industry was iron. The iron mines employed 18,000 men permanently, at the six hours' day, and full wage, with the provision of agricultural farms such as were allotted to all miners.* The annual production of raw iron had risen from three and a half million tons in 1856 to six and three quarter millions in 1892, and was estimated in the latter year at a value of seventeen and a quarter millions sterling, or about £2, 10s. per ton. It is more than probable that from a quarter to a half of that sum went into the landlords' pockets in some form or other. After the Revolution had acquired all the mines, and had abolished land rents, and land renters, and royalties, and had substituted permanent labour, good wages, and merciful work hours, it was found that the cost of the smelted iron was under thirty shillings a ton ; indeed, left a fair profit to the State at that figure. As with coal, so with iron. No raw iron was allowed to be * Page 126. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 225 exported, nor was any sold to middlemen, but only to manufacturers, upon guarantee of use in their factories only — and a breach of this understanding was punished as fraud against the Nation in the severest manner. The iron was sold by tender at a minimum price of thirty-five shillings a ton. Small manufacturers were allowed to tender, and no difference was made between the largest or the smallest buyer. This was a humane principle which the Revolu- tion enforced in every branch of trade, as in railway carriage, or other means of conveyance of goods throughout the Kingdom.* Similar regulations were adopted with regard to the tin, copper, and lead mines, the prices difi"ering according to the value, i.e. cost, of the material. The produce ef the gold and silver mines was not sold, but was retained by the State for the purposes of coinage. The value of the precious metals raised from British mines before the Revolution was under £50,000 annually ; but a large increase of output from the Welsh and other gold mines followed the humane conditions of employment introduced by the Revolution, Every miner felt that he was working for his personal welfare as well as for the general good, and no longer for merely a lando^vner's fortune at the cost of his strength and health ; he to be cast off like a squeezed orange when no longer squeezable. The value of the gold mines increased rapidly, and early in the Twentieth Century a large portion of the English mintage was fed from them. Most of the British quarries were worked at Jubilee period in much the same manner and under similar conditions as the mines had been ; and with few exceptions, the workers were treated with as little, if any, consideration. According to the Parliamentary Report of a Committee appointed to inquire into the dangers to life, limb, and health of workers in quarries, issued in the year 1894, there were upwards of 120,000 men employed in quarries and kindred works of the United Kingdom. The said Jubilee Committee found that " the quarry- man's life is shortened to a remarkable degree by diseases of the respiratory organs. The excessive death-rate from these com- plaints is attributed mainly to the inhalation of dust. It is a most important duty to protect a quarryman against," etc. And the Jubilee Committee drew up a code of rules. And the Jubilee Committee duly added the inevitable Jubilee but : — " But * Page 209. P 226 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF under the existing state of the ' law ' these rules cannot be enforced, as the quarries are neither 'factories' nor •workshops.'" Amongst the signiOcant recommendations of the Committee (which Jubilee law enabled not to be enforced) was this one : — "We advise that a person before becoming manager should (122) ]iave had practical experience in a quarry for at least two years." How could any Jubilee Parliament sanction such a law as that? A law to prescribe that a fit and capable man should be put to command over the well-being and lives of his hundred thousand subordinates? Was not such a recommendation a running counter to the whole principle of Jubilee " law," custom, and Articles — thirty-nine, or other number — altogether 1 Jubilee system, from its legislative machine downwards, pursued a quite opposite course : — Senile washerwoman, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army ; more senile chief, mud-god of British Par- liament; legal word-chopper, Commander-in-Chief of Jubilee Finances ; titled or untitled incompetencies, bottle-washers-in- chief at head of all departments ; worthless landsmen at the head of the navy ; old women magistrates ; horse-hair wigs for judges ; and so on to the very end of the chapter. Let not quarry- men, dying of overwork and condemned to breathe dust instead of air, expect relief from a legislative machine spinning on its apex to corruption and bottomless perdition. Nearly double the old quantity of men were found to be required to work the quarries under healthful and safe conditions such as the Revolution insisted on. In other respects the quarries were dealt with much in the same way as were the mines ; but the material had to be disposed of somewhat differently. All quarry material, required for State or municipal purposes, was supplied at the net cost of pro- duction, and all such requirements were considered first. After- wards, the general demands were supplied by tender, as it was found impracticable in any other manner to regulate values. There was one notable exception to the general method as above described ; and the exception is of such interest, both in itself and as another indication of the corruption and utter woithlessness of the Jubilee landowners, that a complete record of the case is worthy to be laid before the reader. Claimants of certain valuable soil, situate over the marble and other quarries t;f Dorsetshire, were preparing to turn entire populations adrift, to starvation, misery, and wretchedness, as THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 227 ruthlessly as the Sutherland, Glengarry, Strathglass, and other hags — peeresses and non-peeresses — had evicted their crofters and farm hinds. The record which is to be given is taken with slight alteration from the Times of the year 1893. The Times was not (123) a paper to deal untenderly with the property-classes, so it may be accepted as a moderate view of the situation. The force and eloquence of the article, in its bare statement of fact, demands citation, and the historian admits it into his history with unqualified approval and appreciation : "Quarrying is a very ancient industry in the isle of Purbeck. By some happy chance it has never fallen into the hands of any large capitalist or joint-stock Company. [Mark that expression; it is of immense value, coming, as if unaware, from the greatest representative newspaper in the world.] The industry has always been carried on by the native population, each quarry being warked by a single man, or a group of two or three men, with the assistance of apprentices. There is a tradition that the right of quarrying was given by Royal Charter to the men of Purbeck, in acknowledgment of their services in defeating the Danes in the time of King Alfred. Many facts seem to render the former existence of that Charter probable. Beyond doubt the quarrymen of the island have from very early days been organised as a Trade Company, called the ' Company of Marblers or Stone- cutters.' Not only has the Company of Marblers existed, but it has exercised, and still exercises, its power in a very distinct and stringent way. From time immemorial, only members of the Com- pany and the sons of members duly bound apprentice [mark that wise provision, reader — no incompetent, worthless hands admitted to those quarries] have been allowed to quarry stone or marble in Purbeck. Articles of the fourteenth century are, or were till recently, extant. Hutchins, in his * History of Dorset,' prints a code of the year 1551. They are full of interesting and quaintly- worded provisions. Thus, only one apprentice is to be taken on at a time, and apprentices are to be kept in the house of the master for seven years. Not only are all their rules laid down in ancient documents, but they are observed to the present day. It seems almost a necessary conclusion that an industry so privileged must have its rights against the owners of the land in which the stone is found. In later times the Crown sold its lands to subjects, who gradually bought up the small freeJwlds, reduced the quarrymen to the position of tenants, and then began to question their rights. 228 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF [Mark the insidious creep of the land-devil-serpent, here, as every- where, intent upon gorging himself upon the heart and entrails of the noblest labour.] As is so often the case, it seems to have been the prospect of turning their land to account for building pur- poses which first led the ' owners ' into a position of hostility towards the quarrymen. A Mr. Morton Pitt, lord of one of the manors, with a view of making Swanage a rival watering-place to "Wey- mouth — then basking in the smiles of Koyalty — turned his manor- house into a hotel, adding two large wings. It may he merely a coincidence, hut ahout the same time the quarrymen and land-owners came to issue. [" Merely a coincidence," of the sort Avhich befel the lamb at the stream, whom the wolf was eager to devour.] Some years after that Swanage event, Swanage [or rather, Swanage land-grabbers] again aspired to make a watering-place. A more potent ally than Weymouth had arisen, viz., Bournemouth, only eight miles by sea from Swanage. Two or three times a day during the summer season hundreds of visitors land from the Bourne- mouth steamer to see some of the lions of the old quarry lands. Some of the visitors find the quiet and simplicity of Swanage [which the land devils are intent upon destroying] a pleasant con- trast to the crowded town which they have just left ; others are attracted by the grand coast. They come for a longer stay, and recommend the place to their friends ; and so by degrees Swanage is acquiring a considerable summer population, and setting up a 'Season.' These are the accidents ivhich land-ow7iers recuynise as their chances." [Chances, reader, of turning adrift to starvation the old pious, worthy labourers, who had earned an honest liveli- hood, and established themselves and their families in the heart of a beloved country since the days of the Great Alfred.] " The few persons" [mark the fetv] ^^ loho ^ owned' the hills of Swanage irished to turn their pastures into huilding sites. The right to open quarries, and to loork them when open,, against the will of the land- owner ["landowner" not from the days of King Alfred, only from the days of Devil Mammon] " hampers the estate-agent, bent upon laying out roads and cutting up ' his ' land " [his land, not God's land, not the quarrymen since King Alfred's time's land] in rectangular plots. "We hear, therefore, of the ' vexatiousness ' of the quarriers' customs, of the absurdity of the claims they make [verily, absurd, to the land -devil's heart, or pocket, that the brave labourer of a thousand years' inheritance should THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 229 love to work on the field that his ancestors had owned since time out of memory], of the damage they do to the land, and there is a tendency to deny [thou wilt remember, reader, that the great German poet has defined the Devil as the Denier] that usages of centuries have any legal existence at all. [Carlyle Democritus flashed that argument in the face of every scoundrel landlord who attempted to urge the ' usage of centuries ' aa a proof of his title to lands stolen from the people, and Jiot given by Charter of the great King Alfred.] On the other hand, the quaiTymen — we had almost said commoners [why not quite said it, Times newspaper?] the analogy is so close — though numerous, are individuady poor, and shrink from litigation with all its risks" [Mark that too, you British readers, who have any heart for human justice ; the poor shrank from litigation against the rich, and well they might, for it was not a risk, but a certainty of ruin.] "And so, the qtiarry industry heiiig discouraged, a class of indepen- dent workers may he gradually shouldered out of the district, and sent, one by one, to swell the labour market of our overgrown towns." [Do not pass lightly away from that paragraph, for in it is the keynote of all the diabolical misery which the brutal landlord class have inflicted on British toilers since the first day when Mammonism. and Landlordism first commenced to usurp the place of justice, human or divine, in this Britain of ours.] " We find numerous and large villages in the stone-producing parts of Purbeck : — Swanage, numbering a large proportion of quarrymen ; Herston, Down, and Langton. 'Longtown' undoubtedly, for the stone cottages of Langton seem never to cease. Up and up the long hillside they range, till we arrive at the very summit of the wind-swept ridge, only to see another and more compact hamlet forming the centre of more quarries. [All these homes to be destroyed, all these brave, patient quarrymen and their wives and little ones to be turned adrift from their pure stone cottages, to herd in the slums and sweating dens of Jubilee Britain's great cities.] Between the high road and St Alban's Head is the quaint, out-of-the-world village of Worth, with its fine Norman church, and again with its surrounding quarries. Very near is the model village of Kingston, solid with Purbeck freestone, and gleaming with Purbeck marble. And at Kingston we are close to Corfe Castle, the ancient metropolis of the quarry- men. A pleasant race they seem to be; intelligent^ independent, well 230 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF mannered^ and amiahle. Here is just the class op men whom all STATESMEN WOULD AGREE IT IS MOST DESIRABLE TO SEE IN OUR RURAL DISTRICTS, [Let the reader again ponder over those words ; for they are not the words of a revolutionist on fire with divine wrath and indignation at the intense misery brought about by the infernal wickedness of men, which he had to see on all sides of him in Jubilee period ; but all that has been written of Purbeck is by the representative newspaper of the very class whose infamous devilries it describes in so able, calm, and gently unenthusiastic a manner.] Yet, those of power and influence in the quarrymen's neighbourhood look askance at them, and the proba- bility is that they will gradually decline in numbers, that the Isle OF PURBECK WILL LOSE ITS SELF-SUPPORTING PEASANTRY, AND THAT London will receive a few more competitors for work." For NO-WOEK, thou shouldst say, great Ti7nes newspaper. Is it possible to add one word to that straightforward record of right, on the verge of outrage by wrong? Is not the record in itself an appeal for justice against devilish and heartless Mammon oppression ? Often have these pages had to condemn the lapses of the greatest newspaper in the world, but here it is worthy of the worthiest praise. It was such outspoken support of honest right against mere brute might, grasp, and greed ; of the rights of labour against the soulless thieving, the heartless greed and grasping of those accursed Jubilee landowners, that saved the great newspaper when the fury of the Revolution, at its outbreak, burst upon so many of the Avorst trucklers of the press. The revolutionists remembered that the Times with all its sins, and they were heavy enough, had never wavered in its intense patriotism. And madly as it had often fallen in with the mammonish and plutocratic crazes of the Jubilee period, it had stood alone on many a historic occasion to save the Empire from the cowardly, lying, and shifty dodgeries of both political parties. England's fleet had sunk into inglorious- ness, but for the Times and England's self, but for the crusade which had been led by the great newspaper against the soul- desecrated Sorrypebble, intent only on selling, for party votes, the unity of Great Britain to the foullest party scum which 6ver ia the world's history had risen to the surface of a universally rotten political corruption — a gang who, to use the words of the would-be betrayer of England himself, had endeavoured "by rapine and murder to bring about the dismemberment of the THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 231 British Empire." If the infamy of the servile crew and its chief have carried the historian for a moment beyond his imme- diate range, he returns at least purified by that fire of righteous indignation which, be it God's will, shall never forsake the breast of any true Englishman. Those Dorset quarrymen, though poor, so brave and so worthy, shall not be turned out to starvation by land thieves, be they headed by ten thousand times a manor-lord, turning his private home into public hotel by addition of Avings — not angel wings, reader, but devil mammon-wings, of infernal selfishness and greed. Carlyle Democritus cleared that whole Dorset quarry district of its prowling land - grabbers, settled the people for ever on their land, and improved their homes and holdings on the lines of the land and labour codes. This was one of the few districts in which the landlord party made an armed stand against the Revolution. Carlyle Democritus was a great believer in Providence being on the side of big battalions. He knew well enough that his picked troops could stand against any odds, for the fire of Revolution will burn through any injustice or any representatives of it, however numerous be their legions. Here was an opportunity for the war dogs of Terence Grey.* At the head of twenty thousand men he marched into Dorsetshire, and on the field of Purbeck, after five hours' sanguinary engagement, in which only a part of his forces had been engaged, there remained not one live man of the landlord party. For quarter had neither been asked nor given on either side. The record of this event is still to be found on that old battle-field of Purbeck. Engraved upon the base of a towering mass of Purbeck marble may be read these words : — " To the Glory of God and the memory of His servant Carlyle Democritus, who did, here upon this battle-field, cause to be made manifest the power of wisdom and justice over evil and oppres- sion. It was upon this field of Purbeck that 7000 men of the Revolutionary forces, disdaining the use of artillery, since their opponents were without it, after five hours' mortal combat, finally overcame and slew every one of the oppressors — the flower and fruit of Mammonhood. The numbers engaged on either side were equal, but the cause for which each side fought was not equal. The Revolutionists fought to defend the sacred rights of the * Page 36. 232 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF people, their homes, and their means of livelihood, which they had inherited through many centuries ; whereas the landlords fought to roh them of those rights, and to enrich themselves at the price of the people's misery." A local History of Dorset gives some curious details of the Pur- beck battle, from which this may be transcribed : " They who saw the Revolutionist soldiers on that bloody day, ere they commenced their attack, as they knelt and swore that not one of them would leave the battle-field alive whilst there breathed a man of the oppressors, still remember the fire of those maddened soldiers, as, after a brief fusilade on both sides, they, at given signal, burst with a mighty onrush upon the landlord troops, callous of the shot which mowed them down as they advanced. Seventeen hundred men of the Revolutionary force had fallen before they reached the enemies' lines, but few fell afterwards. The oppressors broke when they met the terrible shock of the Revolutionists' attack, and their yet more terrible look. History tells a similar story of tha British Troops of Revenge in the Indian Mutiny time. Of the 7000 upholders of Jubilee landlordism who stood upon that Purbeck field at sunrise, not one but whose mortal remains lie buried beneath the field marked by the marble pile. The moun- tainous monument is without ornament or carving of any sort. It is wild and weird, yet artistic in the massing of its great marble blocks. The field, in later years converted into a garden, was dedicated for ever to those who fell in the popular cause, and whose names are inscribed on the walls of the white marble church which commands the entrance to the old battle-field. The first name on the death record which meets the eye of the visitor is that of Terence Grey, to whom is also dedicated a memorial statue of rare grace and beauty, the pedestal of which bears this short inscription : — TERENCE GREY, 25th Dec. 19—. EXPECTANS EXPECTAVI. IlIAS MaLORUM. "Tradition says that those words were superscribed on a torn letter found on the d«ad man. He had been shot through the heart. The bullet which had pierced him had cut through the letter, and when extracted from the wound, the doctors found a THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 233 small tuft of golden hair adhering to it. This relic Is enclosed in a recess of the tomb, and is regarded with some superstition by the villagers. When they carried the news of the victory to Carlyle Democritus he expressed no surprise. ' The world in arms will never defeat Revolutionary troops with a noble cause in their heart,' said he. And when they told him that Grey had fallen, he seemed also unmoved, but that the paleness habitual to him seemed to deepen. And the messengers said that when they left hira they heard a groan as of a strong man in agony. " The beautiful memorial church was built by the men of Purbeck, with glistening, snow-white marble, the gift from their own quarries. They were a brave and noble race, and were worth pre- serving." That Purbeck uprising was the last stand which the Jubilee Party made against the Revolution. Landlordism was already dead, but upon the field of Purbeck its remains received final burial. The result of the peace which followed was that the brave Purbeck people had their lands granted to them in perpetuity ; and to prevent any possibility of future land-devilism, Carlyle Democritus caused the grant to be recorded in the Constitution of the United Kingdom. Thus met the giant spirits of the Great Alfred and the Revolutionary Leader. And therewith may fitly end this notable chapter. CHAPTER IV. "tools and the man.* That, and no longer " Arms and the Man," shall be the burden of the great future epic, has said the superlatively wisest of all England's sages. Honour and everlasting glory — and not ignorant contumely — shall be the eventual lot of that sage, when the tur- moil of idiocy shall have subsided, and the Sun of Truth shall have risen high above the fog-mists, which its divine brilliance, radiance, and fire-heat, inevitably draw up, in temporary dense clamour-cloud, from the dank rottenness of intellectual bog-tLpths and marsh mud, the accumulation of centuries of corruption and injustice. They, once desiccated, and well burnt up, and the sun of England's wisdom shall appear — his sorrow-cross and his thorn- crown, converted into hal© of worship and of love — of reverence, and of veneration. The longer delayed such popular incarnation of esteem, the diviner will the apothedsis be. As the sun in the Heaven's arch is hidden to the valley throng, buried in dense fog exhalations, and is seen brilliant in its effulgence by those on the mountain-top, so was the great Carlyle seen by his reverent wor- shippers, and by none more clearly than by Carlyle Democritus. Supremacy of wisdom and supremacy of action had met. " Tools and the Man " had been written. *' Tools and the Man " should be enacted. " Labour ! — Is that a thing of the hands only, my people ? Is there no labour of the heart, nor lab»ur of the head ? my brothers, workers of the hand, or heart, or head, not until aU these have become one, and you can say of Labour that it is of the hand, and heart, and head, then, and only then, is there true Labour of any sort. Labour of the hand, without head and heart, is the monotonous cruelty, bred of work by the hour, for starvation wage, 231 ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTUEY. 235- upon dog or swine conditions. Such was Jubilee labour. Labour of the heart, uncontrolled by the head, is but unwise and baneful ; it is unthinking, harming where it would soothe, and is destructive of justice. Such labour was called philanthropy, or Jubilee ' Charity,' Labour of the head without the heart is the culmina- tion of all evil ; and, as in the neglected field, the thorn and thistle are supreme, so in the Jubilee Social field the thorn and thistle- class were supreme, to wit — the lawyer-, politician-, political- economist-, party-, caucus-class. I have come to emancipate you from all such Jubilee Labour, and in its place establish the only possible, worthy labour for mortal men, labour of heart and head and hand, one and indivisible. Where all those are conjoined, the worker is ennobled by his work, and the work is ennobled by the worker. "A fallow field is the crime of the legislator, its thorns and its weeds are the tears of the workers, which bear witness before high heaven of his neglect. A field waving with golden corn, with the fiowers nestling at the roots, like calm joy in the peasant's heart, is the glory of the free and unburdened farmer. Only such farmers will I have," said Carlyle Democritus. "The worker, whatever may be his task, can delight in the labour of his hands, when he knows that his industry and skill will bring him, and all he loves, healthful food, joyful home, lasting peace ; and he will love the calling which brings him love. The workman true, and the work also true; only such workers shall be ours," swore Carlyle Democritus and the Eevolution. Not only then are manual workers included in this chapter. The great Labour Code affected every class of labour, from the humblest to the mightiest. The Eight Hours' Day. — So many instances were known of the most important directors of great ind^ustries having, even in Jubilee period, successfully established the eight hours' day, that (i24) no difficulty whatever was experienced in making this law universal. Many employers declared they had long been in favour of it, but were debarred from its adoption by fear of the competition of other firms. The greatest difficulty occurred amongst the shopkeepers. Nowhere were the labour hours more cruel or the condition of work more inconsiderate, and the smaller the shop, often the more thoughtless the employer. Poverty constrains its victims to submit to almost any hardship ; and it was as true in British Jubilee period as when the words were written 236 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF three tliousand years before that time, that "the destruction of the poor is their poverty." But after those three thousand years, Carlyle Democritus thought it was time to deal a definite and enduring, and indeed deathblow to that destruction. And he said to the people : ** Let us destroy poverty, and no longer be destroyed by it ; poverty, as it exists in this world of Mammon, is no good thing, but is an accursed and an evil thing, whatever the Mammon parsons say. You shall believe the parsons, my people, when you see the ten-thousand-a-year-parsons acting, as well as preaching, their cant-doctrines and articles." Thus spake Carlyle Democritus to all the people ; and it may be observed from the "World Chronology — upon whose vast inherit- ance Carlyle Democritus, and all wise men before him drew — that the king to whom is attributed the poverty proverb lived on this earth some thousand years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The Thracian Democritus, in whom it was regarded as a crime that he chose poverty and rejected wealth, came into the world some four hundred and sixty years later ; and, after another four hundred and sixty years, was born the Latin poet who wrote the ^neid (Arms and the Man). Yet seventy years, and He arrived in the world of whom Saint Paul has said that " He was rich, yet for your sakes became poor." Christ, in His lore of love, had said to the poor that "theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." But the rich had abused the teaching. Seventeen hundred and ninety five years later arose Thomas Carlyle to propound a fiercer doctrine, and to warn mankind that they were not to interpret that beautiful poverty-phrase as meaning also the converse, viz., that " earth was the kingdom of the rich ; " and he warned them — the rich — and mankind generally, that either wise statesmanship would have to overcome the poverty of the masses, in a just and merciful way, Or Poverty would overcome Mammon in a terrible and a merciless way. After them all succeeded, some two centuries later, Carlyle Democritus. He disturbed not the " Kingdom^^of Heaven " theory for the poor, for he would not deprive the Mammon peers, plutocratic bishops, and Shylock landowners, languishing in the slum prisons, from the only consolation left to them, and which, in their turn, they had duly afi'orded to the previous occupants. Therefore he left the Kingdom of Heaven theory a free and harmless circulation. But he very thoroughly destroyed the Kingdom of hell fact which Mammon had, meanwhile, created for THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 237 the poor in this material world. And we are about to learn how he did it. Those who have seen in every individual reform, from the abolition of drunkenness to the restoration of the people to their land; from the abolition of sweating to the establishment of an eight hours' day, the panacea to cure all the evils of humanity, must have discovered from this veracious history that any one of those reforms would have been utterly futile but for the comprehensive wisdom which had learned and taught that each one of them was but a stone in a mighty structure, which on completion was to form the noble palace of human justice and Avell-being ; that any one of them singly was only a stone, though of purest marble, of the whole structure, and in itself no panacea, only an ingredient of the panacea. The eight hours' day once established, it became difficult to believe that there ever could have been resistance to its adoption. But let it not be forgotten that no amount of legislation could ever have established it, had not, side by side with that law, gone other measures to enable the workers to enforce their rights. Surplus of labourers had given Avay to surplus of labour. And when one contemplates this marvellous world, and the work which is to be ceaselessly done in it, one realises that — in every naturally ordered State — labour must ever be in excess of the labourers, and that only the folly and corruption of men could have ever defeated — no, blinded them- selves — to Nature's law in that direction. The abolition of casual labour was not a matter to be effected by an edict. Abundantly good as the thing was in itself, it required more than philanthropic theory to establish it. Let us briefly run through some of the preliminary conditions necessary to have rendered possible the permanency of the labour contract. The Revolution was confronted with at least five millions of men and women on the verge of, or beyond, pauperism. Their numbers (i25) were steadily increasing as more and more of the land was year by year thrown out of cultivation, as day after day shiploads of foreign paupers dumped their waste freights of human misery to further swell the already choked British slums and sweating-hells. Their numbers were further and continuously increasing with the ever- increasing exactions of the urban landlords or land-devils. Two other prolific causes helped to fill the ranks of the unemployed. One was the wasteful system of paying labour by the hour, day, or week. Thus were painters, bricklayers, builder-carpenters, paviors, 238 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF masons, and a host of other workers, engaged, and liable to dismissal at any time. Wages in all those, and many other callings, followed the senseless course resulting from all evil systems. The labourer would be paid during the fine open weather full wages ; good workers could earn from thirty to forty shillings a week. But in the winter, for months together, masses of them would be turned out to worklessness, and consequent wagelessness. It was hopeless to expect that the jerry-builder, the jobbing contractor, the sweating middleman, could ever inspire enough confidence in any honest working-man to induce him to accept a year's contract at a settled average wage. Such was the state of Jubilee "law" that the workmen would have found themselves fully employed during the summer months at the average wage, but remorselessly turned ofi" in winter, the jobbing middleman having " gone smash," or something of the sort. The jerry-builders, in common with the whole legion of quacks, were utterly stamped out by the Revolution. No builder or contractor was allowed to practise unless he was properly qualified and certified by the builders', architects', or other Guild. And an essential qualifica- tion for all would-be employers of labour was their capacity to pay their workmen. Every one such had to find adequate surety for the wages of the labour he sought to control ; and not until he had satisfied the Guilds concerned, could he start as a contractor. If it be fraud to purchase an inanimate thing for which you cannot pay, how infinitely more cruel a fraud is it to purchase, or hire, human labour and defraud it of its pay, which means suffering to the labourer and all those dependent on him. Mark again the application of the Revolutionary "liberty of the subject," as against the Jubilee "licence of the subject." There would be no slaves if the State did not tolerate and encourage slave-drivers ; be sure of that, all men, and beware of all false cries. Beelzebub is not God, though political economists and radical caucuses roar themselves hoarse in wild screeches asserting that he is. And licence is to liberty what Beelzebub is to God. Another factor in the increase of the unemployed was the crowding into such avenues of labour as city offices, and refreshment-houses, of German clerks and German waiters. The attraction for employing the foreigner was twofold : superior education and training of the German over the English, and greater " cheapness " of the foreign wage. The THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 239 first cause was remedied by the more practical education inaugu- rated by the Eevolution* and by the proper apprenticing of both clerks and waiters which those classes enjoyed in common with all labour. The second, " cheapness," was overcome by the minimum wage law. Germans serving for next to nothing, whilst they were learning English, could cut down British service. But when no man could be employed below the statutory twenty-five shillings per week, the influx of the foreigner ceased. "Made in Germany" is decidedly cheap when it costs next to nothing, but "made in England " has its value in comparison, when the voice of Justice ordains that not by " pressure of poverty," but by honest wage for honest work, shall British labour-pay be determined. Difficulties and trials awaited the Reformer on all sides. From the starving gutter child to the worn-out city clerk there filed before the piercing eye and much pierced heart of Carlyle Democritus one gaunt, unending skeleton army of despair. It seemed unending in its numbers, insoluble in its depth of misery. Temptation in myriad forms beset the General, not St. Antony was more sorelj' tried, Venus was not dead, nor Midas, and they united all their powers to allure the much-suffering man to yield up a task which they declared to be beyond his strength ; and they waved the soft silky banner alluringly before him whereon the Earth Spirit for ever weaves the enchantment : " It will last your time." But the banner waved in vain. The gaunt army of Want dismayed not the servant of Man, for he felt in him the power of a living spirit which would marshal that army to glory. Carlyle Democritus closed his eyes to none of the difficulties that confronted him ; he raised the veil boldly ! He faced God's Light ! He knew that the privilege of the ostrich to hide its head in the sand, and to remain stolid against disaster, was not extended to man. A nobler, a loftier duty was Man's : To face disaster, stand undismayed before it, fearlessly wrestle with it, and finally die, or overcome it ! The main causes of the artificial dearth of work, and the consequent compulsory starvation of the workers, were : — 1. Landlordism, i.e. the ejection or eviction of the worker from the soil, and its fraudulent absorption by the non- worker. * Pages 359-65. 240 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 2. A consequence of No. 1, The absorption of the earnings of the workers, compelled — by ejection from the agricul- tural lands — to herd in congested centres, by the said landlord, who, whilst he starved an acre of corn-growing land, was able to exact an exorbitant rent for a square yard or two of urban land. 3. Unrestricted immigration of the waste and worthless paupers of foreign nations. 4. Suicidal, commercial, industrial, and trade laws and regula- tions, which fettered home manufactures, whilst they admitted and invited foreign goods unfettered into unjust competition. 5. A waste and extravagant legal system, made by an interested class, sustained by that class, and fatal to every other class but that one. 6. Overwork of one section of labour, and underwork, or no- work, of the other section. 7. There had resulted from all the above-named evils and abuses a residuum population of drones and of criminals exceeding in number three hundred thousand men and (126) women. • • • 1. The death of landlordism, whereby there suffered a few thousand persons who "owned" millions of British acres, gave freedom to the entire remaining thirty-nine millions nine hundred and eighty-five thousand, who had previously suflFered not only in pocket, but, multitudes of them, endless life torments. Sixty-five millions of cultivable British acres in Jubilee period — of which some forty-eight to fifty millions only were cultivated — afforded work, at starvation wages, for only some one and a quarter of a million of agricultural labourers (those are the official figures of the Jubilee census published in 1893). After the Eevolution, under the merciful provisions afF'jrded to settlers, there flocked back to the land which they loved seven millions of people. Ireland, which, since the year 1841, had decreased in population from eight millions to four millions within one year of the fi'Te grant of her soil to her people, upon the terms already described in the land chapters of this history, reabsorbed nearly two millions of her old lost population. For the first year after the restoration no fresh grant of land in Ireland was permitted to be made to any THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 241 applicant other than of Irish birth. The six millions of population to which Ireland had increased within twelve months of the Revolution consisted entirely of free, hard-working, contented, and cheery Irish people ; as indeed they ever would have been, had not cruelty and misgovernment driven them into crime and exile. Had that return of a free people to its land stood alone, it would alone have tended to exhaust the ranks of the sad army of want, but it did not stand alone. Those seven millions restored to agri- culture were but as a balm-drop in the ocean of Revolutionary justice. The Highlands and Crofts of Scotland alone reabsorbed over a million of its brave people, who had been brutally and mercilessly evicted by the land-devils of Jubilee period. 2. The freedom of the town holders from constraint to hand over their earnings to the non-workers (landlords) lifted out of penury, or the verge of it, yet vaster numbers, who though not unemployed had been almost a drag upon industry, whereas they now became spenders on home manufactures, where before they were mostly spenders on landowners. The neglected land literally sucked up the people. In some of the great cities every third house was abandoned. In some of the mining districts — in spite of the high wages and short labour hours — not a man was to be found where before there had been a thousand. 3. The stoppage of pauper immigration. The return to their own country of foreign paupers, or their emigration to beyond the seas, caused a further lightening of the strained craft of the State. 4. The new laws of commerce, trade, and manufacture called into life all Britain's former supremacy, and so keen became the demand for labour that deputations of merchants and manufacturers waited on the government of the day to petition for the importation of foreign labour. The only avenue of labour which showed a decline was the old profession of jabber. The old windbagocracy was burst, and presented but a terribly shrivelled appearancp. What with the burnt-up wigs, and the superannuated Cokes and Littletons,* there were some forty thousand of the lawyer class seeking employment. They soon righted themselves, however. The Revolution would not grant the importing of foreign labour, unless each labourer could pass the Guild trade test. But the manufacturers were not left long without hands ; the legal, clerical, ♦ Page 387. Q 242 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF and publican classes, which had long been superabundant, gradually betook themselves to useful work, and instead of lawyers spoiling paper, parchment, and horsehair, they took to assisting in the preparation and manufacture of those articles. And instead of publicans and their men converting good corn into bad spirit, they learned to grow the corn for good wholesome bread. 6. The eight hours' day called for no increase of labour as far as factories were concerned ; on the contrary, and as was long ascertained by the wise and practical who had tried it, more work as well as better work was obtained under the eight hours' day than had ever been before. But there was an increase in the number of men employed in State and Municipal service, because of the double shifts necessary in all street employment, and in sundry other avenues of public service. Altogether, where there had been a total of 150,000 labourers of all sorts employed in the public service before the Eevolution, the new regulations required a permanent staff of some 250,000 men, not including the street and park keepers who, as State pensioners beyond the age of sixty, relieved the labour market of nearly three-quarters of a million of men. The number of extra hands which the eight hours' day brought into requisition in the railway service, where overwork in Jubilee period was the order of the day, raised the numbers employed to nearly half a million of men. Entire staffs throughout the country had to be, on some of the lines, nearly doubled. Whatever was the actual increase, it was sufficient to bear very beneficially upon the labour market. About three hundred and thirty thousand men were employed on the railways of the United {126a) Kingdom at the time prior to the Revolution. A census of the Twentieth Century found that vast railway service increased to four hundred and seventy thousand men. An increase of traffic rate followed so great a change. But the extra rates were as nothing compared to the improved service and the improved servitors. Moreover, the real prosperity of all classes of the population enabled them to bear increased charges, since they possessed increased means to meet them. In the increased demand for workmen must be taken into account the many minor avenues of labour, such as those for carmen, bus-drivers and con- ductors, cabmen, dockers, etc. It was no uncommon thing for those (127) workers to have to toil, in Jubilee slave-times, from twelve to THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 243 eighteen hours a day. Then the shop-assistant class had to be materially augmented ; although, in a large number of instances, the hours adopted by the tradesmen's Guilds, for opening and closing shops, brought them all into line with an eight hours' day, still, very many of the larger establishments had to increase their staffs considerably. 7. The would-not-work and the criminal classes were definitely dealt with by the Penal Colonies.* Their withdrawal did more than merely unburden the labour market of their thousands. It purified the whole of their surroundings as well. If we add to the above figures the number of pensioners over sixty years of age (500,000), and who were provided for by the national and other insurance funds, we find taken away from the Jubilee flooded labour market several millions of hands. It is now easier to convey to the reader how very naturally and facilely the per- manency of the labour contract adjusted itself. In fact, the difficulty was not with the masters. Such was the demand for labour on all sides, that inducements were offered to men beyond their union wages to accept a year's contract of service. The Labour Unions who, through their chiefs, were in constant communication with Carlyle Democritus, suggested to him to complete his great reforms by drawing up a scheme of profit- sharing, which would offer a counter attraction to the land, and which would finally cement masters and men. The Unions worked to a man with the Revolutionary Leader. Of the immense Revolution he had wrought, and the good it had effected, they so abundantly testified that by an unanimous vote they determined, with the approval of their men, to abide by the conditions of the Labour Code, and confine their entire attention to its universal establishment, and not seek to go beyond it unless Parliament and the country should first sanction the change (12S) Upon this great question of profit-sharing, Carlyle Democritus determined not to attempt any law which was not the dictate of necessity, because any such unwise policy would tend to destroy the value of other reforms. He, therefore, called a meeting of t!ie Guilds, and requested them to appoint a Committee of five to friendly conference with him. The great difficulty in obtaining labour, and the keen attraction which the land offered to the • Pages 162, 250. 244' THE ENGLISH DEVOLUTION OF people, supported his case more warmly than any eloquence. He showed the merchants how there was only one counter-attraction to offer to the soil, which gave to its tillers a just share in the benefits it produced, whilst the healthy and cheerful surroundings of a country life would day by day render its appreciation livelier to the people. He suggested that they should select one large manufactory to be conducted somewhat upon the principle which had been established in the agricultural produce factories,* which had proved such a marked success. Pending the manufacturers' decision upon such an experiment, it was decided that the Government should take no further steps with regard to the matter. Meanwhile he reminded them that it was the experience of them all that the eight hours' day had increased efficiency, had improved the relations between masters and men ; that not only the work was found to be better, but the quantity produced by each worker had likewise increased. After considerable negotia- tion on both sides, it was agreed between masters and men to try the system for one year, upon the condition that if, at the end of twelve months, the result did not commend itself to either party, the status quo should be established, and the code, minus the profit-sharing, should prevail as before. A majority of employers was to determine the question. After a year's trial, the result was declared a success by a majority of three-fifths of the employers. Thereupon profit-sharing was incorporated in the Labour Code, The division of profits was somewhat as follows : — Interest at five per cent, was a first charge on the capital employed in any under- taking, and a further two and a-half per cent, as a sinking fund for the redemption of capital. The Code labour wages remained as before. Any profit remaining, after the labour and interest charges, would then be equally divided between masters and men, that is to say, one-half to the capitalist or capitalists interested in the enterprise, and one-half to the labour engaged in it. The permanency of the labour contract was already assured by the great demand for labour, and now the union of interests between masters and men became finally cemented by the identity of interests of both parties. But the union of masters and men was not permitted to induce any relaxation of the rules of the great Tiabour Code. The eight hours' day could not be infringed. An * Pages 126, 127. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 245 average was permitted, times of stress might draw upon the daily hours a certain overtime, provided that these hours v/ere remitted at another period, and that the average annual work hours did not exceed the eight hours' day. In the event of a national demand for labour arising — as in war-time, for instance — that was pro- vided for in the reserve army; for the Government had its labour army reserve, just as it had its reserve in the fighting force. And they were furnished from the ranks of the pensioned Government employees. This reserve could not be called upon except in time of war, and it was this liability which secured to them the extra pension.* We now come to the question of a living or minimum wage. It may seem strange to the student of Jubilee labour ; but it is true that, although the Labour Code made twenty-five shillings the minimum weekly wage, and the labour contract an annual one, with a minimum of three months' notice on either side, or an equivalent money indemnity, such was the absorption of labour on the land and elsewhere, that, even at considerably above that minimum, it was difficult to ©btain hands. Yet let it be recorded to the honour of labour, that such was the loyalty and gratitude of the unions to the Revolutionary Government, that picked men in all branches of trade offered themselves in all the Government yards and factories, in spite of the temptation which the profit- sharing scheme held out to them in private industries. It would be difficult to find a more honourable tribute in the history of industry than that. Let only your brother man feel that you are his in sympathy ; that he is more to you than a thing to use and to be cast away uncared for when worn out — and con- flict will die away, and harmony succeed to it. Besides the eight hours' day and the annual labour contract, the new Code required a two weeks' holiday in the year for every labourer (not necessarily at any particular period) in addition to the religious festival days, such as Christmas, etc. Bank Holidays were abolished, as being no longer necessary. Wages were not allowed to be stopped during the holiday periods. The two weeks' rest a year was a minimum requirement of the Code, and no more difficulty was found in arranging it for labour than had attended its adoption ior clerks or domestic labourers in previous times. • Page 195. 246 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF National life, or the opportunities of worthy relaxation and recreation: — In the chapter on State employment some idea has been conveyed of the measures adopted by the Revolution ta substituto something better for the people than the diabolical gin-hells which they had destroyed. Public libraries, which were particular to some parishes in Jubilee period, were general after the Revolution in every parish throughout the kingdom. The management of the public-houses, which had been con- verted into restaurants, or inns, was made over to the Guilds which represented the provision-sellers and dealers. By them these establishments were conducted as public clubs, and were largely used as workmen's exchanges. The ground floor was a large refreshment-room, abundantly supplied with the daily and weekly papers, above was smoking-room, commercial-room, and other rooms which could be hired for trade meetings or otherwise. Except in the refreshment-room, at meals, no alcoholic drinks were sold. And as the people increased in well-being and prosperity, the old drink curse of Great Britain so completely disappeared, that within a very few years after the establishment of the Revolution- ary era, there remained only one inebriates' prison for the whole kingdom. The parks were the chief centres of attraction. All museums, gardens, and societies of Zoological and other collections were nationalised and made free to all. They were lighted throughout by electricity, as were the parks, and kept open until ten at night. The parks were cleared of all buildings other than the recreation and refreshment pavilions for the service of the public. Every athletic sport had its field allotted to it; and cricket, football, tennis, cycle, and training-grounds were all provided. There was also a reserve field for women, where gentler exercises could be indvdged in. And in every park the little children's field was never forgotten, with its miniature pond only twelve inches deep for toy fleets to sail upon, its sand and shingle reserves for tiny delvers to mine upon, and always a grass lawn of exquisite richness. Soft and safe was the emerald carpet, as carefully and daintily kept as ever was the best of palace lawns. Also there were lawns of daisy and clover flowers for the little chain-makers. The children's garden was always the sweetest and brightest nook in the park, sheltered by a hedge of beech and chestnut trees, and from the wind by a triple shrubbery of flower- ing plants; it was alive with bankb of merry flowers. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. i-*/ That feature of the parks was so dear to Carlyle Democritus that he personally examined the plans of nearly all of them, and visited many after their completion — the only recorded instance where the great General had been known to actually interfere in any mere detail work. He told the people that it was the sufferings of the little children in the cruel slums of Jubilee period that had called him to deliver them or die ; and that in all the Gospels there was no more penetrating depth of Divine nobleness and poetry than the Christ words, " Suffer the little children to come unto Me/' It remains in the records of those times that he exacted a promise from the great ones of the State that when his work time should cease in the world — if, when that time came, he was not to share the fate of earlier reformers, and be stretched on cross beams, or hung in gallows' chains — they would permit no other memorial to him but a little marble effigy in some of the children's grounds with that one Christ-line engraved upon it, and a little lad, emblematic of innocent confidence and love, close by him. But is this History? To return: In all the parks military and other bands played almost daily in fine weather. And there is a last mercy to be recorded — the regulation of park preaching. This was a terrible thing, and quite unregulated in the Jubilee period. Gangs of stump-orators, from the crazy nigger missionary to the more crazy white missionary, and an unending assortment of other demagogues of all complexions and fadderies, stationed themselves in the main avenues of the great parks, and there set up a cacophony of squeaky hymns, denunciation of everything and everybody (not of the mental or physical complexion of the specially illumined one); and altogether rendered the parks intoler- able to sane men. The Revolution had a great veneration for "free speech," though a less veneration for free lunatics. Still, they were anxious not to spoil a harmless occupation so long as it did not interfere with other people's comfort. Accordingly, a special field was set apart for the preaching gentry, and to prevent unseemly altercation between these instructors and exhorters of mankind, the preaching-field was made circular, and divided by radii into exact portions, one of which was allotted to each various sect who might apply for it. There was the Nigger section, the End-of-the- World preaching section, the Mission-to-Timbuctoo section, the Psalm-singers, Rights-of-Man, Political-economy, Rights- of-Property, Pope-infallibility, Amnesty-of-slum-prisoners, Restora- 248 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF tion of Jubilee landlords, sections. Also there were unending Societies : The Society for the Propagation of the Thirty-Nine Articles, of Laisser Faire ; a Society for the Restoration of Big- wigs and Little-wigs, of Jubilee lawmongers ; and a host of other societies and sections dear to such remaining Jubilee folk as might be found to exist after the establishment of the Reformation which this history is endeavouring to describe, and whose Park laws it has described in some detail in order to do justice to the great tolerance of the Revolutionary Government. Some months after the period described, the circular fields fell into disuse by any except the lecturers, and by them also, before a year was over. The fields were then converted into general play- grounds, but their circular form was retained, in case of future word-saviours arising, who might require such safety-valves for the release of their surplus gas, without disturbing or ofifending the peace of those who preferred not to listen to them. Labour CounTs op Arbitration or CoNCiLiATioif. (See also tinder the Chapter on Law.) The Courts of Arbitration which were such a valuable feature of the commercial world were not less so in the world of workers. In every trade centre such a Court was instituted. The arbitrators were elected by the various branches of the Trade Unions through their committees. The members of these Courts were called Arbitrators (M.C.A.), a title which after the Revolution became one of great honour, and from the various arbitrators throughout the kingdom some of England's greatest magistrates and judges came to be chosen. There were mixed Arbitration Courts for the hearing of cases between masters and men ; such mixed Courts consisting of the three senior members from the Labour Court of the particular trade concerned, and three seniors from the respective commercial or Guild Court. The rules and regulations in all these Courts were similar. Plaintifi" and defendant appeared in person ; no one was allowed to represent, or misrepresent, either side. Each Court or group of Courts supported and provided officials, whose duty it was to assist either side when required on points of detail or of law, and to generally facilitate the routine of tlic Courts. Common civ.lity and absence of red-tape were the distinguishing featui-es THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 249 of these officials, for the times of Jubilee had ceased to be. As in the case of the Trade or Guild Courts, so with the Labour Courts — the State upheld them, and no expense fell upon cither worker or trader. No difference was made in the scale of remuneration paid to the Labour, or the Guild, or the Professions' arbitrators.* The Revolution determined that justice should only have one scale of remuneration — that pertaining to the office, and irrespective of the status of the candidate. '^In every instance it was of the utmost importance that the greatest honour should lie in the office and title of arbitrator, and no efifort was spared to realise such a consummation. N"o member was eligible, or could continue to hold office, against whom any offence, social, political, pecuniary, or other, had been publicly proved. Thus was it also with the Courts of Honour, which were instituted with the labour representa- tives, as with other employments and professions. In every profession, trade, and labour centre, these Arbitration Courts, and Courts of Honour, were set up throughout the kingdom ; and as from their members were drawn the magistrates and judges, who became so renowned in later times for their wisdom, practical common sense, and often Salomaic judgments, it has been necessary to explain somewhat in detail the practical system upon which these — so to speak — ^judges' schools originated. It is perhaps impossible for a post-revolutionary reader to realise the infinite idiocy of the Jubilee system. No mortal who had any element of practical knowledge in him could ever be made a Jubilee judge. ''Reading," to wit :— Addison on Torts, Williams on Personal Property, Chitty on Contracts, Jarman on Wills, Williams on Real Property, Oliphant on Horses, Roper on Husband and Wife, Woodfall on Landlord and Tenant, Russell on Crime, somebody else on Executors, etc., those are samples of the law jabberies which, together with hundreds or thousands of volumes of " Reports " (Coke upon Lyttleton jargonings), and sundry milliona of " leading cases," and of 7??ts-leading cases, went to train and make a Jubilee judge — a stuffed wig-block, nothing more nor less, a mere thing of unending words and bottled nonsense. But let us not anticipate the Law chapter of this history. More pertaining to this division is the question of Labour Unions. These were no cause of dread to a wise legislator. Quite the contrary. The * Page 384. 250 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF ingenious and wonderful organisations which could bring the State at once and intimately into touch with any great branch of industry, through its self-appointed chiefs, were things to foster and support, not to oppose and ridicule. The Kevolution subsidised every independent Labour Union, upon condition that its doctrines or acts did not interfere with the liberty or constitution of any other Union. The State support took the form of a money grant.* In common with all public bodies, the finances of the Unions were subject to independent Government audit periodically. Agricultural Colonies and Settlements. In various parts of this history, many of the Revolutionary Measures dealing with the land have been referred to ; and here we shall only briefly recount them, in order to dwell more carefully on such portions of them as have not elsewhere been fully explained. Expressed in its most concrete form, the Revolution partitioned agricultural lands into three great divisions : — 1. Peasant Proprietories. 2. Penal and Reclamation Colonies. 3. Military t or Reclaimed Lands. The first, or peasant proprietories, were sub-divided into — (a) Allotments of from one to two acres, available for factory hands^ for cultivation as garden or agricultural plots, (h) Allotments of from three to five acres for miners and others, whose shorter hours of labour in dangerous or unhealthy callings afforded them and their families opportunity for healthier industry during a portion of their work-day. (c) Allotments of five acres and upwards for co-operative farming, afforesting, etc. All those holdings were granted, held, and protected under the land laws, a& set out in the land and other chapters. The second, or penal and reclamation colonies, were subdivided into four classes : — (a) The would-not-work-if-they-could-help-it — a large class, the sad result of generations of neglect — these were set to work, which has been fully described on page 168. Not was- this class permitted again, in any form, t» assert itself. Any per- son discovered "without visible means of support" was forthwith led before a magistrate, and failing to afford evidence of his means * Page 255. f Page 308. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 251 of honourable employment, was relegated to a reclamation colony. Idleness is a vice which no righteously organised social system dare tolerate. Whatever may have been the Jubilee theory of the " liberty of the subject," the Jubilee fact was that thousands of loafers teemed in every thoroughfare of the kingdom. That order of things departed after the Eevolution. The prime liberty of man then became liberty to tcorky not licence to no-work. Loafing, cadging, street-touting, became forgotten industries under the regime of a Carlyle Democritus. {h) The Criminal Class. This was also a not inconsiderable element of Jubilee society, and was to be counted by the tens of thousands.* To this class— after the most careful assorting of goats from sheep — was allotted such tasks as the embanking and dredging of rivers and harbours throughout the kingdom. With the increase of justice and well-being this class tended materially to decrease, if not altogether to disappear. Accordingly, all the prison sites chosen, and the structures designed and erected, were upon plans facilitating their easy conversion, at any time, into such buildings as the locality might require. In the meanwhile, each prison and penal labour depot received a distinct order of oflFenders. For first offences the prisoners were sent to a penal depot nearest the place of their conviction, and their labour day was nine hours. For second offences, the sentence was not only doubled, but the labour day was increased to ten hours. For third offences the minimum period of compulsory labour was ten years, with a labour day of twelve hours. After a fourth con- viction an offender lost his liberty for ever. In Jubilee period it was everyday experience for prisoners to be brought before magistrates scores and even hundreds of times, for the same petty offences. With regard to the crime of drunkenness, which, after the Revolution, was made in fact, as it was in act, one of the most bestial offences in man — it has been explained! that inebriates were condemned to loss of liberty for various periods. The first offence rendered them liable to labour in the home-work cf a penal depot; a second conviction condemned them to labour, for a day of nine hours, on outside work ; and a third conviction made them permanent prisoners, where they were compelled to labour according to the regulations of the Governor and Council. * Pages 387, 388. + Page 411. 252 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF Every prison, or depot, was ruled by a Governor appointed by the State, and a Council of three appointed by the County Council of the division in which the prison was situated. The criminal law of Carlyle Democritus differed widely from what had prevailed in pre-revolutionary times. Such scandals as were rife under the Jubilee system were not possible under the Kevolutionary Code. Jubilee criminals were quite a recognised * and even feted class. They had their " criminal suppers " fostered by the heart- without- head, or philanthropic class ; and untold numbers of old women in petticoats, and other old women in male attire — and magisterial old women especially — smugged and snuffled over the "hardened criminal " whom they were never tired of trying to "reform." Carlyle Democritus reformed both the " old women " and the hardened criminals out of existence, that is to say, out of that particularly prominent and public existence which they had occupied in Jubilee times. After five years of the Revolutionary treatment of criminals, the repetition offenders absolutely disappeared. A second experiment in hard labour on mud embankments sufficed even for the "hardened criminals;" for there were no longer any criminal supper parties, no delicate ass-pattings for " hardened criminals," in any shape or form. Humane treatment, wholesome but very plain food and shelter, the sternest of discipline, and the hardest of work. Early in the twentieth century such a thing as a third offender was become as rare as a barrister's wig, or an old woman magistrate's apostrophising an incorrigible rogue and vagabond before him for the seventieth or seven hundredth offence: "I am sorry to see you here again ; when I see the same faces again and again it shows that the 'remedies' I try have no effect; there- (120) iiow, go and don't do it again." That was an actual and by no means exceptional Jubilee case. The scoundrel referred to had spent some twenty years in prison. The next day you would find a Jubilee magistrate sentencing a wretched starving woman, with five children to support on three or four shillings a week, to seven days' imprisonment, because one of her three-year-old children had stolen a rag from a pawnbroker, and in spite of the fact that the poor, half-starved creature had, upon her own initiative, taken back the rag to said pawnbroker, t Cases were so numerous of this • Page 387-389. t Pago 368. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 253 description that one of the Jubilee Society slander papers used to indulge the class of readers for whom it catered with a column devoted entirely to the infamous "judgments" of magistrates throughout the country. These judgments, read in the light of these civilised post-revolutionary times, seem like the ravings of some court of mere mud-imps. Hundreds of cases of men fined a few shillings for almost bashing their wives to pieces ; whilst women, and often young children, were mercilessly sentenced for stealing crusts to feed their hunger with. Such was Jubilee justice — capped by the liberty of any number of Society thieves to rob the poor of their earnings by means of endless quack nostrums and " Building " or other " Society " scoundrelries.J Carlyle Democritus defined Jubilee law as " Freedom for the rich to rob the poor, crime for the poor to beg of the rich." In the Revolutionary penal colonies that barbarous law was somewhat reversed, and you would find on the penal mud-banks hundreds of the old Jubilee swindling directors, side by side with the other common thieves, housebreakers, etc. The longest sentences were not any more for the wretches brought to crime by ignorance, evil example, and want, but for the souUess gold-thief, hatching, in comfort, his devil's plans to despoil the hard workers of their thrifty savings. All that of the criminal law, whereof more anon. There is one last division of the agricultural colonies too memor- able to be passed over — the issue of the reclamation works — i.e. the reclaimed lands. Thousands of acres of lands reclaimed from waste into rich and beautiful labour settlements were becoming year after year available for permanent colonisation ; and a notable use was made rf them. They were reserved by the Government as national or military settlements, upon which were drafted regiment after regiment of the military and naval troops, with their families and belongings. The management of these colonies diff'ered only from that of the peasant proprietories in that the tenure of the lands was temporary instead of permanent. After payment of outgoings, all the profits of the farms were divided amongst the men who worked them, and in this manner a worthy field of labour was provided for the army and navy time- expired men, reserve drafts, etc., as will be more particularly explained in the chapters dealing with the Army and Navy. CHAPTER IV.—(conftnued). NATIONAL INSURANCE. Whatever was the importance of tlie many reforms and institutions introduced by Carlyle Democritus, he regarded them all as sub- ordinate to this one. The right to labour and live may be regarded as the very bone-structure of a social system, upon which aU its parts are built. Man who has been born into a world without pre-knowledge or assent is entitled to a portion in that world. He finds it occupied by others who have arrived before him, with not a superior, only a similar title. In a rude age his strength would command a share, or his weakness invite destruction. In a civilized age justice has taken the place of mere brute force; and reqiiires that, upon equitable terms, the right of every man to work be recognised. What the skin is to the human form, holding its parts whole and perfect, and protected by a mysterious sensitiveness, called pain, against injury, must the national protection of a people be in a complete and well-governed State. No man, woman, or child was exempt from the operation of the far-reaching system of national insurance. "Time and chance happeneth to them all," and regard not age or sex. It is not more impossible for Fortune to l)ring the high-born into the gutter than for the fickle thing to raise up the poorest beggar to Mammon heights, or depths. Jubilee Era had her broken rich as well as her broken poor. The motto of the State Insurance Scheme was : "From each according to his means, to each according to his needs ; " thus St. Simon, thus also Carlyle Democritus. The National Insurance was comprised under three great divisions, which dealt with accident or misfortune, old age, and death. But before going further into the matter, it is essential to observe that the Revolution not only provided against this scheme inter- fering with individual effort, but it took precautions against ENGLISH KE VOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 255 interfering, otherwise than beneficially, with any existing insurance or benefit society. By clear and plain-spoken manifesto it explained to all men that the National Insurance would but create a minimum provision for decayed citizens, and that it behoved all prudent and forethinking men to add to the necessarily narrow State provision by individual thrift and insurance. It was to encourage such thrift that the State subsidised every Labour Union and Friendly Society, to the extent of paying to them a bonus of one-tenth of the net annual subscriptions they collected from their members for insurance against accident, sickness, old age, and death. How THE State Insurance Rate was levied, COLLECTED, AND PAID. To the National Insurance Fund was devoted the balance which remained (after the Navy additions) of the great Requisition ; but as the many other reforms had drawn heavily upon that great gold harvest, a terminable loan known as the State Insurance Fund was raised to assist the scheme, until it had become long enough established to be self-supporting. This State Insurance was the only rate which was not a graduated one, the reason being that those contributors who paid on the larger incomes would be likely to be the less frequent callers upon the fund. Not only was the Insurance rate payable by every adult without exception, but every father had to pay one-tenth of the rate due from himself for each of his children, from its first year up to such time after its fifteenth year as the child should become a wage-earner, when the rate, one per cent., would become leviable on his own earnings. It was only by making the Insurance rate thus universally applicable that the old evil of unmitigated poverty could be absolutely conquered. That poverty which consists in being less rich than one's neighbour, or in being not rich at all, is beneficial rather than harmful. But Jubilee poverty, which meant starvation, or its near approach, was an order of cruelty to be overcome at any cost. It was also an advantage, and no dis- advantage, that a parent should be responsible for the insurance of each child he brought into the world. Small as the payment was, it helped to remind all men of their responsibilitj', and tended to modify the unwisdom of indiscriminate philoproductors. 256 TEE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF As has already been stated, the rate was levied upon all, because it could never be known how fortune might forsake even the wealthiest, and find him unprovided for. But although the rate was leviable upon all, it was not always payable to all, any more than every householder who pays for the insurance of his house against fire can claim compensation if his house be not burnt. The Insurance rate was collected by the State at the same time and by the same method as prevailed with regard to all other rates and taxes. But the payments made under the scheme were — as far as concerned accident, sickness, or disaster — made through the Trade Unions and Guilds, as well as through the agency of permanent committees of the various Local Authorities, It was of vital importance to this valuable measure that it should not be abused, and stern punishment fell upon the malingerer, or other fraudulent applicant. The minimum punishment for such an offence was heavy fine, and three months' imprisonment and labour in a penal settlement. Applications to the Insurance Fund in cases of disablement had to be made to one of the authorities mentioned, who, upon due proof, assessed the amount of relief to be paid to the applicant. The maximum weekly allowance was ten shillings. The Board had to inquire and decide as to the means of the applicant, as well as his ailment. Cases could only be entertained where the normal wages, or earnings, of the applicant were less than double the minimum legal wage. None of the State Insurances in any way touched the liability of employers, or others, for the due care and protection of their men. Xor could any money paid to an injured person, under the State Insurance scheme, be considered in estimating the compensation due to him by those responsible for his injury. The old-age pension came out of the same fund, as did also the provision for widows and children in case of a worker's untimely death by accident or disease. It was not many years after the establishment of the Revolu- tion before this class became almost the only one to draw to any large extent upon the National Insurance Funds, the high rate of wages and the profit-sharing system having lifted the great majority of workers above the need of State help. Somewhat similar rules applied to the payment of Old Age pensions as has been explained in reference to the disablement funds; but every worker over sixty years of age was entitled to a THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. . 257 pension, if his means required it. The pension commenced at 8s. a week, which was the amount paid to workers whose wages had varied between 25s. and 40s. In order to encourage thrift, sixpence extra was paid for every half-crown additional insurance which a labourer had either, through one of the Trade Unions, Societies, or Insurance Offices, secured by his personal effort. The maximum payable on the incomes referred to was ten shillings a week. Although at sixty years a worker was entitled to the Old Age pension, it was not compulsory upon him to give up active service and become a pensioner. The improved physique of post-revolutionary workers found many men strong and desirous of continuing active service after their sixtieth year ; but directly a man became an Old Age pensioner, he had to relinquish work altogether as far as the general labour market was concerned, otherwise his competition would necessarily have tended to injure the wages' rates. There were two exceptions to this rule : The park and street keepers,* the remuneration for whose service doubled their allowance, supplied them with uniforms, and freed them from payment of rent; thus bringing their income up to that of fully paid labourers, in a field apart from competitive employment. The other exception was the labour employed in Government yards and factories. These men received from the Government an additional Old Age pension equal to one- half of the amount paid to them under the State Insurance Scheme. In exchange for this extra rate, they were liable to be called upon to serve up to the completion of their sixty-fifth year in the event of any emergency. They formed the labour army-reserve of the State. In the event of their services being required, they received the full wage of the department they were allotted to. With regard to the insurance remuneration afforded to those who, in the higher ranks of life, fell into indigence, their cases were examined by the Local Insurance Board, or the Guild, or Professional Council, to which they might belong ; and accord- ing to the decision of those bodies the award was fixed, from a weekly allowance of 15s, to a maximum of £3. All insurances were personal and inalienable, and the severest penalties attached to any attempt at infringing this so necessary protection. Any person attempting to barter with, or bartering for, or in any way * Pages 196-199. 258 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF anticipating or attempting to anticipate, a State Insurance, was liable to a minimum fine of ten times the amount involved, and a minimum period of three months' imprisonment with penal labour. The limit of age in the public service was not voluntary on the part of the server. At sixty years, or in exceptional cases, sixty- five years, all public officers, high and low, had to retire. All public salaries carried pensions with them. Those pensions were really deferred pay ; for it had been found that improvidence was by no means confined to the humbler workers ; some of the best paid officers of the State in Jubilee times were not only penniless in their old age, but cribbled by debt as well. Their salaries, therefore, were rather less in post-revolutionary times than they had been before. But their Old Age pensions were fuller. And it should be here said that with regard to all pensions, or pay- ments from State Insurance Funds, any case of proved waste, or incompetency on the part of a pensioner to deal rightfully with his pension as regards those dependent upon him, caused the amount to be payable to the wife, or other responsible party, according to the judgment of the Insurance Board or Honour Courts. With regard to the compulsory retirement of all officials, it may be said that if the State might chance to lose the service of some exceptionally late-budding genius, it gained on the other hand the life-stirring effect of brisk and healthy circulation in the national body, the invigorating influence of fresh blood, the sinewy strength produced by adequate opportunities of promotion. Set aU that off against the Methuselahs Avho filled high offices at Jubilee period. Let us take the year 1894. Its list of senilities included a Minister of eighty-four, a Privy Councillor of ninety-five, a Commander-in- Chief of the British Army of seventy-five,* a Member of Parliament past ninety-two, a Judge of seventy -seven, many other judges past threescore and ten, bishops of ninety-one, eighty-three, seventy- three, and a host of others long past the age of usefulness, more (130) fit for a nursery than any position of command. 'No law was more inexorable than the State service retirement law. Only by a two- third's majority of his peers voting in secret ballot, upon their own initiative, could any officer of a Government or State department, civil, military, naval, or political, continue his service beyond the completion of his sixtieth year, and, even Avith that sanction, never • Page 307. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 259 tjeyond the completion of his sixty-fifth year. In war time only was any modification of this law, in emergency, permitted. With regard to child-life insurance, the fruitful cause of cruel neglect and murder in Jubilee period,* any such insurance other than that provided by the State was by law forbidden. And the State- Insurance could not induce the most soulless parent to crime, since a child's death brought loss, and not gain, to its parent. The old ■excuse for child-life insurance, viz. expense of burial, was removed by this service having become a national one. Most of the burial ;grounds had, even in Jubilee times, belonged to the Municipal Corporations. After the Revolution they were all taken over by ihese Bodies, who also carried out the service connected with the removal and burial of the dead. There was one law for poor and lich alike in this last office. No burial grounds were permitted inside large towns or cities ; the distance of the grounds compelled 'mourners to meet at the cemeteries, and not at the houses of the deceased, as had formerly been the custom, an excuse for wasteful display of all manner of hideous black mummeries through the public thoroughfares, a wasteful tax on the rich, and a ruinous one -on the poor. Individual superstitions were not interfered with, -and each various religious sect was allotted its separate portion of a cemetery, if it desired to have it, where it might perform its genuflexions and mummeries as it listed. But gradually the pure and simple State service recommended itself to all classes, and " God's Acre " came to be recognised as the peace-home where for ever ended childish differences. In any event, no difference was permitted between the poorest and the richest, as far as record was concerned ; over each grave a small, simple, white marble headstone hoxQ the name, birth-, and death-place, date of birth and death, of the deceased. No other memorial was permitted, nor was any •diflference allowed in the position of the graves. They followed ^ne another as the people died, and the rich lay side by side with the poor. The English cemeteries after the Revolution became known as the great Republics of the dead. Not the greatest in the land was permitted burial in a church, were he king, or Carlyle Democritus himself. Indeed, this giant spirit had exacted a promise from his ministers that when Ms time should come, they would lay him beside the poorest who should * Pages 395-398, and 401. 260 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF chance to depart on the same day. Terence Grey, buxied at Purbeck, was the last man buried in a church, and the explanation seems to be that he died before the law was passed, but more probably that the Purbeck folk built the church over his tomb. Dangerous or Unhealthy Trades. Wherever the risk to life and health, consequent upon working in dangerous trades, could be overcome by shortening the hours of work, precautionary arrangements within the factories, and open- air occupation for a portion of the workers' time — in such trades rules were enforced, some of which are about to be indicated. But such materials as white phosphorus and arsenic, whose baneful effects could not be overcome, were forbidden to be used in British manufactories. At the same time, an Import tariff upon any articles of foreign manufacture compounded of, or containing such forbidden materials, was imposed, its rate being determined by the Guild or Guilds representing the goods affected. In all trades and employments where the danger to health or life could be overcome by wise and merciful regulations and conditions, such were every- where enforced. At the same time, the working men (no women were under any circumstances allowed to engage in dangerous trades), and masters, were honourably protected against the com- petition of foreign goods, manufactured under conditions which ignored the value of the worker's life, and considered only the cheapness of the thing produced. The list of trades, declared even in Jubilee times to be hazardous to human life, but nevertheless permitted to sacrifice the health and lives of untold numbers of women as well as of men, included such industries as lead in nearly all its branches, pottery, linen, glazed wares, matches, etc. In some of those trades two hours was the maximum which a strong man could work without detriment to his health. In none of them was the number of work hours allowed to exceed four. In reasonable proximity to all manufactories of the before mentioned articles, co-operative farms were established, upon similar conditions to those described elsewhere,* andnolabourer could be employed in any dangerous trade who was not fitted to complete his daily occupation in the field. For, strange as it may seem, legislation of the twentieth century regarded human life as a * Page 126, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 261 sacred trust, held it more in regard than the most venerable doctrines of political-economy Banshees. One life saved from degrading misery, phosphorus torture, or lead palsy, out-equalled, to a Carlyle Democritus, a whole world of " buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest " doctrines. He imbued all his followers and every earnest thinker in the kingdom with the divine conviction that man was made in the image of God; and woe unto him or them who dared to desecrate that Eternal likeness. In the cruel times of Jubilee it was a common thing to see a few hundreds of bedizened women at a Court reception, the upper part of them half naked except for bits of silly stones or shells out-costing an Empire's ransom. And jibbering at the side of these undressed things silk-stockinged men, plastered in gold braid and such trappings, the cost of each one of these Jubilee ape-things out-vieing a whole season's slave-wages of any dozen half-starved slum-folk huddled in sacks and rags. And those were the rulers of these ! ** Be not misled, my people," said Carlyle Democritus ; ^' I tell you as a gospel of God that the jewelled nakedness of those Jubilee women was an outrage on the modesty of all woman- hood, and the ape-men were a scorn and a reproach to the dignity and wisdom of mankind. But beyond all infamy, deeper than all disgrace, was the state of the Jubilee toilers, the slum-victims, dying for food. Whilst there is one neglected child in all a country, there lives a reproach to that country. "What then is the corruption and foulness of that State where tens of thousands of children pine, and millions of women and men nearly starve whilst all that mummery stalks in broad daylight ? It shall end, or it shall mend, shall that State." There was no difficulty in establishing the two hours' shifts for dangerous trades. Large farms were reserved in the neighbour- hood of the factories carrying on such trades, and, upon the regimental labour system, the various drafts were changed with all -the simplicity of discipline which such a system admits. Three acres of land were reserved in each farm for every worker in the "dangerous trade" factories, and the whole farm was let upon special terms by the State to the factory-owners ; they contained •in all cases ample reserve allotments in case of future extension of any individual manufactory — the reserves in the meanwhile being 4eft as pasture-land for sheep or cattle. Where any trade could 262 THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OF not be rendered innocuous even on the two hours' system, it was- forbidden. Apprenticeship. The rules of apprenticeship in all trades were so nearly the same- as those which had been established in the Government and Municipal factories and employments, that further reference might have here been dispensed with, were it not that the system was made applicable, not only to trades and manufactures, but to alJ professions and occupations. To have insisted upon an architect, a doctor, a pastor, or a dentist, an electrician, or an engineer, or any professional man, accepting from one to three raw youths for a period of five years would have been impossible. But to prevent any wight entering any profession who had not previously served a five years' practical training — that was possible. And that the Revolution made law. And in order to prevent any future dearth of training schools, where masters declined to accept apprentices^ the State provided — in conjunction with the Guilds — ample means of apprenticing lads to all professions as well as trades. And these State apprenticeships were free, as were all avenues of education. It was left to the Guilds, in conjunction with the various Unions, or professional Associations, to decide upon all details of apprentice- ship ; but great precautions were adopted by the State reserving to itself powers of representation on the various Boards, in order to preserve the free admission of apprentices who were unable to obtain private teaching. Ko Jubilee quack could be tolerated in any calling. To him who was without the needful outfit the wide field of labour was open, where training awaited him in that to which he could set his hand. There was no limit to the age at which a man might enter an apprenticeship ; the youth entrance limit was the completion of his fourteenth year. For one year after a lad's service there was no pay : the second year he was paid one-quarter the minimum adult wage; the third year one-half of the mini- mum ; the fourth and fifth years and until his majority three- quarters. The necessity for such an apprenticeship law was too manifest to require much setting forth in these pages. The unanimity with which the law was approved by masters and men in every avenue of labour is its best justification. Or, if better is required, it is to be found in the unending wail of the quack THE TWENTIETH CENTUEY. 2G3 doctor, quack pill-maker, quack electrician, quack engineer, quack everything and body, who — as is usual in such cases — yielded not up their muddy ghosts without huge noise of bladder bursting in all directions. One result of properly paid and equipped labour was to render annecessary a great many of the products of Jubilee philanthropy. Thus there quietly died out untold number of almshouses, ragged schools, charity schools, and hospitals. Do not start, reader. The hospital, the most honoured of Jubilee achievements, really died, a slow and gradual, but sure and unrasurrectionary death. It came about quite naturally. Every artisan's dwelling of large dimensions had its own properly salaried medical adviser, male and female ; it had also its own infirmary, isolated not only for the sake of the others' health, but in order to ensure for the sufferer entire quiet and continuous care. It thus came about that with the improved housing, feeding, and general environment of the workers they became as healthy as the most favoured of Jubilee folks. Or, if they fell ill, they found not only a decent home and loving hands to tend them, but a Avonderful sick-fund provided by the State Insurance, Avhich their own thrift in many cases further increased, so that the hospital, in the course of time, became no more necessary to the poor man than it did to the rich man. With the disappearance of the hospitals the fine old custom grew up again of doctors personally training their own students. It was no longer possible to practise only on the poor, as in Jubilee times. That species of philanthropical vivisection had become a thing of the past. Hospitals were not killed ; they died. They were the least of all the Jubilee sins. But do not let there be any mistake in classifying them as the result of an evil system — for that they were. In an altered form the best of them were remodelled as colleges. Where necessary, a division of them continued their valuable aid in cases of street accidents, but no longer as charitable institutions. After the Revolution they were uniformly managed by the Guild of Physicians and Surgeons, and supported by the State. Labour Savings. The Revolution numbered the halcyon days of the chartered thieves and scoundrels whom Jubilee laisser-faire let loose in all directions to gull and feed upon the public* " Caveat empior : " ♦ Pages 367-376. 264 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF " Purchaser, beware, for I am licensed by Britannic Government to delude, defraud, debauch, and gouge thee utterly. For one penny- halfpenny the British Government will 'protect' my grain of poison plus twenty grains of soap, and authorise me to sell it to thee as Pill of Paradise warranted to cure all the iUs that thou, and the rest of foolish mankind, are heir to." For such a trivial fee the British Government let Italian thieves sell plain, undiluted water as " certain cure for cancer," at 3s. 6d. for one ounce. •' It must be right," thought poor Jubilee folk, " and not a fraud, for upon the bottle is the British Government stamp." And well- paid British newspapers, one of them conducted by quite a holy and pious man, declared the water to be of marvellous, and of (131) even miraculous power.* Bogus-building Societies, as fraudulent as the grain of poison plus twenty grains of soap, robbed the artisan of his life-long earnings, members of Parliament "directing" the scandalous things.* Everywhere Barrabas King and Jesus stoned. most damnable and iniquitous state of things ! The shilling pickpocket pounced upon and punished, but the ruiner of thousands tolerated and let go free. Fraud for a penny quickly caught in the toils of the Jubilee law meshes, but fraud for a million rewarded with a peerage. Enough, enough ! Company promoters under the Revolution had to satisfy the Committee of the Financial Guild that they were solvent men ; that — for each one of them — three sureties were forthcoming to answer for the capital they required to be intrusted to their hands. The law laid down that every person concerned or interested in the formation of a Company should be held responsible for every statement appearing in the prospectus, or other document, which heralded its inception. No director, or other managing person, was eligible to serve upon any Company until he had furnished security, personal or real, with the Board of Trade to the full value of the share which — taking the whole number of directors of the Company as an unit representing the capital of the Company — in his person he represented. It is interesting to contrast such laws with the evidence afforded by the " Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade " in the Victorian year 1894. Said that worthy gentleman: "Joint Stock Com- panies were created with the intention of producing shares and * Pages 372-373. THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. 265 nothing else. In one year (just passed) two thousand six hundred and seventeen Companies were registered with a nominal capital of one hundred and twelve millions sterling. An enor- mous number of Companies had gone to smash. Year after year Companies were floated of which the object was merely floatation.' To float, viz. the earnings of toil into the pockets of chartered thieves, protected or tolerated, by Jubilee Board of Trade, or other section of Jubilee Political- Economy " Government." Not only those villainous Joint Stock thieves were brought to book, and their brutal trade quenched utterly, and for ever ; but instead of Members of Parliament and Ministers being able to sell their names to such concerns, in order to entice poor folk — who were simple enough to think that common honesty was a desideratum of high office — after the Revolution it was forbidden to any man, holding public ofiice or representation, to be connected in the management of a public Company.* More will be seen of these laws under the chapter which deals with the Legislature. "With regard to Foreign Loans, the Govern- ment also stepped in to protect the Nation. The Revolution divided Foreign Loans into two categories — one industrial, which fell under the ordinary Company law, and rendered the Directors individually and collectively responsible to their shareholders (and only responsible men were permitted to serve as Directors) for the capital they were inviting ; the other concerned State Leans, and required the Foreign State, who desired to borrow, to guarantee due payment of its interest to the British Government, as well as to its shareholders. The Revolutionary Leaders would not consent to tacitly see hundreds of millions of British capital squandered by Greek, Portuguese, Turk, and other fraudulent Foreign Govern- ments; and it took, moreover, a step to recover much that had already been lost. What that step was will be found under the chapter on Foreign Affairs. Here need only be cited, that ample measures were taken to prevent fraudulent dealing by British Stock Exchanges, or Stock personages, in defiance of British laws, protective of common honesty. Such measures ran upon some- what similar lines to those established in the general trade market, which prevented the importation of foreign shoddy to compete with pure Home manufactures. The dealer in any stocks or • Page 423. 266 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. shares not held to be bona fide by the Financial Guild and the Board of Trade, rendered the dealer liable in full for subsequent fraud or repudiation of the stock dealt in. Caveat venditor was uni- versal in finance as in British Trade, and the gangs of Home and Foreign Company swindlers, who in Jubilee times could " float " an acre of African mudland as a " gold mine," found their occupa- tion gone. The trade of sharks and exploiters upon ignorance and innotence had an end. Bona fide enterprise was not restricted, quite the opposite, was in every way encouraged. The State was a very Queen Elizabeth to all true enterprise, just as it was an avenging Nemesis upon all that was not true CHAPTER V. TOILERS OP THE DEEP. In Jubilee Period — some time in the j'ear 1894 — close by the- Board of Trade Shipping Offices, a party of great Jubilites and philanthropites •' opened " — a process common in those times — a^ house of refuge for stray seamen. Said house was not new, was^ indeed a good half-century old, and had, during that long period, furnished " straw beds and broken meat to destitute sailors." But £400 having converted a decayed philanthropic Institution into more decent philanthropic Institution, new "opening" became necessary, and the great ones of the land " interested in shipping '" did duly attend and blow trumpets, more or less loudly, in praise of Philanthropy in general, and the present specimen of it in particular. The Head and Chief of the British Chamber of Commerce, M.P., addressed his brother-M.P.s, and the other notabilities assembled there, and the destitute sailors also. And he said, amongst other things, that : " Seafaring men added to the national wealth from between seventy millions to one hundred millions sterling a year, consequently it was obligatory on those who stayed at home to look after their welfare. At the shipping offices close by fifty thousand men were annually 'paid ofif.'" (132> " Paid oflf ! " Whither 1 — " Many of the fifty thousand will answer you if you ask them," said a voice from the ranks of the paid-off ones. •' But you must seek them in the dens of Slum-land, or in the Government annual returns of deaths from starvation, or in the suicides' grave." Shouts of " Turn him out." Decorous silence is restored, and Philanthropy speaks: "We who are here to-day representing the Government, the Chamber of Commerce, and the British people generally, having tacitly agreed to close our eyes on such old-world theories as human justice, and adopted the more modern theories of casual employment, survival of the fittest, devil' 267 268 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF take-the-hindermost — plus Philanthropy — now make proof of our keen sympathy with the * fifty thousand men annually paid off at the shipping offices close by,' after having enriched the country by some hundred millions or so a year, and we do now, by the item four hundred pounds, propose to quit us of our admitted responsibility." After a pause, during which faint murmurs of applause struggled for utterance in the throats of some of the men, but sounded more like the death-rattle of choking sea victims, there rose from the assembled crowd the same worn, sorrowful-looking, but passion- inspired son of the sea, who had before interrupted. He bore upon the cap which he held in his clenched right hand a small red cross, not unknown to readers of this history. With a voice which commanded attention, partly by virtue of its terrible earnestness, partly by the spell-binding surprise which his sudden speech created, the man boiled forth : " Be damned to your broken meat, your straw beds, and your four hundred pounds ; give us justice ! " lie could say no more. Half-a-dozen policemen — not then mem- bers of the Kevolutionary League — put the maddened sailor out, and he continued his address that night, and other nights, to an audience less philanthropical, with the results already known to the readers of this history. The total audience which the sea- faring branch of the Revolutionary League had to arouse numbered in Jubilee time about four hundred thousand men. The Merchant Navy accounted for two hundred and fifty-five thousand of all grades ; and the fishermen, boatmen, and others attached to the water-industry, some seventy-five thousand. Say altogether three hundred and thirty thousand toilers engaged in an industry perhaps the notablest and noblest of all the callings of mortal men. If omnipotence of word-deluge and immensity of legal and other verbosity could afi"ord a proof that the Jubilee legislative machine also regarded the seafaring classes as worthy of something better than mere philanthropy, such proof is not wanting ; for there exists amongst the wastepaper archives of the Jubilee Era, preserved in the Revolutionary Museum, room 793, reference number 25,987, a Jubilee Parliament " Bill," which the encyclopaedic catalogue thus describes : " Merchant Shipping Consolidation Bill, specimen (13,796) of Jubilee legislation. Exact period of incubation un- certain ; authorities vary between thirteen years and seven years ; I robably exceeded a decade. Was reported to Parliament Anno 1894. Contains 800 clauses, in addition to the usual quantity of THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 269 whereats, bys, wherefores, moreovers, and inasmuches. Of its 800 clauses, 690 are lawyer-jargoned and sense-smothered, so that their precise meaning cannot be ascertained. With the exception of twenty-three clauses, — each clause affords and invites opportunity to litigation, varying from seventy-three opportunities in some clauses to thirteen in others. A careful examination of the actual practical value of the measure was made by a Committee of naval and business men, appointed by Carlyle Democritus in the year 19 — ; and they reported that what was material and valuable in the Bill could be printed, in plain English, on a single folio sheet. A copy of the Bill was kept in the ' House of Detention for legal prisoners,' who attempted to ' practise ' after the New Code was established. The punishment consisted in the legal prisoners being compelled to read from 100 to 200 clauses of the BiU with- out stopping, but the punishment had to be discontinued, owing to the remaining reason of the prisoners giving way. Nine- tenths of the BiU is mere clotted nonsense, or law chopping. This was only a Jubilee BILL; before such a Bill could become a Jubilee LA W it had to be set upon by at least 200 more lawyers in the two Parliaments, after which process it would be called an ACT. Such process would probably occupy from thirteen to thirty-three months, by which time the 800 clauses would be turned into some 900, and any accidental plain English, unpro- ductive of litigation, appearing in any clause, be purged out of it. The cost of Jubilee legislation would sometimes run into hundreds of thousands of pounds, most of which went into the lawyers' pockets." (133) The sea does not always give up its dead, else were there many Port Tarrocks to horrify the just, and answer why one sailor out of every seventy was drowned in British ships, and only one out of 350 in foreign ones.* The Port Tarrock was "wrecked" in the Jubilee year 1894. Wrecked, by the "Hand of God," or by the hand of mani She was a large vessel of 1300 tons, carrying 5000 yards of canvas, to be taken in if a stoim. or a squall arose. To man that British vessel there were twenty-one "hands," including the captain; six of the twenty-one were mere lads, five of whom had never been to sea before. One of the men also had never been to sea, another committed suicide on the * See page 314. 270 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF voyage. Of the remaining thirteen it is enough to quote the last written words of one of the poor drowned boys — the voice from yjg^N the dead — without whose letter this sea tragedy had never been known. For three months they were without fresh meat of any sort. From October in the year 1 892 until the wreck in 1894, wrote the lad : " We have not had one properly cooked meal, and if our crew had been a British one there would have been a mutiny. Exhausted by overwork and semi-starvation, all the hands suffering from scurvy, the Captain nearly dead, and every one of us either lame or footsore, hungry, and without food," they were driven on a lee shore in Ireland in a winter storm, and there released from further misery, by death. That was in Jubilee England in the year 1894. **At night, to watch the vessel and control those 5000 yards of canvas, if a storm came on, there were one man, and four boys, who had never been to sea before." Do you wonder, reader, why five times •more men went down in British ships than in foreign ones ? Why, hj one English firm, 400 foreigners " who would not agitate " were taken on in one week and 400 British sailors discharged ! * Like the coroner's inquests ashore, the sea at times gave up its dead, and revealed, by death, the iniquity of Jubilee Mammonism : — Towards Jubilee year 1894 six steamers disappeared in a storm ; some inquiries showed that one of the vessels was 2700 tons' register. At three men to the hundred tons, she would require a crew of eighty-one men; her entire crew actually consisted of twenty-four "hands." Hands, reader, is a Jubilee word not implying able seamen, but too often including "absolutely incompetent foreigners," "boy apprentices, and others who had never been to sea." Like the poor little Jubilee insured children, who were " worth more dead than living,"! — that 2700 ton ship and her undermanned crew, who may yet appear at a Judgment (■131a) Court not of Jubilee type, was very well insured. But not insured were the widows and orphans of the drowned "hands." Another of the six "lost" vessels was 1868 tons' register. She had a crew .<134b) of twenty-five "hands" on board; three men per hundred tons register would have required fifty-five men. A third of the lost vessels was 1933 tons register, requiring, at three men per hundred tons, a crew of fifty-eight men ; instead, she had only twenty-three .(134c) "hands." * Page 314. f Page 396. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 271 Remember, reader, that the requirement of three men per hundred tons is no fancy figure. It is not only the proper require- ment for a thoroughly well-appointed vessel; but a noted ship- owner tried to convince a Eoyal Commission that the number of men in our merchant steamers actually was in that proportion. Nay, (134 J) that worthy gentleman waxed quite indignant when the Mariners' Society* gave his evidence the lie. (I3ie) One of the many foreign sailors employed in British ships, a Turkish sailor, a Turk probably in more ways than one, sent a letter to his masters, which was no doubt a very wicked letter, and had not a word of truth in it, but it is nevertheless worth quoting : — ** He asked for payment for the loss of his clothes, and stated (1340 that he and others knew that the steamship which had gone ashore on the Indian coast and become wrecked, was allowed to drift for the purpose of being wrecked. A number of the men could swear to hearing the second mate say that the captain was bribed by the owners to lose the vessel. The letter was signed by the Turkish sailor and two other sailors of the ship." All that is but evidence of the poor sailors. Let us hear the evidence of the masters. Here is the signed statement of an officer of the Royal Navy Reserve, written from the offices of the Shipmasters' Society in late Jubilee times : — "With ample means of judging before me, I do not hesitate to (i35) assert that undermanning of sailing-ships and steamers is of frequent occurrence, and is rife to a very large extent. To send or take a ship to sea insufficiently manned is not an offence against common or statute law." [It is an offence against common and uncommon law for a starving child to steal bread, but for a rich shipowner to murder his seamen is no offence. Dost thou commence to understand why one out of seventy British sailors was annually drowned at sea, British reader ?] " The Board of Trade" [with the ministerial chief. Right Hon. M.P., anxious not to be examined under Clause 8 of the Companies Winding-up Actf] — " the Board of Trade returns in respect to ships' crews are unreliable. Look at their evidence before the Royal Commission, Whilst the then President of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom was asseverating that there were three men put on board ship to every hundred tons' register, at that very • Page 272, f Page 369. 272 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF moment, in London alone, there were more than thirty steamers whose articles of agreement provided less than one and a half men per hundred tons' gross register, and in eleven sailing ships the proportion was just over one and a half men per hundred tons register, but that included apprentices and boys. In the greater number of these vessels the undermanning was of a serious character. In the Port Tarrock there were just over one and a half men per hundred tons register, but only a few days ago the Liverpool Journal of Commerce named four sailing-ships whose crews were only just over one and a quarter men per hundred tons register." That is evidence from the Shipmasters' Society. Now hear the evidence from the 8hiY>mariners' Society (also of the year 1894) : — (137) " Undermanning is general. On board sailing-ships and steamers the manning is disgracefully inadequate. At this moment lying in the Mersey are eighty-nine vessels representing 123,425 tons register (a ton register is only one-half of the carrying capacity). Oil all those vessels there is a total of 2028 men engaged (or less than one man per hundred tons register), and that number includes boy apprentices, as many as four or five of whom are on board many a ship, and also a considerable percentage of foreigners unable to speak or understand the English language, and generally incompetent, men shipped because they are cheap. The wonder is^ not that so many lives are lost, but that more lives are not sacrificed through undermanning." " The sea has claimed its victims, and the widows and the chil- dren starve. Help, ye charitable, help ! Brave fishermen have been overtaken by the storm and drowned. ... In the whole of Ireland there are not a more industrious, hardworking, honest set of men than the Kilkeel fishermen. These brave fellows went out to sea in bad weather to get food for their women and their children, and the deep has claimed them . . . and now there is neither food for the starving women and children, nor return of the husbands and fathers evermore. Charity ! British people, charity ! " . . . Thus in the Jubilee Year 1894 sounded the appeal in the daily papers, hid amongst quack advertisements, which, to name as they (136) appeared side by side, were almost blasphemy. " England," said the stern Democritus, " not the cold, chance hand of Charity THE TWENTIETH CENTIIRY. 273 to save my orphaned ones and widows from the terrible grasp of starvation and endless misery. No appeal of that sort shall any more prevail. Not appeal any more, but an eternal demand shall there be, the demand of justice, the demand of right. The victims of those sea-heroes shall be the first and dearest care of their people, not any more the last, or the neglected altogether. Justice, Mercy, shall be the eternal law of Man as of God." The Reforms which this chapter is about to record were com- pleted and enforced within three months of the day of their inception. They occupy about four pages of the great Revolution- ary Codex. And although the Mariners' Court was empowered to decide any disputed matter in connection with them, or to interpret any doubtful clause, such was the honesty, straight- forwardness, and plain English of the drafting, that never was a single clause questioned, so far as its actual meaning was concerned. The Marine Laws of Carlyle Democritus. The Water-lords who, in Jubilee times, strange as it may seem, held " Rights " over the water of British coasts, disappeared after the Revolution in the same manner as the landlords had been made to do. British waters belonged to the nation, and for the benefit of the nation they were worked. The Marine laws were divided into two sections. The first dealt with the Fishing Fleet ; the second, with the Merchant Navy. As the Revolutionary Government had established model factories in all trades as the most practical method of inaugurating staple qualities in all manu- factures, so it organised model fishing fleets composed of the staunchest craft which modern science had developed. The fisher- men engaged on them were the best of their kind. Their contracts of engagement were optionally either permanent, or for a minimum period of one year. Uniforms were supplied appropriate to the service. In addition to the full wages ruling for the best men (the minimum wage applied here as in all trades), one-half the profits of each ship went to the fishermen who manned it. Fisher Guilds were instituted analogous to those elsewhere explained. To each fleet was attached a steamship, which took the place at sea that the workman's club or library aff'orded to men ashore. A doctor and attendants were attached to each " Havenscraft " (the name given to the club steamers which were distinguished from one another by the addition of the name of the harbour, or port, 274 THE ENGLISH EE VOLUTION OF to which each belonged). On many of the fishing stations the period between Friday night and Moaday morning was closed against fishing. At such times, when the weather permitted, the " Havenscraft " afforded recreation of many sorts to the men. A well-stocked library, various ship games, rowing-boats, and athletic apparatus offered worthy means of recreation to worthy men. On Sundays pure simple services were conducted by the pastor of the ship. On all the fishing boats and the club boats rations were ample in quantity, wholesome in quality, and healthful in variety. Spirituous liquors were absent ; but beer, brewed of malt and hops (no other decoction was permitted to bear that name, either at sea or ashore) according to regulations, was served on the recreation craft as well as at the men's messes. Ashore, factors and factories received the catches of the fleet, and cured, smoked, or dried the produce, and arranged for its disposal, as also for the immediate dispatch of the fresh fish to the various rural and urban markets. Free markets for all produce were established by the Revolution in all towns and villages throughout the kingdom. The old Jubilee wicked waste of food, when from one hundred to four hundred tons of putrid fish would be destroyed in London alone, in a month, was put an end to. Co-operation, instead of competition, amongst the fishing fleets, together with the national factories, disseminated the produce of the sea at less than a third of the old prevailing prices, and still left the men concerned in the industry better fed, paid, clothed, and protected than they ever before had been. The profits of the factories (after paying for the fish at market value) were divided into three portions — one went to the seamen (the men divided equally, the captain, or master, counting three shares), one to the workers in the fish factories and distributing agencies, and tlie third to the improvement of the fleet generally. When the State fishing fleets and institutions had proved their success, and the men concerned in the fishing industry were united in a protective union to preserve the great reforms throughout their fisheries of the kingdom, the various establishments were made over to the Fisheries' Guilds, whose duties and powers were akin to those which prevailed in other centres of industry. The laws as to apprentices in the fishing fleets were similar to those which had been introduced in all other callings. An important feature of the new organisation was the division THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 275 of all those of the hundred thousand fishermen — the number 60 engaged in the twentieth century — who joined the Royal Navy Reserve (and there were very few who did not) into regiments of about a thousand men, or regimental companies of five hundred men or less, named according to the port, or county of their origin. The State paid to fishermen who joined the Royal Navy Reserve an additional wage of from one-tenth to one-half over and above their ordinary wage, according to the age^ physique, and fitness by Navy drill of the reservist ; he obtained also the benefit of one-half addition to the Old Age pension. The minimum period that a reservist was required to serve for annual training in a man-of-war was one month, and arrangements were made, wherever possible, to secure that such service should be in the vessel of the fleet to which the reservist was allotted. Every reservist was entitled to wear a badge on the right breast of his sailor tunic and reefer, bearing under the imperial crown the letters R.N.R. over the name and number of his regiment, and the ship in which he received training. Every facihty was afforded the men to reach their training ship and to return from it, and they received full pay during the period of training. The labour code which protected the fishermen at sea did not forget them at home. The labour homes throughout the kingdom had been a great care of the Revolution, and none were more dear to sea-girt England than those of her sons of the sea. The fisher villages were conspicuous for their charm ; not alone were the cottages fair to look upon, and fairer still to live in, but especial provision was made that each should have attached to it its garden and field, inalienable as the land-laws could make them. Provision was made for paying the seamen's wages, part into the savings-bank of his Guild or Union, and part to his family, as he might direct. Courts of Honour and Arbitration were established amongst the sea-folk, as everywhere in trade. The Lifeboat Service was amalgamated with the State, and each fisher company or regiment supplied in turn a crew of men to each boat. The State paid £10 for each occasion upon which a lifeboat's services were requisitioned, and added £1 for every life saved. A powerful and specially constructed steam-tug was attached to each port and harbour, to assist the hfeboats, or for general service when not so engaged. The number and possible speed of these powerful little steam craft made them valuable 276 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF as scouts in war time, and they formed an organised division of the Navy Eeserve. Their machinery was so constructed that when required for tug-service their speed was diverted to havding power, but for Navy purposes they could attain a speed of twenty knots and upwards. They were all built with steel rams, a torpedo tube, collapsable funnel, and a turret for mounting a swivel gun. The Mercantile Marine. First-class seamen of the Naval Reserve, at Jubilee time, were driven out of employment, and so forced to relinquish their retaining fees, whilst 44,707 cheap and more or less incompetent foreigners were taken on to fill their places (see Vol. IV. Jubilee Census, 1893). Circumlocutory, lying Jubilee minister, in reply to questions, thus explains from his place in Parliament (year 1894) :— "The latest return of foreigners engaged in British ships shows an increase [increase on 44,707] ; but I have no reason to believe [no votes to gain by believing] that any appreciable number of first-class Naval Eeserve men have been unable to obtain renewal of their retainers ; ^e?-ftaj)s they are in better employment ashore,* etc." Merely to have to quote the garbled falsehoods of those Jubilee vote-catching things maketh the Historian's heart grow sick. The Divine Jesus was confronted with one Pilate grinning at Truth, but, O heavens, to be confronted by a whole element of grinning Pilates, not content to inquire "What is Truth?" but only intent upon circumventing truth. To have to search the Jubilee records of those political desecrations is, to any truth- loving son of Adam, the all-cruellest, heart-despairing business yet laid on suffering man. The Parliamentary Records of those Jubilee times are one vast charnel house of falsehoods, cowardice, and unending verbosity. * Vol. II. of the Board of Trade Labour Gazette for 1894 recorded )he continued out-of-employment of British sailors at all ports of the United iingdom, and at the same time recorded the continued " immigration of foreign sailors to the extent of more thau one thousand in one month above the immigration of foreign sailors in the same period of the previous year." THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 277 At Jubilee period Great Britain's Merchant Navy employed some 235,000 men. To restore the gloiy of sea-faring England was the (138a} summit of Carlyle Democritus's ambition. Not by cold and selfish neglect of the brave seamen, nor by screwing down the mail subsidies to the last competition penny, and invoking the foreigner in the Political Economy race for mere cheapness, was the old love of the entire people for its sea-heroes to be restored. The lifting of the submerged classes into work and independence was the foundation of all the Revolutionary reforms. The keystone of the entire superstructure was the restoring the British sailor to his old shrine of honour in the nation's heart. To render his calling the highest, to bring about for him the very worthiest conditions of employment, were objects to which Democritus devoted his untiring energy. He felt that he had no time to lose, this giant Saxon Mirabeau ; the spirit was gradually sapping the colossal strength of the man, day by day he felt the nearer approach of the Eternal Angel of Rest, He had made his Faust-Covenant — " Let me over- come poverty ; then overcome thou me, twin brother of sleep ! " It differed only a little from the Goethe one, perhaps differed not at all. " Oh moment stay, thou art so fair," was not the time moment, but the moment of supreme achievement. To no great poet-soul was material Eternity ever an aspiration, for the poet-soul is itself a ray of the Eternal God-spirit, and in its supremest infatuation of Venusberg, or other enchantment, base mundanity could never hold it, could only passingly fascinate it. " In the midway of this our mortal life," Carlyle Democritus had found the world astray; had, by the inspiration of the Eternal One, redirected the errant and the erring. And the wild longing for his Master's peace was absorbing him. Finish his work he must, finish it he did, and then — in mercy — it finished him. " Jamque Opus exegi. . . . Jovis omnia plena. . . . Jubilate Deo." " Thou hast overcome poverty, thou hast destroyed the oppressor, thou hast set the lowly in high places, and everywhere justified God. ... A sun ray from the Spiritual Sun has penetrated humanity to its core, ripened the divine in man, and hied home to its spiritual source." (Pastor Truslove on the Life-work of Carlyle Democritus.) But wherefore have these words entrance in this place ? Because 278 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF of the answer of Carlyle Democritus to the praise of his people, which it is good that men should hear : " Give me no praise, my brothers. Him who shall record the history of these times, I implore never to ascribe to the servant the glory which belongs to the Master. God's purpose has been set before all men since all time. Those who blindly would not read may be blamed ; those who have but done their duty and obeyed Him, and carried out His Divine purpose to man, are only pained by praise not theirs. Your love is my meed, my brothers." N'ow let the record of the Kevolution proceed. The 2300 men annually lost by shipwreck no longer left their families to swell the suffering masses as at Jubilee time. The State Insurance Pension to those dependent on a sailor lost at sea was made equal with the full wage of the victim, and continued to be paid to the sur- vivors until, in the case of children, they attained to years when by labour they could earn their livelihood ; to the indigent widow it continued through life. To the thousands of men annually dis- abled in the performance of their duty, whose numbers Jubilee statistics do not record, in addition to such compensation as they might be entitled to from their employers, the State Insurance accorded three-quarters of the full wage they were in receipt of at the time of the disaster. The "Able Seamen " (A.B.) qualification, once a condition of sea service in England's palmy days, had died out in the merchant navy, except in the best conditioned fleets.* In the same way that capability and training had ceased to be a necessity in the various trade callings. That was the first reform of the Eevolution with regard to the merchant service. Both the minimum wage and the permanency of the labour contract facilitated the adoption of the law. But the establishment of a State training fleet pre- pared a class of men for service who, in time, restored to the British sailor all his old prestige. With regard to the manning of all British vessels, three men per hundred tons gross register was the minimum statutory require- ment laid down by the Revolution. Nor coidd that number include apprentices or foreigners. In Jubilee times there were no less than 44,707 foreigners employed in British ships, in spite of the fact that at all ports throughout the United Kingdom British ♦ Page 272. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 279 Beamen were idle and begging for work. But " British searaen were prone to agitate," said the Jubilee minister, prone to agitate against (139) being sent out iu water-coffins, called ships; prone to require a little of God's justice on sea as well as on earth, but bereft of both by Jubilee Governments. Death by drowning at sea, or by starva- tion ashore, was the brave seaman's alternative in Jubilee time. O British seaman, shall a Carlyle Democritus call thee to arms in vain ] The National Training Fleet. There had been much over-building of ships in the Jubilee period, and the vessels no longer required for coal export left many ships idle.* All that were seaworthy were purchased by the Government, and after being duly refitted were converted into training ships. As there had been no lack of men idle, so was there no lack of strong lads idle. Thousands of these young fellows were equipped and started on a new career as sea recruits. The training fleet was divided into three sections : The first section received the lads for one year's training in ports, or harbours, or short coast trips ; the second were all sailing boats, and in them the recruits served three years; the third section consisted of steam-ships, provided also with sails, and in this division the apprenticeship was completed. The period of service in the last division depended upon the efficiency of the recruit. The m inimum period was one year. It might extend into several years, as this division was intended to supply a reserve for both the Merchant and the Imperial Navy. "Wages were paid in proportion to the years of service and the efficiency of the apprentice. The training fleet was open to receive any British subject, Home or Colonial. Foreign sailors were not allowed to be employed in any ship carrying the British flag and receiving a British subsidj-. But more eff"ectual than any law, in this direction, was the establishment of the minimum wage, for no sailor in the world will equal the value of a British tar. It is not necessary to enter into details of the perfect training which the Revolutionary apprentice fleet aff'orded young British sailors. All of the ships were commanded by the best obtainable officers from the Imperial and Merchant Navy. In the third section of the training fleet the ships were required to enter and leave ports unassisted and without pilots. On all the ♦ Page 220. 280 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF ships anchor work and the management of sailing power was an important feature of the training. The tuition of the apprentices was looked after in all three sections by the pastor, doctor, and other lay officers attached to each craft, nor was physical drill overlooked. Swimming was compulsory upon every sailor, whether he had passed through the training fleet or not. The largest steamers of the fleet were mostly reserved for the training of engineers and stokers, and hundreds of the best men and officers were annually reared by this valuable branch of the service. The Navy Labour Code laid down strict laws with regard to stores. The best fleets had rarely been wanting in this respect, but in the cases of ships belonging to small owners, food had often been insufficient in quantity, and bad in quality. Especially was this the case in sailing-ships.* At a very late Jubilee period, a Government Minister had stated in Parliament that out of some thousand ships which had been inspected within a period of five months, stores (140) had been rejected upon nearly four hundred of them. Doubtless the men suffered most from bad potted food. The indiscriminate import of tinned meat and other stuff — freely permitted at Jubilee time, regardless of quality — was stopped by the general trade laws, which required the marking of the quality of every article in absolutely plain English in common with all goods. Every tinned article of produce had to bear upon it the name of its manufacturer, the place of its origin, the date of its import, and the exact nature of its contents. The custom-house authorities sampled all these goods and tested the contents, and marked the tins according to quality. Nor was the question of the make of the tins overlooked. Whole families had been poisoned in Jubilee time for want of such a precaution. Any dealer selling or holding tinned foods not bearing the statutory particulars, or in any way falsifying them, was liable to a fine of ten times the value of the fraudulent goods in his possession, and a third conviction prohibited his trading as a provision-seller, besides subjecting him to a long terra of imprison- ment in a penal settlement. The provisioning of all ships was effectually dealt with by a tariff' drawn up by the Shipping Guild, and by them enforced on all British vessels. And it must be remembered that the Guilds were composed of men as well as masters, with power of appeal to the Board of Trade ; all interests * Page 270. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 281 'were justly combined. It was this wise co-operation, in place of the old cruel opposition and competition, which made every reform of the Kevolution work easily. The Labour question in the Merchant Service was brought to an issue by the same method which helped to adjust good understanding in all other employ- ments, viz. — The universal demand for icorhmen in place of the old devastating starvation cry for work. The State itself helped to organise the union of all sailors and seafaring men. Organisation is the thew and sinew of human achievement, of which righteous labour is the outcome. Without organisation parts may be seem- ingly strong, but the whole machine is out of joint, and only acts with ceaseless friction and needless wear, tear, and waste. Organisa- tion will never be feared by any just man or men. Organisation is a lever to the just and wise for the ennoblement of all labour. It is only a ghost-drag to the ignorant, the selfish, and the unjust, who falsely and cowardly fear that whatever benefits one man must detract from the sweets of, or tend to the harm of, another. Whereas nothing in all the world can benefit any man which does not also beneficially afi'ect another, or all others. Benefit other than that is mere Jubilee-benefit, needless to be entertained by right-thinking men. A Mr. Winans, in Jubilee period, probably thought he was benefiting himself when he acquired two hundred square miles of Scotch lands to hunt deer upon, turning out mean- while Scotch peasants "made in the likeness of God" to starva- tion and misery — them, their women, and little children. Poor Mr Winans, that it should need a Kevolution to teach him, and the likes of him, that murder, barbarism, theft, were truer defini- tions for such infamously cruel self-indulgence — but never benefit. The " Eight " of a Mr. Winans to those two hundred Scotch square miles of land lay upon the blasted lives of his ruined brother men, maintained by Jubilee Parliaments, mainly composed of Winanses. " God forgive them, for they know not what they do," need to have been written high and large above that St. Stephen's Parlia- ment, and perhaps was — in letters of blood and fire, visible to those not morally blind. The State and the Shipowners. Capital and Labour being but two organs of one organism, true "benefit cannot be brought upon one of them which does not also ameliorate the condition of the other. If labour is to be well fed, 282 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF well clothed, "well paid, and well housed, it must also be well skilled. And that which directs it must be able to bear the burden that all those duties imply and impose. We have shown how the State provided that the labour should be truly trained and skilled. No man could be taken into service in any British ship without the certificate of the Navy Guild. A wise Guild — State supervised — cared that the term " Able Seaman " should have a mean- ing in it. But could just statesmenship stop there 1 Were the great leaders of industry, the owners, directors, and builders of the noble fleets, to whom Britain owed her glorious sea supremacy, to (141) be forgotten by a Eevolution, determined to achieve national justice and wellbeing 1 Jubilee appreciation of Great Britain's maritime supremacy consisted in subsidies for foreign mail services and foreign manning of English ships. Lying Ministers, smothering truth under verbiage, were yet compelled to admit the disgraceful poltroonery that they accepted foreign money-help to their mail service on the humiliating condition that all the (142) British sailors shoiald be turned off the British boats and foreign sailors be substituted. Enough of those mud things ! By virtue of the State-owning of the mines, it has been shown how — to British manufacturers — iron and coal were reduced in price. The first tenders for iron entertained by the State were always those of the shipbuilders for the construction of British vessels, for these benefited the largest number of men, both directly and indirectly, besides tending to the increase of Britain's lordship of the sea, which, under Heaven, Carlyle Democritus was determined should continue to prevail The Mail Subsidies. The laws which determined that there was a minimum wage for labour determined that there was also a minimum wage for service which supported, employed, and protected labour. The nobler, stronger, England's Merchant Navy, the greater her power, always a power for good. Mere blind competition was a heresy to the Eevolution. Their supreme orthodoxy was co-operation. Laws could do less to foster the nobler alternative than worthy State example, ushering in universal custom. The National Government did not invite competition tenders for its great mail services, but continued to the magnificent fleets which had long THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 28S and ably served the country, the mail subsidies which they had long enjoyed, plus always the ampler grant which " Buy in the worthiest market " involved as against the Jubilee " Buy in the cheapest market." The Government mail subsidies required that the lines subsidised should keep ahead of the best existing of the world's fleets in speed, strength of construction, general equip- ment, complement of men, especially in the Engineering Depart- ment. This was not difficult, but it was imperative. Afloat^ as ashore, the British name must mean the bravest, best. The estimates for the mail subsidies were prepared by a permanent Council, consisting of the Presidents, for the time being, of the Shipping Guild, the Shipowners' Association, the Association of Master Mariners, the Seamen's Union, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Trade. The First Lord of the Admiralty presided. Parliament, but not the ministers, had power to amend the recommendations of the Council ; but it was not often that they disagreed with the estimates of so experienced and practical a body. Do not let it be overlooked that these mail subsidies embraced also the Colonial fleets ; the oceans did not divide the mother country from her children under a Carlyle Democritus, but united them. This will be better understood after the reader has examined the chapter on the Pan-Anglican Union. Reserve Cruisers. In Jubilee time many of the best merchant ships were already retained as cruisers for times of war, but many vessels which complied with the Government requirements were not. With the changing conditions of a great industry and an ever-improving sea service, the same Council dealt that had the direction of the mail subsidies. In agreement with the Government Department of Naval Construction, they laid down the lines upon which ocean steamers were admitted to the reserve. They established a scale which adjusted the amount of subsidy in accordance with the size, speed, and fineness of construction of the various reserve boats. Every Pan-Britannic vessel, built up to the requirements of the Admiralty, could enter the reserve. Details of the State contract need not be gone into. The subsidy was a liberal one on the Government side, and it required a substantial pledge on the owner's sida that for ten years after receiving a Government subsidy, the vessel should not be sold to any foreign Government 284 ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. or service. Not only the vast ocean steamers were thus secured to the National Service, but fast small steamers, constructed to the satisfaction of the Admiralty, and capable of a speed exceeding twenty knots, could also be subsidised to serve as " look-outs " in time of war. The Royal Navy Reserve of the Merchant Marine followed pretty closely the conditions described in the fisher fleets ; * but the order of regiments, instead of following the county of origin of the reservist, followed the Line in which he served. Throughout all marine ports and stations under British control, the old villainous crimp-shops were mercilessly abolished, and in any foreign port where those vile debauch hells were tolerated, no sailor was allowed to land from any British vessel. This law was accepted by all the great Unions and Associations connected with the Service, and was made imperative upon the Commanders of all vessels. In the commercial division of the Navy there were, in the Twentieth Century, a quarter of a million men, the sturdiest and bravest of British workers. The Revolution would not permit the voices of such a vital portion of the Empire to be mute when a General Election was deciding the Gcverument of the Nation. Provision was therefore made for a ballot to be held in every ship. Every man who would have had a right to vote had he been ashore, enjoyed the same privilege afloat. The purser and doctor on large vessels, or the captain on small craft, counted the votes and tele- graphed home the result from the nearest port. Here, as in all cases (see the Chapter on Parliament), the State bore all expenses connected with the Election. • Page 275. Book III. NATIONAL. CHAPTER I. THE PAN-ANGLICAN UNION. It has been commonly observed that the apple falls not far from the tree ; also that the apple-pip, though put into new soil well away from the pai-ent mould, will still produce an apple-tree — not a poplar, not a rose-bush, nor any other plant, bush, or growth, but an apple-tree. And also, say the naturalists, that with due neglect, the vermin who feed upon the apple-tree are everywhere found to be a kindred species of vermin, with a kindred object in life — viz., to feed and fatten themselves on the tree's strength and richness — other object, none whatever. The same has been observed of the acorn and the oak — indeed, of Nature's handiwork generally — that the child differs not materially from the parent, and is subject to the same diseases bred of the same neglect. Thus, the sturdy British oak, made by the Great Creator, the ruggedest and most valiant of forest trees, can be gradually hewn, bled, stripped, and finally killed ; but to its last life-flicker, to its last shred, it will be oak — oak branch, oak twig, or oak splinter — but oak, always oak. Why the Creator, in His wisdom, made the oak-tree stronger than the bramble-bush, or the bramble-bush other than the oak-tree, practi- cal wise men do not inquire, for all men are not Darwins, any more than all vegetables are thistles. Man's province is to put the oak to worthy purposes, and to beware of making ships of bramble-twigs. Amongst nations the children of Britain are as the oak amongst forest trees. Idle to inquire why, as idle to ignore the Divine message or fact. It is so. The world's history attests the fact, just as surely as the world's history attests this other fact, that the oak- man has a soul in him — a God-inspired soul to discern 287 (143) 288 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF right from wrong; and only as the oak-man discerns aright, and acts rightly, can a nation of oak-men, or of any men, long con- tinue as a nation to live. It has happened that the mighty British people have cast their acorn sons all over God's earth-planet ; and, unfortunately, in every instance it had also happened that the merciless political economist woodiice had also planted themselves inevitably upon the new growing oak saplings. Thus it came to pass that, although the broad lands of Australasia offered unnumbered millions of fertile acres, pure and rich from the mother-womb, to the willing husbandman, and although in the year of Jubilee, 1894, there were less people in Australasia — about equaliii;g in size and richness all the territory of Europe — although there were less people in that vast-as-all-Europe island- continent than there were in the one City of Loudon ; yet did the oak sapling which sprouted in that Australasian soil exhibit the same soul-and-body destroying vermin, in eveiy branch and twig of her young strength, that were sapping the life blood of the parent tree at home. There, side by side with fabulous wealth in those Austral lands, you would find the fields neglected and the towns suppurating with filthy slums, starving women and children and workless men. For the British Colonies had imitated the British method of Government by party, caucus, and political economist insanities ; and " buy in the cheapest market," "survival of the fittest," " devll-take-the-hindermost " was gospel in the Colonies, as it was in the mother country. Details of each colony cannot haN'e place in this short histoiy ; but one picture will serve for them all. So we will take one small corner, one little island of the Australasian group — New Zealand — or rather, we should say, two little islands, for New Zealand consists of two, just as Great Britain does; and, to make the comparison more exact, it has a tiny splinter of a tliird island at its southern extremity, corresponding to our Isle of Wight, which it calls Stewart Island. New Zealand is somewhat the size of Great Britain, its climate averages nearly the same, is perhaps a little more favoured. This beautiful England of the southern hemisphere, at the mid-Jubilee period, had a white poi)ulation of, not forty millions, but somewhat over half of one million ; and it reproduced the evils of the old corrupt Jubilites as faithfully as a small mirror will reproduce a large picture. Out of its half a million of white people, seven companies — just THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 289 seven — were allowed to " own " about a million and a half acres of land. Thirty private people owned fifty thousand acres each, and thirty-seven other persons owned between one hundred and two hundred thousand acres each. Many people who never went near any of the Colonies were " owners " of the land, and made the new settlers pay rent to them, and give them of their earnings, just as if they had made the land and had the Divine permission to keep it, and only permit its cultivation after prayers, in the shape of gold i-ent, had been paid to them. Yes, there was one man, say the New Zealand blue-books, who never went near the place, to whom those innocent imitators of caucus-ridden British slaves paid eighty-five thousand pounds sterling a year. All those facts you will find, with many more of passing and permanent interest, recorded in the blue-books of the Little Britain of the southern hemisphere ; and if you went to the mainland of the immense island-continent of Australia, you would find that exactly the same evils prevailed. Take, for instance, the beautiful Colony of Victoria, a territory also about the size of Great Britain. In the year 1894 there were 871 people v/ho owned upwards of seven millions of its acres, about half the entire freehold land of the colony. They counted their lioldings by miles, instead of acres. The soil and climate of Victoria compares with the richness of Italy, rather than of England. Of all that fine soil, only two or three million acres (out of fifty-six million acres) were cultivated, and yet almost a half of the entire Victorian population was to be found in over-crowded cities. The same madness recurred everywhere — starving peeple and starving land, and only a wise Captain wanting to wed the two together and breed prosperity from the union. Two British Europes — Canada and Australasia — with a total population of about two Londons, had managed to dissipate their credit and their land as recklessly as their old grandmother at home had done. The total joint indebtedness of those eight millions of colonial people, after an average existence of about one hundred years, was half as much as that of Great Britain's forty million of inhabitants, after a national existence of over a thousand years. But some of the Colonies were commencing to awake \^^^) from their nightmare. Particularly that little New Zealand colony. King Demos opened an eye, and saw a little of what T 290 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF this History has already described; and the awakened spirit caused no little alarm to the land investors. After a certain length of time the wood-lice who feed upon a tree get to think they are part of the tree's life and strength, and they cling so hard that it requires sulphur-fumes to dislodge them. Sulphur-fumes, often, of tlie French Revolution sort. Suffice to say that Carlyle Democritus sent emissaries to all parts of Great Britain's colonies, possessions, and dependencies. Slowly, gradually, the people saw the awakening at home ; how the slums disappeai-ed ; how the starving came to be fed ; how the workless found adequate work ; how the giant force of right had overcome the quondam abuse of might The fearless devoted ambassadors of the Revolution were not diplomatists. They had not a lie, or a subterfuge amongst the whole lot of them. Not one of them could smile when he meant to scorn, nor flatter when he would condemn. But, then, they did not go to the powers that be, but direct to the people themselves. For months and months they worked patiently, even as they had striven at home, till at last democracy awoke. And although the result is now to be told in a brief and simple chapter, it did not occur all at once. Some of the Colonies held out more or less ; some had already desired to go further than prudence advised ; but in the end they became one huge power — one mighty family of self-supporting and mutually defending British men. It required three years after the completion of the English Revolu- tion — three years of patient, brave, and ceaseless labour — before the last knot was tied to the great invincible bond which cemented in one Pan-Britannic union the parent country and her giant offspring. The Colonial Land Question. The princii)le adopted in the United Kingdom — abolition of landlordism, or dual ownership — was made law in all the Colonies. The notable differences in the colonial system were in the size of the holdings, which commenced at five acres, and were limited to fifty acres to any single tenant. All the other terms were, with slight modification, the same. Colonial Land Stock was issued under Imperial guarantee, in order to facilitate the loans at easy rates of interest, and all owners of land above the statutory limit were bought out at the market value of the land. The land, not occupied and worked, constituted a reserve for future increase THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 291 of population. Emigration laws were made to prevent the influx of paupers and to facilitate the settling of desirable emigrants. They followed so closely the home conditions of the general land settlement that they need not be repeated here. The colonial slums were cleared and rebuilt exactly as the British slums had been. Penal colonies were founded, in every way conforming to the home regulations, except that, instead of reclamation land, large irrigation plans were devised, new highways were con- structed, and other works provided, suitable to vast and unoccu- j)ied territories with overwhelming richness of forest lands. All details of government were settled by the participation of the Colonies in the Imperial Assembly in the manner described under the Parliamentary division of this history. The vast coalfields of Canada and Australia were worked for the benefit of their respective colonies, as were also the other enormous mineral deposits. The completion of the union was brought about by the amalgamation of all the military and naval forces of the colonies and the mother countiy. Each continued its separate existence for local requirements, but for Imperial services they became united. Similar laws and conditions were gradually introduced throughout all British possessions and settlements, small and large. All the coaling stations were fortified, and docks, wharves, and repairing basins constructed in all of them. -Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Aden, Socotra, Perim, &c., were made impregnable ; the jut of land opposite Gibraltar, on the African coast (Spartel, Tanjier, Ceuta, and Tetuan), was purchased from the Sultan of Morocco; and Egypt was definitely taken under British suzerainty, and idiot Boy Khedives no longer permitted to imitate Jubilee Ministers, and play the fool with the British Lion. Nor was foreign interference with Great Britain's wise administration any longer tolerated. In spite of Jubilee-Giffen-doctrine — "world nearly full " — the Pan-Anglican Empire had secured absolute reserves for untold hundreds of millions yet unborn. Instead of Britain's emigrants being cast off uncared for, and uncaring, whether they went to enrich Great Britain's settlements, or to foreign shores, — Carlyle Democritus made future emigrants their country's care. Precisely similar rights were held out to them as were conveyed by the home land laws, with the additional provision of free passage, food, outfit, and cross-country transit to any British settlement. In 292: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF that way the tens of thousands of Britain's sons who yearly, sought fresh fields and pastures new, and were in Jubilee times mostly lost to the Great Empire, were henceforth attracted to her own Colonies, which they enriched with their laboui-, while they re- paid all cost of passage by love and patriotism, instead of hate and ill-will, which the old cruel "laisser aller" engendered. The African colonies and settlements reclaimed from Black barbarism by England's fearless sons, wei-e united in the great bond, and made subject to the Pan-Anglican and other laws. Her hero-pioneers, no longer the scorn and scoff of filthy-souled radical denouncers, raised to co-equal governorship with Britain's best and bravest. One reciprocal Customs' Union completed the grand Pan-Anglican Union. Here, indeed, was " Free Trade " an absolute fact. Identical conditions of labour — the outcome of wisdom and justice — rendered the Freedom a godly reality, and no mere name to cloak unbridled licence and injustice. As was the British Code, so was the Imperial, and from one end to the other of the justice-loving Empire, from the smallest coaling island to the greatest New World continent — wherever the British rule extended — there prevailed, in all essential features, one universal, unvarying law, one land-nationalisation, one currency, one language, — one British people. The members various as the climes they worked in, but by the supreme all-pervading laws of mercy, justice, truth, and honour — one people, indivisible. Fired by the high example of her great progenitor, the whole American nation shook off the political vermin who had also fed upon and nigh ruined her young strength. Purged of the poison, the two united nations saw that they were one in flesh, in blood, in love of justice, truth, and in mutual sympathy. The United States of America, with few modifications, absorbed the teachings of the mother land, and the result was an end to all old bickerings and jealousies. The Irish sore was healed, justice had made the Emerald Isle and her brave peasants a peace-loving, prosperous,. and constantly increasing people. America and Great Britain became reconciled ; and though each pursued its independent national existence, they became one people for mutual defence. The great issues which followed for the world need not be recorded here. The British American r-econciliation was the dawn of an universal peace, arbitration having taken the place of war ; but to treat of that will carry us beyond the point defined THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 293 for the present History. There were generations between tlie Pax-Britannica and the Pax-Mundi. India. "The English are a wise, practical and cautious people. They are doing a marvellous work in India, worthy of the admiration of mankind. . . . The czars have their eyes constantly fixed on Con- stantinople. Russia covets Afghanistan. She is already almost mistress of Persia. . . . Russia alone can arrest and annihilate England's civilizing mission in India, which would be a misfortune (1^5) for the world." — Barthelemy Saint-Eilaire. "Why should we saddle the poorest classes in India to save putting taxes on the wealthy and well-to-do ? It is the wealthy in India, such as are voiced and represented by the Anglo-Indian press and the Congresses, who at present, at the expense of the poorer classes, escape their due measure of taxation. It is well known that, owing to false returns on the part of the monied classes, . . . the Income Tax raised from the traders, money-lenders, zemindars, shop-keepers, and other parties forming the upper and middle classes in India, represents only a small fraction of its proper result. Why should not steps be taken to remedy such a glaring injustice before further burdens are laid on the poorer classes 1 A source of income is awaiting the Government in the pampered zemindars in the large areas in India under permanent settlement. When making the settlement the Government never intended that the rents of their tenants should be raised. . . . Since that time these properties have been enormously improved in value by the construction of railways, which have brought their produce v/ithin reach of extensive markets. Instead of sharing the result- ing prosperity with their tenants, the zemindars have rack-rented them, and the Government has not protected the interests of the tenant. . . . Why should these zemindars escape Scot-free? . . . There should not be one rule for the poor and another for the rich ; but as long as the Anglo-Indian Press and baboo-ridden congresses are deemed in this country to be the voice of India, the poor of that country will have little support, and will have to go to the n^^ -w&W'—HoU S. Hallet. "Of late years there has been a remarkable rapprochement 294 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF between France and Russia. It is instructive to mark the- successive steps of advance which have been made by the two countries. In 1863 the Russian frontier was 1680 miles from that of India. Russian outposts are now (1894) within 60 miles of Herat, which is under British protection. . . . The advance of France has been synchronous with that of Russia. It was in (147) 1860 that she first made her way into Hindo-Chinese regions. Now (189-4) she is advancing toward Bangkok, 95 per cent, ot- whose trade is in British hands." — George Curzon. How instructive for the British reader to learn from the history of its great feudatory a lesson identical with its own, and which had (148) ]g(j ^g g^ similar catastrophe, — conquest and annihilation of British nationality, — but for the timely advent of the great Reformer, With utmost attention let the highest authority upon the Land System of British India be heard : — "Oriental financiers held the limit of land assessment to be what could be extracted from the cultivate i*, short of reducing him to semi-starvation. Only a few rapacious revenue farmers killed the goose that laid the golden eggs [a la British Jubilee landlords.] The best rulers of India were averse to raising rents^ or rates on the land ; they made the assessments perennial or for long periods. It was only as the Government declined in char- acter and ability that annual rentings became the rule. Weak Governments at last introduced capitalists and large revenue farmera, estate holders or landlords (zemindars). As efteteness- became more prevalent, the landlords became more cruel and exacting, until at the time when commenced British rule, their merciless exactions stole from the peasants all they could, whilst they yielded to the State of it as little as they dared. Unfortun- ately, these landlords having developed, as we have seen, into a grasping, evicting, all-powerful landlord class, and being found in possession by the British [instead of being crushed out as useless vermin, who had already over long drained the life-blood of the people], they were recognised by the British Government [a fellov/ feeling, perhaps, making them wondrous kind]. Many changes have, in the course of our occupation, been made, but the modern system is generally that of a rent assessment value devised upon the payments made by the tenants to their landlord. Never were THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 295 assessments more merciful than the British. Mistakes have been made, and have caused trouble and suffering ; but to England's honour be it said, she has ever tried to justly regulate and render as light as possible her Land Tax. But the original evil of having recognised the landlords — the zemindars — has loorJced the same oppression in India as in Europe, and has required the same reforms — abolition of the middlemen." *' Abolition of the middlemen ! " Precisely. Landlordism had throttled India as it had nigh done England. The brown peasant slaved and starved that the brown landlord might idle and thrive. England's land taxes were generous and merciful as they could be made. But the landlord — the land-devil, the middleman — drained the peasants. Very gradually were the Eevolutionary troops — as their services were no longer required at home — drafted, regiment after regi- ment, fully equipped and officered, across to the Indian Peninsula until, spread throughout the great dependency, three hundred thousand British soldiers (in addition to the permanent forces), having freed their white brothers, were now about to free their brown brothers. The same marvellous organisation which had broken the tyrant's back in the white man's land, overcame, without possibility of resistance, the brown tyrant also. When every avenue of possible disturbance was outposted, any possible resistance anticipated, this notice appeared on every native build- ing and in every peasant's hut ; was put into every peasant's hand, or, by duly appointed officials, read out to the peasants : — '* From and after this day the worker is the owner of the land which he tills. There are no more zemindars in India. In future the land cf India will belong to the people of India — to those who till that land, and to no one else. The British Government will pro- tect the ryot (the peasant) in the possession of his land and of his labour. Beyond a light and just land rate, which will be assessed at one-tenth of the produce value of the field, no other land pay- ment shall be made by the new owners." The Indian landlords were justly treated : For two or more lives, according to the finding of the Indian Land Court, they were paid the interest upon the value of the land they had " owned." The maximum was a fourth life j after that all pay- ment ceased. With regard to house property throughout India the conditions followed as nearly as possible (with such modifi- 29 G THE ENGLISH REVOLUTIOX OF cation as the country required) those which had been instituted in Great Britain. The result is scarcely to be set out in the narrow compass of a chapter. Instead of annual deficits, the Indian revenue returned to the Government tens of millions of surplus, increasing annually. The land laws, duly adapted to the requirements of the country, followed the British laws to the extent of strictly limiting the size of individual holdings, forbidding agglomeration by purchase, gift, marriage, or otherwise, forbidding also sub- division. Money-lenders — the ruin of the Indian peasant — were prohibited. The local Land Courts made small advances to the peasants if the nature of the case required it. The homestead law protected the ryot as it did the British peasant. Let no unwise conclusions be drawn from the drastic laws of Carlyle Democritus, nor from the brief record of them in these pages. Just as Carlyle Democritus accepted no praise, reward or dinner- banquet eulogies for the great reforms he had established, so did he not waste time in eulogistic reference to good work achieved. To work well was man's duty, particularly the Englishman's. To the noble work that Great Britain had achieved in India, De- mocritus best bore witness by the wide extension of power he everywhere gave to the British local administrators, and the notable methods he adopted to prevent the sickening mission- washerwomen, white-livered radicals, State service by brown cram-examinations, and other noisy and ignorant fadmongers and fads interfering in auy way with the Government of India, or any of Great Britain's possessions. No snatch "resolution" of ignorant demagogues could any more threaten the ruin of a mighty empire. Before three hundred millions of people could be made the plaything of brainless busybodies, their " resohition " had to get itself adjudicated upon by the Imperial Council of the colony, possession, or dependency* it concerned, it had then to be con- firmed by the Upper House. Only after such an ordeal could frothy demagogues get their quack nostrums patented and com- pulsorily applied to the detriment of three hundred millions, or lesser number of millions, of subject nations, of what colour soever they might be. It is most notable that in no single instance did any Jubilee fad-gang ever propose a single useful piece of (149) legislation. Did any of them ever attempt to give the Indian • Page 432. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 297 people practical instead of unpractical education 1 Listen to a Viceroy, in 1894, after five years ruling the great dependency : — ■" Education is spreading, and with it the restlessness engendered by superficial and imperfect knowledge, prolific of vague aspira- tions and ambitions." But, until Carlyle Democritus came, who had proposed to stop the mad cram coeducation, and substitute for it plain, practical, technial training, plus just so much true edu- cation as was comprised within the three R's? Never a one — cram-stuff prolific of "ambition," — ambition of the brown lawyer and brown barrister class to imitate the white lawyer and white barrister class, and bring about universal Pandemonium by jaw- government. Why did Oarlyle Democritus ruthlessly exterminate the Indian money-lenders ? Listen to the words of the same Viceroy upon tlie question of settled land tenure, which merciful land-laws (but unhappily inadequate and only half -measures) had tried to bring about for the brown peasants : — " Increased security of land has increased indebtedness ; " and another high authority continues : ■" Land has acquired a value for the purposes of transfer, of mort- gage, which it never possessed under native rule. Under British q50) rule land can be mortgaged in many districts, or sold outright. It is suitable that a departing Viceroy should candidly point out the danger to which such increased indebtedness gives rise." Danger — viz. of disappearance of the hardworking peasant — and reappearance of the ubiquitous land-devil. Of what good €ver to give poor ignorant peasants "fixity of tenure" if you let a pack of cunning money-sharks loose upon them to exploit their labour, their earnings, and their land? Yet, that is precisely what every land system must do which does not peremptorily and for ever efTectually stamp out and render his, trade impossible to the money-lending vermin. It were wiser to turn timid sheep into an open pasture with wolves for collies, than to establish a peasantry exploitable by money-lenders, or other of the shark species. Better no peasantry at all. For, upon such terms, it is but a victim feast of the ignorant and innocent, prepared by fools, for the merciless, the heartless, and the cunning. Either no pro- pounding of a land question at all, or this inexorable answer to it:— The land is the people's — inalienable, unmortgageable, unsellable non-subdivisible, non-agglomerable. Worse than foullest criminal 298 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF shall any mortal be adjudged before the law who shall attempt to come between God's earth and its peaceful tiller. There is no other land-devil but such middleman : nevermind though Jubilites called them landlords, land-agents, land-factors, land-dealers, land-mortgagers, or zemindars.* They were one vast vampire- class the whole of them, for ever to be extinguished by any wise ruler of men. The land and the land-worker acknowledged only one intermediary — the State, no other, no other for ever. As in the home country, so in the Colonies and in India, tem- porary help could be afforded by the Land Courts eitlier in money or in kind, but by no middlemen of any sort whatever. The first annual return to the Government, after the establishment of the British revolutionary land system in India, showed a sui'plus of over fifty millions sterling. A gold standard was introduced which absorbed about twenty millions of the first surplus ; ten millions were devoted to extending irrigation works ; ten million& were pat to general internal reforms ; and the balance went to the Imperial revenues. India, — in common with all other states, — had her waste lands, which were all gradually dealt with as work for penal labour and for the settlement of vast numbers of half-caste populations, — till the revolution, a growing danger to the country. The poverty in India was as successfully overcome as it had been in all other of the British dominions similarly treated, and the troops of starving beggurs — a reproach to any government — ceased to be. The educational system of the people was completely reversed. The old foolish cram-method which taught the Indian discontent, and little else, was abolished. Thorough technical training, plus simple reading and writing of his native tongue, and English, with a modicum of arithmetic — that, and no more. As for the ignorant radical dreamers who, under Jubilee party government, had raved for government by chattering Parsees, no more was heard of them. Another test than mere talk-capacity was needed to rule an empire of thre& * Sir A. P. MacDonnell's minute on the cadastral survey states : — "The income of the zemindars (landlords) is now eighty times greater than at the time of the settlement, and the zemindars now take ninety per cent, of the revenue." " If the increase in the value of the land were taken into account, the land revenue would be twenty millions sterling, instead of three and a half millions." — Capital (India Financial Paper), November 1893. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 299? hundred millions of men of utterly conflicting race elements. White talk had nearly ruined Great Britain, brown or black talk was by no means preferable, and had to find other outlet for itself. The system of national insurances which had been introduced into- all British possessions completed the Indian reforms. The Native States were by wise and firm pressure compelled to introduce the land and other reforms into their territories, with a beneficial result to the people, their rulers, and the British Exchequer. Throughout India an income-tax was introduced leviable on all incomes over a thousand rupees a year. How Carlyle Democritus counteracted the Russian MARCtf TO India by a British March from India? The honour and prestige of Great Britain under Jubilee Radical- Tory rule, as described by the historian Arminius "Vambery : — "Party politics in England have so essentially injured the Im- perial interests of that country, have done so much harm to England's position in Asia, that the most strenuous efibrts of very many years to come may scarcely be able to heal ther wounds and restore the respect and consideration for England, so wantonly destroyed by the selfishness of one party in its struggle against the other. The frivolity and short-sightedness exhibited by party of late years, culminating in the famous Egyptian Ophthalmy, was really of such a nature as to make peopledespair of the results of constitutional life. . . . One might> have taken the statesmen, who have been deliberately deceived by Russia, step by step, in Asia, and who have shown cold indifference whilst the prestige of Great Britain was going to pieces all over the world, either as miscreants, or as men escaped from the lunatic asylum. Foreigners, indeed, entertain such an opinion. ... It is the great misfortune of the country that their political views are biased by party spirit, employed even in cases where it becomes patent that it is not the welfare of the country, l)ut that of the party, which is aimed at. . . . One party undoes the work achieved by its predecessors in power, the progress — nay, even the maintenance, of Imperial strength and power will become utterly impossible. . . . Whilst the English nation were quarrelling about the Why and the How of the measures under 300 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF consideration, the insidious bear was quietly trotting towards India." — Vamhery. The duty of Russia as defined by her General Skobeleff : — " It will be in the end our duty to organise masses of Asiatic cavalry, and to hurl them into India under the banner of blood and pillage, as a vanguard, as it were ; thus reviving the times of <151) Tamerlane." The duty of the people of Great Britain, as defined by her deliverer, Carlyle Deraocritus : — "It will be o?i?- duty forthwith to wrench the banner of blood and pillage from the Skobeleffian Russian bandit host, and yield up to the Imperial Master of said host the broken staff and shredded rags, that he may bind up ■with them the wounds of his marauders." When throughout India the domestic revolution which we have described was complete, the 300,000 troops, whose services had not been called upon, were quietly concentrated northwards. Once for all the northern frontiers must be settled, had Carlyle Dcmocritus determined. Russia, marching Indiawards by stealthy steps, by "irresponsible battalions," must learn to comply a little i\52) "v^ith treaties. Pendjeh incidents, Pamir interferences, defiance of international obligations, must have an end. Hair-pulling from the British Lion-tail, plentiful contempt of the British Lion, all possible when said Lion is hedged in by white-livered Sorry- pebbles and mealy-souled party politicians, but likely to become a dangerous business with a Carlyle Deraocritus for a people's leader. Once again, not for the first time, have " irresponsible Russian battalions " defied frontier demarcations, and with Czars approval, or not disapproval, knocked down "poles stuck in sand" on <153) Afghan frontier. Remonstration produces for reply that said raids are " only temporary," " Russia not responsible" for action of ambitious R,ussian Cossacks, and more poles are tumbled down, and Afghan land encroached upon. The wily Eear-Czar deems the opportunity good: "the revolution at home, revolution there in India, also possible." And so the Afghan territory and other border places are " occupied." When lo ! there emerge from the mountain passes thousands of swarthy Indian troops, British officered, and other thousands of revolutionary British troops, who suddenly overwhelm and annihilate the "ambitious Cossacks, not responsible." THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 301 Nor do they stop there. Half measures were no feature of Carlyle Democritus's administration. With base and posts firmly estab- lished, the British, Indian, and Afghan troops move forward and reach the territory of Czar-land, finally seize Khokand, Merv, and Tiflis, and establish themselves there in force. Other thousands of British and Indian warriors filing double quick on to Russian soil. The despatch of Carlyle Democritus was not lawyer-drafted. It briefly told the Imperial Czar that 11,000 of his Czarship's Cossacks,"not responsible," lay dead, or prisoners around the Afghan " poles stuck in sand," cemented now, Oh, Czar, with irresponsible Cossack blood ! British troops, very responsible, have retaliated, and now occupy certain of the Czar's territories or protectorates, and will continue to hold them until Russia pays to British Government the cost of repressing the irresponsible depredators tolerated by Russian Majesty, and until definite borderland be demarcated. Threats and manifestoes followed. " War imminent," said all the newspapers. More British troops, meanwhile, file through the Indian passes, the indemnity-money mounting every day. No war came. The cautious Czar perceives, this time, that there are no longer three hundred party things, howling at him on one side of a word-Parliament, and three hundred white-livered other party traitors (or lunatics, say the foreign nations) backing and stroking him on the other side. But in place of those old party curses, there is a united British people, with a non-party Govern- ment, loving truth, and determined to stand by their treaty pledges, and determined also that the Czar shall stand by his. And there is also a Carlyle Democritus prepared, if need be, to pour millions of Indian tz'oops into Czar-land, or Czar-protected- land, to compel respect for treaties, even from "irresponsible Russian Cossacks." The indemnity was paid in full, heavy as it was, and right across the Northern India frontier, — to be for ever impenetrable by British or Russian men-of-arms, — a border-line was defined with unmistakable precision. The line ran from Batoum, in the Black Sea, to Kashgaria, in the Chinese Empire. And the line depended no more upon " poles stuck in sand," but upon the unerring line of the world's fortieth degree of latitude. That famous Carlyle Democritean Treaty cut from recent Russian acquisitions a narrow strip of land taken by her from Persian territory, a larger slice of the South- Western Turkestan country, 502 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF and a lesser portion of the southern extremity of Eastern ■Turkestan. That involved a slight sacrifice from Russia. But he who loses invariably has to pay. And it became evident to Russia that with two hundred and fifty millions of Indians, whom Carlyle Democritus would draw freely upon, with Persia, Afghan- istan, and the great Chinese Empire, iu one league against him, determined to maintain that fortieth degree of latitude as Russia's southern limit, — Czar could not but yield, and so the Treaty got signed, a clause wherein rendered Russia or Great Britain liable to the aggrieved nation in a fine of £10,000 for every armed soldier of either nationality who should dare venture, in •defiance of treaty, within twenty miles of the declared neutral territory on either side of that fortieth degree of the world's latitude, which runs between the Black Sea and the Chinese Empire. That ended the march of the Russians towards India. Verily, under Carlyle Democritus, Great Britain was rightly pictured as a lion, — no longer a jabbering ape in shrunken skin of lion, — but a lion of Judah, a lion of truth and justice. No longer to be mistaken for the toothless party mongrel, all slime and crawlingness, of Radical-Tory-Liberal breed, led by Sorrypebble, Davidxhnme, & Company. In the same fearless manner had the Egyptian and all other "questions" been overcome and definitely answered. Party diplomatist (lie agent) had spent, over one Egyptian "question," some £50,000, filled innumerable quires of foolscap (literally), wasted a year of time — and produced? <154) Zero ! Idiot Khedive boy, and half-a-dozen corrupt pashas and beys, led on by foreign riff-raff" of the diplomatic class, for months ((155) insulted all British officers and tried to render Government impossible. Effete party contemptibilities looking supinely on, daring no manful act, because its party sicklinesses of the washer- women-missionary, rights-of-women, swindling-director sort, — pledged to evacuation of Egypt, &c., tied Government's hands. Carlyle Democritus sent a squadron of ironclads, landed reinforce- ments of British troops, and posted up short proclamation : — " British men and British money have saved this country from anarchy, and the world from wrangling over the spoils of it. Great Britain declares the country under its sole protection, free alike to all men and all nations to honestly trade and sojourn in. Further impertinences from boy or man Khedive, Bey or Pa.sha, -will not be tolerated." THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 303 The millions saved to Egypt by the wise British administration were no longer allowed to waste,* to please one or two designing foreign nations. The Government of the country was thencefor- (156) ward conducted entirely by British officials, the native ones having proved incompetent, or corrupt, or both. Wisdom was at Great Britain's helm, and not mere wordiness. Government had been found to have a meaning in it. Govern ! Steer ! Not *' consider " to steer, O lying spirit of circumlocutory Jubilee statesmen. * " The Egyptian Government accounts for 1893 show an efifective surplus of £740,000. The Government reserves on Dec. 31st, 1893, amounted to £3,643,000— viz., £2,046,000 of the general reserve fund, £546,000 at the disposal of the Government, and, £1,051,000 the amount of accumulated savings from the conversion of the debt. This last cannot be touched for any purpose until the European powers remove what is practically a pro- hibition of its employment. Proportionately, it is the same as if the English Chancellor of the Exchequer had ten millions in cash, increasing at the rate of three and a half millions, plus compound interest, yearly, yet could not use a penny of it for relieving the burdens, or ameliorating the condit'on of the country." — Times, 1894. (160) CHAPTER IL THE AEMY AND THE NAVY. 1. The Army. Short service might have been an admirable substitute for the old system which it replaced ; but, like most Jubilee measures, it was marred by its want of thoroughness, its callous disregard of the trained soldier suddenly turned on to an already overcrowded labour market (after the period of service with the colours), there practically to fall into no-work, or pauperism. This sad feature (157) of the system was not altogether ignored, and the inevitable "question" may be found put to Ministers in Parliament, and duly followed by the inevitable Jubilee ministerial reply — a mixture of equivocation, circumlocution, and down-right lying. As an inevitable result, a system good in itself led only to evil for the men discharged. Death and despair let sometimes a sudden and lurid light into the dismal regions of dumb misery : — In Jubilee year 1894 they found the drowned body of a young Dragoon Guard, and brought it to inquest. Then it transpired that the deceased was one of one hundred and sixty soldiers who had endured great distress. In search of employment the hundred and sixty had gone to a Chicago Exhibition to fight in a tourna- ment there, but that means of livelihood failed, and for some time none of the men had money to bring them home again. How many of those hundred and sixty remained to starve in America, or returned to commit suicide in Britain, the record sayeth. not. Charity had organised an Association to find work for the time- expired soldiers. Charity ! Not in disparagement of the gentle soiils do we speak who bravely did their best to fill the post of duty which the cowardly ministers avoided; — perhaps not alto- gether avoided, for we find that the British Government did, after plentiful appeal, subscribe to the Association, which had found 304 (162) (1G3) ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 305 employment for 7000 men " paid off," or discharged, by the British Government, the munificent sum of £200. Two hundred pounds ! That "was Jubilee Party-Government's measure of its duty towards the brave defenders of the country. All honour to the worthy "Association for the Employment of Soldiers," but what word for the lying War Secretary daring, from his place in Parliament, to answer — by the usual Jubilee subter- fuge and evasion — one who asked him : " Will you make no provision to prevent the thousands of men to be shortly trans- ferred to the reserve being turned upon the unemployed market in mid-winter?" Did not our brave Lord Wolseley say, with warm approval of the Times newspaper, " One of the most serious complaints that can be brought against the system of Government as it bears on the army is that it does not tell the truth to the English people." " Does not tell the truth ! " Far, far from it. Lies, lies, and only lies, everywhere. They cheated the soldier out of his pay, and turned him out to starve after his period of service. A Lieutenant-General, speaking on the question of discharged soldiers, said that hundreds of them " failing to get work were driven to re-enlist. . . . The consequence was that their prisons were full of good able-bodied men, whose chief offence had been that they preferred doing work to remaining idle. To give an idea of the extent to which the prisons throughout England must be filled with these men, at the cavalry depot at Canterbury alone fifty-one men had been sent to jail since the beginning of the present year for fraudulent enlistment, and there were fifteen more awaiting trial. The greater portion of these men were tried on their own confession, showing that as honest men they pre- ferred going to prison to retaining a secret which troubled their minds," Space forbids the setting out of all the abundant evidence in ' ^^ proof of Jubilee Party infamy, but this interesting excerpt from the great Times may be adequately inserted here: — "It is beyond all doubt that public confidence in the competency of the ^*'*^' officers entrusted with the charge of the supply of warlike materials to the Army and I^avy has been very severely shaken, and that gi-ave suspicion has been engendered even as to their honesty. Charges of conspiracy, corruption, and malversation have been publicly made by persons of repute and standing. It is no one's IT 306 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF fault but their own, if the officers responsible for the supply of ■warlike stores to the Army and Navy have fallen under grave suspicion. So far as we can see, they can only escape from the imputation of dishonesty by the admission of incompetence. Matters have assumed so grave an aspect that we should be want- ing in our duty to the public if w© did not call attention to the accumulating evidence of mismanagement and incompetence. We will take a few specimens from answers given by Ministers of the Crown to questions addressed to them in the House of Commons as to the quality of the rifles, bayonets, swords, carbines, or the ammunition as supplied to the troops under their command. One Minister replied that complaints of the nature iridicated had been made, and the Department was making ' enquiries.' . . . This is surely a policy of ' immense consideration,' as the Chancellor of the Exchequer might say. Five years' complaints from command- ing officers in the field as to the quality of rifles, bayonets, swords, carbines, and ammunition; AND THE WAR OFFICE IS STILL MAKING ENQUIRIES ! Nothing is done apparently, BUT ENQUIRY IS BEING MADE. And for all we can see, enquiry will still continue to be made, and complaints will con- tinue to be received, unless the public insist upon ACTION being substituted for ENQUIRY. The Secretary of State declines to publish such complaints as have been received. . . . The Secretary of State assures the world that statements made from the Treasury Bench are made in ' good faith,' otherwise we should be compelled to regard his answer as a transparent subterfuge. ... Of course, publicity would stimulate the War Office into something more efi'ec- tive than a five year."' enquiry into defects disclosed in the field, and this would naturally be very unpleasant to the barnacles of the public service. ... It used to be said that the occupation of barnacle consisted in the cultivation of the art of ' how not to do it.' It now seems to have been developed into the art of how to do the British taxpayer out of his mone]). ... Is all this the result of sheer incompetence or of something much worse ? There is absolutely no escape from one or the other alternative." Those comments (from a leading article in the Times) have an especial value, as they apply to a Government not of the ultra-radical sort, but of the Tory description, and shovdd be read by the thoughtful Briton in conjunction with some of the miles of adulation and processional magnificence which, a few months after they were (I5i THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 307 written, ilhiTninated London with their glories, and rendered the word JUBILEE a word of scorn and contemit to man. Those were the Ministers who were the talking chiefs of the army. This is a Jubilee newspaper's comment upon the acting chief of the Army : — " Who is it appoints our Field Marshal Commanding-in- Chief, and renews his appointment every five years ? Are there no other men in England capable of commanding an army ? . . . Have we no other Field Marshals for this lucrative post ? "Why is this septuaginarian gentleman continued at the Horse Guards ? Is it for his gallant conduct in the Crimea, or for the exceptionally high state of efficiency to which he has brought the Army?" Will this perhaps explain why a fearless, outspoken, and tried British hero is not selected as Field Marshal Comnianding-i.i!.-Chief, and an absolutely worthless seventy-six-year-old incompetency remained (stiU in 1894) glued to the post : — Eeport of evidence of General Lord A\''olseley before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service: — "The tools supplied to the army, taking them generally, are bad, extremely bad. You will find the picks, shovels, axes, and all those descriptions of stores are very bad. The Government of the day cut the prices down so low that inferior articles are purchased. For instance, when we sent out a large number of troops to Canada they took out a number of axes. The only purpose they served was to amuse the people. They were absolutely useless. The pattern was infamously bad. . . . The pattern, of course, was dense stupidity on the part of the people who bought the axes. . . . We buy articles of inferior quality ; the price is scamped by pressure from above. I think that our implements have always been inferior. I can remember it is described in Kapler's Peninsular War that in our sieges under the Duke of Wellington we used to try and break into the French mines in order to get to their tools, our tools being made of poor metal. From my own experience I can say that the tools we had in the Crimea were bad ; and I am quite sure that if you sent to-morrow for an implement called the biU-hook — the common bill-hook that is used in the army — you will find it is made of very inferior stuff, little better than hoop iron. If you chop wood with it, the wood £hops it." That is evidence not to be sneezed away by any, except by party-sunk corrupt mud-politicians and those who "think" with them. They neglected and ruined both the materiel and personnel of the British army. We will deal with the personnel first. 308 THE ENGLTSn REVOLUTION OF What the lying Juhilee Ministers failed to do, that the Revolution commenced by doing — they prevented the soldier from ever falling into the ranks of the unemployed. Part of the agricultural lands, it wiU be remembered, were reserved by the state as military lands. Not only were these retained for the reservists, or time- expired men, unable to obtain other employment, or not desirous of emigrating to a British colony, but they were worked by the soldiers during their period of service. It used to be the curse of the soldier that no adequate outlet was provided for the men after their period of daily drill. Some foolish officers tried to fill up spare time by excessive or unnecessary drill, which only pro- (165) yoked mutiny. "Wise officers know that over-drill may be worse than no drill at all. Your strained bow is not better than your untried bow. The result was to drive the men for distraction to the public-house, resulting in crimes induced by drink. The' public -houses having been abolished, some other means of occu- pation became imperative. Let it, then, be recognised how valuable was that institution which, whilst it trained the citizen soldier to as perfect a discipline as ever prevailed in Great Britain's army, protected him also from enforced idleness, and retained him as a productive worker, as well as his country's defender. The minimum period of engagement after the Revolution was twenty-one years, whereof ten years had to be with the colours, six years in the first class reserve, and five years in the second reserve. During his service with the colours the soldier was trained to a trade, or to agricultural service, all the produce of his labour at the farm or factory being absorbed by the army or navy. After the completion of his ten years' service, if the reservist could not obtain employment — a rare event, with the ever-increasing demand for labour — the State ofi'ered him con- tinuation of employment in the trade, or farm, he had served in^ or free transport to a British colony and settlement upon a farm allotment, free of rent and rates for three years, and subject, after that period, to the rate prevailing in the colony he had selected — a rent or rate never exceeding one tithe of the net produce of the farm.* If the reservist remained in the military farm or factory, the wages paid to him were only one-half what they were outside, * See Land Conditions, pp. 117, 253. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 309 for it was not desired to retain strong men in a service which was only designed to provide against waste of the soldier's time, and to prevent his suffering for want of work after his period of active service was past. As for the Jubilee pension system, it is but an insult to the word " pension " to call it so. Take this as an illustration : — (I3t>) " William Rogers, aged fifty-six, formerly of the 2nd Dragoons, after eleven years' service, was discharged on a ])ension of sixpence a day. [Sixpence ! Remember that sum, reader, and that the Parliament Minister retired, after a four or five years' course of party-lying and maladministration, on a pension of £2000 a 3^ear or upwards.] The old soldier received sixpence a day. He was able to sup[)lement that British Government sixpence by a further half-crown a week, by serving in the Tower Hamlets Dispensary seven days a week from seven in the morning until ten at night — sometimes he had to serve all night. The old soldier, who had bled in the defence of his country, ' lived ' for a time on the six shillings a week, but finally could not, and died of starvation. The jury said that that was the way the poor army pensioner often died, and that it was a disgrace to the country, and the coroner agreed with them." Let the patient British subject contrast the sixpence a day pension, for life service in the defence of his country, with the Duke of Grafton's pension of £20,000 a year for "butlerage to Charles II.," continued down to late Jubilee times, and by a Jubilee Parliament commuted by payment to the Grafton Duke of the sum of .£229,000. That is small in comparison with the Duke of Richmond pension, commuted by Jubilee Parliament in the sum of £630,000 odd. The Amherst people received in a similar way and for similar " service " £95,000. The Duke of St. Albans was paid by Jubilee Parliaments £1373 a year for filling the post of " Master of the Hawks," notwithstanding the fact that those interesting animals had ceased to exist in Great Britain ; but that did not matter, for the Parliament lawyers decided that "the nation was bound to continue not only to pay the Duke his salary, but also to find him in hawks " which did not exist. For such were Jubilee lawyers. Those are (167) a few of such pensions which Jubilee lawyers and Jubilee Parlia- ments paid — "memorials of corruption," said the Times news- j)aper, in a comment upon them. Can the British reader picture (1^8) (169) SIO THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF to liimself the venality and utter foulness of the political things capable of the " sixpence a day pension for life service," and the £600,000 pension to a do-nothing duke for a corrupt service performed two hundred years before to a corrupt king? With all this hot in thy mind, British reader, listen to the story of another State pensioner, for all State pensioners did not die of starvation ; some of them died in the workhouse instead, like David Thomas, "a hero of the Crimea, who held the Crimean medal with four clasps, the Turkish medal, and the medal for distinguished services in the field. He fought and bled for his country for twenty-six years, and then was sent by his grateful country to die in the workhouse a pauper ! " And your circum- locutory Jubilee Minister "has no reason to believe" (no votes to catch by believing) " that the thousands of reserve men to be turned off in mid-winter " will swell the ranks of the unemployed. He is ready to pension Grafton, Richmond, and other dukes. Let us ask no more. Carlyle Democritus materially changed that quaint Jubilee system in every way. The National Insurance included all the forces of the Crown in its wide scope. But in the time of war the soldier's loss fell upon the Imperial Government instead of upon the Insurance Fund. The State pension to a soldier who suffered in the service of his country was to the full equivalent of his service pay, and in the event of his death those dependent on him received the full pension so long as their circumstances required it.* The standing army was raised to 250,000 men, a large portion of whom were engaged in productive work, and all, on retirement, became workers, and strengthened the State in a double sense. The tone of the militia was raised by more attractive conditions of service, better pay, more efficient drill, and frequent camping with the regular troops. The volunteers were also a particular care of the Revolutionary Government. A system of capitation grant was instituted on a liberal scale, and was made dependent partly upon the efficiency of the volunteer and partly upon the efficiency of the entire regiment. The Government afforded facilities for volunteer regiments to camp and drill with the regular forces, and bore the entire cost of the men and officers • Compare p. 278. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 311 during such periods of training, including transit to and from the camp, etc. But the most notaWe change made by the Kevolution in the military service generally, was the abolition, of senile, or juvenile, incompetencies in high places, and substituting at the head of all Military Departments and Commands the ablest officers in the army. Titles, Royal or otherwise, ceased to afford any grounds for promotion. Merit, and merit only, could commend an officer to a post. And in order to prevent future degeneracy in this direction, the Revolution instituted a Military Council having very much the same powers in the army that the Guilds possessed in trade. They had their Courts of Honour, and notably the power — not to appoint but — to bring to the notice of their superiors the merits of any officers, or men, whom they deemed worthy of promotion. These councils enjoyed also the power to make representation against any appointment which sought to set over the army incompetent leaders, or officials. Promotion was rapid after the Revolution, as immense numbers of officers were required for the enlarged Indian, and other Native forces o£ the Empire ; the reduced age of retirement was a further help. After Carlyle Democritus had given to the people of India, Burmah, and all British Dependencies their lands which they tilled, and had raised entire nations out of the extremes of poverty and oppression into independence and content, the loyalty of the subject populations grew beyond the influence of detracting agitators. Nor were these gentry at all tolerated by wise leaders. Native papers, which could not learn to appreciate freedom without degenerating into mere vulgarity of licence, were instantly quashed. Listen to this excerpt from a very high authority indeed. " In (170) India the press is not representative ; it is the creation of a set of instructed — not educated — men, who have obtained their instruc- tion at the expense of the State, and use it for the purpose of vilifying and abusing every officer of the Government who will not fawn upon and flatter the class to which the writers belong. Their hatred of those who are trying to work for the good of the people at large, and not for the exclusive glorification of the Bengali Baboo, is betrayed in every page of their journals." "Not garbage," my brown friend, said Carlyle Democritus, " can the British Government any more tolerate as adequate food for mind or body." No more of that, O brown or white baboon, 312 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF (plural and general form of the chattering baboo-species of any colour). Yes, after the Revolution, brown lawyer, barrister, and able editor, had to seek other livelihood than the brown agitation business. Native congresses had to confine their debatings within the loyalties, or betake themselves to more useful work, provided for them in the farm and labour settlements. The age of talk — by white or brown tongues — had passed away. All the Indian troops were British officered, even in the native states, to a wider extent than had ever prevailed before. Similar steps were taken in India with regard to military lands, and the industrial occupa- tion of the soldiers, to those which prevailed at home. The methods differing, in some cases, to meet Indian considerations of caste. Measures were also passed with the Colonial Governments by which their forces were incorporated with the Imperial Army. And when the Indian frontier difficulty — referred to in a previous chapter — came to a head, 50,000 Canadian and Australian men volunteered for service, 30,000 of whom took part in the opera- tions. It was computed that had Russia at that time decided oa war, Great Britain could have poured into her territories at least a million men without drawing on the home reserve, or includ- ing in these figures the Afghan troops — who had all submitted to British leadership — or the untold horde* of China. A few minor details of the army reforms may be touched upon before closing this chapter. The value of the thoroughness of Britisli manufactures, in all departments of trade, was abundantly well tested during the course of the Indian campaign. The commissariat of the army was as remarkable for the excellency of its officers as for the good quality and quantity of the provisions supplied ; and its consequent abdominal strength gave it a marching endurance which tested its boot-leather more than tho Napoleonic maxim perhaps contemplated. Although it may seem a detail to add in this history, yet it should have place, as an evidence of the wisdom of the revolutionary leader, who had insisted upon exceptional care being exercised with regard to this portion of the soldiers' equipment. The old English thoroughly-tanned leather was practically a lost art in Jubilee period ; but Carlyle Democi'itus restored it. And amongst the great military factories which he inaugurated, the most important were the military tanneries and boot factories for supplying the forces. Worthy to be remembered also is tho law which forbade the wearing, or imitation, of tiie THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 313 Imperial uniform by any other than the Im{)erial troops. A very necessary law ; and it supplies another indication of the miserable degeneracy of the Jubilee authorities that they permitted, in spite of protest in Parliament and out of Parliament, the proud uniform of the national forces to be literally dragged in the gutter by street clowns and advertisement hawkers. It was a common thing in (171) Jubilee times to see poor, half-starved wretches, dressed up in military helmets and tunics, parading the London streets, carrying advertisements upon their backs of some wretched music hall vul- garity. The designer of such brutal travesties was an honoured personage of Jubilee Government, and lifted by said Government, along with the beer-brewers and party politicians, into titledom, instead of being taken down to public whipping with cat-o'-nine tails. Military bands were forbidden to assist in degrading Saturnalia. In Jubilee time one might have seen the regimental band of one of Her Majesty's crack corps taking part in an advertising entertainment for the sale of a poisonous hair-wash, (172) " Ex uno disce omnes." 2. The Navy. With all the glorious traditions of her fleets which had conquered an empire for Great Britain, compared with which the dear mother country was but as a pearl drop in an ocean of expanse, might not the British reader hope that political corruption would here have stayed its desecrating hand, its lying tongue, its cringing cowardice ! But not even here. The palsy engendered by the party politician had touched the nation's heart. And, but for the llevolution. Great Britain's doom had sounded. If any reader of this history be not already convinced of the callous disregard which successive Governments betrayed towards most that was great and good, whilst they pandered to the time-server every- where, that can only be because a long continued disregard of human worth, of national greatness, of human life, has sunk into that reader and has infected him by generations of political decadence. But let the real evil be recognised and not mistaken. Let not the British oak tree be confounded with the wood-lice feeding on it. There were not forty millions of political vermin in Great Britain. They were but a class — a dangerous, spreading, much infecting class, but they were not the people. At tiie core of the 314 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF nation still beat the pulse-throb of hope for a truer life. The nation longed for its true reformer. It was the calling for the man that brought the man into being. The world of Englishmen cried aloud for a Carlyle Democritus, and Carlyle Democritus appeared. "Why did the British sailor in those Jubilee times go to his watery grave in thousands every year? Because the numbers engaged on the sea were large? Or because of unpun- ished crime, not detected because insufficiently inspected, and which has not a name 1 Lost at sea in the Jubilee years was one British sailor out of every seventy engaged in the calling. In the ships of Germany only one man was lost out of 128 so engaged ; in the Dutch, Italian, and Norwegian ships the average sacrifice (173) of life was only as one in every 350. Those figures belonged to the merchant navy. But it was the Government duty to remedy them. There was a remedy. Was there not also a remedy for another cruel evil of the merchant seaman, that which condemned them to perennial no- work? Read this from the Jubilee Government (174) Labour Gazette of the year 1894: "The supply of seamen is in excess of the demand in nearly all ports of the United Kingdom." Whereupon in Parliament followed a somewhat unusual "ques- (175) tion":— Fierce sea officer, M.P., a navy reserve man, knowing some- what of the real sea life, no mere party jabbering ape, he, the salt of God's sea and God's truth well in him — " How dare the Government ask British sailors to enlist in the Reserve when no employment is found for them in times of peace because they ask for something better than a bare starvation waf^e? Only last week one firm of shipowners discharged four hundred of its British sailors to take on four hundred foreigners, and that firm is heavily subsidized by the British Government, but no word of protest, or protection, on behalf of the British sailor. How dare you ask the free British sailor to join your Reserve and tlien send him out to starve?" fierce son of God and truth, Parliament is not thy place. Picture Jesus in Parlia- ment with not one, but 500 Pilates opposite Him, enquiring^ " What is truth V Poor sea hero gets due Jubilee mud-lies for (176) answer from Jubilee Mud-Secretary to Admiralty, listen : — " The Govemuient can do nothing, British seamen are turned off and foreigners taken on because the British seamen 'agitate.' " Cheap foreign labour is not so particular about sweating wagea THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 315 and bad food as your British sailor." Brave Naval Reserve man, leave jabbering Parliament, and stand by Carlyle Democritus. The Governments who had languidly shut their eyes whilst Russia stealthily crept towards India ; whilst misery, starvation, and disease crept upon her children in slum-courts ; whilst the demon of drink besotted the people and soaked them in crime. Of such Governments dare any one hope that there could be wake- fulness to the gradual and ominous growth of the war fleets of Great Britain's rivals? Vain hope if such were. Stealthily the nations crept on to the water, as Russia had been creeping on India. Jubilee Party-things, sunk only in lust for power and place. "Awake, my Country," shouted the lion Democritus, "and before it is too late see ! " And now let it be told, as briefly as may be, the naval works of the Revolution. The nation was aroused. It was indeed time. In the Mediterranean waters passed the great trade of mighty Britain. Think of the Mediten-anean as a wide irregular funnel, through which British trade to India and her other Colonies took its shortest route. The handle to the funnel is Gibraltar, the spout the Suez Canal. All the ships collected in the wide mouth of that funnel passed through the Suez Canal to get eastward. As a measure of the importance to Great Britain to guard that Mediterranean Sea, let it be realised that whilst in the latest Jubilee year of which this history treats (1893— 94), two thousand two hundred and sixty-two British vessels passed through the Suez Canal, there went only one hundred and sixty French and nineteen Russian ships. To guard shipping interests represented by her nineteen vessels passing in one year, Russia had, in the Jubilee year 1894, four efficient battleships in the Mediterranean. To guard her hundred and sixty vessels and their line of route, France had thirteen battleships. And, to watch over her two thousand two hundred and sixty-two vessels, Great Britain had eleven ships of war. But ominous as those figures are, they become more so if the total of war vessels large and small be taken. Of these, France alone had in the Mediterranean, in the year 1894, over one hundred, whilst Great Britain had less than forty. (178)f If we take the whole British shipping and compare it with that of France and Russia, the figures become curiously startling. The value of the merchant navy of Great Britain exceeded one hundred (177) 316 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF (179) (180) <181) (182) and twenty millions sterling. And the joint value of the French and Russian merchant navies counted for less than the odd twenty millions of the great British service. Add that Great Britain had Colonies and possessions all over the world* to guard and protect, whilst France had one or two, and Russia none. Yet Russia and France possessed a total of 107 ironclads against England's 77. And whilst Great Britain was expending some eighteen millions sterling a year upon her Imperial navy for the protection of that enormous and most noble sea service, the other two powers were within a small amount of the same expenditure on their comparatively insignificant interests. Glance at this table taken from the Year-Book of the Chef de Bureau of the French Minister of Marine — Ships. France. Russia. France and Russia. Great Britain. Armoured Ships, Unarmoured Ships, Torpedo Boats, Officers, .... Seamen, .... 66 160 230 2 227 41,536 55 72 180 1,573 38,000 121 232 410 3,800 79,536 81 2S0 155 2,803 42,507 Or at this Jubilee-ministerial confession in a Parliament session of 1894, extracted from the Right Hon. Shuttlecock, M.P., under examination by Brother Radical, anxious for the waning British fleet, but nevertheless walking out of the House when the voting time came — more anxious for Radical nuul-Party than British Navy and British Empire combined. Right Hon. British Secretary to the Admiralty : — " Yes, during the last twelve months the ton- nage of battle-ships launched was as follows : — France, . . . 30,000 tons. Russia, . . . 12,000 tons. Great Britain, . . nil." Except to soul-sunk Party cowards, dead to all patriotism, dead to everything but their sordid truculences, could those warning figures be without significance 1 Here, as everywhere throughout * The area of Great Britain is 121,069 square miles, and the area of Greater Britain is 11,000,000 of square miles, or three times the territory of all Europe. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 317 Jubilee history, the same slime-track of the Party serpent pre- sented itself, which only by crushing under her heel could Great Britain hope to save herself. Oak-tree of sturdy Britain sore beset by political vermin in every crevice of its rugged strength. On all sides the Russians and the French were building as fast as they could — not ships to do brave trade, but war ships. To what purpose, reader ? France and Russia were not, and have not yet become, Island-Continents. All Britain was asking, imploring cowardly Pax'ty creatures to rouse themselves and build up the British fleet ere it should be too late. Tory and Radical word- machines, one was as worthless as the other. Thus had the British poet hissed at them : — " You — you — if you have fail'd to understand The fleet of England is her all in all ; On you will come the curse of all the land. If that Old England fall, Which Nelson left so great. This Isle, the mightiest naval power on earth, This one small Isle, the lord of every sea, — Poor England, what would all these votes be worth. And what avail thy ancient fame of " Free," Wert thou a fallen State ? You — you — who had the ordering of her fleet, If you have only compass'd her disgrace ; When all men starve, the wild mob's million feet Will kick you from your place — But then — too late, too late." Aye, KICK THEM ! No other word for them even from the gentlest and sweetest singer this England ever had. KICK THEM I For heart they had none to pierce. Their conscience was but a maw for gold pensions or temporary place and power. Their brains but diseased fibre, fit to sling empty words upon. What else to do? Where else to apply the brand of contumely, but there — the region emblematic of their utter baseness, utter senselessness. The London Charivari spoke boldly, as has ever been its wont, of those dastardly Admiralty wizard-enchantments, and it bid the English people change their "Rule Britannia" into : — '■^ FOOL, Britannia, Britannia ruled by knaves !" and change also its old heroic abnegation into new and craven determination of remaining EVER slaves. (^^^) SI 8 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF Let no man be deceived by the momentary word-humbug of either party, when in what was called opposition. A party politician snug in office invented subterfuges, lies, crawlings of every sort. Often — within a few days of protestation that the navy was sufficient for all purposes — the first lords, or liars, of the Admiralty, the Prime Minister, or Crime Minister, would be driven by outraged public opinion to admit the truth, and pro- '^ ^ pose to Parliament to build much needed ships. In office, only cowardly lies and subterfuges. Out of office, called "in opposi- tion," the Party slime-things befouled the other side for not doing the very work they had neglected to do. ■^ ^' Take this as an instance, First Right Honourable Lord of the Admiralty, M.P., " in opposition'': — " It is an act of recklessness amounting to madness not to keep the navy strong enough ; when I was in office I did all in my power to bring before all classes and sections of society the paramount importance of a strong navy." That was the Tory Right Honourable M.P., First Lord of the Admiralty, addressing a gullible Jubilee public in the year 1894. Now listen to the manner in which he actually performed his duty, as described by the great Times newspaper, in a leading article, at the time when the same Right Honourable First Lord, ^ ' or Liar, of the Admiralty was "in office " : — "Official assurances are directed with exasperating persistency to points remote from the real issues. Every one is weary of the statistics which the Admiralty is always ready to present . . . Omissions, misdescrip- tions, suppressions, and errors to such an extent that no two experts (unless they are in office together) can be found to agree upon them. They are absolutely worthless and deceptive ... It is a scandal and a disgrace to the rulers of this country tbat an official ring has been allowed to deprive us of the advantages of our unrivalled manufacturing capacity, and to enable foreigners to beat us hollow in our own staple industry. . . . There are ships which have been waiting years for guns, etc., etc." . . . Those are the Times comments on the Jubilee party liar, who, when in office, " did all in my power to bring before all classes and sections of society the paramount importance of a strong navy." That First Lord, or liar, of the Admiralty "in opposition," and his party, were the very persons who maddened the nation by their " omissions, misdescriptions, suppressions, and errors," said the Times news- paper, and who by their stolid refusal to strengthen the fleet (until THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 319 public opinion finally drove them to do it) provoked those fierce Tennysonian lines : — "You — you — . . . the wild mob's million feet Will kick you from your place. ..." Be not misled, good people. Trace all the Party history through, and, except the one great Earl of Chatham (in his first period), they are one crew of waiters upon popular propulsion or compul- sion. Away from them quickly. Consider the work of a MAN and turn to what Carlyle Democritus did to remedy the creep of dangerous foreign fleets after British commerce. It is a pity that the pen can only record in gradual and ex- tended manner actions which are not extended, except in their application to events. Many of the brilliant reforms which this history has endeavoured to describe have had to toil through chapters, in the way that pearls are hung upon a thread. But in the actual doing they proceeded not in sequence, but many of them simultaneously. Thus especially was it with the reforms in the army and the fleet. Long before the period we have reached in this recital, the new legions of the army and of navy men were already drilled and absorbed in the national forces. And the ships about to be recorded were built and speeding everywhere upon the mighty ocean ways. Seeing, then, that Great Britain needed warships for defence and not ofi"ence. Seeing also that the strangers were increasing their fleets, not in proportion to the requirements of their mercantile marine, but in ominous proportion to the swelling greatness of Englund's, Cai-lyle Democritus, within one day of his establishment in power, set all Great Britain's ship- building yards into fervour of construction. Let the puny-souled, of Jubilee-party-creature and peace-at-any-price sort, shudder in their timidness and time-servingness, and pass on, for the record of the Democritean naval building scheme will dement them. The Revolution determined that England's fleet should stand at least in strength as two battleships to one of any of the two most considerable foreign powers combined. But as to armed cruisers, which are only one of two things, protective of a country's merchant ships, or destructive of an opponent's merchant ships — the Revolution determined Great Britain should always be in the minimum proportion of five to one of any two other combined Powers. Accordingly, such the Revolution made law. The 320 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF reformed Parliament in due course confirmed that Revolutionary law, and to prevent its desecration by any possible future degeneration, made the great rule a part of the Constitution. But Oarlyle Democritus had provided that the marvellous little Island, which held an empire in wise sway, should not wait, should start with no possibility tliat the foreigner should mistake his meaning. Great Britain touched not, nor threatened any foreign nation's peace. Nor should any nation threaten hers. These were the ships which within five years the Revolution added to the glorious navy of Great Britain : — Twenty-five first class "battle ships. Twelve second class battle ships. Ten third class battle ships. Twenty-five ironclads of the gunboat and coast defence class. One hundred small strong steel ram-boats. Twenty-five armed cruisers of the first class. Ten cruisers of the second class. And of the torpedo-destroyer sort one hundred boats, besides two hundred of the torpedo type, according to the determination of the Admiralty. Of reserve cruisers we have already spoken. Every merchant vessel, small or large, built to the requirements of the Admiralty, at home or in the Colonies, received an annual reserve- pay of from ten shillings to fifteen shillings a ton. The sea, not the land, is the home of England ; her land is the cosy hearth — the sea her work-a-day world. She bridged the seas with her fleets. The child loves its parent for his love ; how impotent is that love without protecting strength. Only the just and the merciful should be strong. England had become just and merciful, and the same hand now made her strong. But the wisdom which created the giant fleet did not leave it in idleness, or lingering in port^, or vainly rusting. The great cruisers and the transport ships, when not required for military or naval services, were the " free bridge across the ocean " for British emigration. Of improved ordnance the fleet at Jubilee times stood as much in need as of added ships, and the Revolution neglected not that orave matter. All the old obsolete muzzle-gims were replaced by breecUoaders, and ample reserves were held in all the naval depots. Ample armaments w^ere also held in readiness for all the reserve THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 321 cruisers. These also carried guns for training purposes, and periodic gun-drill was gone through by all the crews — that being one of the conditions of the subsidy, which varied from the maximum of fifteen shillings, down to a minimum of ten shillings, according to the class of the vessel, and the expertness in naval drill of her crew. At Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, and all British ports and coaling stations available, docks were built and fortified, and large re- serves of coal and provisions stored in them. And — to prevent any future laxness in these reforms — a joint (X>uncil of the Ad- miralty and the "War Office (no longer presided over by party apes, but by the bravest generals and admirals in the respective services) appointed a staff of ten admirals and generals, whose duty it was once in every year — never at the same period of the year — to visit and inspect every naval station, and report briefly and plainly the exact condition of the places. Their report had to be immediately acted upon and laid before Parliament. The party Inanities had allowed the Fleet and the national armaments, the coal and other stores, and the naval prestige alike to dwindle. The whole fleet was undermanned ; but within two years of the establishment of the Eevolution, there were over one hundred thousand officers and men serving in the navy, and a reserve, ready for immediate call, of at least fifty thousand, not including the great reserve of the merchant navy. Nor had the wise Democritus forgotten a class of men and officers, too much neglected by Jubilee people, given to forget and neglect the strongest portions of the social frame because not always or easily visible. In modern warships and steamships generally, serving under conditions more trying than those of any other division of the fleets, were a class of men — the engineers, stokers, and firemen — upon whom not only the safety, but the wise manipulation of the ships in large manner depended in storm or calm. Five hundred engineers were at once added to the navy. The pay of all engineer officers and men ■was raised to the highest scale prevailing in the service ; and the engineer officers, according to their merit and and standing, were accorded equality of rank with the highest grades of the service. On all boards or Councils of the Admiralty the corps of Eoyal Naval Engineers was represented, including the council who carried out the annual inspection of all naval ports and stations. The same care which was extended to the food supplies of the merchant X 32-? ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. navy protected the Imperial navy also. A wise Government does not neglect the health and strength of the men upon whose valour the national existence depends. Promotion was secured in the inferior ranks by limiting the number of years' service in any one department to periods of fifteen, ten, and five years, for the three lower grades ; whilst, in the higher ranks, an age-limit retired commanders, captains, and admirals at from forty to sixty years of age according to their degree. All were retired on full pay, if remaining in the reserve till their sixtieth year, or on half-pay if definitely quitting the service. One object attained by this system of retirement, in addition to the benefits of the healthy system of promotion, was the provision of able officers for the training fleet. Poor England had long expected men would do their duty. MEX would do it. But party-jabbering apes? Of them let no wise man expect other than ruin and decay. Expecting duty from such as they, England had been cruelly enough disappointed, CHAPTER III. the chubch : pastors op christ. pantheon purified. Probmial. *' ... It is the curse of making the Clergy a profession, a road to get on upon, to succeed in life. The base strain is apparent in their very language, too sad an index of what they are. Their ' duty ' ^v'hat is it ? To patter through the two Sunday services. For a little money one of them will undertake the other's ^duty' for him. And what do they all aim at ? Getting livings / " — Froude. "The Marquis of has been condemned by three judges as utterly unworthy to associate with gentlemen. His conduct is so Bcandalous that he is kicked out of sporting circles with every possible mark of ignominy. But no matter what disgrace has been inflicted, no matter what a flood of filth has been poured over the country, . . . this noble Marquis appoints clergymen to eleven livings. And the Bishops leave this question of private patronage (185} nntoucbed." — Jubilee Jottings. Ecclesiastical Intelligence. "Yesterday afternoon the Bishop of Lichfield was presented with a new cope. It is made of red stamped velvet, richly embroidered with gold. The gold band contains figures of six saints specially connected with the diocese of Lichfield. The cope «ost £500, and was given to supply a deficit in the CatJiedral worship." In accepting the £500 piece of mummery, the Bishop €aid : — "Considering the weight of authority on which the use of the vestment rested [not that I have been able to find any authority ior it in Christ, or His simple history], considering also the 323 324 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF continuity of its use in the Christian Church [and not considering its utter uselessness, vanity, not to say vulgarity, and not considering that the £500 would have been more aptly bestowed upon the underpaid and half-starved curates, or the wholly starving children of the poor — not considering any of such things], how can I do otherwise than accept it ? You have asked me to do nothing illegal, and I hope it will help you all, and help me also, to rise above Party. [Party, or a certain Party, very anxious to disestablish £500 copes plus six saints on the golden waistband, bishops, and all that belongs to them.] — The " Times " (bar (186) parentheses), Anno 1894. (187) More Ecclesiastical Intblliqbncb. (" Times.") '* Prayer was offered yesterday on the occasion of the appoint- ments of the Right Rev. A. R. Tucker, the Right Rev. H. Evington, and the Right Rev. H. Tugwell to be bishops of Kiushiu, Japan ; Eastern Equatorial Africa ; and Western Equatorial Africa. Last week, the Archbishop of York in the chair, exhibitions were granted to promising divinity students in the Egyptian Ek-Tissad School, and it was decided to take steps for aiding materially the higher education of the daughters of the upper dosses of the Copts, at a cost of £2000." Brown and black Eastern people and the Egyptian upper classes thus accommodated with expensive new bishops and exhibitions, by no means wanted by, or necessary to, such people, there imme- diately followed, under that " Ecclesiastical Intelligence," a state- ment and appeal on behalf of Eastern white people, signed by the Bishop of London : — " The East End Church Fund is nearly exhausted. After anxious deliberation, and with a full knowledge of the sacrifices which its action must entail, the Council has de- termined to reduce all its grants for assistant curates and lay -helpers [although they were already reduced to about £36 a year !]. It is feared that many of them will be compelled to resign, and this, of course, involves the loss of valuable helpers. The only method of averting such calamities is to 'appeal,'" etc. No method of diverting those expensive black and brown bishoprics to the salvation of the white slum-people, for whom, continues the " Statement and Appeal," " the demand for assistance is continually increasing, and upon whom terrible poverty is creep- ing [nay marching double-quick, London Bishop] ... for THE TWENTIETH CENTTTRY. 325 example, here are six thousand people in one parish, with one clergyman working single-handed because a second clergyman cannot be maintained," etc. Small wonder that an eloquent Canon Scott-Holland in his sermon on " National Penitence," had to say : — (^^8) "Nothing is more noticeable and startling than the discovery of the selfishness, recklessness, and cruelty with which even a Church is capable of acting." . . . For was not that Church, even then, that very day, in that year of grace 1894, there in mighty London, the centre of civilized humanity, intent upon Japanese, Chinese, African, Timbuctooese, Indian, and every sort of expensive coloured Bishopric, while its own white curates were starving? Was not that Church itself deriving " rents from slums (189) which were a sanitary disgrace, and from publichouses which fattened on the hideous drunkenness which their blazing gas or roaring heat fed nightly into fever ? Was there no room for a plain, straight curse on such sins 1 " (190) Veritably, yes, your Canonship, abundant room ; and has not a Carlyle Democritus achieved it for you, and sent your archbishops and other panderers, " become the very by-word for arrogance and merciless ambition," down to the slums they fostered, down to the starved stipends they afforded their patient, long-suffering curates ? Shortly after that Scott-Holland canonical fulminous, or fulminic maranatha, we find him, under "Fashionable Intelligence," instead of " Ecclesiastical Intelligence " — at a Jubilee dinner-party. And (191) readers may picture to themselves the eloquent divine, after the champagne and the multifarious courses have a little subsided, thus "returning thanks" for the Church, with more or less fuligi- nous magniloquence : — " My dear brethren — I beg pardon, my lords, ladies, and gentle- men, — I have been requested to respond to the toast of the Church — so appropriately, adequately, liberally — I make no reflec- tions upon the politics of our host — expensively, warmly, and enthusiastically proposed by the right honourable gentleman, recently at the head of Her Majesty's Government. If at a super- ficial glance you might conceive that I have any compunction in responding on behalf of an institution of which I said the other day that ' it had arrived at a point where it stood convicted of the most inhuman conduct, harshness, cruelty, greed, and ambition, that it had yielded to the impulse of self-interest, and, had become 326 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF the very by-word for arrogance and merciless ambition ; ' I can assure you that I have not. You must remember that I uttered those words in a church in the City, and the subject was ' National Penitence.' I appeal to the right hon. gentleman, recently at the head of Her Majesty's Government, who has so eloquently proposed ' the Established Church ' — notwithstanding the fact that in another place he was prepared to disestablish what his sapient supporters, the centre and select of the civilized world, called an anomaly. I appeal to the right hon. gentleman to support me, when I say that there is a time for everything, — and that the marvellous compound of saltpetre and charcoal, called gunpowder, must not be blamed because it is used for brilliant effect in the display of fireworks, and for deadly effect in the breech-loader on the battlefield. Nothing in nature is consistent, — certainly not my right hon. friend recently at the head of Her Majesty's Government. He glories in his marvellous ability, which I am sure we all admire, and which enabled him to exalt one day that ■which he denounced on the morrow. My dear brethren — ahem, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen — that great, that hyper-superlative, that most absolutely essential, all-comprehending, ultraperfect, adoration-compelling attribute of a Jubilee statesman — inconsist- ency (lovd atid prolonged applause) — must not be thought to be the attribute of the politician only. Ladies and gentlemen, it is the sole deity of this modem world ; it is the axis upon which our whole social system turns; it is the Alpha and the Omega of modem greatness. Without it, where would any of us be ? I look around me on all sides, and I shudder to think what must occur ■were I to use that saltpetre and charcoal compound outside the Church, as I made use of it in the Church. Ladies and gentlemen,, I spoke to the people God's truth within the sacred edifice, but — and the right hon. gentleman recently at the head of Her Majesty s Government will bear me out — you dare not speak that, truth to the people at large. Where would modern statesmanship be if the truth were to be spoken, instead of dexterous platitudes 1 Ladies and gentlemen (in a deep and solemn tone, somewhat hashed), if wo were to tell the people the truth, as the Lord Jesus required we should do, where would the social structure be H Could we uphold our peerages made out of public-houses and the sale of alcohol-poisons, our statesmen raised by tongue agility into power, OUT wealth and prosperity wrung out of the festering misery THE TWENTIETH CENTUEY. 327 of the masses, our archbishops of £15,000 a year, and our starving curates of £35 a year, to be further reduced, — the £35 curacies, not the £15,000 bishoprics? Ladies and gentlemen, I say again, if the truth were told, if we spoke to the people, as we shall have one day to answer to our God, nothing hiding, all confessing — . . . (signs of impatience commence to manifest themselves) . . . Ladies and gentlemen, I will say no more (evident signs of relief). I will only ask you to bear with me, and remember that if I am a Canon in the Church, I am only a sort of toy pistol outside of it, (Loud cheers and soft laughter 3 music.) " The Church. Disestablishment ! The political Jubilee Eadical Party cure for spiritual, material, and political evils and abuses : a Church filled with ten-thousand-a-year bishops, fat, dual, triple, quadruple, quintruple, and other-uple livings ; Christ's poor pastors left poor indeed, even to starvation poor; these doing all the work, those robbing all the honey. Church livings, priestships, advowsons, benefices, put up openly for sale or exchange in the same way as cattle, pigs, and stable refuse; offered for barter openly in the daily papers and special " Church Bazaar and Exchange Gazette," (1^^) as were they empty beer casks, superannuated pianos, bicycles, and such things. Overpaid ministers not ministering, filling pulpits with inanities, twaddle, and windbagisms, and pretending, with much unction, that those were the teachings of Jesus. Was there no cure for all that 1 No remedy but to cut the great Church adrift ? Could no new Luther be found to cut the lies away, and leave the beautiful Christian faith divinely pure, and recognisable by man- kind ? Was the only possible way to cut the State adrift from the religiousness and the religion which had made it strong in past times, and should make it yet stronger in times to come ? Could not we cut the lies away? Kadical, Anarchic disestablishment - panacea is an effective kill, but it is no cure. Was it not the same with the Jubilee Upper Chamber, no longer a House of Lords, only the house of the degenerate sons and grandsons of lords ? Was there no wise means of reforming such a necessary second chamber, by wise rule of true lords, instead of no-rule, or misrule, by dummy-lords, or worse, money-lords ? " No," said 328 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF blatant Jubilee Eadical Party brayers* — "easier to anarchise lords, second chamber, and national constitution — blow them all * Lest it be deemed that a natural and patriotic abhorrence has unduly warmed the historian against the belittlers of all that was glorious in England, and perilled his impartiality, the said belittlers shall speak for themselves, through the mouth of their high butcher. It is not often given us " to see ourselves as others see us," but in the year of grace 1894, that power was given to the Jubilee Radical Party, and the following accurate description of the genus Political Radical was published, unsolicited, by the most typical specimen of them all, the Radical-in-Chief of the United Kingdom : — " We are ever ready to grovel before a lord who will condescend to notice us. A Radical who has spoken to one of those lofty beings drags the act into his conversation, and would have it believed that he and his lord are intimate friends. "We are a race of snobs, and we are never so happy as when we can indulge in an orgie of snobbism. Look how your Radical rejoices when he can get a lord to preside over some local festival, how he beams when he is talking to one, and how elated he is when he secures the smallest shred of a (193) *ltls *^°'" himself." We may complete that candid confession by adding other marked characteristics of the species ; for, in addition to their tendency to grovel before mere wealth and titles, was a far more fatal tendency, indeed, the very fatalest of all tendencies — an inability to appreciate true merit any- where. The mere sight or sound of heroic action amongst their countrymen sent them into fits of uncontrollable vituperation. In exact proportion to their fetish -worship of the foul was their abhorrence of true merit or great- ness. The Radical-in-Chief, who drew the above faithful picture of his political crew, also defined his own methods of attacking British volunteers who sacrificed their lives on the battle-field in the service of the Empire. He deemed it his radical "duty" "to publish every statement calling his attention to any misconduct on the part of the British forces." , . . Such trifles as enquiring into the bona-Jides of the lying statements, he held to be quite unnecessary: he entered, therefore, into a "campaign of misrepresentation, malevolent guesswork, and anonymous, or unsupported .slander ; adopted and circulated broadcast, in an undiluted stream of calumny, accusations of odious crimes by anonymous or irresponsible slanderers, when- ever the pioneers of British colonization were concerned." This arch-type of the Jubilee mud-Radical M.P. boasted (all these excerpts are from the Times newspaper, which the Radical-in-Chief had himself declared to be without bias in the matter) — that "if none of the charges he had published against the brave men fighting under the British flag were true, he would still con- tinue to call those British officers and men, murderers, marauders, ruffians, (194) ^^^ riflT-raff." Seldom indeed in this world has a foul-souled Jubilee politician so accurately illustrated the truth of the proverb : " The cuckoo calls its own name." We will not soil a history destined to live as long as English wisdom lives by quoting his other patronym. The Revolution relegated the whole Jubilee Radical crew to their proper place in the British Constitution, as a reference to the reformed Parliament will make abundantly clear. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 329 up, that is easier than reform." Destruction is so easy, reform so difficult. Any fool, even a Radical fool, can destroy— but wisdom alone can reform — and wisdom was not in the Eadicals' line of business. Need wise souls, or true souls, have to consider much upon such methods ? Were it not more profitable to a pure heart to consider how far downward towards the abyss his nation was speeding, led by Anarchy in disguise? The Radical Anarchists used not a glass or an iron infernal machine ; but they used an infernal machine beside which the iron and glass instruments were as children's toys. The Radical infernal machine bore the Devil's seal unmistakably upon it; it was a compacted imbroglio of futilities compounded by ignorance, cupidity, and often enough rascality, put up and packed in harmless-looking guise, and carried by the ignorant and dishonest — assisted occasionally, unfortunately, by the honest and well-meaning, but very simple — for a little time — until the internal mechanic clink startled them, and they cut their foul acquaintances and their methods of world reformation. Disestablishment ! The patent Jubilee quack panacea for all evils : poor Ireland robbed, oppressed, down-trodden, bled by absentee partridge lords, the peasants evicted from their fields, left to penury and starvation generation after generation. "Was no wisdom of just government possible for those poor Irish peasants, no settling them justly upon their land, and abolishing absenteeism for ever ? No ; that is the remedy of wisdom and of justice, not of Jubilee radicalism. Jubilee radicalism would "disestablish" Ireland, would give her a Government crew of pirates, of the political moonlighting, cut-throat, dynamite, dancing-master, publican class, and call it " Home Rule." No other method known to Anarchy- radicalism. Their cure for a nursery full of ill-treated children was not to punish the wicked nurses, and substitute just and wise ones^ but to take away the nurses altogether, and let the children '* rule themselves," with just a sufficiency of moon-lighting brigands placed at the doorway, with daggers for the parents' backs and thongs for the children. Must your noble oak perish because of the woodlice on it ? Or will you not rather brush the vermin ofi^, sulphur-smoke them olF if need be, destroy them, but spare the tree? Bethink ye, English Nation, it was not a little thing, that divorce, which Jubilee Party creatures were howling to con- summate. Of all the desolation of inanity, ignorance, and corruption, national-spiritual-suicide, that of the divorce between 330 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OE a State and its religion is the saddest, fatalest. Anarchy, which reared its cowardly head in all directions towards late Jubilee times, knew but one method, one treatment for all diseases — and that treatment was death. Jubilee radicalism's one Gospel was comprised under the fatal watchword of universal Disestablish- ment. Eemove your vermin by burning down your whole oak forest ! That was the political-Jubilee-Radical method. Effective vermin cure, it is true, but — There is always that little word remaining ; what about an after-forest of weeds instead of oak- trees? Verily a vermin-laden oak-tree is preferable to mere waste thistle-growth, or noisome poison - weeds. It was not by disestablishment that a Carlyle Democritus would cure any- thing. Rather by re-establishment. Under the Anarchy cloak of Church Disestablishment lies hidden the foulest fiend of all the Satan- crew — indifference. A friend, an enemy — the one for sweet counsel, the other to teach you many necessary things, wise caution, constant readiness, preparation; and to wean you from all soft indulgences, most of all from sick indifference. Neither friend nor foe, but the thing between, the lukewarm thing, the father of every evil over hell, he who stands on earth to intercept men's energies from producing righteous- ness; the ubiquitous steriliser; of that lip-smiling fiend, let all brave men beware ! Indifference is a Jesuit robe, capacious, even wide enough to find temporary shelter for every evil under the sun. Indifference is the eldest-born of Disestablishment. There are some who are quietly fostering the Disestablishment fiend with considerable inward chuckle, viz. your Jesuits. They hunger for just that Radical garbage to feed upon. Given Dis- establishment indifference for just one decade, and you may see resuscitate (for carrion easily breeds) popes and cardinals, monks and friars, to hack you once more in Inquisition torture-holes, auto-da-fe burnings, Smithfield bonfirings, and St. Bartholomew massacres ; cowled Spanish fiends to hack your tender women and little babes, in order to impress God's mercy on them ; Italian popes twisting maidens' hair into Cenci-ropes, drawing them limb from limb, all in the name of the Pope-God. Those are some of the things which stand waiting outside the door of Disestablishment. Is there then nothing between the divinely simple Christ- teachings and the coalescence of abuse, lies, make-believes, THE TWENTIETH CENTUliY. 331 hypocrisies, and cant which have crept into the Church of England ? Fat and omniverous as the priest-lice are, cannot we mend them without burning down the Church along with them % Fifty thousand pounds, eighty thousand pounds, say the papers, in Jubilee times, easily found to start new bishoprics ; sixty thou- (195]^ sand little Board School children, say the same papers, were mean- while starving, forced to the schools every day unfed. Divine (196> Spirit of the ancient Hebrew people, Thou who hast said " Suffer little children to come unto Me," what were the mockings of that ancient ignorant mob compared with the devil-cant mockings of these Thy pretended followers? Thy humble disciples turned into fifteen-thousand-pounds-a-year archbishops, plus palaces and parks, and Thy little tender children crying for food. " Thou mighty Spirit of unending sorrow, whom to name by such as pretend to teach in Thy name is sacrilege, enlighten the people who suffer, to know the true teacher from the false one, for ever more." Thus spake Democritus as he opened up the purest book which the world possesses, the book which records the life and death of the sweetest Son of God who ever walked this earth. And he searched in vain in that book for the Thirty-nine Articles, for the fifteen-thousand-pounds-a-year archbishops, for the priestly palaces, for the . . . Then he searched the English priesthood, and he found many exquisite souls, pure as the Master required them to be, poor, poorer than He willed they should be, some of them nigh starving, (1977 Also he found a motley crew of archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, deacons, deans, canons, vicars, rectors, curates, such a host of " venerables " and "reverends " that he wondered the Church branch had not fallen from the Church tree with the mere weight of such a host. The Jubilee Church contained upwards of 20,000 of those assorted gentry, with salaries varying from £15,000 a year, with two parks and two palaces, down to £50 a year* and one slum tenement — the latter posts often occupied by the best of men, * Here is an interesting excerpt from the ytmes:— "The speeches of the (193) Bishop of Peterborough are always eagerly read for their combination of sound sense, eloquence, and racy humour. "With regard to the impoverishment of the clergy, he says that this difficulty may be met by a distribution of Church incomes. He proposes to meet a glaring inequality which exists at present, when we have incomes of £15,000 at one end of the scale, and of £50 at the 332 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF ■who cheerfully sacrificed their lives for the poorest and weakest ; true pastors of Christ they. One such died in the year 1894, quite (198) a young hero-priest, from overwork amongst the diseased and suffering, and the Jubilee papers truly enough called him a modern martyr ; he had asked in vain for help from stepmother Church. And there were many such. "Was a Church which contained such martyrs to be destroyed, or were not the pure rather to be chosen from the impure, and not left to starve and overwork, whilst meaningless pomposities outraged their Master's teachings by their mere existence 1 The Jubilee Church income from all sources was eight million {199) pounds a year ; some'authorities put it at ten millions. But let us adopt the humbler figure. It accounts for the salaries which the Revolution established for its pastors. Twenty thousand pastors, and eight million pounds would give them all £400 a year That was the irreducible, and also the irre-increasable, pastor stipend. Not gold trappings, place-allurements, money prizes, may a Christ Church offer. Those are the prizes of Mammon-worship, not of Jesus-worship. The only " attraction " that a pure Church may offer to its servants is that divinely and humanly beautiful attrac- tion : " Power to serve thy fellow-men." No nation worthy the name will ever lack such service. Great nations have always had those servants, with or without pay, oftenest the latter. Great Britain beyond all nations has had them, and will continue to have them. When the day can come, and England seek in vain for Buch service, there will be no longer a Great Britain, but only an infinitely Little Britain, a despicable and disappearing Britain. Never to come such a time, may it please the Eternal Guardian of mankind. Not only was there only one stipend for the pastors, but only one title was there also. Could a better, nobler, be conceived 1 Pastor — a spiritual feeder o/ the people. Not a material feeder M/^on the people. Pastor — a shepherd of the people ; verily, a pure and homely title. Not to be without meaning either. The Revolution estab- other. He wants to see the Church funds treated as one united whole. . . . Undoubtedly some scheme for the redistribiUion of clerical incomes must be un- dertaken, either by the Clergy themselves, or by the State. . . . WTiat must be done is to establish some kind of relation between the work done and the money received. It is monstrous that a clergyman should be condemned to work in A town parish of ten thousand souls on £200 a year." THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 33S lished Shepherd Guilds, very much as in all other callings there were Guilds. They had also their Courts of Honour. The whole suhordinate to the Government, through its Minister of Public Worship. One inestimable value of those Pastor Parliaments was the prevention of rust or decay. It was through the medium of them that the Revolutionary Government finally brought about its great Church Reform. The Jubilee Church was quite hopeless as far as expecting reforms of it to come from within. Let us see what the new pastors, without palaces, with a Revolutionary Gov- ernment at their back, were able to do. They inquired into those Thirty-nine Articles, and found them empty things, dried shells without a kernel; mere worn-out wrappings, serviceable to no man. For the soul grows as the body grows. It will not do to try and cover the full man's nakedness with mere infant swaddle- ments, nor the full man's reason, as for ever developing, in pristine dogma-futilities. In the realm of matter much can happen in three hundred years ; and no less change occurs in the human mind in such a period. Yet did the Jubilee bishops and parsons pretend that the " Thirty- Nine Articles," which the stress of furious religious warfare against the corrupt Cenci-torturing Romans rendered necessary in the years 1562-1571, required no change, and that they were " believed " by them, as facilely as they were subscribed by them — in the Jubilee year 1894. The great Universities had already, some years before (1881-88), revolted against the mummery, and were freed from them, but the bishops and their crew mumbled on, in the impossible nakedness of the threadbare Thirty-nine Article garments, no more able to cover their or any sane men's mind developments than thirty nine infants' swaddling-garments could cover their body developments. The Revolution cast them away for ever. Freed the human soul of such unrealities, and gave them healthier fare — the divine Article itaelf as in the pure, wise Book propounded. They considered also the worn-out Trinity theory, and they got that and the Ghost well buried, for long since were they dead. They reverted everywhere to the pure and simple Jesus lesson, as it stood long before vain traditions spoilt the Divine ^Ian Jesus into the impossible God Jesus. Prophet he, Christian, Mahomet, Moses, Confucius. Not the Godhead, but His beloved servant upon earth. Teach that to the people, pastors, Chris- <200) 334 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF tianity that will be of the purest, loveliest. Can ye not see how warmer the heart can beat to human sacrifice which a people can understand, than to myth-jargonings which the teachers believe not, nor the people comprehend 1 Open the way of the people to ^communion with their God. Has not Luther broken the pope idol worship ? Let us further his good work, said Carlyle Demo- •critus, and break down the worst of all idolatry — book idolatry, — whereby from Trinity-myths and Holy, or unholy. Ghost impos- sibilities, a pure Christian deism may become again visible, realizable, and actually believable of men. In Jubilee times there were churches never visited in centres (Cityward, and other), where the populations had disappeared, yet where a puppet bobbed to empty benches and performed, for huge pay, at stated intervals, sundry unrealities. All such churches were closed, and the sites sold. And where new centres of population had arisen and no churches were, churches. State built, arose. In the church all pastors wore a simple gown of the college rector sort, but out of church they clothed themselves like other sane men. All monkey dressings of the lawn sleeves, coloured silks, and such woman fripperies had to get themselves effaced. Any conduct unbecoming a spirituarminister quickly relegated him to lay business. There was no appeal from that law. Preaching was not confined to the pastors. Earnest men of wisdom could be invited by the congregants, through their wardens and committees; or if no wise preacher, clerical or lay," was to be had, sermons were dispensed with. For poison is not better than no food, either for the physical frame, or the intelligent soul. The collecting plate was abolished — money collecting not being commended in God's temples ; strictly forbidden, indeed, both by the Christian Book and Carlyle Democritus. The State made good any requirements in the money line. If a State cannot support its Church, that State had tetter abdicate itself. The Eevolution abolished all abuses of the Church, and restored to it its exquisite simplicity, as the Great Master taught it — pure, unselfish, without arrogance or ostentation, divinely just. No JB15,000-a-year parsons shaving their flocks, but worthy £400-a- year pastors feeding them. It was required of the servant that he should follow a little the life-example of his Master, whose divine- ness of self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-renunciation, he THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 335 elected to teach to his fellow-men. All so-called training colleges for priests were abolished ; but in all schools and colleges there was a " Divinity side " where the young pastors were trained, not apart from, but together with, the men whom they would have always to live with. Other training may make cant-machines, but not fearless, free-thinking men. Religion is not a garment only for Sunday wear, but is the very atmosphere of the human soul, and requires of the spiritual doctor abundant acquaintance with humanity, and not mere dogma cant - acquaintance. Carlyle Democritus left to the new pastors and their flocks the whole business of reformation ; and it was not he, but they, with the characteristic wise, sober, earnest manfulness of the British people, who cut away the old priest-cant from the Established Church. Carlyle Democritus had only cut away the caiit-jmests. They being gone, cant soon followed. All that jargon which had been characteristic of them disappeared as absolutely as if all England had been visited by another Luther. He who had knocked the bottom out of the lying popes, saints, virgins, relics, and other Macbeth witcheries, had his work consummated by the Revolu- tion, until finally they laid make-believe stone dead. In all that concerned mere doctrine, neither Democritus nor the Revolutionary leaders interfered. They were satisfied to abolish the abuses of the Church, its sale and exchange of livings, its glaring and monstrous corruptions. ITiat quite complete — an abolition of all titles and powers outside their immediate duties, and an institu- tion of 20,000 worthy, pious, and righteously paid men^ in sympathy with the people — he knew well enough that wise reforms could not but follow. But there was one matter which the Revolution left not to the slow hand of a multitude. Carlyle Democritus having cleaned out the living abuses from the Church, next proceeded to clear out dead abuses. Great Britain had her Pantheons, but by misuse they had become far other than homes of gods, or heroes. In Westminster Abbey there were hundreds of allegorical insipidities in stucco, stone, or marble ; hundreds of saints, apostles, virgins, and such articles ; untold hundreds of Fames plus trumpets, heathen deities, negroes, Indians, dogs, dragons, and other grotesqueries. Read Sir Gilbert Scott upon all that. St Paul's and "Westminster Abbey were crowded with lying epitaphs and muritaphs of not heroes, but mere mammon-folk, politicians, and empty-title-gentry 336 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF generally. The Revolution clean swept away every one of them. It appointed a council of the wisest and best men in the land, and according to their decision it dealt with the London Pantheons and all churches throughout the country. Only truly heroic names and monuments were left ; and some of England's best and bravest who had not been there were quickly and worthily given presence. Amongst the most notable of these were Crom- well and Carlyle. In Jubilee time the people thought the Pantheons full, but after the great " delivery " it was found that there remained ample room for many centuries of British heroes. A law was passed soon afterwards which prevented any interment in the Abbey, or St. Paul's, or the erection of any public memorial until twenty years after the death of a national hero. After that time your mud-god will cease to be resplendent, whilst your real hero shines ever brighter. "With such a wise law a national Pantheon need not fear to become overcrowded. It need scarcely be added that the Church reforms extended to, or were adopted by, all British Dependencies, and that the bishops of the Otaheite and Borrioboolah-Gha type effectually disappeared. Missionary gentlemen were allowed to continue their harmless and useless enterprises, perhaps not harmless though useless, in common with the searchers after the North Pole, and other voyages to the great inane. But the State Church funds were not concerned. The State found quite enough to do in converting the wicked of its own people, and left better-regulated nations to tolerate mission- aries if they listed. But on no account would the Revolution permit the misdirected energies of its fad-people to provoke it into war, or warlike attitude ; and it gave the Chinese and all other nations clearly to understand that the missionary persons were doing business on their own account, and not by any means on that of Great Britain, or with their approval : CANT lay dead, but not lamented. It may be mentioned here that not only were all Churches "jail-delivered" and all records of the Great Unknown and the Little Well-kno\vn scraped and scoured away for ever, but public street monuments were treated in like fashion, and all of them that did not commemorate true heroes well moved off. York Column vacuity, scores of political zeros, money dukes in stucco, stone, or bronze, in entire regiments, disappeared as effectually as theii types in flesh had been made to do. On the other hand. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 837 many noble and worthy memorials of the truly great were added and multiplied. And where inadequate or inartistic memorials of good men existed, they were replaced by the best that good taste and high art could devise. Complete tolerance was extended to all religious denominations, but they were not permitted to interfere with, or infringe upon the laws of the country. Thus, while they were free to teach the children of those who intrusted them to their care their various tenets, they were not permitted to fill the child's mind with lies by torturing History or Science to suit their futilities.* Even Jesuit nunneries, mummeries, and monkeries were tolerated, but they came under the merciful law of all private asylums — lunatic, dogmatic, or anyaXic. Government commissioners visited all such establishments and examined every individual inmate ; and upon evidence appearing that any incarcerated person desired his or her liberty, such an one was forthwith removed by the commissioners, without any opportunity being afforded to the Jesuits, or such people, to coerce, or further mentally torture the victim. Such a released person was protected by the State, made its ward, whilst ander age, and retained at a Government school and protected against "undue influence." For the first six months after release from one of those so-called religious establishments, no persons, other than the Guardians appointed by the State, were permitted access to the released victim. Any attempt by a religious, lunatic, or other asylum to evade the law rendered such asylum liable to immediate suppression. ♦ Page 364. CHAPTER IV. Woman. L — Jubilee Women and Children. la it well that, while we range with Science, glorying in the time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime ? There among the gloomy alleys Progress halts on palsied feet, Crime and hunger cast our maidens by thousands on the street ; There the master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread. There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead ; There the mouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor. • • • • • This is fixt As are the roots of earth and base of all ; Man for the field, and woman for the hearth ; Man for the sword, and for the needle she ; Man with the head, and woman with the heart ; Man to command, and woman to obey — All else confusion. For woman is not undevelopt man, But diverse : could we make her as the man, Sweet love were slain. — TKNNYSOy. In theory many things are beautiful which in fact are singularly unbeautiful. In theory the Jubilee woman was perhaps the most enviable creature upon God's earth. She was " free," *' emancipated," had *' rights," was redolent of adoration, the object of man's pro- tection and veneration ; was, in fine, that highly delectable being which theoretical perfection invariably is. "England," said the Continental people, *' is the Paradise of women." It behoves sane men to inquire what the status of the Jubilee woman actually was. In nothing anywhere in the world was the contrast between truth and semblance of truth, pretentious theory 838 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 339 and sober fact, more overwhelmingly poignant and humiliating — unless perhaps in the Church — than in the condition of Jubilee womankind. In the two centres of European civilisation representing the most polite and the most free of Christianised humanity — France and Great Britain — there were in Jubilee times some quarter of a million of women ostracised from all that was ennobling and pure, 6unk in the social ban of irrevocable damnation. Condemned to a life of degradation unnamable. Was it love which attracted them thither ? Passion ? Inclination ? Temptation ? Or was it WANT — the grim, the terrible, the protean monster of ** civilisation " ? Jubilee misery forced the woman into the earth- hell — the Piccadilly mud-fires — and the Jubilee social system kept her there. Let us try and realise the alternative occupations which Jubilee civilisation offered to the poorer classes of woman- kind. And, remember, you of the lighter kind, prone to believe in the facile doctrine of "slums made by the slum-dwellers," remember that there are not two kinds of women in the flesh, though infinite in variety as education and circumstance may make them. In this they are all one, viz. — that the God who made them willed them to be the weaker of human kind, the weaker in order to invoke the protection of the strong. Be not misled by the ravings of Jubilee rant-idiocy of the political radical or any other type. True, they invented a hybrid variety of non-male monstrosity, by pumping the bosom nutriment into the brain organs, and called it strong-minded-woman class — tough of skin, voluble of tongue, but that was not a branch of womatir kind, only of abortive, radical-political-economy malekind, a type of infinite degradation. It is essential to the right understanding of a problem that true men be got to look at fact, and be not misled by mere semb- lance of fact. You may paint wood so cunningly that it will look like iron to the casual observer, but yet the axe will cleave the wood as it will not cleave the iron. Those Jubilee things who could only demolish a Church and not reform it; destroy an Empire instead of govern it ; pull down a Parliament instead of purge it, did not stop at trying to corrupt and unsex their women, in lieu of elevating and ennobling them. Let us glance at some of the trades that Great Britain put its tender women to. And we are not misusing the gentle adjective. It is the divine order 340 . THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF of humanity. God's wisdom protected His Divine masterpiece with weakness and with delicacy, as He surrounded the sweet flowers of the mimosa with leaves of infinite sensitiveness; as He made the leaves of the aspen-poplar tremble before a warm summer breath. He turned the man's hard breast into the yielding woman bosom — the living child-rest and lifespring ; the stern and fibrous man skin into velvet smoothness in the woman ; the hard, irregular muscle of the man into the dimpled roundness of the woman. Such was woman as God made her. Look at her as the Jubilee governing classes made her : — Upwards of twenty thousand young girls and women were employed in the manufacture of iron nails, anchor chains, cutlery, bolts, screws, rivets, and other iron and steel manufactures, from the age of ten years and upwards — at ages when the Jubilee bishop's child had scarcely emerged from the* nursery ; when the minister's child knew nothing harsher than to be deprived of a mother's kiss. At the mines there were 4,700 women at work ; 26,000 women were to be found in the earthenware and glass factories (not only in the lighter departments). Three hundred thousand women worked in cotton mills, 89,000 as tailors — dis- placing men; 13,000 were cabinetmakers, upholsterers, French polishers, etc. Those are a few of the trades and manufactures in which women and young girls were employed in Jubilee times, in nearly all cases displacing men, *' because their labour was ' cheaper ' " — a rare consideration in Jubilee times. This fact is proved by the census return, which showed that whereas the percentage of female workers above the age of ten years had largely increased during one decade, the percentage of male workers had at the same time decreased.* • " It is often stated" (says the Censics, Vol. IV., page 58, 1893) "that women are, owing to the smaller wages they •will accept, gradually ousting their male competitors out of their occupations, and there can be no doubt that in some industries such a substitution of female for male labour has occurred in the course of the last thirty years. Occupations that require great muscular strength are [should be, you mean, O Government compiler of the census returns] practically confined to men. There are, however, some occupations in which the opposite is the case. The following is a part of a list of the headings in which the female sex outnumber the males : — " Bookbinders ; pin-makers ; steel pen-makers ; fusee, fireworks, and explosive articles manufactures ; worsted stuff manufacture ; flannel- blanket manufacture ; silk, satin, velvet, ribbon manufacture ; cotton THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 341, But if we condemn the employment of girls and women in such delicate manufactures as ironware, glass, cutlery, tailoring, boot- making, etc., what measure of denunciation do those deserve who employed young girls in such cruel callings as match-making, lead and litharge factories, the glazing of pottery, and other such works. Let the civilised reader consider these things, taking as illustrations by the way these notes from coroners' inquests : — "Frances Louisa, aged twenty, employed since her sixteenth year (201) at the Imperial Enamel Works. The girl had suflPered on many occasions from lead-poisoning. The body was emaciated and pale. Verdict — Death from lead-poisoning." "At the Thames Police Court an Inspector of Factories summoned a Lead Company Limited for employing a girl of fourteen years. He said it was * singularly unfortunate ' for the said Lead Company Limited that within a period of six weeks he had attended the inquests of six persons who had worked for them." *' Two sisters worked in (202) goods manufacture ; flax linen manufacture, fustian manufacture ; hemp, jute, and cocoa fibre ; net-makers, canvas, sackcloth, and sacking ; machinist and machine- worker, hosiery manufacture," etc., etc., etc. The Government of the day were aware of these facts, for they quote some of them in their Board of Trade Labour Gazette, Vol. I., 1894; also these further statistics : — ♦'Employment of Women in 1881 and 1891. "It appears from the census returns that the number of women and ^iils returned as 'occupied' out of every 10,000 females above ten years of age in England and Wales shows an increase since 1881 of thirty-seven per tea thousand, which compares with a decrease of ten per thousand in the case of males." "The number of young girls between the ages of ten and fifteen employed in 1881 were 1506 per ten thousand of the population, according to age periods. In 1891 the proportion had risen to 1626 per ten thousand. Between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five the employment of females had increased from 2900 per ten thousand in 1881 to 2960 in 1S91 ; whilst during the same period the employment of males between those ages had decreased. In contrast with the increasing employment of young girls there was a corresponding falling off in the numbers employed above forty-five years of age, both as regards male and female workers." Amongst the trades which were employing cheap girl-labour, and oust- ing male labour, the same authority quotes : — "Tailors, increase 25 per ten thousand, against a decrease in the case of males ; increase of female labour in •boot and shoe manufactures, against a considerable decrease in the case males ; and similarly with regard to drapers,'' etc. (203) 342 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF another lead factory for a few weeks at a time, and then succumbed. After recovery, they would work again, till one of them, at the age of twenty, could go no more, the lead-death having overtaken her. Tiey earned from twelve to fifteen shillings a week when they could work." "Another, a mother of six little children, went also to the lead business, driven to it ' because her husband was out of work ; she knew the work was risky.' She must feed her children ; but the poison attacked her, and she could go no more. The doctor told the court that he had at that moment under his charge five young women all so poisoned, one of them under sixteen years of age. He said a great number of such cases came under his notice, in which women were ruined for life. The coroner said the lead occupation was the most dangerous he knew of, and the jury said the state of things was most appalling," and . . . and all over Jubilee England the horrible toll was being exacted from tender girls and young women. Were it necessary, this volume could be filled with the cruel records of such ruined lives, the tribute of God's tenderest creatures to Jubilee mammon-worship. Between your lead -poisoning, phosphorous-torture, enamel-death, and the Piccadilly-pavements, was there not a way 1 Could you not starve, O children of the poorl Ye of the gentle sex, brought into the light of day in dens of Slum-land, knew ye of the " Paradise of women " which this England is said to be 1 Now, if there is one authority in Great Britain who may be said to be ainimpeachable on a question of this kind, it is the British Government (never mind how unconsciously it is incriminating itself) ; and if there is another authority as entitled to be heard upon such a question, it is the Times newspaper. When these two authorities are combined, they compel the attention of all thinking men and women. Listen, then, to these authorities upon (204) t]je condition of workers in the Jubilee period. This is an extract from a Times leading article : — "The Board of Trade Eeport on the condition of the South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire nail-makers raises by its facts an imperative demand that something be done. From time to time every industry is subject to depression, with sad con- sequences to those engaged in it. Colliers may be ill oflf without any fault of their own. Weavers suffer for a period from a cotton famine or a glut. Coventry ribbon-makers may be brought to pauperism by a caprice of fashion. [Mark the comfortable way THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. 343 in which this is accepted : " the established order of things."] In the East-end itself penury practically is permanent, [That is quite a natural order of things.] But hunger, grinding toil, hope- lessness, and an utter privation of the pleasantness and beauty of human existence are the enduring and constant characteristics of an unchanging population in groups of villages in the neigh- bourhood of Dudley. Cottage workshops might be supposed to offer the happiest aspect of manufacturing industry. But we find in the privacy of home, children under fourteen labour all day long without fear of or hope from legislative prohibition. Married women, with large young families, wield heavy hammers for twelve or fourteen hours a day. Their infants are left to themselves, or are cradled on the bellows or a rafter of the ceiling. For a pittance of four or five shillings a week mothers abandon their duties and instincts of aff'ection, and do the work of slaves on a Cuban plantation. Their husbands, though they cannot work harder, are as wretched. Except drink, they have no variety in their lives. There is no grace. Their houses are gloomy and unspeakably dirty. Their wives generally are robbed of all feminine attractiveness, and are more ignorant of house- keeping arts than savages. Wages have been diminishing continually, and neither men nor women attempt to fight against the fall. They only toil the more without ceasing. They are born to be nailers, to blow huge bellows, and operate ten to thirty pound weight * Olivers ' from morning to night ; to be skinny, wan, flat-chested; to breathe fetid air; to account butchers' meat once a week a luxury ; and to be deafened with the perpetual babel of rasping sounds. That is their fate, and they accept it. That is the nailer's life for a dozen hours a day from the end of infancy to old age. Old age for nailers commences soon after fifty. The nailer is forced to sell his ware at the price the nail-master will give, whether it be high or low. The nailers have to sell without a moment's delay, and are at the mercy of ' foggers ' or factors — the Black Country equivalent for sweaters. The number of persons existing in this misery the report puts at fifteen thoiisand. The small chain- makers of Cradley and neighbouring villages vie in the severity of toil, and want of comforts of life, with the workshops of the Sedgley and Gornal nailers. For twelve hours' work a day a chainmaker may expect to gain ten or eleven shillings a week. 344 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF A woman receives from half-a-crown to eight shillings. On this her household lives in a ruined hovel, amid filth, on water-gruel. A man of sixty-eight, who has been a chain-maker for fifty-four years, and earns five-and-threepence a week, out of which he finds fire, shop, and tools, exclaimed to the Board of Trade representative, ' I often feel inclined to put myself away.' The whole of the industries are stained by these horrors. The enslave- ment of children and women in circumstances of the most frightful cruelty should be checked. The report concludes with instances of endurance under overwhelming difficulties, which prove nail- and chain-making villages to be schools of heroic courage and devotion. The pallid, horny-skinned young women who work from six in the morning to nine at night, and remain 'clean, civil, honest, and respectable' on five-and-fourpence a week ; the man of seventy-two who toils from six in the morning to half-past eight at night for four shillings a week without a murmur; the woman with the paralysed husband and three children, who keeps a roof over their heads by earning tenpence a day ; the young fellow ' working like a demon ' for eighteen shillings a week ; and the patriarch of eighty-three rejoicing in his ability to earn half-a-crown, are but specimens of a collection of cases which show that labour and privations may be heartbreaking and not demoralising." In Parliament, in the year 1894, it was asked of a Jubilee Home Secretary, was he aware that young girls in paper factories were worked twelve hours a day, and for two hours additional as over- t2Qj) time, making fourteen hours a day on forty-eight days every year? " Yes," said the Jubilee minister, " he was quite aware, not only young girls of sixteen, but young boys also could work fourteen hours a day." * You have seen what some of their wages were ; take these other examples : Seventy thousand women and girls, * The British Government had attended an International Labour Con- ference in the year 1890, and there agreed to raise the age at wliich children should be set to work from eleven years to twelve — inadequate enough con- cession that to bare humanity ; yet four years had passed, and the year 1894 was also passing, with its filthy olla-podrida of party-quackeries — Home Rule Bill, Scotch, Welsh, and Universal Disestablishment Bills, Moonlighter and Dynamiter Relief Bill, etc. — but no step was taken to relieve those silent, suflFering, little children. . . . Had ye votes, like the cut-throat moonlighters, O poor little Jubilee children ? . . . None ? . . . Then was there no hope from a lying, swindler-director-ridden Party -Government. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 345 mill-hands and others, in Ireland, working fifty-six hours a week in a damp, hot temperature of eighty degrees, productive of lung disease, could earn about eight-and-six a week. In the light, (206) woollen goods trade of the Yorkshire West Riding, the weavers earned nine shillings and sixpence halfpenny a week, those poor wages being brought about by the influx of women into the trade. *' Only those who have seen inside a mill can realize how exhaust- ing both mentally and physically is the work at the looms. In the wholesale clothing trade, at Leeds, a woman by working from eight in the morning till half-past six at night, and then taking home bundles of work to finish until midnight, could earn fifteen- and-six a week. A great deal of overtime is worked in the trade, which means working from eight in the morning till half-past nine at night. The unskilled only earn from five shillings to seven shillings a week." "The match-box makers in Leeds earned from six shillings to eight shillings a week, working twelve and fourteen hours a day, and finding their own paste and their own fire for drying the boxes." . . . "Girls in the fish-curing yards near Aberdeen could earn about eight-and-six a week, occasionally working for thirty-six hours at a stretch." ... In the rope-making (207) trade, in evidence before a Jubilee Royal Commission, the women workers showed how they had to submit to an eleven weeks' strike before they could enforce a bare living wage — some ten shillings a week, or so. " In the sack-making trade, the women, by working long hours for two days, if skilled hands, could make one hundred sacks per woman, and her pay for those hundred sacks was one shilling and sevenpence. By employing three, four, or five, little children to help her, a sack woman could earn from ten to fourteen shillings a week. (208) We fain would have avoided these details, but who can realize the crying necessity for the laws of a Carlyle Democritus who knows not the evils that required a remedy ? Into the misery of shop-life we will not enter ; * the curious reader may learn * Poor girls employed as dressmakers' assistants were worked from twelve to fourteen hours a day, and turned adrift without redress if they protested. (208a) The Courts were worthless to protect them, the "Acts" more worthless still, and the magistrates yet more worthless. We find a factory inspector summon- ing one of the wealthiest and fashionablest ladies' establishments in Regent Street for employing seven girls from nine in the morning till half-past ten at night. . . . The magistrate dismissed the summons on the ground that the Act "did not say at what time at night work should cease." That was a (208b) Jubilee magistrate administering Jubilee "law." 346 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF enough and to spare of all that species of Jubilee employment of girls and women from a brave little book entitled " Death and Disease behind the Counter." Surely, after all that, women in England were revered in a strange way. You could see some of them nightly dancing before wild beasts in a cage of lions, or jump- ing from the roof of a place opposite the Parliament of Westminster, and elsewhere into a small tank of water, or into a rope net Jubilee minister, of the radical species, in the Parliament opposite, on being asked if Government intended to tolerate such brutal (209) exhibitions, replied that he had not seen them. It was the Jubilee minister's ostrich-privilege not to see anything which did not produce votee. All else was mere political sand, wherein such ministers laid their political eggs, to be in due time hatched into mammon peerages or money pensions. Meanwhile, let women peril their life and limb, or betake themselves to Piccadilly street- \valking. But let us be just to the Jubilee people j for although they protested not against the degrading folly and inhumanity of risking a woman's life " to make a Jubilee holiday," the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did protest against the keeper whipping the lions to pievent them mauling and tearing the woman, and they brought an action against the showman in the Jubilee courts of horse-hair-wig-justice, but as the judges were not agreed upon a point of Jubilee " law " — to wit, as to whether lions (210) were domestic animals or not, some of the sapiences deciding one way, and some another,* in the usual Jubilee fashion, and since no lunacies of that precise nature had been dealt with by M. and "W., Yol. 3, 719, Ex, 2., Eliz., Mary, or Anne, present learned asses and antediluvian learned asses had no chance of comparing notes — the question remained undecided down to the time of the Revolution. But who would wonder at the Jubilee reverence for women who knew the sufferings of the yet tenderer than women, the little Jubilee children 1 A visitor to some of the Board Schools of (211) London gave this record to the world, "That after an exhaustive enquiry at a few of the schools he found 2600 children insufficiently fed, and 1400 usually in a state of hunger." They brought before a Jubilee minister (a Tory this time) the case of a little child who had had no food for twenty-four hours, and the Compare Chapter on Law. THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY. 347 minister replied : " He was afraid there were many cases of the same kind." " Not exceptional," by any means such cases to Jubilee ministers. (212) Of the condition of little Jubilee children generally take this from a School Board Inspector's report : — (213) "There are 60,000 families in London, whose 'homes' consist of one room only." One room : do you realize what that means, reader ? Mother, father, sons, and daughters in one room, in one bed — like this, as an instance among a thousand such brought to light in the usual Jubilee way, by death and the coroner's inquest. "Adelaide B., aged thirty-three, wife of an engine-driver. Wife, husband, and five children living in one room ; all the seven sleep- ing in one bed ; children attacked by measles, mother dead, and the children playing around the bed nearly naked, mid-winter too." (214) 60,000 families in homes of one room, and your archbishops in two palaces — that is Jubilee London under the Gospel of Party Government and the Thirty-nine Articles. Let the School Board Inspector, a noble-hearted man, as every page of his report abun- dantly proves, continue : — " In one school I found that 36 per cent, of the parents of the children were out of employment, 40 per cent, of the children came to school without breakfast, 28 per cent, without dinner. In another school 34 per cent, of the children's parents were out of employment, 10 per cent, of theui were fatherless, 17 per cent, attended school dinnerless, 23 per cent, breakfastless. In another school 11 per cent, of the children were fatherless, 27 per cent, breakfastless, 20 per cent, dinnerless. I am in a position to say that the rents in the most overcrowded parts of my districts amount, as a rule, to about a third or a fourth of the maximum wages earned by the tenants.* I have more than once, when going my rounds, been accosted by a landlord in a state of abject terror, lest I might be arranging to rob him of his victims. A dilapidated house of ten rooms yielded to its landlord 54s. 9d. a week, or £97, 8s. a year. That did not include one of the cellars which was to let. The hungry little boys and girls who fill the Board Schools are not fit, either physically or mentally, for the strain that passing the Government examinations implies. Some means should be devised whereby one good meal a day [confess that our worthy inspector is • Pages 119-123. 848 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF not unreasonable] could be provided for the breakfastless and dinnerless children of our schools, and saving the little children who are now rotting in heaps within sight of the porticoes of our churches.". . . . And those were not the worst cases. Those poor little starved things had dens of a sort. There were gathered together by one London Charity Home for Children in one year (214a) 2400 absolutely destitute and homeless children, and 3000 others only slightly less destitute. The same agency in one year supplied over 50,000 nights' lodgings to forlorn street wanderers, most of them young girls. Need more be said? Except, perhaps, this significant climax to those Hell-statistics : In the report of the School Board Inspector he records that in his division there were 429 bakers' shops, 350 milk shops, and 912 public-houses. Those figures speak for themselves. The public-houses debauched the poor, whilst their owners and caterers were the elect of Party England, the richest of them ornamenting the British Jubilee Peerage. There is no over-colouring in those tragic details, for we find the (219) state of things more than confirmed at a later period by the School Board itself. Here is an excerpt from a Times leading article on the subject of how to deal with the semi-starvation of the Board School children : — "No less than 43,000 children,* or more than 12 per cent, of * And these 43,000 (or, according to Sir R. Temple, 60,000) little starving children were only of those who were upon the register of the London School Board. There were many more thousands who were too far gone even for the School Board register — little shoeless waifs who were to be seen in courts and alleys of Jubilee Slum-land at all times, and who, if all had been told, would have brought those already dreadful figures of half-starved children to (215) nearer 100,000 than 60,000. Indeed, the workers amongst the poorest, the Ragged School Union, sad and ominous title for a Christian civilisation, held their Jubilee in the year 1894, and published a book to commemorate the event. The poor little Ragged School children were altogether apart from those dealt with by the Board Schools, and the book declares that "the outcasts are as many to-day , and almost as needy, as they were fifty years ago, viz., 30,000 absolutely homeless children (in London alone) growing up in the most degraded, or even criminal surroundings. . . . Thousands of suffering little ones were left unlielped for lack of money." ... On that (216) very day a London suffragan Bishop died worth £50,000, and the day before (217) a Dean died worth £34,000, and the day before that some millionaires had "dinner" at a cost of £20 a-head — "sixty of them," said the Jubilee news- (218) papers, "at a cost of £1200 for one dinner." Human pigs, with golden troughs ! THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 349 the numbers in average attendance, come to school in want of food. Eight thousand of the little sufferers are in the Infants' Depart- ment. It is absolutely incontrovertible that starved, or half- starved, children can do little or no good at school. ... It is not only barbarous to torture the brains of a foodless child, but it is useless as well. The money which is bestowed upon teaching starving children is wasted. It is ' clearly desirable ' either that these children should be fed, or that what is called their education should be abandoned. . . . After a ' certain period of experience ' it may 'perhaps ' become possible to obtain help from Legislation." " After a certain period of experience." "Perhaps ! " Perhaps ! Have 43,000 little children votes, Times newspaper? Can 43,000 starving little children compete for legislation with Irish moonlighters ? "Will your Jubilee legislative machine stoop to the Christ -love: "Little children, come unto me," — "we are rich, strong, powerful ; you shall be fed " ? * Your Jubilee Parliaments have Parish Councils to create, Welsh Church to disestablish, British United Kingdom to dissever : how shall such Parliaments consider little starving children? The little wasted forms, the wide starvation eyes of those silent suf- fering children, — think of it, women of England, intent upon platform oratory ! Think of it, Churchmen, intent upon " higher education of the wealthy classes of the Egyptain Copts " ! Think of it, Jubilee Radicals, intent upon filthy slander of British heroes buried in the far African plains ! Reader, reader, not utterly dead to mercy, ye who know what is meant by a long-suffering God, do you think a Carlyle Democritus an unnecessary thing for such a Jubilee England 1 Do you com- mence to realize the necessity for those slum prisons? And justice retributive ? It was not by penny or by halfpenny charity-meals * "Six miserably clad little children were placed in the dock at the "Wool- wich Police Court, and charged by the contractor of pig's-wash with stealing food from the Royal Artillery Barracks, A police sergeant had found the prisoners that morning picking refuse food out of the swill-tub ; the food was what the soldiers could not eat. . . . The children had often been there before, and the sergeant said he could not keep them away [let us hope that thou wouldst not keep them away, police sergeant]. Some of them took the food to their ' homes.' . . . The prisoners, in answer to the charge, saidthey were hungry, or they would not eat food from the pig-tub." . . . (221) " Suffer little children to come unto Me." . . . Christian England ! 350 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF that Carlyle Democritus would see those starving children fed. . . , Oh, in those long dreary years of waiting and of preparation what were his sufferings — there, amongst them, sharing their trials, starving with them, loving every little helpless thing as if it were flesh of his flesh, heart of his heart. In later years he was heard to say that the sufferings of the children of the poor formed a living cross upon which he was transfixed. . . . And in the agony of his sympathy he had cried aloud : " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani ? " For " the moments of inspiration were short, and the hours of depression so long." But the dawn came at last — to him and to them. Previous chapters have shown how the little and the larger children were fed, protected, made for ever the care of their country, had they votes or had they none. No longer was it a necessity for womankind to seek their bread in the Hell-mud of Piccadilly pavements, or by roof-jumping into water tanks six feet deep, or by posturing in lion cages before wild beasts of the gaping ape and grinning jackass sort. Bow down thyself into the dust, England, that there ever should have been such base necessity ! II. — Woman after the Revolution. Great restrictions and precautions had been imposed upon the conditions of male employment in dangerous trades, but women were forbidden to be employed in them upon any condition what- soever. The minimum age limit of employment for girls was the completion of their fifteenth year in all occupations. The wage laws for women were the surest means for preventing their engagement in callings unsuited to them. It was therefore enacted that the " minimum wage " prevailing for men should be extended to women in all industries of an arduous nature, or in which men were employed. The maximum hours for women employment in all trades and manufactures was eight hours a day, and overtime was absolutely forbidden. With regard to reasonably light occupations suited to women — such as shop assistants, clerks, medical nurses, etc. — the eight hours day was established, and the rate of wages adopted on a minimum basis of 20s. a week, permanency of contract being established throughout women's labour as with men's. It is impossible to go into all the THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 351 humane details of the Kevolutionary Code — such as the com- pulsory supply of seats in all shops or business places for female workers, the provision of female inspectors appointed by the respective women's labour guilds, etc. The conditions under which women and girls had to work at Jubilee times in laundries, dressmaking establishments, and generally, both as regards ex- cessive work hours, inadequate sanitary provisions, and sweating wages, were all effectually reformed. Technical training in all the schools formed as marked a feature of the girls' education as it did of the boys'. The system of apprenticeship was also as broadly introduced, and was super- intended by the various women's guilds. Perhaps the most worthy, as it was amongst the most necessary, was the reform introduced into domestic service. The million and three-quarters of women and girls employed in in-door domestic service at the Jubilee period were without union, or adequate protection of any sort. Now and then a maid would fall from a window-sill and disclose by a cruel death some of the conditions of Jubilee domestic service. Want of due training on the servants' side, due to the defective school system, which conceived education to be mainly a matter of theoretical cram, turned out shoals of half useless girls, just sufficiently instructed, or ^estructed, to despise service, which narrowed the Jubilee conception of liberty, and sent them instead to seek an unhealthy and precarious living in poisonous lead works or other health-destroying factories. On the other hand, in the (220) absence of protection and inspection, the conditions of domestic service, in the vast majority of instances, were thoughtless and cruel to a rare degree. Overwork and underpay, too often accom- panied by poor food — indeed, in numerous cases, scarcely removed from semi-starvation — was one of the main causes which accounted for the dearth of domestic servants throughout the Jubilee period, notwithstanding the fact that want and misery were so ubiquitous. Jubilee ladies intent upon Zenana Missions might have done better work nearer home in organising the neglected, slave-driven Jubilee maids-of-all-work. But Jubilee high-class women, like Jubilee high class other things, in the governing department, had a fatal way of overlooking mere duty, and adopting mere fads instead. We find in the year 1894: a noble lady. Captain General of a talking army, preparing to start on a quite gigantic fad 352 THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OF mission to every part of the world with accessories of the most expensive sort, special steamer amongst such accessories — said Mission directed to the abolition of all liquor except water, all smoke except women vapours, and all vice except slum-purveying. Meanwhile the noble lady, Captain-General-of-Teetotalers-all-over the-World, was also Captain-General of one of the cruellest slum areas in the United Kingdom, and could have achieved more good by staying at home and doing her duty by her wretched tenants than all the water-missions and suppression of vice crusades in (223) creation could bring about. Indeed, it was a highly, or lowly, ominous sign of all those times the savage part which high-bom dames played in the Jubilee world. Amongst the most heartless evictors of Scotch peasants from their land, you will find none more ruthless than the female land- owners, under whose administration women and children by the thousand were turned out wholesale to starvation and perennial (222) misery. Let those readers who cannot read Dante in the original, or for whom Milton is too magnificent, and who yet would know a little of hell's doings, read any of the many published accounts of the Highland clearances, or of the Irish, or even English clear- ances. This history has given but a small glimpse of them in an earlier chapter.* It is not productive of unlimited adoration, except of the lip sort, towards Jubilee femininity to see them so often emulative of the very worst and basest of their masters' examples. Happily for the reforms which the Revolution brought about, they were first actual and practical, and only afterwards drawn up into definite law and code. It was not by edict that the cruel orgies of Piccadilly hell-scenes could be mitigated. Generations of putridity cannot be healed by Act of Parliament. Wise Acts of Parliament need never try that method. You will drain no marsh until you have first provided an outlet for the stagnant waters, and wisely constructed your canal or channel to draw off the marsh water into healthy river stream, or adequate lake basin. Piccadilly infernal occupations ceased to allure poor womankind when, on all hands, there was established — firstly, a healthy demand for healthy service under just and equitable conditions ; and secondly (really higher than firstly), a need for the daughters' Pages 98, 99, 100-103. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 353 services in the work at home : "Man for the field, and the woman for the hearth." There was no home in the Jubilee times for millions of workers— no home, nothing but incest dens— mother, father, and five or eight chUdren "living" in one room, and 43,000 or 60,000, says Sir R. Temple, starving children a daily item of ^^^^^ London Jubilee programme. The way that Carlyle Democritus cleared London and Great Britain generally of its unfortunate females was by not creating them; he did not clear Piccadilly streets ; he simply by thunder- peal closed the sources of their manufacture— the awful slum dens, the casual employment, the sweating wages— f^iese were the Jubilee social marshes which the brave reformer drained, until dry land appeared, and godly men and women could stand firm and work upon it, instead of being compelled to wallow in eternal mud-filth, dragging the country's manhood in unceasing mudstream, growing for ever fouler, even unto night blackness. Let us get back to domestic service, and learn the conditions established by the Revolution. There was a minimum wage of one quarter which prevailed in factory or other service, inde- pendent of home and food. The engagements were annual. Unions were encouraged amongst all female workers; they had their Guilds and Councils as the men had. No case of injustice between mistress and maid could be passed over. Refusal of just character to a servant—" Go out to perpetual ruin for thy fault, O woman, because thou art poor"— could not get itself continued under any merciful system of government, as little for maids as for men. Women Councils— where Government Inspectors also attended— saw to the just application of all laws and regulations concerning women service. The sleeping-rooms of the servants were under their inspection (very much needed in Jubilee times indeed, but never applied); under-feeding was made impossible, overwork likewise. Female domestic slaves at Jubilee times had a sadly burdensome time, their hours commencing often at five in the morning and ending not before eleven at night, a ceaseless drudgery. As it was impossible to fix domestic work hours, the Code, instead, fixed the minimum of rest hours, and these were a minimum night or sleep period of eight and a half hours and a mininum day period of three hours. But the surest means by which reform was secured were the Unions. The State started them throughout the country, perfected their organisation on the same z 354 THE ENGHSH REVOLUTION OF lines as workmen's Unions, and then delivered them over to the Women's Guilds, at the same time reserving a necessary Govern- ment Inspectorate as has been before indicated. Courts of first instance were established in the "Women's Guilds, for the hearing and arbitration of all women's cases ; their organ- isation followed closely that of the Courts described under the Chapter on Law. In them, as in all Courts, the State bore the entire cost of administration. We may now state a few of the laws which followed the reforms : Foreign dames of the unfortunate class were no longer permitted to land in British ports. The law which tolerated no idle man in the country tolerated also no (ostensibly) idle woman. The liberty of the subject was not interfered with, only the licence of the subject. Let it be quite clear that Carlyle Democritus was no child dreaming of universal purity Utopias. And also, on the other hand, that he was not prepared to tolerate universal mud-Utopias. You must remember that, with general work becoming the rule, and idleness the exception, the general tendency toward a higher order of things gradually slackened the demand for the old Jubilee " unfortunate " class. Not only that : the class itself was no longer manufactured. It was getting quite a lost art after the Revolution ; so much so indeed that many of the foreign Ambassadors found it necessary to send private despatches to their Governments cautioning tourists against molesting English ladies, as so many cases were occurring, from mere ignorance on the part of foreigners to appreciate the fact that although Great r.ritain still remained a great commercial nation, it had stopped its traffic — or rather the traffic had stopped itself — of .... Happily, the traffic has no name. Fashion, which in Jubilee times favoured bachelordom, looked rather askance at such an anomaly after the Revolution, and you did not find many men unmarried after their twenty-fourth year. There was no law upon the subject, but there was a healthy state of public opinion, which was more influential for good than any law. A reference to the chapter on Education will help the reader to a better appreciation of this great social question. To have told a Jubilee young man of the fashionable sort that it was not a natural condition of things — that there should constantly prevail a floating population, relegated to what is only to be described as THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 365 a living shambles — would have been at once to confess yonrself outside the range of the human solar splendour — gone instead entirely moon ward, or lunatic. Now it ought clearly to be grasped that an evil is remediable by solar methods as well as lunar methods. Has it not been shown that weeds and wildness will everywhere grow and spread if there is no cultivation, both in the moral world and in the material world 1 Do not let practical folk imagine that a Carlyle Democritus could ever descend to the unpractical What could be more practical than the methods he adopted for ascertaining the actual origin of the most degrading form of the social evil ? He employed no Royal Commission, and yet he arrived at a remarkable fund of information, which left the late Mr Acton a lame, halting, and impotent authority indeed. After the most earnest researches into the life-histories of 20,000 shambles cases, the 20,000 were found to have been supplied from the following classes of the community : — 1. From the peerage None. 2. From the wealthy classes 3. From the well-to-do middle classes . . 5 4. From the lower middle classes 5. From the poorer classes — ^ j (a.) Born in moderate poverty \ (b.) Reduced to poverty from station . None. 5 107 2,709 a superior . 3,073 7 (c.) Reared in extreme poverty . .14,106 20,000 Class 1, it will be perceived from the table, retained their lapses within their own ranks, and never went beyond occasional exhibitions in the divorce courts. With Class 2 it was similar; family wounds of the Dulcinea sort were always healable by gold ointment. In the Classes 3 and 4, all the cases were attributable to the application of the principle of eternal punishment for sin. Not one of the 112 cases but who deplored the horrible necessity, or punishment, which had condemned her to such an existence and closed all other careers to her. With regard to the three last classes, it is enough to record that poverty made temptation easy if not irresistible ; poverty made 356 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF regression next to impossible ; and poverty for ever intensified the horrors and the degradation. In the many cases where Jubilee remedial measures had been attempted, they had failed, for the reason that such work and service as could be got for the restored ones was invariably of a sort that, in nine cases out of ten, favoured a relapse. After the Eevolution it is not pretended that Eros dropped his wings, and was content to hold firmly to earth and the conven- tionalities, and stray no more. Let us remember that Cupid, according to Hesiod, was co-eval with Chaos and the earth, and, according to human experience, is likely to outlast the second institution, as he already has the first. Now, although the ancients gave Cupid many forms, it was left to the moderns to give him the hell-imp form. It was the hell-imp form which the Revolution abolished, no other. Every one had to work. " If there is one man or woman begging in the streets for bread," said Democritus, "that is a reproach to the whole country." No begging of any sort was allowed. If not for bread, certainly not for mud. There was an avenue open for every British worker under the sun, an avenue laid out by the Divine Creator of the world which it is compulsory for man to tread — the avenue of work. This history has shown sufficiently that there was no lack of work after the Revolution ; there was, rather, lack of workmen. Any man found loitering was promptly and merci- fully furnished with work.* That law applied to women also. There was never a lack of domestic work on the Colonial, Penal, or Labour Settlements. There is one thing in this world which God has given to mankind to be for ever unsaleable — his person. Carlyle Democritus and the Revolution upheld that law absolutely, both for men and women. With the giver he nor they interfered. But slavery, concupiscent or other, was abolished. If Eros — from his exuberant sweetness — gives away his feathers, happy they who receive them, but Eros shall not be let sell his dove-plumes in the market-place, or elsewhere. Poverty and starvation no longer compelled, or instigated, that awful sacrifice. There is one other step that the Revolution took in the direction of raising the status of English women. But again, let it be well * Pages 162, 250, 251. THE TWENTIETH CENTT7RY. 357 understood, it was notj,the outcome of any law. In a preceding chapter* it was incidentally mentioned that female as well as male doctors were provided in all the labour palaces. That was not an isolated instance of a great reform in the customs and manners of a nation having grown from below upwards. Is it necessary to insist that the institution of female doctors for female patients was a step in a good direction ? No, not necessary. The workers felt it to be a boon, and Carlyle Democritus left time to recommend it to the higher dames. And a wise historian will follow the example of the great legislator. Modesty needs not to be commended. Praise is detrimental to her. To a generation whose drawing-room women, while holding themselves to be the most refined of their species, delighted in exposing to the uttermost their arm and breast developments, and whose music-hall bacchantes — the least refined of their species — delighted in exposing to the uttermost their leg and thigh developments, gaping public supposed to be looking on applausive at both exhibitions — to such a genera- tion let any wise historian speak of modesty only in the language which Christ adopted towards another generation which mocked at truth. Let the wise historian be content to record that there came a time when innocent-souled English women who had gone to the East to '* convert " the " heathen " — the passionate beauty of India, the devoted woman of Cathay, and her flower-sister of Japan, sweet as a lotus bloom — returned themselves " converted." For they had seen a difi'erent but not a lower civilisation. Women less talked about as emancipated, but emancipated nevertheless. Those teeming millions would not have the " liberty " of a British woman. Liberty to expose her person without shame to every staring wight; liberty to shout upon the housetops their " equality " with man ; liberty to compete with man in the platform jargon element, whilst they supplied slum dens for the poor, or turned them from their peasant farms on to the winter fields to starve. The tender Mnconverted preferred a dearer empire — the supreme rule of home, the absolute queenship of the generation yet to be. Not talking on plat- forms to corrupted men is woman's mission in this or any world; but to train the undegenerate and uncorrupted man so that he never become corrupt. "The child is the father of the * Page 263. 358 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. man," British woman, when thou knowest purity and modesty in thine own soul, and exhibitest it a little in thine own body, thou canst then insinuate that infinite sweetness into his. Thy child will not listen to thy mere words, but he will imitate thy action. God has bereft the little child of knowledge whilst the mother feeds it at the fount of life. woman, thou desecratest God's fairest law, thou outragest His greatest trust Avhen thou teachest to thy son, by animal example, grossness bred of sensual vanity, the arch-origin of all corruption. CHAPTER V. EDUCATION. *' Plato rebukes the criminal folly of preoccupying the mindi «f children, when they are too young to protect themselves, with the traditions of the old mythologies. •' Woe to the unluckyJman who as a child is taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his grown reason must forswear ! " — Froude. In nothing was the Jubilee age more complex and chaotic than in its system or want of system, of national education. Its infinite varieties defy analysis, and would not repay the work when accomplished. The Jubilee people had very certain and scientific rules for rearing and training horses, pigs, sheep, and cattle, but for rearing and training human-kind the general rules (if any could be discovered) were uncertain and unscientific. There were the Board Schools for the poor, the governors whereof had wrangled for the best part of a year whether the teachers should or should not be compelled to tell helpless little children — 60,000 of whom were half starved and not fit to learn anything — that God was not God, but a triple arrangement of Ghost, and Son, and Father. The teachers being sane men and women — practical, pious, and humane — revolted against such idiot-tyranny, and pointed out to the School Board governors (beset with Jubilee parsons) that tens of thousands of the poor children's stomachs were already fed with wind instead of food, and that to feed their sad little brains with wind also were quite the culmination of criminal folly. At any rate, the Board Schools possessed practically trained and duly certified teachers, hairbrained as many of the governors were. On the other hand, there were troops of teachers, outside Board Schools, uncertified, untrained, and incompetent. These were thought good enough for a large class of middle-conditioned people, whose children suffered in 359 360 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF consequence. After the Eevolution no person was allowed to follow the profession of teacher unless he or she had been duly certificated. The highest calling that a mortal could be put to was no longer permitted to remain a sort of refuge for the destitute. Happily there were merciful and sane provisions elsewhere for the destitute after the Revolution. Perhaps if we glance at the very highest Jubilee conception of "education," it will afford us a sufficiently vivid idea of what the medium or lowest must have been. " Very much of words and very little of things," applicable to all of them. Here, then, is a small table of statistics of Jubilee education for boys of fourteen, collected and published in the year 1894 from 224) twenty-two English public schools. Five hundred and ninety-eight hours a week (for the 22 schools) were devoted to, and divided amongst, the following subjects : — To English .... Ancient and Modern History Geography Science . German . French . Scripture and Religion Mathematics . Greek Latin 32 hours. 39f 18| 17f Nil. 71 m 119| 1151 140f Total, 598 hours. That is an instructive little table for many reasons :— (1) Greek and Latin absorbed not far short of one-half of the total instruction afforded to the British youth of high (or rich) degree. (2) Modern languages had one representative ; all the others were entirely ignored, although the Government was offering high premiums to young men who could pass examinations in Chinese, Hindustani, Malay, and Russian, which would fit them for employ- ment in State service throughout the wide and glorious empire where right understanding of those languages was so much required. The grand colleges were turning out cartloads of useless brain- inflations, capable of doing Greek "verses," Latin rhymes, and THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 361 such dead rubbish — mere windbags of education — blown out of any possibility of living usefulness, until they had voided their undigested classical coeducation. The infinite and ceaseless professorial cant of appreciation and adulation for those ancient Greek and Latin literatures stood like a thistle abatis between the British youth and British usefulness. Dare any mortal man raise his voice against the lunatic squandering of the national brain forces, professorial prigs shrieked at him till the poor man fairly gave in from damaged tympanum. Not so Democritus. He dearly loved the wise and great, both Greek and Roman, and he proved his love by imitating what was good in them, not by mere lip-mockery of them. Caesar and the Antonines were not unknown to him, nor the Gracchi. But he still dared to prefer Cromwell to Caesar, Shakespeare to Sophocles, Froude to Fenestella, Ruskin to Rutilius, and Wren to Rhotus ; or any of the glorious gods of British genius before all the dictionary-full of Lempriere-people — from which, by the way, the above names have been taken, more for purposes of alliteration than of particular appropriateness — much in the same way that British Jubilee youths were penning Greek " rhymes " at the expense of English reason. A Cromwell excelled a Caesar to Carlyle Democritus as infinitely as a Jesus Christ a Cretan Jupiter ; in spite of the fact that the Jupiter cant-priests, accord- ing to Varro, divided their Jupiter god into three hundred individualities, whilst the jubilee cant-priests only divided theirs into three. High-class British colleges turned out shoals of poor water-brains, crammed with the literature of two nations dead by their own corruption, while the living wisdom of Germany, the great God-fearing people of the world, was a close-sealed book to them. As for the literature of their own country, Heaven protect them — the mud-wash of idle women's sickly vapours, thrown off in three -volume novels, was their principal pabulum in the English-reading line. Choked at college with ** classicalism," they afterwards craved for anything not classic — like an alcohol inebriate for soda-water. Very much did the Revolution change the curriculum of the great educational establishments throughout the country. Those 362 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 598 hours of the high-class classical schools were turned upside down much in this fashion : — Greek and Latin 25 1 lOurs. English Literature and History, including Scripture reading 100 Modern History, other than English 30 Ancient History 15 Geography 50 Science 35 German, French, Italian, Spanish (a scholar to choose any two) . 70 Science of Education and HumanjPhy siology 50 Mathematics ...... 120 Hindustani, or other Indian dialect . 35 Chinese, Kussian, Malay (one to be chosen by the scholar) 35 Military drill 33 Total, 598 hours. No more details. We have only dilated upon the highest form of Jubilee education, because from the ludicrous unpracticalness of the highest, sane readers may be allowed to imagine what were the vagaries of the lowest. From the highest to the lowest all schools and colleges were made absolutely free. Wise and wholesome variety prevailed in different centres ; but Parliament, through its Minister of Public Education, prevented any lapse from the practical reform introduced by the Revolution, which is best seen in the measures they adopted with the School Board. The post-revolutionary School Board curriculum was based upon the following four categories : — 1. Technical training. 2. Physical drill. 3. The three K's. 4. The science of education, including human physiology. Dividing the school hours into 100 parts, the following will give a measure of the importance and value set to each subject : — 1. Technical training, requiring proficiency in some one trade or calling before a child could pass to the secondary or Guild training schools . . 25 hrs. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 363 2. Physical Drill, which included the art of self- defence, military drill, gymnastic exercise, and swimming. . . . . . . .15 hrs. 3. The three R's., pure and simple : — (a.) Reading, including Scripture, English history, and English literature . . 15 „ (b.) Writing, including elementary shorthand . 10 „ (c.) Arithmetic, theoretical and commercial . 15 „ 4. The science of education, rearing and training of the young, and elementary human physiology . 20 „ 100 hrs. The fourth division — the science of education and human phy- siology — was the most valuable and vital of all the educational reforms of the Revolution. It is quite impossible to exaggerate the intense ignorance of the masses of the people, rich and poor, at Jubilee times, with reference to all matters concerning the care or training of the young, or the life duties which awaited a citizen beyond the region of his counting-house. A more deplorable piece of feminine futility than a young Jubilee mother is not to be conceived. Half the miseries of domestic disunion were directly caused by the launching of a raw, ignorant girl into the sacred temple of matrimony, without one fraction of previous domestic or physical training. As if the rearing of a man were of less regard than the rearing of a pig or a cow, — the care of neither of which would be intrusted to an untrained person, yet who was thought quite good enough to rear a British son of God. Whilst half the Jubilee world was running after political economy as use- fully, though not as harmlessly, as a dog after its tail, domestic economy was an art scarcely introduced as a serious study even in the best of schools. The relation and duty of a child and man to the State was so little understood that, even amongst the clergy, it was a common rule to find the poorest of them dragging into misery and poverty a dozen children whom they could not properly feed, let alone train and educate. Such was the result of wise physiological training after the Revolution that it came justly to be looked upon as criminal wickedness for parents to increase their families beyond the number for whom they could honestly and worthily provide. If Carlyle Democritus had done no more than 364 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF scotch the prurient cowardice which blinked those vital questions in Jubilee times, he had done well for his country. But more good followed from his brave instauration. The health of the people rose with the healthiness of their knowledge. Infant life ceased to pay its tribute to the Moloch of ignorance and fashion. Ah ! Fashion ! That ceased also to depend altogether upon foreign lunacies. Physiology taught the new generation of womankind the insane folly of pinching their vitals in two, and taught them to laugh less at Chinese crushed feet, and weep more at their own squeezed anatomies. A time came when in the room of horrors, at an exhibition which still flourished in Baker Street, were to be found certain specimens of whalebone and steel, cun- ningly covered with silk or cotton, and thus described in the Twentieth Century catalogue : — " Models of implements of torture in use at the Jubilee period, called ' little-ease.' "When first dug from an old grave at Hanwell it was supposed that they were relics of the Inquisition, but further research inclines authorities to the belief that they were construc- tions invented by the French for the destruction or prevention of population. Exact year of manufacture uncertain." Briefly, it may be said that after the Revolution the national education set before everything the necessity of a high technical and physical training. Competitive examinations were entirely abolished. Degrees, certificates, and passes were granted to scholars who qualified themselves by passing the standards fixed by the governing bodies, but not upon any principle of competition- With reference to the freeing of all schools, it may be added that all voluntary schools that desired it were taken over by the State, and compensation given to them ; but no capitation grants were made to any such schools which continued an independent exist- ence. They gradually died away as the thoroughness and practical- ness of the State schools commended themselves to the whole nation. Complete freedom was left to all such voluntary schools as continued to exist on all subjects, except that the State would tolerate no departure from truth in the study of history. In Jubilee times you would find histories, so called, which as ab- solutely refuted one another as did the old Jubilee Blackswhite and Whitesblack journals.* Upon that history question the • Paee 22. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 365 Revolutionary Parliament permitted no quibbling. It is a sad business to inculcate in one part of your national children that King A was a saint, whilst another portion of your children are being taught that King A was a devil. The Educational Depart- ment of the Government decided the history text-books, and wherever opinion was irreconcilable with fact, history stated fact, and left opinion alone. Every student on leaving school had to pass a public examination, non-competitive. In history the ex- amination was oral as well as written. Upon evidence appearing that the national history had been departed from, the school guilty Df the misteaching was closed, or in the event of private tuition, the certificate of the teacher was forfeited, and the pupil required to attend a State boarding-school for three years. "Woe to the unlucky man who as a child is taught, even as a portion of his creed, what his grown reason must forswear." CHAPTER VI. JDBILEB LAW — BBVOLUTIONARY JUSTIOB. '* Parliament will initiate no wise legislation. Until public opinion force it to the brink of the waters of reform it will but wallow in the mud-stream of Party. Compelled to the pure waters of reform, it will not drink, but turn away to appoint Royal Commissions, to analyse the constituent parts of its beloved mud-stream, and report — if pure water be preferable — Why ? Boyal Commission was the Jubilee name for Limbo, or Lethe, the black unutterable, which swallowed for ever and revealed nothing, never satisfied nor satisfying. "Ancient Wisdom said : ' Doing, not learning, is the thing.' Jubilee Parlia- ment said : ' Learning, not doing, is the thing,' so it set up its Royal Com- missions filled with gangs of Party politicians, placed an unlimited quantity of soap-water before them, also clay or brass pipes, and bid them blow bubbles, and not be in any hurry to exhaust the soap-water." Carlyle Democrittis. First there was chaos, afterwards creation. Darkness preceded dawn. Was there ever a fouler darkness than that ever-increasing darkness which Jubilee law had made from what mankind called Justice ? The Jubilee Church had had its Trinity. Do not think that Jubilee Government was without a similar mystery : — The Father was Party Government; the Son, Publicans and Public-houses ; the Holy Ghost, Law. It had also its three states in the regions above and beneath : — Its Heaven was compounded of Office, Power, Company-monger- ing, and Peerages ; its Purgatory was experienced in Opposition ; its Hell lay in Poverty, Drunkenness, Misery, and Crime ; its Styx or Hell-ferry might be entitled " Royal Commission." The hundred and fifty millions a year which the publicans sucked from the Nation's wealth were slight, compared with the ubiquitous graspings and emasculations of the law. A Parliamentary return published in the year 1894 showed that in six years the "law" had sucked from "gas and water" companies, railway, canal, and tramway companies alone, over two millions sterling, 866 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 367 merely for the cost of obtaining Parliamentary "legislation." (005) Could a return have been made of the cost of litigation produced by that so-called legislation, it would probably have had to be expressed in tens of millions. The dual legislature was choked with publicans of one class or another, with lawyers of one sort or another, and with company-mongers of all sorts. Tkey made the laws. It was as if it should be given to burglars to define the weapons they were to be assaulted with, and the methods to be adopted for their circumvention. Let us take first the question of public companies. The Inspector-General of Companies in Liquidation published a report in the Jubilee year 1894. He put one year's "loss" (223) (legalised thieving by promoters and company-mongers) at twentj- five millions sterling. This loss was not ascribable to disasters incidental to trading or bad times. On the contrary, he said: "One looks in vain for any signs of failure caused by real misfortune, or by any other of such causes." The real causes he attributed "to a conspicuous absence of honesty of purpose, intelligence of management, and telling the truth" (the last phrase was written "accuracy of statement placed before the public"). Yet, in spite of the fact that twenty-five millions sterling had been robbed from the hard-working masses by mere chartered thieves, such was the infamy of the Parliamentary (227) "Acts" that, says a high authority, "all concerned [in those public robberies] probably kept within the letter of the Companies' Acts, and a prosecution under the Larceny Act, or under any of the penal provisions of those Acts, would have almost certainly failed. Such is the perfection of the art of the modern promoter, that he can, and does, victimise the public with absolute immunity from punishment. A large class of abuses goes on briskly under cover of the vei'y statutes passed to prevent them."* * "The gain to directors of Companies is so great," said the Times, "and the chance of final escape so considerable, that rascals will always be found to swindle shareholders . . . and evade justice ; . . . there are enough of such refugees at large to found a small colony . . . there will be no real reform and no real security for shareholders, mostly of the poorer classes, until the law takes a very different view of the duty and responsibility of directors from that now in vogue. It seems positively to be thought a sufficient defence for a director to avow that he did not know anything that went on at his Board. It is his business to know, and if he does not (227*) know, he stands self-confessed as an impostor." 368 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF Hearken, hearken, reader ; here is a contrast : — (228) "Elizabeth Dash, aged thirty-nine, who was given a chair in the dock ' owing to the condition she was in,' was yesterday [Christmas- week 1893] charged with stealing a woollen petticoat, value one shilling and ninepence, from a pawnbroker's shop where she had gone to redeem something. The prisoner, weep- ing bitterly, said she had four little children, all of them ill, one dying, and whom she feared would be dead before she could return home [and one more yet to come]. Her little boy told her when he got home from the pawnbroker's shop that he had picked up the petticoat on the floor of the shop, and she put it round the child who was dying to keep it warm, and she went to the shop the next day and offered to pay for it, but the pawnbroker said 'I cannot compromise,' and was hard to her till the policeman came, then he was very civil, but would have her locked up. The prisoner's little son said he picked the article up in the shop, and his mother did not know it. The magistrate said, *This is a very sad case.* And the bench of magistrates said, ' You are to be fined ten shillings, or in default seven days.' The police knew nothing against the poor woman. She had only six shillings in the world, four children ill, and a fifth coming." The poor widow whose child stole the shilling petticoat did not know that the poor little pilferer had taken it — but they condemned her to prison nevertheless.* Sentence ten shillings fine, or in default seven days ! What do you think about it. Right Honourable Jubilee gentlemen M.P., Q.C., G.C.M.G., and many other grand letters of the alphabet, who paid ten per cent, dividend as directors of a company at a time when its realised losses exceeded a quarter of a million sterling, and which failed a few months later for some millions sterling, but who were not imprisoned for seven days, but made Cabinet Ministers for seven years, to rule a mad and degenerate Jubilee people in the name of "Party"? Such was Jubilee justice. Ponder, ye who would know what Corruption means ! Your right honourable Company-promoters, M.P.,P.C.,K.C.M.G., etc., could, with impunity, rob tens of thousands of widows and ♦ Page 367 (note). THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 369 humble toilers and go scot free 1 Reader, do you know how that was possible in Jubilee times ? A fearless historian will tell you. Because the crew in Parliament who "made the laws" did not need to steal a little flannel to clothe their naked, starving children with, but they did require to invent phrases and clauses which would enable them to wriggle out of the devastating consequences of their directoral " mismanagement," and thus enable them with impunity to "lose" annually Twenty-five Millions of the national wealth. In what dictionary must we look for the actual meaning of that word " lose " 1 Had the money fallen to the bottom of the sea? Had it passed through those directors' hands and fallen nowhither ? Had any of it stopped in their pockets, or in those of their friends ? Verily, the historian knoweth not. He only knows that the Inspector-General of Companies in Liquidation assured the Jubilee world that those Twenty-five Millions sterling a year were '* lost " owing to " a conspicuous absence of honesty of purpose." May not a truth-loving mortal humbly opine that where there is a conspicuous absence of honesty of any sort, there is a perspicuous presence of dishonesty of a sort ? In the Radical Party Government of the year 1894, you would find at least half a score of Her Majesty's Ministers Company Directors. Some of them — peers and legislators — " directed " any number of companies from twenty down to ten, or less. One of those Companies, included in the Report of Her Majesty's Inspector-General, etc., had failed for a sum of Seven Millions sterling, and had brought ruin upon tens of thousands of the struggling masses throughout the Kingdom. It had for its President a peer, and for its arch- fiend (Director-in-Chief) one of the most pious of Radical ad- ministrators. A President of the Board of Trade was Director of another exploded Company. A First Lord of the Admiralty in a Tory administration had directed another exploded Company. Take this as a passing searchlight glance into Jubilee Companj^- mongering :— ^229) Chancery Division op the High Court op Justice. ■ In re the New Fleeceland Loan Agency Limited. This was an application on behalf of the Right Honourable Sir James Fergusson Bart., M.P., the Right Hon. A. J. Mundella^ M.P. (President of the Board of Trade), Sir E. W Stafford, 2a 370 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF G.C.M.G., Sir George Russell, Bart., M.P., Sir J. E. Gorst, Q C, M.P. (a Financial Secretary to the Treasury), that an order made in the winding up of the above-named Company for the public examination of the above-named five honourable and right honourable gentlemen might be discharged. Counsel Q.C., M.P,, for the five honourable and right honourable gentlemen explained that his clients desired to be examined under some section of the Companies' Act which did not convey the impression that fraud had been committed by them. Tlie Judge: — "Fraud has been committed by some one." Counsel, Q.G., M.P.: — "My clients object to any examination based on the notion that the slightest fraud has been committed by them, or any one with whom they had acted. I and my learned friend [brother counsel for the above worthies M.P.] will take upon ourselves to say [i.e. are duly paid for saying] that the stigma of fraud could not rest on any of those honourable and right honourable gentlemen M.P." Could not rest ! It would glide from the right honourable shoulders like water from a duck's back, or like the golden money which had glided, and become "lost," from the pockets of the unfortunate shareholders. After floating through " learned " arguments in the usual manner, to prove that inasmuch as his honourable and right honourable clients had only "lost" a few millions, or hundreds of thousands, of the British public's money which had been entrusted to them, and had not at all stolen it like the wicked slum people, who stole pennies and flannel petticoats to feed and clothe their starving children with, therefore his honourable and right honourable clients ought only to be examined in a quiet and comfortable way, " and not by public examination." And the "learned" counsel further argued that, if fraud had been com- mitted, " the Oflicial Receiver was wanting in moral courage not to say so." Tlie Judge .•— " Oh, I don't agree to that, Mr Counsel, Q.C., M.P. Counsel, continuing, referred to the report of the Official Receiver and said that " the Company was a substantial one, and the applicants were gentlemen [Jubilee gentlemen], whose position was indisputable as regarded their integrity and business capacity." Indisputable ! Yet the wicked Judge disputed the " indisput- THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 371 able integrity and business capacity" of the honourable and right honourable gentlemen, Q.C., G.C.M.G., Cabinet Ministers, M.P. And the Judge said: "The Company was 'wound up' in July 1893, and the hon. and right hon. gentlemen authorised a dividend of ten per cent, in 1892." "Ah," said the learned Council, Q.C., on the other side, "grant the examination, your Lordship ; a public investigation is necessary, and it is right and proper that the gentlemen should be examined, for it is evident that some one has committed fraud." And he referred the Court to various precedents from the days of the deluge down to Anno Jubili 1894, to try and prove that if a poor starving woman with five children could be arraigned and sentenced to seven days' imprisonment because her baby stole a piece of flannel, might not wealthy Eight honourables be examined for etc. etc.? All the learned and unlearned arguments being completed, the learned Judge went home and studied the Companies' Acts, and spent much time and labour upon them. And after three days he re-appeared in the great Court of Justice, and pronounced a grave and careful decision — not of the concrete Salomaic sort — '* divide the child in two ; " but'of tho^ Jubilee diffusive sort, poor man — for let us love our dutiful brother man at all times — it was not the Judge that had made Jubilee law and Jubilee Acts of Parliament, it was they that had made, or unmade, him, and condemned him to wade in a never-ceasing tide of confused limbo-jargon. For liours the learned Judge poured forth his verdict, using more words than are employed in the recital of the entire history of the great King Solomon ; more words than have sufficed for the average chapter of this history with its store of truth and wisdom. JBe not dismayed, O reader; we will not set out that Jubilee judgment here for you, but only the kernel of it, and always with deep sympathy and pity for the brave Judge who, with a fear of God in his heart, and not the fear of men, thus " divided the babe in two : " — The actual verdict was : " Fraud has been committed by some- one, and there must be public examination ; thus says the Act of Parliament, and thus say I, one of Her Majesty's Judges. The accused are all honourable men, innocent beyond doubt, anxious Btill more beyond doubt to prove their innocence ; but the poor 372; THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF starving accused gets public trial and sentence of ten days for stealing three-penn'orth of flannel, and these honourable men must be similarly examined for ' losing ' millions of the public's money." Now, when the learned counsel of those honourable men heard the wise Judge's verdict, he gathered his counsellor's robes around him, pressed his horse-hair wig firmly upon his head, and made a wild rush to the Appeal Court next door, and he bowed low before the supreme lords of Jubilee Appeal-Justice, and he said, " great and most learned Judges of Appeal, reverse the verdict of the less- learned Judge of the Queen's High Court of Justice. He has studied the Companies' Acts for three days, and thereafter has decided that the Ministers of the Queen and other great, mighty, and most honourable men are to be tried for * losing ' a few hundred thousands of the people's money, as if the amount were only sixpence stolen by a starving slum thief. Justice ! O most learned ones, Justice ! — I mean of course Jubilee justice — Jubilee justice 1 " * And he got it. For the most learned supreme Judges reversed the seven thousand words of their brother Judge. And . . . the poor widow doing her seven days in the prison cell, with the four little children starving outside, was praying to the Father of all to forgive her sin and watch over her hungry children. Dost thou begin to grasp what was Jubilee justice, reader % • Public examination of the honourable and right honourable gentle- (229a) men did eventually follow nnder a rule which did not contemplate fraud. The examination extended over a month or more, with the due array of learned counsel on both sides. The Judge made a further "statement," which occupied five hours in delivering, and involved 7000 more words. We find the brave Official Receiver — so grossly insulted by the Q.C., M. P., on behalf of the honourable and right honourable gentlemen — upheld by the Judge, and his report declared to be "admirably clear and accurate, and unimpugnable," and not by any means "cowardly," O learned counsel Q.C., M.P., but infinitely brave and true. The Judge heard evidence for a •whole month, which involved more printed words than would furnish type for half a dozen Old and New Testaments combined. And the Judge said that fraud had been committed by the directors, "collectively," in a very cruel and wholesale fashion. " Collectively ! " Sweet Jubilee euphemism : wholesale fraud by directors "collectively," but individually they were held as innocent as baa-lambs mumbling grass in the summer fields. " Collecr lively " fraudulent and eminently dishonourable men, but individually "honourable," ay, "right honourable" men. For Jubilee Justice wore seven-league boots to crush out the small criminalities, and quickly sentenced the hungry ones who stole bread or shillings, but by no means exercised itself THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 373. • But then, for what were the lawyers in Parliament, except to confound judgment? When hon. members complained that a clause of an important Bill was altogether incomprehensible, would not a right hon. gentleman rise and read a lengthy explanatory (230a) statement by the draftsmen of the Jubilee word-maze, called Bill," which left the hon. members probably more bewildered than before ? " The difficulty of interpreting the thing is insuper- over the "great thieves." Ten housebreakers, by Jubilee law, were both "collectively" and " individually " guilty, but pocket-breakers, so long as they put " Limited " after their names, and "Honourable" or other title, before them, would only be "collectively" and not "individually" respon- sible. Exquisite refinement of Jubilee wig-law and party corruption. Let us from our heart admire the sturdy outspokenness of the Times on this occasion : " It is idle cant to pretend anxiety for the better distribu- (229b) tion of wealth until we can devise means by which the preying upon people of small incomes can be put a stop to [' until we can devise means ! ' It is so difficult to catch big thieves, so easy to catch the poor little ones.] Men of business could not be hoodwinked with an illusory debenture which was good enough for the general public. . . . The holders of debentures were extensively deceived as to the nature and value of the security they held. The balance-sheets were systematically cooked to conceal the true state of affairs. The reserve had totally disappeared, but figures were manipulated to make it appear that the reserve existed. . . . Public aud shareholders alike have been tricked and defrauded during a long term of years through the fault of a Board of Directors. . . . Yet, as we see every day, neither the law [the Jubilee law] nor public opinion [party opinion] otfers any serious guarantee for care, attention, or honesty upon the part of directors. On the contrary, their punishment, even in bad cases, is difficult, and they boldly claim to be regarded as ' honourable ' men after collectively doing the most dishonourable things." Ay, even so, out of all those persons "collectively guilty of fraud," only one resigned, and his resignation did not take place till many weeks after the Official Receiver's denunciation, and after the Press — duly "inspired" — had assured the British public that the Cabinet Ministers "collectively" "saw no reason " why their right honourable colleague should resign ; and he him- self felt so supremely innocent that he declared his intention of visiting his constituents " to seek an expression of renewal of confidence." (229c) Whilst Jubilee justice was thus passing unpunished those honourable and right honourable " collective " defrauders of millions of the public money, she was sentencing, at that very moment, to three months' hard labour a poor (229d) wretch who had obtained, not one or two millions sterling by false pretences, but ten pounds sterling, by false pretence of charity from a right honourable gentleman M.P. It was fraud, justly punishable, to rob ten pounds from a right honourable M.P., but it was only "collective" fraud, or Jubilee innocence, for half-a-dozen right honourables to rob the poorer middle classe of millions sterling. 374 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF able," said hon. members. That was inside the " House ; " let the reader imagine its insuperability when, in the form of an "Act,"' it got outside the "House," — when not two hundred but two thousand lawyers would tear and rend at it as a bird of prey tears the carrion. Perhaps the impartial reader would like to hear the opinion of the greatest newspaper in the world upon this matter. Upon a case that had suffered the usual battledore and shuttlecock business at the hands of the law courts, in the Jubilee year 1894, a case (230) involving some £200,000, the Times said : — " The Legislature escapes responsibility in a cloud of verbiage. One party attaches to a vague set of words one meaning, another party another meaning, and Parliament attaches to them no mean- ing in particular. No two tribunals were at one as to the purport of words on which depended thousands of pounds. All felt the difficulty of a sentence which began by saying one thing and ended only to unsay it. The arbitrator appointed under the Act thought it meant one thing, which was the opinion of the majority of the judges of the Court of Sessions in Scotland. The Divisional Court thought the arbitrator (and the majority of the Session judges) wrong. The Lords Justices (on the case being taken to another court) thought the Divisional judges wrong. Every court before which the question has come has complained of the 'great difficulty ' in construing the section. Apart from the hardship to be inflicted, it is unsatisfactory to note the element of gambling in the whole litigation. There is something amiss when property of great value is inflated or depreciated according to the meaning which judges extract from, or give to, words barely intelligible. Counsel have given diverse opinions as to the purport of the thing ; and the Court of Appeal do not conceal their perplexity in presence of the statutory gibberish on which the dispute turns. . . . The fault rests with Parliament, which does not say in plain terms what it means, does not make use of familiar and well-ascertained meanings." Yes, " STATUTORY GIBBERISH," says the Times newspaper of the year 1894, and also : " This is an example of a favourite mode of drafting Bills dealing with controversial matter." Lawyer-subter- fuges and chicanery, mediaeval mud-jargon, imbroglio of " learned asses," universal Pandemonium, parliamentary corruption — verily a Carlyle Democritus was required to sweep away such canaille. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 375 At the time when the Divine Philosopher, Jesus of Galilee, was teaching in Jerusalem to a deaf and corrupt people, there was a philosopher in Rome saying to another corrupt people : — " One day may make all the difference between the greatest city in the world and no city at all." Thou shalt know later on what that " one day " means, reader. Meanwhile, thou hast seen a little of Jubilee law, of Jubilee makers of law, and of Jubilee breakers of law. And of such were the Kingdom of Mammon, With such ministers to make the laws, need an intelligent public wonder why company thieves might rob them wholesale of Twenty-five Millions sterling a year with impunity 1 Diplomatists, ambassadors, peers, members of Parliament, were amongst those Directors ; those were the people whom Parliamentary laws practically privileged to "lose " the public's money wholesale. Twenty-five Millions in one year (and going on year after year in the same fashion). It is not a little thing, O English people. It meant ruin to untold numbers of silent, hopeless savers, who had no redress anywhere. Amongst the victims of one of those companies of whom the Inspector- General spoke, there were numbers of men and women, from the ages of fifty up to eighty, who were robbed to the last penny of their hard earnings and savings of a lifetime. Many in sheer despair committed suicide; the distress was so general that a charity subscription-list was organised, in order to modify to a small extent the worst sufferings of some of them. If, amongst all those wrecked fortunes, any desperate mortal dared to try for justice, what befel him 1 Costs, contumely, star- chamber cross-examination, and this decision by one of Her Majesty's judges : — " There is no doubt that the Directors of this Company are morally guilty of the ruin they have brought on thousands ; there is no doubt they have wantonly squandered the millions of money that a confiding public has entrusted to their hands, misled by (230b) their high position, misled by high-sounding names. If I, as a Judge, had to mete out justice, there is not one of these men but upon whose head the heaviest sentence of the law should fall, but alas, it is not law that I have to dispense, but only Jubilee law, and therefore, after these wasted months of ' trial,' after all the frightful evidence of what is the most culpable misrepresentation of facts, and misappropriation of funds, I must declare, not 376 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF that the prisoners are innocent, but that the wizard enchantments of the ' law ' cannot touch them." " The law," said Democritus, " dragged the poor gutter thief by an iron chain, whilst it was but as a gossamer thread to the practised Company scoundrel. God have mercy on a country (asi) which compels its judges to dispense such law." There was no hope for any mortal ruined by a Company who should venture to appeal for justice. Only costs, contumely, and an adverse verdict awaited him, further disaster added to already unbearable ruin. Legal sharks were let loose upon the unfortunate protesting mortal ruined by a Company, by the same power that had raised fraudulent directorship into an organised brigandage to prey upon society in all directions. The liquor and legal traffic shared between them the principal power in the political arena. Just as the liquor interests diverted the nation's savings from health into drunkenness and waste, so the legal interests diverted the healthy English language into mere mediaeval doggerel, which no man, not even the lawyers them- selves, could understand. Just as the "Company Acts" of Parliament bred the very abuses they were pretended to be passed to "prevent," so was it with every conceivable statute made by Jubilee Parliaments ; the newspapers teemed with accounts of the ruin and ravage brought upon trade through the hopelessness of ever getting justice out of them. What one judge in one court declared to be black, a judge in the next court decided was white, and the judges in the superior court determined was both black and white. Nothing was commoner than to find wigged idiocies voting both (232) ways. Here is a case that will illustrate a thousand : — " Sixty miners were killed by an explosion in a colliery. Their wretched widows sued for compensation. One court interpreted the Act of Parliament, which dealt with such cases, and decided tiliat the widows were to have justice and compensation. The next court of wig idiots reversed the first court's interpretation, and de- cided that the widows were not to be compensated. The poor widows tried the Supreme Court, and that third court reversed the second oourt wiggeries' decision, and determined that the Act did allow compensation. Meanwhile untold months had been wasted, enormous costs incurred, and by the time the poor widows got their 'judgment,' they might have died of starvation, had not charity, or the men's Labour Union, given them food." THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 377 Or take this : Again it is a widow, this time of a sailor (233) drowned at sea, through the admitted carelessness of the captain. Widow appeals for compensation against the ship- owners. The first court interpreted the Act and gave the widow £175 damages ; the owners appealed, and the superior wiggeries decided that the Act of Parliament did not allow the poor widow compensation. She could appeal no more, so she got nothing. Only the lawyers got anything. On the same day which saw the poor widow's discomfiture we find this other Jubilee law interpretation : — (234) A member of a School Board became bankrupt. No. 1 court of wigs decided that he was disqualified to serve as a member of the School Board according to the Act of Parliament, He appealed. No. 2 court decided both ways, viz. two judges held that the Act did not disqualify him, and one judge (the Master of the Rolls) decided that the Act did disqualify him. Two wigs counted more than one wig, so the unfortunate bank- rupt remained a member of the School Board. Such was Jubilee law, and such were Jubilee judges. Do not let it be imagined that complex questions had anything to do with the law's delay, uncertainty, expense, and general worth- lessness.* The more simple the question, the more protracted were the legal "arguments." The bewildered and stupefied reader doubts it t Take these actual cases, boiled down and extricated [from more words than were employed Mn the Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare taken together ; and, if you include the references to *' leading cases " and mis-leading cases, involving probably more books (of the sheepskin description) than would fill a slum-room ten feet by ten. "Are the London streets intended for traffic, or for trade?" (236) The costermoncers said : " For trade." * "They (the merchants and traders) had over and over again advocated practical measures which the United Chambers of Commerce had ten times approved, but Bills for the consolidation and amendment of the most im- portant branches of commercial and shipping law had been killed by obstruction and by our Party and Parliamentary systems. It was useless for the President of the Board of Trade to point the injured trader to the remedy of costly litigation for breaches of the law . . . . The Board of Trade must vindi- ■cate the law, and if it had not the power, the sooner it got and exercised it (235) the better for the community and for trade." — The President of the Association of Chambefjs of Commeecb of the United Kingdom. 378 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF The Municipalities said : "For traffic." Tlie law courts — after multifarious trials, peals, and appeals, and costs interminable, and much wasted time, disagreed as follows : — The first court said that the Act of Parliament intended the streets for traffic and not for trade ; the next court reversed the verdict, and decided that the Act of Parliament meant the streets for costermonger-trade and not for traffic ; and the supreme court of horsehair wigs decided that the Act of Parliament meant — ■ meant — that they didn't know what it did mean, and they must divide upon the matter. They did so with this result : Three wigs interpreted the Act in favour of the costermongers, and one wig in favour of the Municipalities ; three wigs counting more than one wig, it was finally decided that the Act of Parliament meant that the London streets might be blocked by costermongers' carts, and, we suppose, the traffic must go over the roofs of houses. (237) One more example, and we have finished : — Smith, Brown, Robinson & Co., well-known Oxford Street tradesmen, delivered a cartload of tinsel and 'toys on loan to a wedding party, said tinsel and toys to be fetched back after thre? hours. Cart and horses put up during those three hours at the stable of a greengrocer of the name of Jones. The cart had upon it, writ large on all sides, Smith, Brown, Robinson & Co., Oxford Street. Jubilee landlord comes on the scene, and walks off with Smith, Brown, Robinson, & Co.'s cart and horses, in spite of vehement protest, in order to compensate himself for Greengrocer Jones's arrears of rent. After the due Jubilee legal delay of many months, after columns of vapid " argument," precedents, and mes- sydents, horsehair-wig finally decided in this manner (we will leave his " argument " about the cart, and listen to him on the horses) — " Upon the question of the horses," said the learned Judge (they called all judges in Jubilee time learned, in the same way that they called the £15,000-a-year archbishops "most reverend," or the swindling ministerial directors "right honourable." The actual signification of the titles was really this : " Learned " — stuffed idiocy J "most reverend" — inflated cant; " right honourable " — licensed to commit fraud, or to utter unending falsehoods with immunity and impunity). " Upon the question of the horses," said the learned Judge, "three points of 'law' arose: (1) "Was a horse, temporarily resting for three hours, privileged from distress ? (2) "Was it so privileged because it was an implement of trade ? THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 379 [You are not to smile, reader ; those are the actual words of his wigship, as reported in the Times newspaper, under the heading "an important point in the law op distress."] (3) "Was the horse a privileged implement because etc., etc. On the first point the learned judge decided that the horse was not privileged because etc., etc. On the second point he entertained doubts, but on the authority of Eead v. Burley, 2 Cro. Eliz. 596, and Muspratt v. Gregory, 1 M. and W. 596, and 3 M. and W. 677, he answered the second point in the negative and the third point in the affirmative. Thus," etc. As all readers do not speak mediaeval "English," twisted into downright idiocy by lawyer-jargon, we will translate the learned judge's decision into plain English : — Point 1. Landlord may steal Smith, Brown & Robinson's horses because his tenant Jones owes him rent. Point 2. Landlord may, and he may not steal Smith, Brown, Robinson, & Co.'s horses, hut, as a learned ass in Queen Elizabeth's time said that a then landlord of Jones might not steal a then Robinson's horses, he (the present learned ass) would say also that the present landlord of Jones must not steal the present Robinson's horses. Point 3. Landlord may steal Smith, Brown, Robinson, & Co.'s horses, and he may not, but as a learned ass in Queen Elizabeth's time decided that the emphasis was to be on the not, he (the present learned ass) would decide that way also. Result — Two points in the negative, and one point in the affirmative ; balance of points therefore in favour of the negative. Therefore the judgment of the court is that the landlord may not steal Smith, Brown, Robinson, & Co.'s horses. Time involved in that sapiency of judgment over five months; expenses several hundred pounds. Would the reader like any more Jubilee " leading cases," or is he satisfied? We could give him some rare specimens, one involving upwards of £300,000 ; another involving several millions (238, of pounds, with Right Hon. Privy Councillors, Peers, Ministers, K.C.B.'s, K.C.M.G.'s, and all manner of magnificent Directors swindling the British public within two or three years of their Companies' floating, all let off because — because — as Luther says : "Thieving is the most common trade in the world, and great 380 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF thieves go scot free like the Pope and his crew." Carlyle Democritus had only to alter the last four words to mirror perfectly the Jubilee period. The last four words will then read : "like the Party-Ministers and their crew." "Acts" passed by Jubilee Parliaments pretending to protect labour were, like all the other Acts, mere traps for litigation and (239) costs. Hear a learned Judge incidentally say : — "In his experience he had found that actions under the Employers' Liability Act were subject to great uncertainties and to great costs, rarely recoverable." That, of an Act for the protection of poor working men. A rare fuss was made by a Jubilee Parliament of the year 1894 because of another such Act, which they had not quite managed to foist upon an innocent and ignorant public. The Chairman of a London Hospital for accidents to workmen {240) spoke thus of it : — " The conduct of employers of men who suffered from accidents was little short of a scandal, and the one thing that the men needed was the opportunity of getting a reasonable hearing of their case at a reasonable price. But the Government Bill was a downright farce, and the members of the Bar were the only people who would get money out of it. It is as useless to tell poor men when they are ill that they should take turtle soup and champagne as to tell them when injured to take proceedings at law. Both remedies are for the rich only. ..." As for the law of libel, it beat everything under the sun for sheer cruelty. Let no son of Adam in those times dare venture to pro- tect himself. The courts teemed with wigged brigands, whose whole stock-in-trade consisted in verbal assegais, which they levelled at witnesses' heads and hearts. There was no Star-Chamber to tear a man's limbs to pieces in Jubilee times, but there was an infinitely crueller thing, which aimed at tearing the reputation and character of any victim who sought for justice.* If the witness * In the Jubilee year 1892 a very " fashionable " case Vas before the courts, and here is a description published in the Times newspaper, by a "learned brother," of how the two highest right honourable titled counsel, Q.C., M.P., f340a) treated gentlemen in the witness-box: — "The Solicitor-General made him- self the vehicle of imputing unnatural crimes to Mr Dash. This he did on a valueless suggestion, though he was aware there was no other evidence to support it. He also, on the same suggestion, exposed two doubtful or dis- creditable antecedents of the witness, neither of which had any relevance to THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 381 happened to be a woman, the cruel feast was all the more base. In a famous case where the lady gained her verdict, she had pre- viously " to submit, for four hours on the rack,[to be tortured with ' questions and insinuations.' " That is a description by a Jubilee (341) law minister himself. And by whom was such torture inflicted ? By another Government law minister, the highest of his kind (subsequently promoted into " Supreme Judge " by his party !) Let innocent souls conceive the fate of women at the hands of the loicestf instead of the highest barrister-luminaries. Hundreds of women submitted to any life-torment sooner than brave the infinite degradation of a British Court of " Justice." When once they dared venture there to get divorce or separation from some male fiend, they had to submit to " examination " by barrister harpies, beside which the foulest Zola-realism was fair. We have glanced (p. 249) at some of the stepping-stones of the duly prepared Jubilee law student (sufficiently stuffed with Coke, Littleton & Co.'s horsehair), by which he mounted to Jubilee judgeship : — " Political exigences ; " "a troublesome barrister self- seeker to be got out of the way ; " " party services to be rewarded," &c. But the supreme stepping-stone which, according to the greatest newspaper in the world, " with few exceptions, led to a judgeship, was being made an Attorney-General's 'devil.'" (342) Seldom has legal slang more adequately and forcibly defined itself. the issue, and which could have been asked with the sole object of causing pain. ..." That, of a Tory Solicitor-General. This, of a Radical Solicitor-General : — " He makes himself the vehicle of imputing to Major Blank that his visit to a French watering-place was necessitated by an infamous disease, of which there was no evidence whatever, nor would it have affected the issue before the court had thewitness suffered from one or fifty diseases. . . . Such conduct should have led to both these ' distinguished ' men being seriously admonished, if not disbarred by the benchers of their Inn. Instead of that, they received fulsome, not to say sickening compliments from the weak Judge, in whom gentlemen of this stamp [right honourable learned gentlemen, Q.C., M. P. stamp] inspire a positive terror. . . . It is well known that the [Radical] Solicitor-General insulted three judges in one court." (One of them died in 1894, and was declared to be one of the best and most upright judges England had ever had.) " These men have turned our law courts into theatres, and before their rough tongues the judges stand in awe." That worthy, right honourable, learned, titled "gentleman" Q.C., M.P., was not disbarred for insulting the Jubilee judges, and terrorising and torturing wit- nesses, but was instead himself made, by a Radical party-" Government," a supreme of supreme judges — a Lord Judge of Appeal. 382 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF It may afford a small insight into the abominations of the bar- rister-harpies who fed upon women's reputations in the divorce {243) courts, when we find that great newspaper offering as a meed of the highest praise to a Jubilee judge, who died in the year 1894, " that he would not permit in his Court unseemly mirth, jocularity, or ribaldry, by even the boldest advocate." Is it not interesting to learn that there was such a judge in Jubilee times, O British reader ? But is it not also a little tragic to learn that the scales of justice in those times were held by Attorney-General's devils, sur- rounded by grinning crews of ribald barrister-harpies, with much jocularity proclaiming to all suppliants for justice : — "All character abandon, ye who enter here. There is no sanctuary of sorrow which we will not desecrate and invade : we will tear open the holiest secrets of your heart and life, and lay them bare before a gaping, prurient multitude. Come to our courts of justice, ye fashionable ones, and witness the dissection of the foul. Zola's bestialities may not be translated into English, but we will out- Zola Zola, — ay, and the fairer and sweeter our women-victims, the coarser will we denude them. Walk up ! walk up ! " And indeed it was a very common thing throughout Jubilee times to see those fashionable ones respond with zest to the barrister-harpies' invitation — even the Judge's dais being placed at the disposal of the fair. Then as to costs,* it was ordinary business for even a successful litigant to be half ruined by a lawyer's bill. Costs were piled on by thousands. Without money there was no " law," and even with money there was rarely justice. What did Carlyle Democritus with such an Augean stable of abuse ? Now let it not be thought that the Revolution abolished lawyers by Act of Parliament, It was not by Act of Parliament that the Revolution had abolished unfortunate females, nor was it by such method that they attempted to abolish unfortunate males, of the wig species, or other. For it is indeed altogether unfortunate that any human male should have to depend for his livelihood upon the * Not only was Jubilee law becoming impossible for the poor and the middle classes ; it was fast becoming impossible even for the rich. "We find a wealthy peer in the year 1894 writing to the Times, and urging that, in cases of dis- pute in the assessment of probate duties, appeal should be made to the County Council or some other local authority, on the ground that few tax- X243a) payers could afiford to come before the Courts of Law. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 383 strife, vice, or crime of his fellow-men. Even the lowest order of vermin do not feed upon one another — except when driven to it by actual starvation ; that awful supremacy of verminity has been left to perverted human-kind. Jubilee cant, which loved things in trinities, had its vampire-trinity in rare consummation — three orders which fed upon the vices of their fellow-men : — 1. The manufacturers, purveyors, and abettors of drunkenness, or publican class — the direct authors of two-thirds of the crime of the country. 2. The slum-OAvning; jerry-building, and rack-rent class, evicting and starving the people off the land — the direct cause of the poverty and misery of millions. 3. The lawyer-barrister class, confounding wisdom in mere wordi- ness, hiding the divine spirit of human language by ever-increasing agglomeration and obfustication of the mere letter of language, until one word required many Acta of Parliament to define it ; each "Act" many judges to interpret it; and each judge other lord judges to interpret Mm. Not by Act of Parliament were these beasts of prey abolished. But by action of combined wisdom and justice they disappeared, as fog-mist disappears before the north wind. In previous chapters * it has been made clear how practical men were selected by their fellow-men in all trades and callings to constitute courts of honour, conciliation, and arbitration, for the hearing and adjudication of all questions, differences, and disputes arising in their respective trades and professions, or in the course of domestic misunderstandings. Only those practical men who have had actual experience of such admirable arbitration courts can adequately appreciate their worth : the precision, simplicity, costlessness, and speed with which they discharge their duties. The cases were rare which required appeal beyond those courts of first instance. The courts of second instance were constituted in a similar manner, from members of the central bodies of the various trades and professions. All the arbitration and conciliation courts were free, it being the very essence of justice that the poorest and the richest should stand absolutely equal before the Judge. The State, therefore, bore the entire cost of all those courts. They were a part — the deep and worthy foundation of the entire post-Revolutionary judicial system. It has Pages 209, 249. 384 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF been explained how the members of the various arbitration courts were chosen, and what were their methods of procedure.* The following table will afford a clear view of the system which formed so admirable a judicial training-school, and from whence the new magistrates and judges were selected. Constitution of the Courts of Honour. Local branches of traders, workers, professors, literators, mer- chants, etc., each appointed its own court of honour, consisting of ten, or more members, according to the requirements of the locality. These courts arbitrated and adjudicated upon all causes and cases of a private or business nature which concerned the members of the respective callings. The hearings were absolutely private. Any breach of trust by a member of a court of honour was punishable by fine and dismissal, and incapacity for any future public office. The State paid all members of the court and of all courts. The members of a court of honour (M.C.H.) were elected for life, and were only removable by voluntary resignation, or any offence against the national laws, or failure of health ; their election followed the principles which governed all elections f and was by ballot. No case could be taken before a higher court until it had first been adjudicated upon by a court of honour. Thb Women's Courts of Honour and Arbitration % had to deal solely with domestic cases, and questions concerning the wel- fare and protection of their sex generally. Only single women were eligible as officers and officials of the courts, and only married women were eligible as dames of honour and arbitration ; and in order to prevent the public service from unduly encroaching upon the home duties of the latter, their attendances were restricted by the statute to three alternate days a week, and a maximum of two hours on any one day. Members of the "Women's Honour Court were entitled to the prefix " honourable " before their names, and of the Higher Arbitration Courts to the title for life of "Lady." In all other respects the rules and regulations which governed the men's courts governed theirs also, except that there was no further public magisterial service open to them. The age-limit (comple- tion of the sixtieth year) at which all public officers were obliged to retire — members of Parliament, judges, magistrates, civil ser- • Page 248. t Pages 417, 426. i Page 353. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 385 vants, and officials of every description * — included the women also. This wise law not only secured the healthy infusion of new life into all the State and public services ; it kept open also a constant avenue for promotion. Breach of confidence by a mem- ber of the courts of either sex, in addition to the penalties already indicated,! forfeited also the right of title. Throughout the country, in Jubilee times, charitable institutions of every conceivable sort bore witness to the exquisite sensibility and depth of 'heart (never mind the occasional shallowness of head) of the great British people. I^'oble as many of those institutions were, the management of many required considerable winnowing and wisdoming. A more painful sight to eye and heart than was afforded by the tasteless hideousness of too many of the poor uniformed creatures sheltered by the sad cold charity-hand in those times is not easily imaginable. The reforms, and bettered condition of the nation generally, inaugurated by 'the Revolution, gradually superseded nearly all Jubilee charities. Unprotected orphans became the care and charge of the State, as did unpro- tected chQdren of any sort. They were not allowed to be accum- ulated in doleful charity-heaps, but were individually boarded in carefully selected homes at the expense of the State, and thus assured the warmth of family attention and affection. Over such cases the women's guilds and courts retained a watchful super- intendence until the children reached the age when they could independently support themselves. The improved condition of the nation, the prevailing justice of Government, was a practical security against the continuance of such helpless classes as saturated the country with misery in Jubilee times, and of which the "charities" only touched the outermost fringe. J "Charity" received another interpretation after the Revolution. " Charities " had scarcely an interpretation at all. Justice had eclipsed them so entirely that a later generation knew not the meaning of the word in its concrete plural form. Constitution of the Courts of Arbitration. Trade Unions, literary and professorial associations, chambers of commerce, and all guilds, appointed their own courts of arbitration, consisting of ten or more members, according to the requirements * Page 258. T P^ige 384. t Page 152. '>. p. 386 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF of the particular centre. The primary object in all cases was to prevent any delay in the trial of causes. The Arbitration Courts, besides adjudicating upon causes arising in their own guilds and unions, were also Courts of Appeal (of first instance) to the Honour Courts. All causes were heard in private, and the same stern rules applied to the members of the arbitration courts (M.C.A) as to those of the inferior and superior courts. Election was by ballot and for life, determinable only by resignation, or offence against the law. Remember, that the Revolutionary Codex left no law open to ambiguity. An offence against the laws was not liable to any misinterpretation ; it might be said required no interpretation^ inasmuch as it bore its meaning on its face. Truth, honour, and honesty were the absolutely indispensable qualifications of the humblest or highest members of the judicial system. Any proved offence, whether of pecuniary, moral, political, or other sort, inevitably terminated the offender's tenure of office. There was no Jubilee " Justice " in the prisoner's dock one moment and on <109) the magisterial bench five seconds afterwards. Tliat was the order of the day in Jubilee mud-period. All officers of the Courts, high and low, were appointed for life, upon conditions as to conduct similar to those of the justices. The pay of all concerned in the administration of the law was on the highest possible scale, far above the necessity of temptation. Personal merit was the only qualification for judicial appointments, and any attempt at nepotism, favouritism, or politicalism, most heavily penal. (In the case of mixed suits in either the Courts of Honour or of Arbitration, the said Courts were empowered to appoint joint-committees consisting of equal numbers from each section concerned.) After five years' service in either of those Courts, members were -eligible for selection as magistrates, and after ten years' service as judges. The magistrates were also eligible for selection as judges after three years' service. The magistrates and judges were nominated by the Minister of Public Justice, and appointed, after confirmation by a Joint Committee of the two Houses of Parlia- ment. Thus was provided a class of men drawn from all the great practical avenues of the nation — military, naval, professional, literary, commercial, trade, and labour, trained in the brave, stern school of experience and fact, chosen first by their fellow-men to judge over them, and after a long trial-period available for the THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 387 Tiinhest offices in the national administration of justice. Judges and magistrates were thus trained by living contact with fact, instead of dead contact with mediaeval verbiage of Cokes upon Littletons, Littletons upon Biggletons, Chitty's Contracts, Croke's Reports, Addison's Torts, Oliphant's horses (" implements of trade " to be divided into three),* Leading Cases in Equity, meaning mis- leading cases in iniquity, etc. There was a thrice blessed end to all that. The whole mass of " learned " garbage got ended for ever. Post-Revolutionary reports of the Gaslight and Coke Company, and of the Patent Water-Gas Company, record the substitution of Jubilee law-books in lieu of their ordinary fuel, for a space of no less than six months and eight days, during all which time the furnaces were fed by superannuated law-books, with a result, said the reports, " that never in the history of the Companies had more gas been produced in proportion to the quantity of material consumed." It was in that manner, and not by any Act abolishing lawyers and barristers, that the whole legal fraternity (59,652 strong, says the latest Jubilee Census, Vol. IV. page 85) melted into oblivion, gradually took to worthier work, and ceased to weary mankind any more. To all Courts, offi;cers of justice were attached, whose duties were to assist applicants in matters of procedure, etc. Everything was of the most straightforward, businesslike, and simple nature. The entire procedure in all cases was the business of the Courts, from the summoning of witnesses to the drawing up, or rather setting down, in plain, unvarnished, or unmudded English, of the plain- tiff's and the defendant's case. Justice was as absolutely free as the air of Heaven, and as pure and unpolluted. Mere litigiousness was rendered almost impossible by the adjudication of the Courts of first instance, and, if attempted in the superior courts, was pun- ished as one of the most serious misdemeanours before the law. Crimes such as were common in Jubilee times were scarcely known after the Revolution. This was the Jubilee order of things : — 1. Acknowledged and tolerated floating population of habitual criminals at large — about 30,000. 2. Annual, or rather perennial population of drunkards proceeded against for disorderly conduct — 180,000. Paj^e 378. (214) 388 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 3. Anarchists, of the foreign sort, dynamitards,* etc. — all that liked to come to Great Britain — variously estimated at from 2000 to 5000. 4. Normal prison and reformatory population — over 55,000. 5. ISTumber of cases of cruelty to children recorded by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children — 100,000. 6. Juvenile criminals and offenders committed and sent to reformatories, etc., in one year — 8000. (In England and Wales alone over 18,000 of such juvenile criminals are recorded in the last Jubilee census as so imprisoned.) 7. Total annual number of convictions of all sorts — about 600,000, To all truly discerning men those cruel records show less the criminality of the criminals than that of the vile Jubilee system which not only was responsible for them, but which actually created them, and kept them floating upon society. Whilst human nature endures there will be human passions, and there v^ill be errors bred of those passions — human vices, human crimes, — but never more such a hell-record of inhuman crimes as those of Jubilee times, in a country calling itself Christian. Let us inquire a little into some of that Jubilee criminality, and see if it was the result of human weakness in the individual criminal, or of positive and deliberate manufacture by the corrupt, cowardly, and degener- ate party -Government system of fostering and abetting the vilest temptations, side by side with a cowardly fear to tie up acknow- ledged and blatant crime, and abolish the hideous monster. * Of this class of people, welcomed by Jubilee Party-governors, here is a small record from an 1894 newspaper : — '* In London there are 2000 Anarchists ; their headquarters are in the centre of one of the most crowded thoroughfares of the metropolis. It was from that centre, or Club, that the recent Spanish massacre was incepted [women and men blown to pieces in a theatre, by a dynamite bomb]. Amongst the members of the ' Club ' is a fugitive Italian murderer, under sentence of twenty years' penal servitude. These 2000 foreign scoundrels are the scum of Continental gaols, including an enormous percentage of prosti- tutes' bullies. It is indisputably due to their presence in London that the sti'eets of the West End, and whole districts, swarm with foreign won;en of the worst type. The sums of money stolen yearly in the Soho quarter are enormous, and the connection of the thieves with the Continent allows of the disposal of the property Avith the greatest ease." Empty your pockets, and visit one of the gambling hells of those foreign ecum at any time after midnight ; see them and listen to them, and then THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 389 The Jubilee definition "habitual criminal," applied to thirty thousand human beings, is a confession of the brutal civilization which manufactured the criminal, and dared not, therefore, fearlessly do away with him, by compelling him to labour usefully, and preventing him for ever from further desecrating God's earth and God's people. Here are some specimens of the '* habitual criminal " cut from the greatest newspaper in the world, within almost a few days of one another : — " Two men waylaid a passer-by, assaulted him, dragged him into (246) a side street, and robbed him. The prisoners were old offender?, against whom a number of previous convictions were proved ; the magistrate told them they were curses to the parish, and he com- mitted them to prison for two months." Habitual criminals, well known to be so, " the curses of their parish/' found guilty of the cowardliest of crimes, hindered in their career for just two months, and then let loose again to hide in dark corners, and recommence their street brigandage. Almost at the same time two other such habituals were being tried before another znagistrate ; one of them had " served " forty years, and the other thirty years, at various times, for larcenies of one sort or another. (247) At another court a habitual criminal was convicted of larceny ; he (248) was described by the police as " a terror to the locality," had been *' up " at that court alone four times — but his longest sentence had decide for a bewildered Englishman who were more utterly vile and con- temptible, those murder-plotters, thieves, and anarchists, or the party mud- politicians, who welcomed them to pollute our brave island with their cowardly plots for the wholesale massacre of friendly foreign people, and even of our own men and women. The Times of those days described a visit to another of their haunts, and said : — "A collection of more dangerous-looking persons has rarely been collected in a criminal dock. They consisted almost ex- clusively of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, the latter being the choicest specimens of petroleuses. They ' sang ' choice songs, invoking every kind of ■destruction by dynamite upon respectable people and property. Such (245) ' Clubs ' ought to be swept off the face of the earth." Yet, in face of all those things, the Government Home Secretary (of the usual Jubilee barrister type, all words and windbaggery) and the British Party Government, did nothing. That would be "to interfere with the liberty of the subject." Jubilee Ministers, of party mud-slime sort, were utterly unable to distinguish between Godly liberty, and murder-licence ! How could they ? — their own so-called Government was but Anarchy glossed ■over with smooth lies. They naturally had a real, though unconscious, sympathy with the other anarchists. 390 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF been fourteen days, and after each sentence he was " free " again to prey upon his helpless victims. At the same court, on the same day, a man was brought up, on6 of a fearful class known in Jubilee times, and described in the papers as " prostitutes' bullies," for bashing his wife and another woman, both unfortunates, with boots, fist, and knife, in a manner which need not be described here ; he had been convicted of the same brutal offence on three previous occasions. In this case the verdict was tantamount to saying, "Lock him up again for a few months, then let hira out," 124 8a) actually to murder his wife and other unfortunates. In another case (of robbery with violence) the prisoner had thirteen previous (219) convictions proved against him. Sometimes whole batches of these ruffians would be caught and brought — six at a time — " well-known thieves," before the magistrate — and let off, because of some flaw (250) in the prosecution. "H. H. Collin, an old man, was waylaid by two men. One seized him by the throat, whilst the other robbed him of all he possessed ; they then kicked and otherwise ill-treated him. The detectives caught these worthies ; they turned out to be well known, and a number of previous convictions were proved against them for high- way robbery with violence. One of them had undergone a sentence for manslaughter; both of them lived upon the prostitution of women." Their regular meeting-place was a well-known public- house, described by the police as " the resort of loose characters, and in a neighbourhood which it was dangerous for persons to frequent." Bobberies were of nightly occurrence, but people were frightened to give evidence owing to the intimidation to which they (251) were subjected by the friends of the accused. The judge said he could not understand why such public-houses should be licensed. Poor Jubilee judge, dost thou not know that the licensing (252) magistrates, like their masters, are political slime things, bred and made fat by the liquor-prostitution of the masses 1 And thus your Jubilee civilization kept a floating stock of thirty thousand of such and other criminals upon Jubilee society. Thirty thousand of that sort, and certain thousands of unconvicted criminals of the- company-swindling-directorial-Cabinet-Minister-sort M.P. "Five men attacked and brutally assaulted a Custom-House officer, knocked him down, kicked him, inflicted severe wounds^ and left him for dying. One of the gang was caught, and twenty (253) previous convictions proved against him — the others made off.'' THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 391 What did it matter? — six more or less out of a permanent floating population of habitual criminals thirty thousand strong. Thirty thousand habitual criminals ! And that number did not include the "great thieves who go scot-free ;" they were not so strong in numbers, but infinitely stronger in power and performance of mischief. The 180,000 perennial Jubilee drunkards. Reader, you may remember that report of a brave Jubilee School Board Inspector,* wherein it was recorded that in his district of starving children, overcrowded incest-dens, hell-desola- tion of misery, hopelessness, and wretchedness, to 429 bread shops there existed 912 public-houses. It should be written that the 429 bread shops existed ; the 912 public-house hells throve. That was but a sample of the whole of London ; in many districts the domination of the drink-hells was yet more pronounced. Even the courtly Times newspaper — a strong supporter of the " rights " of public-house land and public-house peers — had to confess, or did confess in a moment of unwonted candour, that " there are far too many public-houses. The temptations thrown in the way of weak humanity are too many and too strong. The brewers and the distillers are too powerful ; and the system of ' tied houses ' tends to all sorts of abuses." A wonderful admission that, and (250 not to be lightly passed over : " The brewers and the distillers and their system too powerful." Their work — 180,000 perennial drunkards ; their reward — peerages ! And perennial, or hereditary power of Government in Great Britain. Perennial ! Yes, per- ennial when it shall be a perennial law of the long-suffering God that vice and the abettors of vice shall perennially rule mankind. Otherwise not perennial, except in the sense of the Jubilee- party-slime-government, You must be brought to realise a little, British people, what that population of 180,000 perennial drunkards really meant : — There was a Society in Jubilee times called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Try to realise what underlay the necessity for those charitable watchers over the helpless inno- cence whom the Almighty Father of us all— with divine supremacy of wisdom — entrusted to mankind in the form of perfect depend- ency, in order that the sweet mysteries of heavenly tenderness and * Page 348. 392 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF infinite love should be for ever renewed in man. The strong man thus tutored in love-worship and protection of the weak and help- less, — that, the never- varying God-lesson to mankind. In it consists the mysterious, unconscious, and divinely perennial link between the Eternal Creator and His creation : — "I send for ever into the world the little child — helpless, innocent, pure and undefiled, whom to neglect one day is to slay ; whom to protect is the great privilege of man. It is My bond unto thee, man. As thou shalt guard over the angel-weakness of thy son, so will I guard over thee ; and as thou guardest over the little children I entrust to thee, so will I guard over thee. And verily I have set My Law of Laws upon the little child, and I will never depart from it. In the little child is j\Iy love and My trust to the sons of men. And in him shall all reward and punishment lie. Tor this say I ever unto man : For evermore, from the first day of the creation down unto the latest day when life shall move in the created world, the little child is My message, which as thou shalt hearken to, understand, and fulfil, so shall thy reward or punishment be. For it shall be that if thou guardest the purity and innocence of thy child, and shalt train him in manful ways, so shall he grow up manful to continue thy strength, thy love, thy worth, and all that is good in thee. But if thou neglectest My great trust, and neglectest thy son, and rearest him not in love, in reverence, in truth, and complete manfulness — which is virtue — verily I say unto thee, thy child shall work thy ruin. Thou rearest thyself the rod that shall break thine own back. If thou withdrawest from the cliild the needful protection, and rearest him in falsehood, in wickedness, and in corruption, thou art in him rearing the nation which shall effect thine own overthrow." World of men, is that mighty God-lesson understood by you? Think you it was understood by Jubilee mankind ? How were they rearing their children? Is it true that Jubilee mothers, in vile example of undress and worldliness, taught their sons impudicity from their earliest childhood ? * That there existed in one city, supreme in Christian civilisation, 60,000 little children wanting food? That the place of the Jubilee mother, in 100,000 cases, had to be taken by the Jubilee Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children? So that down to the year 1894 such Society • Pages 75, 261, 358. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 893 had to record 23,000 cases of cliild-neglect and starvation, 10,000 cases of violence to little children, 5000 cases of child exposure by- begging, and 2000 cases of child-immorality. Altogether 100,000 little child-lives involved in that sad work of a Society so worthy ; (-Sa) but of the need for such a Society how infinitely jmworthy ! " Verily I say unto you : I have set My Law of Laws upon the little child, and will not ever depart from it. In the little child is My love and My trust to mankind, and in the care which man bestows upon the little child shall all reward and punishment lie," The brewers and the distillers and their " tied-houses " are too powerful and tend to all sorts of abuses ; there are brewer-peers and brewer-legislators ; they make tlie laws. There are brewer and publican justices of the peace and magistrates, and they carry on, in their own way, those laws. Let us see how. Has the reader forgotten the slum-manifesto of Carlyle Democritus, with its awful pastor-record of the Great Wild Street orgies 1 Look back at that,* and then ponder over these other beer and distiUer-kings' orgies. All the quoted records which follow are derived from the most authentic of all the Jubilee archives, to wit, the Times newspaper of the Jubilee era. Wherever any record is from another source it shall be stated : — " The attempt to clear the streets of persons in a state of simple intoxication was beyond the power of the police, and we have now reached such a point of affairs that unless drunkards are very disorderly, or absolutely incapable of motion, and without friends to take charge of them, arrests are never made." (255) Lose not the significance of that, reader ; it meant that for every one of the 180,000 besotted wretches "taken up" before magistrates for disorderly drunkenness, there were ten or more, no less bestial, " taken up " by their friends, to make work, in their homes and slum-dens, for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Women and Children. In the Jubilee commemorative year 1887, three-quarters of a million women signed a memorial to the good Queen Victoria, praying her to close the public-houses on Sundays. " Let us have (257) one day in the seven free from the cruel drink-fiend, British Queen, one day when we can see our children not beaten, and ourselves not kicked and bashed by besotten beast-men." * Page 85. 394 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF The depth of meaning and the awful necessity of that prayer of the poor British women, perhaps their Jubilee Government (258) " Parliamentary Return " will make manifest : — "During the past three years (including the period of the women's petition) there were 442,736 convictions for drunken- ness in England and "Wales alone, and nearly ten per cent, of them occurred on Sundays." But the poor British Queen could do nothing. British Party men took care of that ; British Party men made tlie laws, the powerful amongst them owned the breweries, distilleries, and public-houses. "So you must continue to be bashed and your children starved and kicked, even on Sundays, three-quarters of a million British women, otherwise we of the brewer, distiller, and public-house sort will make less profits." Here is a light-flash into drink in the army : — ** In one regiment of the Royal Scot& Fusiliers there were seven hundred cases of drunkenness in six months ; that fact came casually to light owing to one of the men, (259) in a drunken fit, having shot dead two of his comrades." We hear of no withdrawal of the drink from that regiment, only withdrawal of the soldiers' ammunition. It would never suit a Parliament of beer and distillery legislators to stop drunkenness in the army. " Good heavens — rob us of two hundred thousand victims 1 " Not to be thought of. " So long as you have a Parlia- ment made up of law and liquor traffickers, so long will you have destitution throughout the country, as the self-interest of those (260) few prevents their passing measures for the benefit of the many." Let no mortal be misled into the fancy that the occasional party- braying of Jubilee politicians portended any serious effort to over- throw the villainous traffic, for it was quite true what the great " Thunderer " said on many an occasion : " The liquor traffic, with all its effects on morality and social liberty, was made a mere counter in a game played by cynical politicians in caucuses and division (261) lol>bies." There was a statesman in Jubilee times called Sir William Hnrcourt, and when he could get votes from the publican people he shrieked against "interfering" with the liquor traffic, and the three-quarters of a million Jubilee women praying for help were unheeded by him ; he admired and quoted the bishop who said he would sooner see England drunk than controlled in its liquor bestiality, or, to put it in its due Episcopalian eloquentiality, " he THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 395 would sooner see England ' free ' than sober " — free to murder, free (262> to bash tender women, free to send hundreds of thousands of besotted beasts to conviction year after year. But wait ; look at this other scene. Suddenly that great Jubilee statesman, named Sir William Harcourt, discovered that he might get more votes from the temperance than from the wtemperance party ; thereupon '. he swallowed all his rant about " freedom " and " interference," and offered to close all the public-houses, if only the poor silly people would give him their votes, and — all Merciful, those were the gods in Israel, in Jubilee times ! In the previous chapter it has been said that "WantVas the great factor in the awful horrors of Jubilee prostitution ; that was the opinion of most workers amongst the poor — " sheer necessity " was the cause. (263) Some of the worthy pastors who worked amongst the poorest said that " strong drink " was also a potent cause, and in any event was the considerable stimulating cause. (264; There was no limit in the Jubilee era to the number of times that a hopeless drunkard might be brought before the magistrates. At one court a woman had been charged with being drunk and disorderly in the streets two hundred and thirty times. (2C5> Another woman was "charged" before the magistrates forty times, not including various attempts to commit suicide. Day (266> after day, year after year, the police courts of London and Great Britain were choked with such cases, and worse. As for the coroner's courts, one illustration will serve for a thousand. (267) A child of four years had died from neglect — one of the hundred thousand cases brought to God's light by the brave Society for the Protection of Children. They had watched the woman — must it be written, the mother — of the child, because she had already killed one of her children by neglect and cruelty a year or two before, and had been imprisoned for the crime. The mother was one of the habitual Jubilee drunkards. Her husband, in evidence, said that whenever he reached home his wife was intoxicated and abusive, and — the children were all insured in the Prudential Office, and — the woman was " censured " by the Jubilee coroner, and let go to starve and murder her other children, who were all " insured." Of that other hell-refinement, child-life insurance, let it only be known that it was no common thing for a mother to have " lost " — not murdered, reader, not tortured by 396 THE ENGLISH EE VOLUTION OF neglect and slow starvation, only " lost " — (sweet, Jubilee euphemism for the hell-blackest cruelty ever tolerated by brewery and distillery legislators and peers) — " lost " six or seven children, all " insured." Here is an " Insurance " case with the prices fixed for the (266) murder-temptation : — A man and woman were summoned at North London for neglecting their four children — Charles, aged 10; William, aged 8; Emily, aged 6; and Thomas, aged 4. The boy Charles was insured for £9, William for £8, and Thomas for £3, 15s. The girl Emily was a cripple, and could not be insured. She was allowed to sleep on a box, though without clothes ; the other little children were huddled on the bare boards, naked except for a few rags. They were in a shocking condition. The room was filthy and smelt ofl'ensively. The children were all emaciated, and covered with vermin and dirt. Two of the younger children were brought into Court in that year of Jubilee 1894 — a little boy aged 4, and a little girl aged 6, and neither of them was bigger than a baby of eighteen months. The Jubilee sentence on that " mother " was " three months ; " after that period " free " to complete the insurance-murders. One of the brave women of the Children's Protection Society, (2Q7) " attracted by the frightful screams of a child — between ten and eleven at night — obtained entrance into the rooms of a man who was found beating a little four-year-old boy with the buckle-end of a strap, and, when remonstrated with, bid the woman ' Mind her own business, as the child was insured for £7, 10s., and was worth more dead than it was alive.' They examined the little child in the court, and found its back cruelly marked by the buckle, and one mass of bruises." Yes, murder was positively attempted in that way — for £7, 10s. — although the Doctors, at a Royal Commission, or Lords' Com- mission, years before, had implored the British Government to stop that "insurance of children which was but a premium on murder." But had little Jubilee children votes, Jubilee Gov- ernment? Assuredly not, any more than right hon. swindlers M.P. had bowels of compassion. Yes, Parliament knew all about it; had they not had their Royal Commission, or Lords' Commission, years before upon it, and as usual nothing achieved, nothing but unending talk, and unending expense of printer's ink. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 397 The committee consisted of two bishops, the Lord Chancellor, five Earls, and seven sundry Lords. To them speaks a medical officer of health. Here is some evidence from that Lords' Com- mission or Committee : — " I am quite convinced that in cases in which the children of poor parents in my district were insured, the chief anxiety of the parents was to see their children dead. I have no doubt that insurance operates as an inducement to neglect children, and let them waste away. A sura of thirty shillings, or a much less sum, would be a sufficient inducement for a parent to neglect a child. ... I have known cases where a child of two and a-half years old only weighed seven pounds." Another medical officer gave similar evidence. He said : " I have seen children with their tongues so parched that I have taken a knife and handed it to the mother, and said, ' Be merciful, and kill it that way.' . . . The Insurance Companies must be well aware that such cases occurred." Many doctors from all parts of the coxmtry gave similar evidence. And Jubilee years passed on, and the Jubilee Bishops and Peers still sat mumbling in patent commission, in their Jubilee Jugger- nauth Car, which, with Mammon for driver, crunched on and on over the bodies of men and Avomen, and over the bodies of little children. And the silent stars were above, and the Eternal God over them. And the Jubilee Lords, and the other slime things, talked on unceasingly. You have heard the merciful doctors and their evidence before the Jubilee Peers. Now enter the Police Court and listen again. Here is one of the cases on trial : — (271) John Gee, and Sarah his wife, were charged with having caused the death of their son by starving and neglecting him. All the children of the prisoners were " insured." The Magistrate : — " What were they insured fori" Counsel for the Prisoners : — " I do not know the amount." The Magistrate : — " What is the usual amount?" Counsel: — "Thirty shillings to two pounds. And for that amount they pay a penny or more per week." Magistrate : — " Then, for a penny a week, a child just born can be insured, and the parents get the sum of two pounds, or so, when it dies 1 " Counsel : — " Yes." 29S THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF Magistrate : — " And how much does it cost to bury a child ] " Counsel : — " I do not know exactly ; about eight shillings." Magistrate : — " And the parents get a profit of about twenty -two ^;o thirty-two shillings." The Magistrate's Clerk : — " It is a premium on manslaughter and murder !" Magistrate : — *' It is scandalous, and have you many Insurance Companies like that ] " CZer^- .•—" Oh, plenty." O reader, those cases were going on all over Jubilee England. Yet people railed at the brutalised poor, not at the brutalised Parliaments who had crunched out humanity from their victims, until the love which God placed in every heart had dried up before starvation, filth, misery, and despair. At the end of the world the Final Judge will see this case also ^272) when he tries those child-murderers : — An inquest was held on the body of Charles Wootten, who had died from exhaustion by falling from his van whilst asleep. The evidence of his widow proved that for years he had had to work from half-past four in the morning until ten at night ; those were his continual hours, and " he was wore out," . . . and tlie van crushed over him and released him from further Jubilee toil. And a Duke was being "pensioned" at that time by Parliament with £600,000, because his great-great-grandfather was an Ass-in- Ordinary to Charles the Second.* And another Duke later on was getting a quarter of a million or so from Parliament for a piece of land which the Lord God had made, and which the British (273) people by their industry had enriched. They, the people, were to get the acre of land, and the Duke (descendant of him who shot himself because he already possessed £500,000 which he did not know how to invest) was to get the quarter of a million sterling. By what enchantment the Duke "owned" that land, this Jubilee history hath already recorded. And now to revert to the Jubilee Insuiance Companies and the little children. This is an inquest on Henry Frederick, a little «(27l) child {not insured, this little one) : — (Witness a widow with four children, and the little starved one — dead). * Page 309. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 399 Coroner : — " Were you at home much 1 " Widoto : — " No, the children used to look after themselves. I liad all my work to find bread for them." The Jury: — "What could you earn?" Widow : — " When there was work at the laundry, I would get three shillings and ninepence for a day and a half. At other times I would work at covering tennis-balls." Jury : — " What was the pay for that ? " Widow : — " Fourpence a gross; I could earn altogether about four shillings and ninepence a week." She had to keep herself and five children, and the rent was three shillings out of it. She had a son at work, a long distance away, who used to send her a shilling, or a shilling and sixpence a week, sometimes. TTie Jury: — "Do you mean to say that your family had never more than three shillings a week left for food and clothing ? " Widow : — " Yes ; I am compelled to make it do, we only eat dry bread for days together ; when I can spare the money, I give them a little butter. I have often worked until eleven at night — twelve hours a day." Let the curtain fall, reader, and marvel no more that the heart and breast of a woman can be dried up. When thou shalt have seen starvation and misery, and twelve hours a day work, and three shillings a week balance of pay, then shalt thou condemn the poor. Meanwhile there is the Eternal Judge, and He will condemn, perhaps, other than the poor. But get back to the drink, and hear these last words of a London magistrate : " It was impossible to sit for a month, or a week, or (275) even a day, in any one of the London police courts without seeing how homes were devastated, domestic happiness ruined, and lives wrecked by the abuse of strong drink." And the abettors of that villainous traffic were Jubilee England's "greatest." It was one vile ubiquitous mud-stream of "law" and ^* liquor." Enough ! Enough ! You who would understand Jubilee England, look not to the laws and lawyers, nor to the courts and judges, nor to the peers and politicians. Look to the silent and patient multitude ; look to 400 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF the societies who tried to undo the wide-spreading evils of the governing pollutions ; look to the heroic men pursuing England's greatness far away from the corruption of place and party. It was a nation too brave and beautiful to be lost. " O mighty British Oak, sore beset with vermin, send from thy knotty heart's strength new flood of potent sap to swell out thy giant limbs, and shake the foul creeping things clear from thy branches. mighty and invisible Power of good, permit not this glorious people to decline : send from all corners of the earth and heaven thy storm-winds and thy purging winter-blast to shake off the poison-growths from the British Tree of Life. For the people are in their heart a God-fearing, earnest nation ; it is only the governors who are vile." Thus had answered Carlyle Democritus those who, in the early days of the Revolution, still mad with the sufferings they had endured, had wanted to carry fire and sword among all the children of Mammon. In that prayer he had answered them, and they let him pursue his way. We can but dimly record the immensity of the reforms which the Revolution established in the judicial system of the country. Closely analysed, we see in them no particular innovation any- where, but rather a universal burning up of unutterable abuses ; a wiping away of vermin and verminous excrescences everywhere. The British Oak tree was left unharmed, but cleansed of the legal and political slime of ages which had been allowed to gather there. For instance, in all the old various millions of legal, mediaeval, verbose twaddle-volumes, it was noAvhere an offence for a man's dog to bite and tear a child or adult, provided it was the dog's first human feast. Now, although the whole codex of the Revolu- tion consisted of only one moderately sized volume, that dog- matter, and a thousand kindred matters, were settled in a very few lines. Under " Injury " was the following : — " Whoso by himself, his servant, his animal, his machinery, or by whomsoever or what- soever is his, or employed by him, or to him responsible in any manner directly or indirectly, accidentally or wilfully, by neglect or otherwise, causeth harm to another, — to that other shall he be responsible, and shall make reparation." THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 401 JuLilee Parliament would have required fifty "Acts" of some thousands of clauses to have conveyed one-tenth of that law, and other fifty " Acts " of more thousands of clauses to amend the first fifty "Acts," and then \\onld not have achieved the simple and just result of the one Revolutionary law. Under the word "Reparation" the codex set forth: — "The jury, assisted and directed by the judge, shall determine in every case, upon the evidence before them, the nature of the reparation, whether it shall be by restitution, fine, compensation, imprison- ment, or one, or any, or all of them." It must be remembered that after the Revolution all cases were tried by practical men, not by mere windbags and horsehair wigs. The training of the Revolutionary magistrates and judges has been already explained. Plaintiff and defendant came before the courts equal ; no pleaders, or paid liars, were tolerated any more. Pure, simple justice existed, unchoked by Coke or Littleton. Poverty on one side, and wealth on the other, made no difference. Before the august majesty of the pure Revolutionary courts of justice the poorest stood level with the king. Money could avail neither party. The poorest suitor, or the richest peer, enjoyed common privileges. It went ill with the court official who should slight a poor suitor. The Balance which the Revolutionary courts set up swerved not for mortal man. The age of Mammon was dead ; right alone could turn the divine scales. That was the only weight in British courts thenceforth. "We have said that the entire laws of Great Britain were compre- hended in one volume of simple, unadulterated plainness of state- ment. It is impossible to do more than indicate some of the contents of the great codex. Life-insurance of children was for- bidden. Labour insurance was permitted — that is to say, a child might be insured even at its birth against accident and dependency, but no payment resulted in the event of its death before the age of adult work-years — twenty-one for males, and eighteen for females. Nor could any money payment Avhatsoever be made to any person on behalf of an insured, other than to those dependent on the deceased for support — unless by the written order, or testament, of the insured after the completion of his or her majority. The Com- pany Laws have been mentioned in an earlier chapter.* Briefly * Page'! 264-266. 2c 402 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF a public company was treated precisely as a private trader. Every director and managing person concerned and interested in a com- pany was made absolutely responsible for all acts and deeds of the whole body of directors and managers, just the same as in the case of a partner in a private business. He was also made responsible for every statement made in prospectus or report, and not only responsible in the amount of his immediate interest in the com- pany, but responsible to any and every shareholder to the extent of his private fortune also. The Revolution did not trifle with fraud, nor with defrauders. It held that the greater the man who robbed, the more " noble " the thief, the greater was the scoundrel. £25,000,000 sterling a year were no longer sucked from the earnings of a confiding people into the endless maw of company thieves. The Revolutionary net might now and then perhaps let a minnow escape, but not a whale. It was not a Jubilee net by any means. Quackery of all sorts was so efiectually suppressed — mainly by making an advertiser absolutely responsible for every word he advertised — quite irrespective of one or one thousand fools who might come forward to " prove " that the quack or his quackery had cured them of all evils under the sun, that early in the twentieth century a Jubilite would have imagined, from the dearth of soap, pill, and patent-medicine advertisements, that all diseases had disappeared, and twentieth century folk required no wash- ing. Distilled water could not be sold by plausible Italian thieves, even of the titled sort, as a cure for cancer at half- a-guinea a bottle ; idiot British editor vowing that the water (181) was a true gift of the gods, notwithstanding. The medical guild courts exercised a check on such conduct, and the like of it. Advertisers altogether were compelled to accommodate themselves to truth and fact. The Revolutionary era traded neither in lies, subterfuges, nor ubiquitous cant, the prevailing characteristics of the entire Jubilee period. Jubilee statesmen, perhaps rightly enough, had been considered fit objects for vulgar display on advertisement boards, or at the back of useful papers ; no one objected in those times, and it must be confessed with very abundant reason. But the Revolutionary statesmen were England's best and noblest, most truthful, not most lying; most honest, not most fraudulous ; and woe betide him who dared to pollute the name of the man of honour and worth. It was not left to public men to protect themselves against such degrading THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 403 Offensiveness, England's great men were England's pride ; their names and their glory her keen solicitude. The Board of Public Prosecutors were responsible for all duties in connection with the protection of their honour, so far as abuse, slander, or libel by public journals, advertisements, or otherwise, was concerned. Half the gin-hells in Jubilee times would be called by the name of Jubilee statesmen or British heroes. That was possible then ; but it was not possible afterwards. England treasured h( r hero- titles, and jealously guarded them against pollution ; no name of a national hero or statesman could be used as a trade-mark or designation of goods without permission of the individual if he were living, or of the Council of Public Prosecutors were he dead. Owners of wax-nonsenses had to obtain a man's written permission before they could imitate the god-image of him. Criminals and Jubilee statesmen they were free to appropriate unasked, but no others. The law of libel was altogether simpli- fied. Freedom of the Press was not allowed to mean filthy licence of the Press. There was an end of mud-gutter Jubilee, so called — perhaps very properly called — " Society papers," bespattering every decent name with scandal and base insinuation, their whole business to sniff out the unsavoury in human character; the swine and jackals of the Pres.s, to whom all wholesome food was repugnant, and whose instincts led them only to the dung heap. The dishing of such ragouts for society curs as base as themselves ceased with all other Jubilee barbarisms. The libel and slander trade was no longer a business in which a man could defend himself only with the certainty of ruinous expense to his pocket, whether he won or lost his case. The licensed Jubilee libeller had to cease his trade after the Revolution. If any journal insulted the king because he was a king, or a peer because he was a peer, or any public man because he was a public man, or a hero because he was a hero, — and because the mud-journal was infinitely vile ; not the king or the peer, the public man or the hero, had to ruin himself to punish foul libel. That had become the duty of the State. A healthy generation could not, and would not, tolerate an atmosphere of perennial mud and stench, and ^'Society Papers," being unable to live in any other than that •vitiated atmosphere, died. The laws of marriage, divorce, and breach of promise, were con- -•siderably changed. Insanity, criminal conviction, and drunkenness 404 THE EXGLISH REVOLUTION OF were made grounds of divorce. Insanity, because it condemned the sane partner to needless misery, to an unnatural and un- healthy life, and the progeny to infamous danger. Only the sad cant of a Jubilee era could have so long tolerated the horrible burden of being bound by such a foul custom. If the insane re- covered, there was no security against a relapse. Moreover, should a cure be effected, the divorced was free ; and for one such case there were a hundred which did not recover. Drunkenness as a ground for divorce was a law after the Revolution, but happily had not often to be called upon, because the vice had practically disappeared ; still, it remained in the codex. Whatever might be the grounds of divorce, no man was permitted to retain any money that the wife brought to settlement. If there were children, a portion had to be settled upon them ; if none, it reverted entirely to the woman or to her family, never mind how guilty she may have been. The Revolutionary laws were on too noble a basis to permit a man to profit by a wife's error, crime, or misfortune. On the other hand, reasonable provision for the divorced wife had to be made in every case by the man in cases where she had not her own provision, according to his position and to the circumstances occa- sioning the divorce ; but always provision — never mind how guilty the wife ; otherwise there could be no divorce. "Wise laws must regard all sides, and not only one side. Let the evidence be what it will, there is no mortal to be so damned for the errors of pas- sion by his or her fellow-men that hope shall be entirely and for ever cut off. A woman left without provision is worse than killed. No true system of justice shall punish mercilessly ; else it is not justice, but mere revenge. Leave the door open to reform ; where that is barred, it is not a porch of heaven or of earth, but of hell. Even when the " habitual criminal " was removed for ever from the society of his fellows by a wise penal code, he was only removed to prevent him from harming others — removed to the penal settlements, where work and duty {i.e. a useful life) were compulsory to him, and for which reason he was free who had once been a slave, since habitual criminality is not freedom, but is an awful and unutterable slavery to the Infernal One. In order to prevent any temptation to unnecessary litigation, there were clear limits set to the provisions required in cases of divorce. They were severe where the offender was the husband, and proportionately light if the offence was on, or provoked by, the other side. Furthermore, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 405 the sexes were made equal before the law, and the grounds which enabled the mau to sue for divorce could be invoked by the woman also. The mischief and scandal of the Jubilee breach of promise laws were eflfectively remedied. In Jubilee times the weak woman bore the heaviest blame and the sorest burden ; on the other hand, the strong or the brazen woman levied a system of black- mail which did not compensate for the other evil, but made only two evils. The Revolutionary codex remedied both of them. The laws were simple and clear, and their application no less so. Breach of promise, with no ulterior harm than the change of mind of the parties, or party, was amenable to no punishment at all ; why should it be 1 But if a suitor induced a woman to forego her employment, he was responsible to the full amount of the income or wages he had caused her to lose. Nothing was considered beyond that. A just law refused to grant money allotments for ■" feelings." An engagement entered into with an ignoble intent and act, or ignoble act irrespective of intent, was treated as serious <;rime, and was punishable not only by heavy pecuniary levies, but by imprisonment to boot. All money fines were laid down in the code, and were not left open as speculative temptations to black- mail. They were calculated upon clear proportion of the income of the offender. Towards the support of a child the Jubilee sum was doubled — that was a minimum. But justice must take all things into consideration ; and, according to the position of an offender, that weekly allowance increased. On the other hand, an end was put to mere blackmail cases by the Courts of Honour and Arbitration. All those courts were private, and they dealt with aU cases between the sexes. Appeal to the High Courts was open to the parties aftericards. But if, after the adjudication of the courts of first instance, a case was continued merely for worthless motives, the penalty upon the offender was severe, and carried with it abrogation of all monetary claim, and, in extreme cases, imprisonment. As a fact, however, such cases could scarcely occur ; in Jubilee times they had been the direct produce of shark -lawyers, and they disappeared together with the producing cause. Perhaps the most difiicult of all problems between the sexes are those arising out of what is conveniently called " incom- patibility of temper." Carlyle Democritus was too wise a legis- lator to slacken the laws of divorce in any undue manner. There- iore, beyond the equalising of the husband and wife before the law, 406 THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OF the Revolution made no change beyond what has already been indicated, except in the simplicity of the procedure. But separa- tion was granted upon easier conditions. The courts were rarely able to eflfect conciliation in matrimonial cases ; any hopes in that direction could never occur to practical legislators. Where family influence has failed, the necessarily cold and inflexible hand of the law is not likely to avail. But a decided and simple code could, and did, mitigate many evils. Either party could obtain judicial separation, instead of divorce, in cases where the heavier penalty might have been obtainable, as in Jubilee time. Judicial separa- tion, however, not being irrevocable, and often conducing to reconciliation at a later period, was open to husband and wife, the courts laying down very clear and definite rules in the matter of ample provision for wife and children. If the evidence before the( court showed the wife to have been the aggressive or offending party, the penalties and restriction bore more upon her ; if, on the other hand, the husband was the prime offender, the pecuniary provision and other penalties exacted from him were more severe. Unless for good cause to the contrary, the mother retained charge of all the children up to the age of fourteen, after that age the children were allowed to choose with which parent they would dwell. The frequency and the conditions of visiting the children by the separated spouse depended upon the cause which had engendered the separation. The law set no limit to the number of times parties might separate and reconcile. But, after one recon- ciliation, the penalties upon the provoking or offending party were materially increased. There was one other species of sexual relation known in Jubilee times, and productive of wholesale misery and mischief, for want of definite legislation : that of " free " unions. After the Revolu- tion such cases were considerably diminished owing to the healthy marriage laws, and the stigma which rested upon bachelordom.* A sane society saw nothing but the reprehensible in mud-existences of any sort ; whether they were commercial, political, connubial, or free-connubial. There were such cases, and there probably always will be such cases. And the parties, being human, will be prone to suffer the usual incompatibilities. Now, it behoves- wise law-makers to face evils, to stare them in the face, and mak& * PaffQ 354. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 407 them (the evils) disappear; not let themselves be cowed, like ineffable cowards, by any evil, or accumulation of evils. Men must not deal with dangers and difficulties in ostrich-fashion — the tail feathers turned skyward, and the eyes buried in desert sand, " Free " incompatibilities having cause of quarrel could not try universal blackmail a la Jubilee breach-of-promise futility. The courts and the codex had very definite rules for such cases ; the only portion needing here to be touched upon being the pro- vision, or pecuniary one. Tired Lotharios were required to settle proper provision upon a discarded mistress. Freedom of the licence sort was not tolerable upon other conditions. Seldom were the public ears offended by such cases after the Revolution ; not one case in a hundred needed to appeal beyond the Honour or Arbitration Courts. The " free " laws were just ; they did not assume unmitigated scamphood for all Romeos, or unmitigated Magdelinity for all Juliets. A practical Carlyle Democritus said (with, and beyond, the poet Schiller) : — " A fox knows much, but a woman in love knows more ; and a woman 7iot in love, but pre- tending to be in love, knows most." The cruellest scourge of society in Jubilee times was cunning self-seeking, hidden behind the mask of simplicity. The Revolu- tionary Courts distinguished clearly between the alluring playful- ness of kittenhood and the matured (and by no means alluring) scratchfulness of full-blown cathood. Wise laws overlook nothing; they look into everything calmly, dispassionately, and absolutely without cant. The Revolution left the railways in the hands of the Companies.* With few exceptions they were worked infinitely better than any Continental raihvays under the direction of the State. Some of the great English companies were indeed models of able manage- ment. What the Revolution did was to compel all Companies to "level up " to the working of the best. Those which could not, for want of capital, were purchased by the State. The following, amongst other laws, were then made applicable to all the railways : — All Companies were held responsible for the due carrying out of the time-services printed in their time-tables. Any departure from ♦ Pa'^e 223. 403 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF the contract time, except in cases of accident, rendered the default- ing company liable to a fine, summarily recoverable by the aggrieved passengers. A railway company could no more be per- mitted to deceive its customers in the matter of the work for which it was paid than any other public or private caterer. The days of fraud of any sort were past. If a company found it difficult to arrive within the period notified in its time-tables, that company had to alter its time-tables, and not continue to deceive the public. One minute in every hour's journey was allowed, after that the statutory fine was one penny on every ticket for every minute later than the arrival-time notified in the tables. Every company had to adopt the safest and best system of brakes and signals, and in lighting and warming their carriages. The labour conditions of all were already safeguarded by the Labour Laws. All Companies had to mark the names of their stations in a sufficiently conspicuous manner, at minimum distances of thirty feet, along all divisions and walls of platforms, and no advertisement was permitted to appear within six feet of any portion of the name-boards. All the station lamps had also to bear the name of the station upon them. Failure to light a carriage under a tunnel subjected a company to a summary fine which the aggrieved pas- sengers could levy at the end of their journey, by lodging a com- plaint at the justice-room of the station post-office. * With regard to the rates for carriage of goods, a very simple but stringent law was made. No preferential rates were permitted on the carriage of British goods, nor any evasion of that law by means of discounts or otherwise ; the mileage rate, for rich or poor, of the same class of goods, was identical, whether the quantity were large or small. Also the scandalous Jubilee preferential rates for foreign carriage were abolished, and in their stead all companies were compelled to reverse their old unpatriotic Jubilee policy, by charging one-tenth less upon British goods than upon foreign wares of the same description. The State laws discouraged competition between companies, and by every means induced co-operation instead. There was no longer any cost to the companies in obtaining Parlia- mentary legislation. The days of the barrister-harpies were over. No millions of capital were wasted f in mere senseless legal jabber — a fact of great advantage to railway and all other companies. * Fase 413. t Page 366. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 409 Finally, there was the Railway Guild, with its masters and men all represented — a kind of railway parliament in fact, where reforms and improvements were considered and discussed, and whose general meetings were attended by an official representing the Government, as a central authority in all railway matters. By means of this assembly necessary changes and improvements were made general throughout the whole railway service. Throughout all the agricultural districts of the Kingdom, the Government built light railways and connected them with the great Trunk lines. As these light railways were erected on land owned by the State, and without ruinous fees having to be paid to land- lords, land-agents, lawyers, or any of the old Jubilee bloodsuckers, their construction rarely exceeded a cost of from £3000 to .£4000 a mile. They proved a rich source of direct revenue to the nation, and the facilities they afforded to the farmers added a yet more valuable, though indirect, revenue to the country — a revenue of widespread prosperity. I^ot the Jubilee prosperity of a few, at the expense and degradation of the many ; but a prosperity which, like the equal sun, cast its radiance in the lowest as in the highest places, and lit the humblest village with a rosy glow of that healthy life which regained for this fair Isle her old poetic title of " Merry England." On all freights brought by the agri- cultural light railways to the main lines, special rates were made ; and thus, and by other kinds of State help. Great Britain, in the twentieth century, grew to be once more a vast agricultural pro- ducing country. Its peasants were the bravest and sturdiest in all the world. " Sons of God " was written on the simple honest features of them all. Their children were once again the wonder of the world, — as in those old Roman times when the Roman mothers who saw them cried : " Non Angli sed angeli." The adulteration laws have been touched upon elsewhere.* That old Jubilee trick of advertising sawdust as gold-dust was as dead as cant ; Carlyle Democritus was in no way tolerant of it. To advertise a ware of supreme qualitj-, and then sell ten inferior articles under the same title, was Jubilee dodge-business but was not permitted after the Revolution. The reader will remember that healthy lawf which required every article to bear marked upon its face, in unmistakable plainness, what it actually was. Imagine this Jubilee article under Revolutionary law : — (276) • Pa«es 208-20y. J Page 208. 410 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF "Divine Arabian Revelation ! A certain cure for asthma, cancer, croup, measles, obesity, chilblains, and childbirth." Imagine further, under such an advertisement, in plain honest English : " This preparation, price 3s. 6d. a packet of 8 ozs., is plain and unadulterated ground lentils ; obtainable in plain wrapper, under its proper title, and without the above named lies, for ten- pence, or less, a pound." In Jubilee times the British Government directly "patented" that fraud, and others like it, and absolutely robbed the public out of £200,000 a year over the bargain. Let the dubious reader (277) invest sixpence and read a little book called "Quack Medicines," which he will find to contain over 160 closely printed pages of such devil-swindles, of which the above is but a very humble example. Post-Revolutionary British Government happily derived nothing from infamous fraud of the quack species, whereof indeed Jubilee Government was the supreme head. "Was there not the " Sorrypebble Jubilee Mixture," guaranteed to make a lie look like truth? and "The Sorrypebble Gin-Hell," guaranteed to fire a man's brains and render him fit for any bestiality or crime in ten minutes 1 With a Sorrypebble for supreme quack, an infinity of transcendent quackeries are inevitable. Perimus Ileitis. With regard to " advertisements in public thoroughfares" rural scenery was protected against desecration by advertisements. However much the land and the houses were the property of the owner and worker, yet was no man permitted to carry on offensive or obnoxious trades to the detriment or annoyance of his neighbour. And as vulgar advertisements, amid peaceful valleys and beautiful scenery, are amongst the most outrageous forms of nuisance, they were severely forbidden. Similarly, with regard to houses, the owner was limited to the exhibition of his own trade notices, and not permitted to rent his walls, or in any way disfigure them with extraneous advertisements. The beauty of the streets is the common property of every citizen. To vehicles the same law applied; every trade vehicle had to bear its owner's name and distinctive number clearly upon it. The trade and calling of the owner might appear, but mere advertisement waggons were rigidly forbidden. All public vehicles came under the same law, and were restricted absolutely to notices concerning their own business or route. The unsightly Jubilee omnibus placards, the peripatetic advertisements (called sandwich men) disappeared altogether. The THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 411 streets were laid out and preserved for traffic, and not permitted to be invaded by exhibitions of any description. The various sounty and district councils jealously preserved them against iisfigurement by soulless advertisers. The drink laws have been dealt with in many parts of this tiistory. In a word, the Kevolution regarded drink (drunkenness) IS the most heinous of all crimes ; the worst, because it was the father of so many others. Murder committed murder and ceased. But drink instigated a thousand crimes, and was not satisfied. Three times convicted for drunkenness, and your beast-man came forth from the penal colony no more. That was the end of him, and, as far as this history is concerned, the end of further reference to him. With regard to the observance of Sunday, a word should be said, for the Revolution dealt with that matter in a brave and character- istic way. In Jubilee times, as has already been shown,* drunken- ness was at its height on Sundays, liquor Parliaments having quite cunningly arranged that matter. Every conceivable means of human recreation was carefully cut away from the people, except the recrea- tion of getting drunk, and of that, as we have seen, they duly availed themselves. Now, let Garlyle Democritus be praised, that supreme consummation of cant was made to go the way of all other Jubilee cant. The public-houses existed no longer, so laws had not to be made for them. For all beside, the law was conclusive. No loork on Sunday ! That was emphatic and clear. It was to be a day of rest and recreation. " No work," says the pure, beautiful Book of the world ; but it nowhere says, " No play." Consequently, with the exception of refreshment-houses (and only those whose assistants or owners — no exception was made — received an alter- native rest-day), every shop in the kingdom had to close. But, owing to the healthier state of public life, the shutter-horrors were almost entirely done away with, as no longer necessary ; and the streets, though without the bustle of business, were not without the refreshing brightness which tasteful shop-window decorations afforded. All museums were open, and the parks were free for play in their respective fields. All the chief walks and avenues, and the grass plots near them, were preserved for those who preferred perfect quiet ; but the ponds and the streams and the • Page 394. 412 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF playing fields were, under wise regulations, free for the young to play in and rejoice. "Ye shall rejoice," the Scriptures say every- where ; nowhere do the lovely pages say, " Ye shall be glum." And where is rejoicing more pure and righteous than under the fair canopy of heaven? Kejoice then, O young ones of England, no more cooped up in filthy murder-slums, where little children starved and pined ! God's light and justice is everywhere : there is no more poisonous gloom. Play, little children, and rejoice greatly ; for herein lies the truest worship of God. Let us, how- ever, be just to the Jubilee times ; they did permit one source of recreation in the parks, since boats were at all times for hire on the ornamental waters. That permission to play upon the water, but not upon the land, is perhaps not altogether inscrutable ; had the Jubilee governing folk an unconscious sympathy for a pastime of a liquid nature ? There was one period of sublime quiet, a beautiful contrast to the lively day. At eleven o'clock bells were sounded in all the parks, and play ceased until two in the afternoon. During the same interval all public buildings and all refreshment-houses were closed ; only the churches remained open. In them, at half-past eleven, were held simple, godly services. Few were they who did not attend to hear the honest, truthful voices of the people's pastors. There was no cant-whine, no more of the soul-curdling throat- monotone, as of mud-water gurgling through a half-choked pipe. The voices of Men (not of Jubilee cant-prigs) allured true men to worship by their piety, sympathy, and manful counsel. The Eng- lish Sunday had become noble and true, like the national life. Few were they who did not visit the pastors' services after the great purification, or Revolution. ^Nonconformity had become a lost word. The nearest approach to it was a much more fatal word, used to designate those who cut themselves from union with their God. /deformity that was called — an old word with an added meaning, half-contempt, half-pity. The English were ever a deep, earnest, and religious people. Even Jubilee cant could not kill the diviue link in them. It had cruelly cloaked it, and suppressed it ; but killed it could not be, and it burst out in all its soulful splendour with the reversion to the pure and pious worship which the Church reforms had established. Here is, perhaps, the most beautiful of all the extensions of the Revolution : the ubiquitous assistance furnished by the State I THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 413 in connection with its administration of justice. There was a principle which dominated or underlay all Carlyle Democritus's legislation. The principle, viz., that it is better to support a man in danger of falling into the stream, than to grapple and fish him out of the mud-ooze after he has fallen. Justice, legal help, was placed at every man's door literally, in this manner : — It has already been said that the Government erected permanent post-offices wherever there had been temporary ones or agencies. In every post-office was a division set apart for judicial officers. Here a citizen could apply for any needful help under the sun of British law. The official directed the applicant as to the relief he required, as to the court he should apply to. The making, record- ing, and registering of wills, and any occasions of transfer, were un- dertaken in them for the great central authorities. Wills, like all other post-Revolutionary documents, were no longer expressed in terms of almost idiotic verbosity, but were recorded in honest, simple English. And, if the citizen desired it, the State provided official trustees. There were no fees for any of this work. The State taxes on wealth and the revenue from land * amply pro- vided all revenues, as has been effectually set forth in earlier chapters. Very small matters often cause very large distress ; for instance, one objectionable man in Jubilee times could disturb the peace, convenience, and comfort of a whole neighbourhood. He could not continue to perpetuate a nuisance, even for a few hours, after the establishment of the Revolutionary judicial system. Converting a back garden in a crowded neighbourhood into a cock and hen yard ; opening a fried-fish shop in a street thenceforward rendered uninhabitable, and almost impassable by human kind, was not possible to an offensive Briton after the Revolution. Such and kindred luxuries could only be indulged in with the written sanction of the majority of the neighbours of the would- be-frier-of-fish or cock-keeper. In one day, often in an hour, at no cost to the parties, a Court of First Instance heard and adjudi- cated upon a matter that required six months at Jubilee times, and ruinous expense. And now may the Law Chapter end. The great codex was the triumph of the Revolution. There remained only to preserve it against desecration by future asinine commen- tators. The new Parliament, therefore, made it contempt of court, • Pages 136, 137, 143, 144. 414 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. and an act of treason against the laws, for any man to start any commentary business upon the great codex. All the laws contained in it were as honestly clear and simple as human righteousness and truth could make them. If any doubt existed on any law, the Eevising Council at once took the matter in hand, and set the doubt at rest. The Revising Coiincil was a permanent institution. It consisted of five judges selected by the Bench of Judges, five lay members elected by the Central Chamber of Commerce, and five members elected by the professional associations. As all officers and officials had to retire after their sixtieth year, there was no stagnation possible anywhere nor amongst this body ; and there was no possibility of the codex suff"ering from the decay which has overtaken less wise institutions. The Revolutionary Council not only guarded over the purity and simplicity of the Code, but from time to time (with the sanction of Parliament) amended laws which had grown obsolete, and recommended new ones to Parlia- ment when new were required. Mere bibliolatry was bravely guarded against. Coke, Littleton & Company were not wanted here. And now let the Law Chapter fitly close with the wise words which stood at the great Codex's opening : — "NBMO PRUDBN8 PUNIT QUIA PECCATUM BST, BED NB PECCETUB." PAET IIL APOTHEOSIS. Book L PARLIAMENT AGAIN. "Democracy is always the willing subject of the autocracy, either of true or of false and plausible individuals. At this hour it is the bond-slave of the tongue. The Empire has become a rhetorical ' phantasm,' and its councils are flitting ignes fatui. The rule and power of the people is thought to be advancing with great strides during these years ; but is the people more powerful for their power ? Unless this is the case, the word Democracy — signifying the strength of the nation, and the embodiment of the national will in active force — is an assumption and a mistake. Democracy without this condition is compatible with increased feebleness, with greater ductility to designing men, with having its own honest will turned out of doors, and the place of it supplanted by tyrannical agitators and self-seekers. Democracy may be like a large ant-hill of most commercial and industrial ants, each intent upon his one grain of stuff, and carrying it home on his back to his proper young, and to his typically respectable community. Democracy in this case may have a neighbour which watches its prosperous trading, and wants it, soul and body. There may be a Great Ant-Eater in the neighbour- hood — a Grand Old Ant-Eater. If Democracy is not something more than a community of trading pismires, the Great Ant-Eater has only to protrude his long tongue in the path of the stream of ants — a tongue attractive with glistening trail of promises — and to keep his tongue well out in talk, im- movable, vocal motion so incessant in vibration as to simulate rest and preach peace. The ants climb the sweet tcngue, and are raised by the promises ; and, when the tongue is well covered by the creatures, the Great Ant-Eater draws them in, and has them in his belly, nourishing his shaggincss. And as swallowed-up ants tell no tales, he lays out his tongue again and again, and draws in well nigh the whole nation of them. ... Of course, tlie swallowing process may be avoided, but only by keeping sedulously out of the way of the tongue, by discerning the selfhood in the toHgue, detecting what it wants, and giving its cajoleries a wide berth and a religious inatten- tion. But it may be feared that Democracy will have to find itself many times in the belly of the Grand Old Ant-Eater and his successors before it learns to distrust and righteously to detest him and the likes of him." Gaeth Wilkinson. CHAPTEE I. THE NEW ELECTORATE. Has not this history many times declared, what all wise men have always known, what all unwise men do not know, and will with difficulty believe — which yet is true — that an Act of Parliament (that is to say, of a Parliament made on the Jubilee principle) will reform very little, least of all itself. And yet mankind — British mankind — long looked to it to reform the makers of Parliament — the Electorate. In all throes and troubles, that has been the one never-ceasing hope : Extend your electorate, make it " cheaper," bring in every grade of mortal, criminals included, and when you have exhausted them, bring in the women. No wisdom to be had from four millions of electors ? — try six millions, and that will hurry on the millennium. That not enough ? — try what we can do with eight millions of electors, or for supreme effort try the women, and let us have twelve millions of electors ! Poor innocent English people. Have you, or any one of you, ever yet " elected " a hero, except of the talking sort ? And yet there is a means of heroic selection. For it is abundantly true what a keen master of men has said : " The people have judgment ; " but he added — "when not misled by orators." That was one of the most pregnant sayings of the First Napoleon. Dwell upon it, reader, for Carlyle Democritus acted upon it. ** Trust the people " — a Jubilee phrase of Sorrypebble — a vastly different matter, a mere oratorical wind-phrase, ear-tickling flat- tery, deliberate Jubilee lie. That, and nothing other. The people "elected" Jabez Balfour to swindle them out of seven millions sterling of their savings. They passed over a fearless man of action who had added a wide world to Britain's empire, and they preferred a chattering brown baboo of barrister sort. Their entire Parliament was scarcely other than an agglomeration of men of the liquor, land, and legal sort — plus money. And from such as "7 2d 418 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF they wisdom of Government was awaited. Awaited ! The people are not to be trusted ; the people are far too simple and honest. The mass of them — of the working sort — are incapable of telling lies as a trade, still less capable of acting lies — therefore unable to believe that Soft Sawder and Company are liars by nature, more intent upon party and personal aggrandisement than true devotion to the service of their country. The people are no more to be " trusted," unprotected by wise laws, than children are to be trusted in the neighbourhood of dangerous traffic, or more dangerous criminals. There are " rights of man," but they are far other than the poli- tical party sort. " The rights of man," it has been truly said, "are that he be governed by unswerving justice!" Those are "the rights of man," which until man achieve he will suffer. Will you sub- mit to the rule of knaves, fools, and word-babblers 1 Or will you put those under your feet, and have true vien over you, never mind though their pockets are not furnished with golden guineas for your charity bun-feasts, charity bazaars, or hundred-fold kin- dred blackmail vanities ? Of all the Jubilee Parliament people, how many, think ye, had a desire which went beyond the "next election"? "Party" was a Jubilee shibboleth before which the vilest Barabbas, with glib tongue, would have been preferred to the divinest Jesus, minus the glib tongue and sufficiency of guineas. The simple electorate, " trusted " by Sorrypebl^le and Company, had been so dinned with inanities of party, that they believed the thing was a real god, and that there was no other. The " trust " which the Jubilee politicians preached was of that sort which meant : " Trust me, my somnolent friend, with thy purse (or thy vote), and see what I will do with it." See ! it was a very considerable thing to see — A million paupers in and out of workhouses ; Four millions of others worse off than paupers — people on the verge of pauperism, too noble to beg, infinite in patience, endurance, and suffering ; One hundred thousand children cruelly and barbarously suffer- ing, "insured," and given up to endless misery — but for a little brave help now and then of a Charity Society ; Sixty thousand starving Board School children in London alone, and some forty thousand other starving children in London, not in Board Schools ; THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 419 Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and English evictions ; Free Trade for foreigners, and hampered trade for Britons j Liquor Peerages, rack-renters, political Judges and Magistrates. If men are to be judged by their works, then, since the world began, there has been no fouler Beelzebub than that of Jubilee " Party." And realise at once, reader, with such shock as the occasion may require, that Carlyle Democritus as effectually did away with party as he had done away with the whole Jubilee vermin species. And you shall discover how : — Every British man who could read and mark a voting-paper, and who was not a criminal, floating or otherwise, enjoyed the Franchise — no other. So much educational qualification was necessary to keep your cant priest and mammon agent out from between the citizen and his liberty. Women did not share the Franchise, except in so much as their good influence ennobled and purified the men's choice. Remember, that debasing occupations for women had ceased, that a freedom which they imagined they enjoyed in Jubilee times, after the Revolution they aetually enjoyed — not a few favoured ones amongst them, but all. Their voices could therefore be heard " like linnets in the pausings of the wind ; " weU heard, for was not the wind abated — the political wind — and wisdom become possible in place of it. The age qualification for exercising the Franchise and for members of the Commons was twenty-five (in spite of, perhaps because of, the fact that unhappy Britain had once upon a time possessed a Prime Minister aged twenty-four — prime author of England's mad indebtedness and general anarchy, all of it well traceable from that time downward). In the Upper House the age qualification was thirty-five. There were nine millions of men in Great Britain of the age of twenty -five and upwards entitled to the Franchise, and as the number of representatives was, by the Con- stitution, limited to six hundred, this gave one representative for every fifteen thousand voters. Future increase of population would not increase the number of representatives, but only the number of voters whom each Member of Parliament represented. In the meanwhile nine millions of post-Revolutionary male Britons had, each man, one vote — no more. One man to repre- sent every 15,000 electors — i.e. 600 men to represent the Nation in its Parliament, and not to be chosen by money, or for money con- siderations. A strange problem for a generation mostly inured tc 420 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF Jubilee guinea-pig landowners, lawyer word-mongers, and liquor- lords. The money considerations were overcome by a series of reforms. The State undertook every matter concerning the elections, and it was made a misdemeanour for any candidate to expend any coin in connection with his candidature. Any breach of that law disfranchised a candidate for ten years, and rendered him incapable of ever coming forward again. Next, a candidate was debarred from charity or other subscription lists altogether, that being but a Jubilee system of blackmail in disguise. As far as money was concerned, all candidates were thus rendered equal. The Eevolution then established Parliamentary districts of 15,000 electors, and sub-divided them again into 150 electoral wards, each consisting of 100 members. Two months * before the time of a general election each Hundred was required to meet, and within twenty days select one or more candidates from amongst the residents or workers within their district (not necessarily ward), and to appoint also a chairman and deputy-chairman to represent them on the combined Electoral Hundreds of the district. At the first meeting of the Ward Hundreds the senior member present of a Court of Arbitration or Honour — or failing such an one, the senior elector present — presided, until the meeting could elect its own chairman. The names of the Hundred of the electoral ward were then read out to the meeting, and the members invited to elect a permanent chairman. After discussion, the meeting proceeded to elect its chairman and deputy chairman by ballot, with the ordinary formality and procedure. The candidate or candidates of each Hundred were then selected, and the chairmen duly deputed to consult the chairmen of the other ward divisions. There would thus be one hundred and fifty chairmen and deputy- chairmen forming the central electoral committees of three hundred — representing the full 15,000 of the electoral division. With that notable common -sense and business capacity — the prominent feature of the true Briton — the various Electoral Hundreds quickly fell into a perfect system of friendly human interaction. Within ten days of the great revolutionary political instauration the Hundreds had met, appointed their chairmen and hon. secretaries, and deputed their respective chairmen to hold * This period could be shortened by Parliament if urgency or emergency required. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 421 counsel, and discuss the preliminary list of candidates which each Hundred had nominated. After the second week these had met and winnowed their lists to a few mutually-agreed-upon candi- dates, and the lists, as reduced, were referred back to the various Ward Hundreds. Within a few weeks each electoral division (of 15,000) had definitely selected its candidate or candidates. In numerous instances the lists were reduced to two candidates, often to only one — and in no case were more than three names left in any single constituency. After the final adoption of the candidates, they were invited to attend meetings of the electors throughout the division, for which purpose the large halls of the School Board, or the justice-rooms attached to the Post-offices, were placed at their disposal. The meetings were used not for purposes of speech-making ; they were more in the nature of interviews and discussions between the candidate and his constituents. The candidates were no longer mere representatives of money, land, law, liquor, or talk. They had not been selected for their speech-proclivity. They were perforce men well known to the communities who chose them, were selected because of the work they had done, and the way they did it, there, amongst the men who were to select or elect them. No longer to be chosen upon promise of work. Let that change between the Revolutionary, practical representative, selected by the calm judgment of the people among whom he worked and was known, and the old Jubilee windbag, often drawn indiscriminately from limbo because he had money in his pocket, or a voluble tongue in his head, never mind how void of brain, justice, or wisdom. There were thus created throughout Great Britain electoral committees from all portions of the people, no longer self-constituted blatancies of the Jubilee caucus-type, but practical everyday business and working men, of all shades of opinion, and mostly acquainted with one another (the Ward Hundreds being necessarily close neighbours). If a member of the Electoral Hundred failed to serve at one-third of its meetings, such a member (unless good cause obtained for his absence) was disfranchised for ten jears, besides having to submit to a fine before the Arbitration Courts. If the final choice of the electors fell upon a candidate whose pecuniary position did not enable him to bear the loss ol partial dissociation from his calling, the State paid him £200 fl 422 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF year, if representing a London constituency ; or £300 a year if a provincial, during his period of service. Thus left to themselves and to their own calm judgment, not " misled hy orators," the electors — from the men whom they saw day by day striving, working, and doing — at least 'knew whom they were selecting, and did not have to rely upon words, promises, party-lying, or trickery of any sort. Canvassing was strictly forbidden, disqualified any candidate who directly or indirectly partook of it, and subjected the canvasser to heavy penalty. Wise administration, more than word-legislation, Avas the business of Parliament after the Revolution. Endless and senseless piling up of Acts no longer necessary as in mad Jubilee times. A Bill, after the Revolution, was discussed in Parliament often in a few days, and drawn up by practical men in less words than many Jubilee Bills had had clauses. A Jubilee Bill was often discussed for years, and then put into the Jubilee waste mud- basket — a mere heap of clotted lawyer-jargon — damnable alike to sods and men. At one sweep of the gigantic Revolutionary broom the Jubilee accumulation of political corruptions disappeared. Not a light disappearance at all : — Subscription tolls without end. Paid canvassers, male. Paid canvassers, female. Voluntary canvassers, male. Voluntary canvassers, female. Paid agents, pretending not to be paid. Unpaid agents. Speakers : party, demagogic, secretly paid, and other. Wire-pullers, caucus-mongers. Party clubs — mostly disguised drink-hells. Liberal hundreds, or caucus gangs. Radical ditto, ditto. Tory ditto, ditto. Unionist ditto, ditto. Variorum ditto, ditto ; and Universal associations of fad-mongeries beyond the enumerating THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 423 power of mortal man — the whole forming a complex and wide- spread political-jesuit-party-brotherhood, demoniacal, bewildering to all honest men. Contrast the simple establishment of Carlyle Democritus : Those universal local committees of one hundred men ; the chairmen of those Hundreds, and beyond that nothing more. After the electoral divisions had selected their candidates, they set about drawing up in brief, concise, plain English a list of such local, general, or national matters as they deemed required attention. A copy of that list, or local programme, was given to each candidate of the division, but he was not pledged to adopt such programme. Its object was to afford him a guide of the wishes and wants of his constituents. The judgment of the electors had been freed from the mass of Jubilee corruption which had formerly enthralled them ; it would have been most unwise to send a representative to the great Assembly of his nation a tied and hampered thing. If you have elected a man, to his wisdom and judgment leave the expression of your wants ; you have laid before him your wishes and desires as you have seen them locallij ; he will have to judge from the imperial point of view, as well as the local one, what is the truest and best for all, and not only for one. Therefore no election pledges were allowed to be exacted from any candidate, only the pledge of the electors' own hearts, understandings, and judgment, that they had selected the man in sympathy with them. It was for them to choose a God-fearing, sincere, practical British man ; having so chosen, and having given to him the record of their wants, leave him free to act wisely. If experience should prove that they had mistaken their man, that their judgment had erred, they must be wiser and warier next time. The candidate once become the elected representative, was debarred from Company Directorates of any sort, beyond such as he had filled before his selection as candidate. He was forbidden to make political speeches outside his own constituency, except in the Parliament where he had been elected to serve. In early days of the Revolution printed explanations of the great reform, and of the methods to be observed at future elec- tions, had been circulated to every elector in the land, and printed lists of the various '* Hundreds" were duly delivered to every member of the electoral wards. These lists were revised every six months by the secretaries of the respective Hundreds, and amend- 424 THE ENGLISH EEVOLUTION OF ments, or, where necessary, new lists, regularly notified to all con- cerned. After the meeting of the " Hundreds," and the appoint- ment by them of their chairmen, who formed the central electoral " Three Hundreds," printed lists of these also were distributed in the same manner. For all purposes of delivery within the '^ Hun- dred " "Wards the services of the street-keepers (p. 185) of the immediate locality were requisitioned, this being a part of their duties. No expenses were allowed to be incurred by any of the electoral bodies, either in their individual or corporate capacity. Printed circular-forms for calling the members together at any time were supplied, and all printing in connection with the list of members, and other necessary printing work, was undertaken by the Election Department of the post-office nearest to the particular "Ward Hundred. The Electoral Department could also undertake any other outlay in connection with the elections which circum- stances or the locality rendered necessary. The " Hundreds " and *' Three Hundreds " were permanent establishments, and could bo called together by their respective chairmen, or at the written re- quest, delivered to the chairmen, of not less than ten electors, upon the minimum notice of seven days. And now observe the great election day — one and the same day throughout the kingdom — and its mode of operation. On that day all the law offices in the kingdom were closed for law, and con- verted for that day — both the law offices, officers, and officials — into polling stations and election officials, the latter aided also by the clerks of the local authorities, with their registers and other necessary paraphernalia. The day was not made a holi- day ; far better otherwise ; election is not a matter for play, but for earnest and serious — ay, solemnest consideration. The polling stations were open from seven in the morning until seven at night. Enumerators were then drawn from all parts of the Civil Service, and other services if necessary, for the occasion > and early on the next morning, posted underneath the clock of every post-office throughout the kingdom, appeared the results of the poll. And seven days later, there, at Westminster, appeared also the result of the poll. Pause, British reader, and draw into your heart of hearts, into your inmost thought of thoughts, the deep result of a people's choice, untrammelled by the rhodomontade of Party, not misled by the twaddle of orators. But to enable you to appreciate the great THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 425 Revolutionary Parliament, first look at a Jubilee Party-Parliament. We will take six hundred of each. These are six hundred of a Jubilee Parliament, classified by a Jubilee authority : — 1. Mammon Class: — Landlords and mine-owners Liquor and lawyer people . Peerage people .... Government ex-official Party people Bankers ..... No occupation .... Working Class : — Labour members .... Manufacturers, shipowners, railway people, literary and professional men, and merchants . Army and Navy men . . Colonial and Civil Service 155 124 96 12 17 20 424 10 55 26 7 Journalists — mostly of the *' Blackswhite " or " Whitesblack " class .... Unclassed and nondescript, including the moonlight sort ...... Total 98 28 50 600 Briefly, as that table shows. Mammon had 424 representatives. The workers of all sorts only 98 „ Mere Party scribblers and indescribables 78 ,, Need thoughtful men wonder whither such a Parliament could "lead" a nation? Now contrast the six hundred of the reformed Parliament, as elected by nine millions of free and untrammelled British men : — 1. Working Class : — Master-artisans, independent of State salaries ...... 90 Artisans in receipt of State salary . . 25 426 ENGLISH EEYOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Master workmen — manufacturers, ship- owners, merchants, traders . . 210 Professional and literary men . . . 75 Ditto in receipt of State salaries . . 10 Railway directors, bankers, and Company Managers . . . . . . 45 Journalists not of the Blackswhite sort , 5 Army and Navy men .... 30 2. Retired Workers : — Labour 70 Professional . , , . . . 25 General ....... 15 Total 600 The mere word-class — the lawyers — had entirely disappeared, so had the no-work class — the landlords — and also the peer-, beer-, and moonlight-class. There remained, instead, 470 trained practical workers, and 130 literary and professional men. Those are six hundred men who are not likely to waste time in mere verbosity. Exactly the same methods of selection and election were established for all public bodies. In commemoration of the Revolution, the 14th of February was the date fixed for all municipal elections, one such election taking place on that date every year, viz, the County Council, School Board, and District or Parish Councils. (There were no other bodies municipal ; all others which had been were merged in the four described.) Elections for those bodies took place in successive years, and as each one of them served for three years, there was thus an election on the 14th of February in every year. The Parliamentary election, taking place at every septennial year, gave two elections for that year, but the law required that a minimum period of three months should elapse between a parliamentary and any municipal election — a matter easily arranged, as Parliament fixed its own time, but the municipal date could not be interfered with. Before closing this chapter let it be repeated what has been before set down, that Parliament could not alter any article of the Constitution without a reference, or referendum, to the entire Nation, which required for its adoption a two-thirds majority. CHAPTER II. THE SIX HUNDRED REPRESENTATIVES OF GREAT BRITAIN. " Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last. . . Babble, babble ; our old England may go down in babble at last. . . . You that woo the voices — tell them ' old experience is a fool,' Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule. Charm us, Orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat. . . . Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name. • . . "When was age so cramm'd with menace ? madness ? written, spoken lies ? . . , Step by step we rose to greatness, — thro' the tonguesters we may fall. . . . Take the suffrage of the plough ? . . Nay, but these would feel and follow truth if only you and you, — Rivals of realm-ruining party, — when you speak were wholly true. Ploughmen, shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find, Sons of God and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind. Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar ; So the higher wields the lower, while the lower is the higher. Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine ; Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen, or his swine. Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope, Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the slope." Tennyson. "It is a strange world, and in nothing stranger than in its loves and its hates : "It is recorded that in Jubilee times a grand old orator dearly loved the Poet Homer, yet has Ben Jonson recorded that ' Homer says he hates him worse than hell-mouth that utters one thing with his tongue and keeps another in his breast.' Most strange perverseness of human affection." Carlyle Democritus. Carltle Democritus to the new Electorate : '* By platform tests will you discover your true man 1 By virtue of the facility of his soft talk — commonly called eloquence ? You shall discover your lawyer-hero that way, your 'learned friend' — easy of speech for easy pay — ' the practised hustings-liar.' Not by that method is a 427 428 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF son of God discoverable. Examine a little the sort of men who by that method have been raised up. We shall find a Barabbas mob-worshipped and a Jesus slain ; a Charles II,, with his whores and minions, national saviour — and a Cromwell hung in gallows' chains ; a Gladstone — people's William — and a Gordon blanching in the desert sand. Was it by popular election that the Jesus, Cromwell, Gordon, Mahomet, Confucius, and other strong and noble men rose amidst the crumbling vanities of their nation's effeteness — to bring a new halo of the Eternal Heaven Fire or Glory upon their people ? Or was it not rather by the irresistible power and work and freedom from cant and insincerity — the God- reliance — of the men themselves, lifting their souls beyond and above the universal pettiness of sordid self-seeking and selfishness into the divine arena which all great souls attain, — the Eden of self-sacrifice, devotion, sincerity, duty done for duty's sake, unmindful of all except the universal creation law : * Justice, and only Justice, shall prevail.' Not by platform tests or caucus crawl- ings are such men discoverable. Close those much-beflattered ears of yours, O voters, overfilled by claptrap spouters, eager to grasp at power, — by treacly, lying tongues, pandering to your ignorance and gullibility. You hard-working men in factory and field, far other duty is this of mine than to be lying to you, or seeking by delusive vapourings and fiatterings to attribute to you other power than honourably to perform the labour which has been set you in the world to do. Is it by your work or by your word that your masters have distinguished you ? Not by his words shalt thou, workman, or any other, distinguish in all time the merit of any man ; his icorTcs may prove a better guide, — ay, the only guide. Can you see beyond the frothy turmoil of election jargonings and party recriminations, sufficiently to understand, if only a little, whither your caucus-imposed mud-gods have been hurrying the nation ? Millions of your starving brethren crowding workhouse and no-workhouse ; workless men driven to self-murder for relief ; women and children * rotting in heaps ; ' stone pavements lined at nights with hungry men, and women, and little children ; sack-clad women and naked children frozen to death by winter sleet, — all that, whilst wealth on all hands was increasing and accumulating ! Or will you rely upon the ' Upper House ' of brewer-peers and mammon-kings, of ancestor-selling, turf-swindling, divorce-court peers, cant-bishops, fraudulent ministerial directors, and the like ? THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 429 Are no purer Parliaments a possibility 1 Can no higher house be constituted — the assembly of the nation's best and wisest, — God's nobility, instead of Mammon's ? " To a Jubilite entering the stately Assembly-room of the Palace of Westminster after the Revolution its changed appearance first attracted his attention. It was double its old dimensions, and its form octagonal, with a slightly raised dais at one end for the ministers, who faced the representatives. Each seat bore a small metal slide-plate with the name of the constituency engraved upon it. The members sat according to the alphabetical order of the constituencies. In Jubilee times the disorder which had reigned outside the House was fitly symbolised inside the House. Most of the members had fought and struggled through corruption — party-, or money-anarchies — into the Parliament, and, when there, had to struggle again before they could get even decent seat accommodation — there being about 400 seats provided for some 670 representatives — emblematic indeed of the millions of the nation outside, who were struggling violently, and more fatally, for work-places where none were provided. Can it be possible that the Government of Great Britain had become a concern of patriotism, of justice, and of sincerity, and no longer a club for land and peer appendages, moneyed wind-bags, and legal tongue- fencers ? Can a generation inured to such things believe? — believe that Party could yield before patriotism? believe that men ceased to be selected by blinded Party slaves, because they had money in their pockets, and could pay registration fees, agents' blackmailings, charity subscriptions, etc., and rob them afterwards as Company promoters 1 Believe that CHARACTER and not MONEY had become the gauge of a representative's merit? Heavens, the Jubilee brain must whirl at such a revolution in its mode of thought ! PARTY no longer the supreme mundane god, or devil? Who is this little David that with his history-sling bodes death to the Goliath Party ? Goliath with eight heads ! For the Jubilee Party Goliath had many heads, or blocks. Let them be recorded for a future age. Here are they all : — 1. Radical Party. 2. Gladstonian Party. 3. Liberal Party. 430 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 4. Labour Party. 5. Unionist Party. 6. Conservative Party. 7. Parnellite Party. 8. Anti-Parnellite Party. Besides these, there were smaller Parties, such as^ 9. Gallant-little-Wales Party, and 10. Scotch-home-rule Party. Those ten Party-regiments coalesced now and then into two mutually opposing Parties, and carried on the "Government" of Great Britain much in the way that the following illustration will tj'pify. Govern means " to steer ; " remember that, reader. Now picture to yourselves a brave ship. On the upper deck, and in the state-cabins, are the fairest and whitest of people, playful, not particularly aware of other object in life than to agreeably pass the time in shooting gulls, of one sort or another, eating prolonged dinners, dancing, piping, and love-making. On the lower deck is another set of people of various sort, but all busy, intent upon working the ship well, and doing manful duty, if they can. Below them is another deck, whose rotten boards let the bilge-w?.ter in. Enquire not too narrowly of what is going on there. Human life in all its saddest, lowest, foulest form. Occasional moans ascend, penetrate for a moment even to the uppermost deck; then there is quiet again — for a time. By the rudder are two helmsmen ; in the captain's cabin are two commanders. When one helmsman will turn the helm to north, the other spits at and fights with him, and will try to pull the helm to south; they call the sailors who, bewildered by the lies and fatuities of either helmsmen, join the fight, and — according to the preponderance of numbers on either si(Je — for a little time, they drag and incline the rudder chain. So also when one of the captains proclaims an order, the other captain shrieks a counter order. Over all is only turmoil, vacuity, and idiocy ; the bewildered crew — in the name of Party — at one time backing one commander, at another time the other. In this precarious way the poor ship braves storms and rocks, groaning heavier day by day, dangers for ever increasing — the upper deck ever playful, the middle deck ever toiling, the third deck ever suffering. Some of the toilers from the middle deck, after violent struggle, or insidious robbing of their fellow-workers, scramble on THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 431 to the upper deck, but oftener, from overwork, numbers continually fall, but no one notices them, the occurrences are so familiar — a hatch is opened, and — crunch — fall the wounded into the bilge-hell below. That was the Jubilee ship " Britannia " down to the year 1894. • ••••• The Revolution set more store upon Doing than upon Talking. And it took certain measures to promote the former, and discourage the latter. A time-limit was fixed for all speakers in Parliament. Ministers introducing a measure were allowed half-an- hour; at other times, in common with all other members, the maximum for any individual speaker was twenty minutes. The cant-nonsense of addressing members as " Honourables " and " Right Honourables" was abolished, and in its place "the Member," or " the Representative for ," or in the case of ministers, " the Minister of ," or the title of his office substituted. Mediaeval garbage was also sent into oblivion, and plain English substituted for it. Ridiculous iteration of "humble," "loyal," ■** gracious," "faithful," and all that cant-jargon, used in Jubilee addresses to the Throne, was altogether done away with. As Parliament was no longer made up of mere money people, the expensive Jubilee political dinner-craze was put an end to. In fact, that insensate habit died out in private as well as in political circles. Honourable poverty, or moderateness of income, was a power after the Revolution. Height of character had supplanted depth of pocket. There were no longer two sets of governors; there was only one. There was abundant opportunity for able men to range themselves in the fore-front of the nation. The age- limit of sixty years, which required all public men to retire, opened the way to reasonably speedy promotion in the political "world as in all other State employments. The grand solidity and strength which her unity of purpose and Government gave Great Britain released her giant energies from war scares, and enabled them to be concentrated upon the perfect- ing of the country's commercial interests throughout the world. Her Consuls and Ambassadors were no longer ornamental gentry, ■"lying abroad," but practical, trutliful men, more honoured and appreciated by their countrymen if they secured a new trade avenue for Britain than if they overreached a hundred foreign ■diplomatists " lying abroad." The Parliament had become more 432 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF an administrative than a legislative machinej after the Kevolution, and more work was done in Committees than had ever heen the case before. Talking for talking's sake having ceased, sessions were short and the meetings of Parliament rarely exceeded four days a week. The House did not meet till five in the afternoon, and no Committees were allowed to be held whilst the House was sitting. The Committee hours might be fixed for any time in the morning, and until five o'clock in the afternoon, but not later, except on those days when the House did not meet. All Colonies and Dependencies, or groups of the smaller ones, had their particular Committees, and no snatch " resolution "^could be passed by the House which concerned any Colony or Dependency until it had been referred for report to the Committee concerned. Ked-tape was a forbidden article in the new Parliament. Pro- moters of Bills could consult the proper authorities at any time, and get them drawn up in proper, simple form. The old Jubilee system was an ineffable scandal. Corporations and business men might spend months of labour in preparing their Bills, or appeals to Parliament, or Parliamentary Committees, only to find at the (277a) last moment that the red tape-worm officialities rejected their papers, plans, or Bills, as "not complying with the red-tape standing orders." Thousands upon thousands of pounds were thus wasted every year, not to speak of the wasted time and opportunity. All ministers enjoyed the privilege — when introducing measures into Parliament — of attending and addressing both Houses, but their voting power was restricted to the House in which they habitually sat. As for the reforms which the new Parliament introduced into the Civil Service, they may be described in a phrase : — Parliament ordered the public service on the same wise system as private service. State clerks were no longer appointed because they were relations of peers, or place-hunters. There were many hundreds of such in receipt of State pay in Jubilee time — not so many afterwards. Here is one Jubilee branch of the public service — and very much like that one were they all : " The War Office occupied 19 houses of 289 rooms, and for staff" employed 805 (278) clerk-personages." The public service was permeated with political abuse, and was a refuge for empty-headed peer — and politician — sons. By righteous administration and wise dis- THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 433 cipline — as of the merchants' order — by true selection, by merit only — that one department was reduced by the Revolution, and better served than it ever had been, to one building of less than a hundred rooms, with a total staff of 350 clerks — all engaged upon the eight hours' system — from the highest official to the lowest messenger boy. And so it went throughout the service of the State. The age of babble and Babel was dead. 2 E CHAPTER III. THE FIVB HUNDRED OP GREATER BRITAIN. The pre-Revolutionary hereditary peerages (except those which have been referred to in a preceding chapter) were not abolished by the Revolution ; they formed a valuable feature of a remarkable nation. They were the orchids of the national garden, and amongst their other advantages attracted much American wealth to the country. The great American people cultivated great fortunes, but no nobility, and much as the sons of the Western Republic despised titles, their daughters did not, and many a golden queen-bee from the "Western hive would settle upon a British mulberry-, strawberry-, or other leaf, and spread con- siderable money there. Titles are the glittering jewels of humanity, precious in poor humanity's eyes as the night flame to the insect world, and not always so fatal. The dangerous features of Jubilee nobility — its wanton luxury, partridge-shooting futility, and general vampirity of constitution * — had disappeared * Here is the history of how a Jubilee beer - peer extracted from the public a million of golden sovereigns more than his brewery was worth, most of the money extracted from widows and small investors : Years passed, and no return was made to the said widows and small investors, who had thriftily saved their earnings, and entrusted them to the beer-lord and his brewery. And the women wept when they saw their money gone, and them- selves driven to part with the paper shares of the beer-lord's brewery, not at the £100 which they had paid for them, but for thirteen to twenty pounds or so. Now when those £100 shares were originally foisted on the poor, confiding, silly people, great promises were made, a dividend was paid, and just for a little time the £100 shares were dangled before the people's eyes at the enhanced value of from £120 to £125, giving the innocent public, who did not think that peers were pickpockets, visions of tiny El Dorados. Then, when the swindle was apparent, and distress compelled them to take a few pounds for their wasted hundreds, the peer did a wonderful thing. He came into "the market," and "bought up" all the silly people's sharea ENGLISH KEVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 435 with the Revohition. Mobility had to work. Mere existence upon the toil of the masses was its privilege no more. As the British people enriched the land, the British land enriched the people, and no longer were the few noble or other Jubilee landlords allowed to stand, like a living Danaid-sieve, between the nation and its prosperity. They remained highly ornamental, and the title-plumage continued an ever-harmless decoy-bird to the Western cousinry. That was their allotted task after the Eevolu- tion, for a time. Most of the beer-, fitz-, and other froth-creations entirely disappeared. The fair ones over the Atlantic, practical business damsels, being a little particular as to the true quality of their purchases, though quite willing to " hold the diamond neck- lace dearer than the golden ring " — yet required diamonds of a sort, and not mere paste. But much as Carlyle Democritus scoffed at the partridge-lords and the titled liquor-Jubilites ; much as the thought of them made his very soul heave at the desecration which pretended that such things were a nation's — Ms nation's — "best"; unutterably vile as they were, and the yet fouler things who had " made " them, yet he knew there ivas a " best," a real Aristocracy, gaugeable by heart and work and merit, not by pocket, beer, or tongue-prostitution. And it was his crown of work to seek out that "best," and hold it up imperishable, divine, fit for the love and worship of British human-kind. Let wise readers decide how he succeeded. at the worthless price of the day, due to no dividend having been paid for years. Now when the pickpocket peer had got back all the shares for which he had been paid £100, for the smaller sum of £20 or £30, he went to many publicans and said: "0 seller of beer to the working man, lo ! I bring you a little bit of paper, being £100 share of my patent brewery, limited ; now, if you will buy my beer, I will give you this nice little £100 share (which I have bought from the ruined widows for £20). True, it is not worth £100 to-day, but if you buy beer of me it will be." And so, of a surety, it came to pass. The publicans bought their beer of the pickpocket-peer, and enabled him to pay a dividend, and so the shares "went up." And so your Mammon-peer, by lying prospectus, and other limited company dodgeries, extracted one million sterling from the pockets of the confiding British public, and made another quarter of a million by quietly buying back their shares at the rate of a dollar for every pound. And his brother peers and Mammonites thought that quite a clever transaction. No seven or seven hundred days' imprisonment with hard labour for such wholesale fraud, but perennial (Jubilee perennial) peerage 1 And of such were the kingdom of Mammon. 436 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF The peerage had its Courts of Honour and of arbitration, with final appeal to the House of Lords. " Noblesse oblige " was made a living force once more — the ideal atmosphere of a true aristocracy. Accordingly any offence against the laws, social or imperial, brought the offender before the courts, and rendered him liable even to the forfeiture of the title altogether. The Second Chamber, after the Revolution, was constituted of those only who, by service to the State or to the people, rose by their own merit to a place among the nation's best and highest, — Aristos, indeed, Panaristos. The Five Hundred were not of the British Isles only, but Avere gathered from the best and greatest of the whole Empire. The following formed the order of life-peerages, with the number of each respective order, and the method of their appointment : — 1. Members of the House of Commons, elected by ballot by three-fifths' majority of the House,* 1, . 20 2. Judges (constituting also the Lords of Appeal) selected by the Bench of Judges by ballot,* 3, . 50 3. Voyagers and Discoverers who had added to the dominion, strength, or development of the Empire, elected by the Upper House by ballot,* 3, . . 10 4. The eminent in literature (40), science (40), and art (20), elected by ballot of their respective Guilds,* 2, 100 5. Governors, or Heads of Colonies, Dependencies, and Settlements, after five years' service, by ballot of the Upper House,* 3, .... . 60 6. Colonial representative Peers, one elected by ballot of the joint Houses of every Colony, Dependency, or Settlement,* 2 and 1, . . . . . 40 7. Ambassadors and Consuls, after five years' service, eligible for election by ballot of the Upper House,* 3, 20 8. Presidents of Chambers of Commerce (50), and Trade Guilds (50), by ballot of the House of Commons, and confirmation by the Lords,* 3, . 100 •l. Requiring confirmation by the House of Lords. 2. Three-fifths majority. 3. Bare majority. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 437 9. Admirals, elected from amongst themselves by ballot 50 10. Field-Marshals and Generals, by ballot amongst themselves, ....... 50 Total, 500 Any life-peer desirous of serving or seeking election in the House of Commons, could resign his privilege of a seat in the Lords, whilst retaining his title, but he could not, on any future occasion, reclaim a seat in the Upper House. With reference to the sixth order (Colonial Kepresentative Peers) as the number of British Colonies and Dependencies was liable to change by extension, consolidation, or otherwise, the numbers were preserved by grouping together the smaller Colonies or Dependencies, as occasion might require. All members of the Upper House serving £is life-peers were granted the following titles according to the various orders : — 1. Members of Parliament — according to the selection and decision of the Commons. 2. Judges — " Lords Justices." 3. Discoverers and Voyagers — according to the greatness of their service — Dukes, Marquises, or Earls, of the Dom- inions of their exploits. 4. Literature, science, and art — Viscounts, Baronets, or Knights, under their family name. 5. and 6. Colonial Governors, and Colonial Eepresentative Peers — Dukes, Marquises, or Earls of their respective states, settlements, etc. 7. Ambassadors and Consuls — Earls, Viscounts, or Barons. 8. Presidents of Chambers of Commerce and Trade Guilds — " Lords President." 9. Admirals — " Admiral Lord " 10. Field Marshals and Generals — ** Field Marshal Lord," or " General Lord " In the event of especial merit a title could be made hereditary — but not bearing any privilege beyond the honour — by a three-fifths majority of the House of Lords voting in ballot, or by recommenda- tion of the Commons and approval by bare majority of the Upper 438 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OP THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. House, voting by ballot. Such hereditary titles descended to direct male issue only, and carried no collateral titles with them. In order that absence of wealth should not defeat presence of merit, and honourable poverty be no bar to advancement, any member elected to the peerage was entitled (if his means required it) to a life annuity of £500. All Colonial peers, and peers em- ployed abroad, enjoyed free transit to and from their colonies or stations, and the mother country. Members of the Upper House were subject to the same laws which governed the members of the Commons. They were restricted from giving public dinners or public banquets of any kind, and were prohibited from subscrip- tion lists, and all such old forms of Jubilee blackmailing. In that manner were five hundred of a nation's best and worthiest gathered together ; by no means an idly ornamental peerage, but the very flower of a nation's manhood, and, as such, the proudest actual ornament of a God-fearing people. No mere toy-glitter of the jewel sort those, but the rich flower and fruit of a glorious nation. It may be remarked in passing that the old tinsel-order of nobility enjoyed all the privileges of an ordinary British citizen, but as they were without the old Jubilee adventitious powers which landlordism, unearned wealth, and consequent undue influence over the electorate had engendered, they were not much in requisition as representatives in the Revolutionary Parliament. Only five were chosen amongst the first lists of candidates, of whom only three received the final vote of the people. As the average age at which a member entered the Upper House was necessarily a somewhat advanced one, the age of com- pulsory retirement was somewhat relaxed, and a member who held his seat in the Upper House for a less period than ten years was permitted to serve until the completion of his sixty-fifth year. If any measure — after its rejection by the Lords, and re-intro- duction in the House of Commons — failed a second time to pass the House of Lords, the measure was submitted to a joint assembly of both Houses. If that failed to secure a majority in its favour, such a measure could not be re-introduced during the existing session. Book IT. fJONCLUSION. CHAPTER L THE REVOLUTIONISTS DISARM. Oy the 14th of August 19 — , ten j^ears and six months after the outbreak of the Revolution, those of the troops still remaining under the command of Carlyle Democritus laid down their arms. The day was made the occasion of a national holiday, at once solemn and magnificent. Throughout the entire country similar ceremonies were to take place, and the regiments quartered in the .various towns and cities, 300,000 men in all — whereof in London were 100,000 of the troops — laid down their arms. The rest of the Revolutionists had been gradually disbanded and absorbed into the working populations of the Empire, and these, the last battalions, had, to a man, per s ions a! id places secured for them. The London through which the last Revolutionary troops were to make their final march ■«P9S a different city to that in which the same troops had assembled ten years before, then clad in rags, now in brilliant uniform. One looked in vain for the slums, for the endless dreary streets, for the miles of mere brick walls with square holes for windows ; the dead, cold lines, without a curve, for mile upon mile, of roofs and eaves. The streets were alive with trees and flowers,* every ground-floor room had its window- box of growing plants, f Graceful pillars of stone or brick relieved the old monotonies of flat dead walls. J Curves, lattices, and gables gave variety and grace to the house- tops as they merged from earth into the ether-curve, called sky- line. Has not the architect's work been described as "frozen * Page 184, t The Land Court had induced the universal adoption of the simple and beautiful custom by allowing an appreciable reduction on the rents of all houses so adorned. t For an account of the architectural care of London buildings, see pages 179, 183-4. 141 442 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF music"? There is melody in every beauty — even as there is dis- sonance in ugliness and neglect. Cleanliness and purity were everywhere. The old death-pall, called London dirt, had dis- appeared — no thread of it was visible.* Even the slum prisons had at last disappeared ; the surviving prisoners had been amnestied three months before the great disarmament. The foul slum sites had been razed, and each of them laid out as memorial gardens. The troops commenced their march from the same barracks at Knightsbridge from whence they had emerged ten years before, armed to deliver their countrymen. But how different the masses who welcomed them ! 'Ko longer the starving, clad in rags and misery, but everywhere bright, free men and women. The roar of despair had given way to the warm acclamation of the heart, and the bright grateful people who remembered what had been, and what now was, received the men — whose task was done — with a fervour of enthusiasm which shook the valiant heroes as they marched. As they passed what had been the slum purlieus of Jubilee degradation, but where magnificent labour palaces had usurped their place, huge banners and decorations marked the sites, and everywhere along the route such records as these appeared : — " The land whereon these buildings stand, now the homes of 2000 men, women, and children, in Jubilee times belonged to the Marquis of , who, into a room-space less than one-third of that which we now enjoy, crowded 3200 human beings in filth and rottenness, and extracted from them three times the rent we pay." [The Marquis there referred to fell a victim to the fury of the people, and the rest of his belongings perished in the slum prisons.] In a wide district in the northern regions of the great Metropolis the troops marched through broad avenues of alternate poplar and plane trees, their bases alive with summer flowers, the roadways flanked by stately labour dwellings, whose verandahs shone bright, like the flowers under the tree-branches, with merry children, the love and glory of the Revolution. And from above and all sides there burst forth, as the devoted troops advanced, one never- ceasing heaven-artillery of enthusiasm. Never waved the proud banners of a Revolutionary soldiery in glory more sublime, the * For abolition of the smoke-fiend, see pages 221, 222. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 443- Ted now changed to white, the black letters into gold — "For God and for the People." On, the heroes of the Nation marched, under a love-rain of flowers and blessings. Arrived in the centre of the great district of Winters-Town, they halted. This enormous district had been in Jubilee times one of the typical slum-areas of Great Britain, the property of a titled family, with a woman for chief. It had been condemned over and over again by the Municipalities, ordered by the Government to be razed, and the scandalous owners to be "compensated." "Never!" had the brave Municipalities declared ; " we will not waste the ratepayers' millions on these soulless land-thieves ; we demand justice!" But no justice came. The wretched slum-people died at the rate of sixty in the thousand, whilst their owners lived ambrosially in palaces and castles — until the people at last arose and cast the vile owners in the ski ni-prisons, confiscated their land, and reversed the brutal mandate of plutocracy and Mammon. In Winters-Town, ten years after the Revolution, the death-rate was only seventeen in the thousand, and in the slum-prison where the old owners lived the life to which they had formerly condemned their thousands of wretched tenants — there the death-rate had been sixty — and the Jubilee nobility there learnt, in all its horrible reality, the meaning of slum-land. Through such scenes and such remembrances the soldiers passed — fifty divisions of the last hundred-thousand Revolutionary troops — through the London of the Revolutionary year 19 — , until, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the various divisions converged in the park which faced the Palace of Westminster.* Company by company the men crossed the Palace-yard, and laid their burdens down, and as, unarmed, they emerged from the golden gates, the women seized them, and armed them yet again, not in steel this time, but with an enthusiasm of gratitude and human love. The emancipated people, fired by the all-pervading ecstasy, hailed their deliverers with salvoes of the Revolutionary watchword that they had so well redeemed, "For * For two thonsand yards on all the land sides of the Parliament the houses had been cleared, and approaches worthy of the site made to the glorious Senate of a now free people. The formation'of this park, and the extension of the gardens and open spaces of the Metropolis, had been facilitated by the reflux of vast numbers of the people from the towns to the land. In the Revolutionary decade the population of London had decreased by nearly three- quarters of a million. 444 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. God and for the People." Six chimes sounded from the great Westminster bells as the last company left the Palace-yard. And slowly, with an emotion such as rarely has stirred the heart of a nation, the crowds melted back into their homes ; ay, into their Homes. Brave English word, pure emblem of God's peace on earth ! And Carlyle Democritus was once more at the Bar of the House of Commons CHAPTER II. CARLTLE DEM0CRITU8 LAYS ASIDE THE THORN-CROWN. "The wicked have no power, their works are as nothing in the sight of God. The great Chaos is Hell — the sempeternal churn for the annihilation of evil, the recrudescence of good. The wicked think themselves power- ful, and the good deem themselves not powerfnl. Yet is good the only power, and evil no power at all. Good everlasting. Evil but transitory, and not to prevail. "The wicked attribute everything to self-derived prudence. The good attribute everything to God Omnipotent. Evil has no spiritual life, and hence cannot endure. Good is all spiritual life, and hence cannot die. "Love, purified by wisdom, is the highest spiritual life. Reason and liberty are the divine prerogatives of man. From their abuse originates evil, the hell attribute which is pre-destined to self-annihilation." — Swedenboeg, And the great wave of popular enthusiasm receded homeward, leaving here and there little groups thinking over the deep meaning of the day that was passing, like sea-drops left by the receding tide to reflect the glory of the setting sun. Unable to bear the emotion of such a scene, Democritus had proceeded by the river to Parliament. A calm and noble peace now enveloped the place; the soul-stirring scenes whose far-off echoes were still faintly audible, like distant music, flushed the attendants and caused a glistening in their eyes, as, with every mark of reverence and loving respect, they saluted the General as he passed. The beautiful approaches and staircases to the National Chamber had been cleared of their legions of statues of past talkers. Only the best and greatest of them remained — a most small company. But others were added who had not previously been there, Eng- land's greatest, not of the talking sort. 445 446 THK ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF He has read this History to small purpose who has not dis- covered the source of Carlyle Democritus's power. He understands naught of the greatness of the brave English people who knows not the deep soul of religion burning in them. Over the dais of the National Chamber, like the aegis of a guardian spirit, spread the wide wings of an organ, through whose grand diapason a hymn of glory thrilled as the General entered the Chamber. Involuntarily the House rose to its feet, as with bent head and wasted form Carlyle Democritus stood before them. There was one moment of silence as the last sound hushed from the reeds, and then the pastor spoke : — " Mysterious Power, under Whom man uses the marvellous gifts Thou hast bestowed in him, sees or ignores the origin and condition of all good, succeeds as he perceives, and fails as he disregards. Success as Thou adjudgest, Almighty Father ; failure as Thou pitiest, All-merciful Judge. The success of a Christ, in torture on the cross ; the failure of a Charles, acclaimed as divine saviour by poor England. To Thee, Eternal Spirit of Good, incline us in obedience. As the Sun, which Thou hast set to guard and repro- duce the life with which Thou hast filled this planet, with its light and warmth ripeneth the fruit of the husbandman, whether he knoweth it or regardeth it not, so we perceive is it with the spiritual warmth of Thy perennial Love and Wisdom, which con- tinueth though man may ignore it, disregard it, or deny it. It continueth for ever. A nation rises and a nation falls. But that nation cannot fall whose spirit of justice has not fallen first. It is that spirit of justice which Thou hast caused to be re-awakened in this Nation, O Divine and Omnipotent God, and we lay our hearts open before Thee, and in this solemn moment of national re-birth resolve that Truth, Simplicity, and Justice shall be our guide." The stillness was scarcely broken as the representatives resumed their seats, Carlyle Democritus still standing at the bar. Then the first minister rose : " Not at the bar of the House, General, but here ; you, who are higher than the first ; it is the unanimous desire of the House, your place is here." And the Members rose again as one man. But Carlyle Democritus remained at the bar, thanked them for their courtesy, but he would not be the first to break their rules, which he had helped to re-estabhsh. Had he not broken enough in the former House % THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 447 *'I implore you, be seated, colleagues ; friends, I had not hoped so much from public sympathy and gratitude as to see here to-day all those elected by a free people who have for ten weary years worked with me to make them free- Let those who are new to the great task which lies before them, lose not the beautiful significance of that tribute of a free nation, whose judgment has not been trammelled by orators. Do not ever aim at oratory, my brothers; train yourselves in wisdom, work, and to gain know- ledge. Leave for ever your Demosthenes, your Ciceros, and their horrible Jubilee imitators. We have torn the wretched models from the schools, stopped the vain debate-societies, and substituted technical-, work-, and thought-societies, in order that earnest men can be trained, instead of mere tongue men. ... To those who have worked with me need I say aught 1 We have been a small company of men, given more to action than to speech ; will not our ten years' labour bear that out ? " To those who are new to me and to the task of government, I would say : O my countrymen, regard the trust of your con- stituencies as the dearest treasure under heaven. Be not eager to justify their choice, only be determined never to sully it. Be not anxious that they shall hear that you have spoken. Be only anxious that they shall not hear that you have spoken foolishly or selfishly. Look not to your constituents for praise, only to your consciences for approval. Our laws protect you for three years from addressing your constituents. The framers of that wise law have hoped that after that time the debased appetite for mere talk, bred by insensate men in Jubilee times, will have died. Whilst anxious to preserve good laws, be not dismayed at new growths and new desires. Pin no faith to the silly example of Lycurgus, lauded in the schools. He who makes a law, or constitution {which is but a great aggregation of laws), not tolerant of change, does like one who would plant a goodly tree and tether it with inflexible chains instead of a reasonable guiding stake. Such a tree, in time, could only grow distorted, earthward, its free inclination upward, heavenward, prevented. Who has seen finality in the work of man? Finality is the attribute of the work of Divinity, and not of man. Durability, not finality, is the best of man's power in all directions. Be sure that a State need not die ; it is not a man, but an infinitude of men ; but be sure that a State cannot live unless Justice be the atmosphere of 448 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF its life, for so has God made the world. As you free Justice, so will she free your people, and as you cloak and disguise her, or hide her from the people, so will the people be enslaved. Watch the growth and expansion of your nation, not hurrying and not hasting it, also not retarding it ; but protecting it bravely ; silently encouraging it ; ever ready to widen and extend your laws. Hasten no change, but also retard no healthy growth. . . . You, who have been so patient with me, and who desire that I say yet a little \apon the order of things which our Revolution has established, hear me then. After your own consciences is the Court of Honour of your Parliament ; true, its laws are stern, but your Assembly is the guiding-light of the nation, a lamp that must not be fouled, not even by rumour's breath ; let the laws of the Court for ever remain inflexible, and its justice immaculate. Dwell upon the true words of your pastor : ' The passing opinion of the world must not be your measure of failure or success.' T)niy done for duty's sake, let that be the only measure. Be not like the Jubilee ministers who scoffed at justice and let the people starve because one of their most contemptible of ' Parties ' was not (279) satisfied with the Radical sweetening of the Party-Cerberus-sop. •* Do not think we have tried to abolish poverty ; we have abolished pauperism. Poverty — the calm antithesis of wealth — is not an evil but a good. But the degradation of the poor ? That for ever contend against : For every free man let there be work ; tor every enslaved man (the idle man is the only slave) let there be compulsory or penal work. " Do not listen to the scoffer who shall endeavour to persuade you that all this is a counsel of perfection ; it is not that ; per- fection is for God, the path which leads to it is for man, a path endless, but sublime ; a path over which justice and wisdom for- ever guide ; there are few gold deposits along its borders, but there is no lack of wealth. The wealth of a contented and happy people, a wealth that increases the more with every honest endeavour that is made to protect it. Be unmindful of mere riches. Come not here, you who are anxious to fill your pockets with gold. But come here all you who are anxious to fill your souls with God. . . . " The land ! That is God's wealth, which He has entrusted to you to watch over and preserve ; look to it that never again in this noble empire the greedy be let absorb it. To-day is my last THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 449 with you ; I go to see witli my eyes the trees and the jflowers of this England, the innocent children brighter than the corn-flowers, the workmen sturdier than the oak, and the women pure and con- fiding, like the sweet climbing plants uniting the earth, and the flowers, and the trees. Like them, let your religion be, for that is the true binding — not, as the old Jubilee priests pretended, of futile dogmas, lies, and cant, which is the ?«ibinding, the irreligion. The care of religion which concerns a nation is the heart and core of the thing — this dear land has selected the purest of all the world's teachings ; maintain that purity, and it can never die ; it is the 'worship of sorrow,' the adoration of the highest, its example — renunciation of self, of all, in the cause of Love, Charity, and Mercy. Eeligion is not to be bound, religion is to bind you, me, us all, to our Divine Creator. Permit no ' Articles,' b\it that undying One and Eternal Article : the beautiful Book record. . . . " When you come to ponder upon all these things, you will perceive that it is not so much new laws that will become necessary, as ever new, brave, and untiring application of them. Therefore let your minds be more intent upon wise, just, and fearless admin- istration than mere feverish desire for never-ending legislation. . . . " With regard to the Second Chamber, do not think that we have left the appointment of its future members unduly in the hands of the Upper House. That would be to overlook the fact that the original appointment of all those who are not elected by the great independent bodies of the State (the Judges, the Literati, the Guilds) is entirely the work of this house, namely, the governors of Colonies, the ambassadors, and the heads of the Army and the Navy. But even in that, as in all the laws of the Eevolution, there is no Lycurgunism ; if there be weakness anywhere, that is but proof that their authors have been human; to amend as well as to preserve have you been called into power, a power which it is for you to exert with all the wisdom and sincerity that you can command. ... It was an evil of the old guilds that they degenerated and bred monopoly. Again I bid you remember that to establish justice in the land have you been placed here, and to guard against corruption. We have laid down the Guild laws in no narrow spirit, and even though there be many spots in the sun, the wise astronomers fear not that the light will be extinguished. We have not legislated for to-day only, but for al! time. Will you not emulate us in that, and remember that posterity is in your 2f 450 ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. loins ; your children arc the seeds of the great future ; for them prepare the soil, that soil whereon your fathers sleep, and youi sons will work. It is for you to be the liudbandnien of the laws, and if you see the weeds growing, to bravely clear them from tlie field. . . . Think of what has been and what will be, see wluit now is — and ignore only, each one man, himself. . . . Beware, when you shall see the germ of ' party ' uprearing again its serpent head. It is the first sign of discontent, of incipient agita. tion ; touch not the party, but eradicate the evil which gives rise to it. Be like wise captains, and treat such manifestations as surf-signs on the waves of time, bodeful of hidden rocks, or bars beneath. Decry not the agitator ; that is the province of the coward or the fool — but bravely face the cause of agitation, and remedy it. It is only the fool who believes that the agitator breeds discontent. When they can persuade you that the forest agitates the storm, and not the storm the forest, then shall you believe that man agitates injustice, instead of by injustice being agitated. " Be not dismayed before words. * State interference ' will always be the cry of rogues who fear disturbance of their villainy. Fear only State indifference. Be the guardians of your people, and not their oppressors; and, before all things, say the thing you mean, fearlessly, bravely. Speak not to the people that you trust them, but give them good cause to love and tiust you. The words which have guided you, my colleagues, through ten years of toil, let continue to be the guide of this free Assembly. So may it be that when each man yields up his power into the hands of those who have trusted him, he shall be able to say as man to man, as man before the Eternal Maker of man : * To the best of my sincerity and strength I have worked, intent only upon the public good, uumindful of self-interest — fob God and for the Peoplb.' " CHAPTER III. EUTHANASIA. " I made no haste in my work ; my house was framed and ready for raising. " — Thoreau. " I am neither author nor fautor of any sect. I will havo no man addict himself to me, but if I have anything right, defend _it as truth's, not mine. It profits not me to have any man fence or fight for me, to nourish, or take my side. Stand for truth, and 'tis enough." — Ben Jonsok. " The frailty of a man, the equanimity of a god." Carlyle Democritds entered upon his last journey. He went not into the large towns and cities to wonder at the noble buildings of brick or stone. Whatever their grandeur, he knew they could never even distantly approach the awful magnificence of the vast mysterious palaces and temples of Assyria, Babylon, Tyre, or Egypt. He had stood in the King's chamber of Ghizeh, a soul in a labyrinth of stone, pyramidic toy of the Pharaohs twenty hundred years before Christ, and he said : " Even the purpose of your buildings is unknown, poor vanished kings ; to-day they are but playthings for men's wonderment. Thy purpose, O Sufferer on the Cross — there. upon the Golgotha- waste ? Do men ask Thy purpose, after two thousand years ? Hast Thou not designed the palace which is growing in my soul, Divine Teacher of renun- ciation, the palace of spirit and not of matter, the alone imperishable 1 " Between Tyre and Palmyra he had come upon the ghostly ruins of Phoenician Heliopolis, "a wonder of the world" to John of Ajitioch. Will Europe equal its marble doors, its Titan pillars, gigantic yet fairy -like in beauty — " frozen music " ? or the Karnack Palace of Thebes, which great Homer declared to be unrivalled ? And, beneath the forests of a thousand years, he had 5tood amidst the ruined temples of Yucatan, Mexico, and Peru 451 452 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF also sublime in their awful grandeur, in their more awful warning to mankind. " Build not thy greatness upon stone, son of man, not upon accumulation of any matter. I, Time, will wash away thy landmarks as the sea the rock. I am a spirit, and as such have power over matter. But, O son of man, build up thy palaces upon Justice, and thou buildest upon the everlasting corner-stone of God's creation, which not all Time can destroy, for Justice is of Heaven, and shall outlast all time." Then, away from the sublime, he had seen the hollow skull-apery of the black Haytian, King Christophe, with his many palaces — palace of "Glory," of "Conquest," of "Victory," of "King's Beautiful View," and " Sans Souci " — that last a strange black mockery of the white "Sans Souci." Thirty thousand black workmen were killed by "accident," over-work, or under-feeding during its construction ; and from the majestic height of the palace-citadel the black "Sans Souci" King hurled thousands of his subjects into chaos and death, until finally — with modern pistol and gunpowder — he hurled his beast-brains into endless night. It is told of the highest of all palaces — Babel Tower — that there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth if a stone fell from the battlements, but when a worker fell no man cared. "Like Jubilee Babylon State," said Carlyle Democritus, as he stood upon the fabled spot where that old "Heav u-defying" fabric is said to have been erected. He looked not, then, to piles of brick and mortar, or stone or marble, to discover the veins of his nation's wealth and greatness, but down into the humblest homes of the masses. Those would tell him of the healthfulness of the Nation's blood and life. And down into the sunny fields and the peasants' cottages he went, to see the merry children and the contented women, the free, toiling men, and their godly homes. And he remembered what had been before, and what the great Master had permitted him to teach to His people and to achieve. Silent and alone, unknown to them, he continued his journey through the land, the glorious promise of peace rising daily in him as he saw that his task was done. His last visit was to the field of Purbeck.* There the pilgrim arrived late one summer evening. Some little children, who had • Page 232. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 453 been playing in the field, told how they had seen him at the shrine which marked the historic site there; and had seen him, later, enter the memorial church, whither one of them — induced, he could not tell why — followed him. It was a little golden-haired lad, whom they found, after anxious search, asleep, like an angel of peace, on the tomb of Terence Grey, warmly wrapped in the cloak which Carlyle Democritus had worn. The vault of the tomb was open. . . . They asked the child what had happened ? who had wrapped him on that strange couch ? He told them that after he had entered the church the strange man saw him, and beckoned to him, and he went up to him and kissed him, . . . and soon he heard beautiful music — but could remember nothing more. . . . And no one to this day knows more than that of the end of the Great Commander of the Revolution of the Twentieth Century. PBNDENTK LITE. "When God was about to create man, the angels gathered around him, and some of them said, ' Wilt Thou create a being, God, to bring glory to Thee on earth as we attest it in heaven 1 ' "And others of the angel host said, ' King, create no more, lest the glorious harmony which Thou hast established be destroyed.' "And silence fell upon the host, and the Angel of Mercy spoke, and sweet was the voice which said entreatingly, ' Father, create Thou man after Thine own image. With heavenly pity will I fill his heart, and with sympathy towards every living thing.' " * create him not. All Merciful,' spake sorrowfully the Angel of Peace, ' lest he sow dissension upon the fair earth which Thou hast made.' " ' Then I will be there,' said the Angel of Justice, ' and before the Divine Footstool shall man answer for his works.' " And the Angel of Truth spoke and said, * Create him not, God, lest with man Thou sendest falsehood to the earth.' " Then all were silent, and out of the deep stillness came the Divine command, * I will create man, and thou, Truth, shalt go to earth with him, and yet remain an angel of the Eternal Host — the connecting-link between heaven and earth.' " I N D E X. ' Acts." See Parliament. Adulteration. See Law, Advertisements, 185, 208, 313, 402, 403, 409, 410, 411. Afghanistan, 293, 300, 312, 323, 349. Alrica {see also Colonies), 109, 154, 292, 293, 328 {note). Age, old age, etc., 201, 205, 258, 322, 340, 343, 344, 384-85, 419, 431, 438. Agitation, Agitators, 101, 314, 450. Agriculture. See Land. Alien Immigration. See L America. See United States. Amherst, Earl of, 309. Anarchists, Anarchy, 329, 330, 344, 388, 389. Apprentices, Apprenticeship, 193, 200-201, 227, 262-63, 274, 279- 80, 351. Arbitration. See Courts of Justice. Arbitrators, 209, 249, 383-84. Archbishops. See Church. Aristocracy, 211, 435, 436-38. Army, 33, 44, 46, 148, 258, 291, 300, 304-13, 319, 394. Military Lands, 250, 253, 308. of Revolution. See R. Artisans' Dwellings. See Labour. Assessment. See Land. to Income Tax. See Finance. Australia {see also Colonies), 109, 110, 288, 289, 312. Bakeries, horrible condition of, in Jubilee Period, 120-21. Baker-shops, requisitioned by the Revolution, 53, 62. Banks, 60, 64. Banquets, 194, 431, 438. Barristers. See Law. Battle of Purbeck. See P. Beer, 118, 162, 189, 274. Beggars, begging, 153, 356. Bishops. See Churck. 455 Black, Colonel Andrew, 157. Blackswhite (Jubilee party-news- paper), 22, 66. Bloodletting. See Medical. Board of Trade, 215, 264, 267, 271, 280, 283, 342, 344, 377 {note). Board Schools. See School Board. Booth, General, 28, 29, 31, 43. Secundus, 29, 32, 33. Borrioboolah-Gha, 336. Bournemouth, 228. British Museum, 70. British People, The, 96, 113, 134, 283, 287, 296, 318, 399, 400, 418, 420, 446. Buildings, Street Improvements, Architecture, etc., 175, 178-79, 183-84. Burial, 259, 336-37. Boards, 147. Burraah, 311. Cabmen, Carmen, etc., 242-43. Canada {see also Colonies), 109, 110, 111, 215, 289, 307, 312. Candidates. See Electorate. Cant, 17-18, 24, 115, 331, 335, 336, 361, 402, 407, 419. Capital and Labour, 281-82. Carlyle, Thomas, 22, 27, 28, 43, 104, 113, 234, 236, 320, 336. Carlyle Democritus, member of Parliament, 30 ; Colonel in the Army, 33 ; world-wanderings, 30, 451-52 ; resigns his Marquis- ate, and consecrates his inherit- ance to the public service, 30-31 ; visits Slumland, 33, 42, 80 ; his trials and sutieriugs, there and elsewhere, 80, 239, 277, 350 ; his vow, 277 ; his connection with the Salvation Army, 29, 31, 32, 44 ; becomes its General-in-Chief, S3, 43 ; his advent a necessity of the time, 314 ; he introduces new organisa*;ion and discipline, 33, 456 INDEX. 34, 44, 43, 81, 95-96 ; visits the shelters, 35 ; his persorial appear- ance, 42, 43, 80-81 ; meets Terence Grey, 36 ; his influence over his followers, 34, 35, 42, 44, 81 ; Fourteenth of Febn:ary, 35, 49- 50 ; re-enters Parliament, 67 ; has interview with the King, 69- 76 ; with his Revolutionary Councils, 156-60,165-71 ; notable utterances : — to those in despair, 34 ; his prayer, 35, 400 ; address to his troops, 50 ; to the Royal Guards, 52 ;